'It was like an endless therapy session': Secrets of a celebrity ghostwriter

Metro

19 hours ago

Some of the bestselling authors of the last few years didn't write a single word of their book.
Prince Harry certainly didn't open up his Apple Mac in a local Starbucks and type out that he put Elizabeth Arden cream on his frostbiten penis, and there's not a chance that Britney Spears rented space at a WeWork to reveal how a conservatorship stripped her of any freedom.
Instead, they told their life stories to experienced writers, whose expert storytelling helped earn a slice of the biographies and autobiographies pie that was worth £120.6m in 2023*.
Ghostwriters spend hours speaking to celebrities to find out all their secrets – and which will make it onto the pages – but it's unlikely you'll know who they are. If their names are revealed at all, it's usually buried deep in the acknowledgements at the back of the book.
One person who knows this all too well, is showbiz journalist Emma, who is understandably going by a pseudonym and took on her first ghostwriting gig around five years ago.
Because of her job, Emma's path often crossed with Sarah**, a well-known British name, at showbiz functions. The pair got along well whenever she interviewed the star, so when the book idea was first born, it seemed like an obvious avenue for them to work together on it.
'We're very different people, but we bonded,' Emma tells Metro. 'She could always make me laugh with her one-liners and outspoken way of talking. It was fun to be around someone who was quite unapologetic about it.
'I just liked her. She'd recognise me, even in busy rooms, and make the effort to say hello. I was also quite close with her agent at the time, so that helped.
'There was no way Sarah had the will to write it herself,' adds Emma. 'So it was an immediate yes when I was asked to do it. I'd never ghostwritten before, but I thought it would be a fun challenge figuring out things as I went along.'
While J.R. Moehringer is said to be the highest-paid ghostwriter ever after earning a rumoured seven figures for penning Prince Harry's memoir Spare, Emma was offered to choose from an up-front fee of just over £10,000 or be paid in royalties based on the number of copies sold. She opted for the former as she didn't know how well it would perform, while Sarah got six figures from the deal regardless.
Through the agent, it was quickly arranged that Emma would head over to the celebrity's home for their first official book session.
'The plan was to run through her story chronologically. She is a natural, so she didn't need any prompts I'd prepared. But she'd go off on tangents, which began to make things a little difficult,' Emma recalls.
'Sometimes, she'd just want to tell me gossip or moan about exes, which I knew could be legally problematic.
'It could be a lot and felt more like an endless therapy session at some points. Sometimes I did have to stop myself asking, 'Why the hell did you do that?''
Over the three-month process, Emma found herself chasing Sarah, desperate to lock in dates for more interview time, as the book publisher got on her case about looming deadlines. Ironically, the ghostwriter even got ghosted at certain points. 'She was very hard to pin down,' Emma remembers.
'Once I travelled to her home, it was a four-hour round trip, but she wasn't there when I arrived. She texted saying I'd got the wrong day, but I looked back at our messages, and I had got the date right – she was trying to gaslight me.
'I also had a full-time job, so sticking to the schedule was important, but Sarah had no concept of that and became very flaky. It was very much about her, it was clear she never viewed my time as important as hers. Most of the time, she wouldn't even give an excuse; she just used to cancel or not pick up the phone.'
When they did manage to meet up, Sarah would sometimes end their sessions prematurely: 'She'd say, 'Right, I need to go now, I've booked a pedicure, let's do another time' or 'I'm going out to a party'.
'It was annoying, but I've dealt with celebrities for years, so I know what they can be like. I just plastered on a smile and moved forward,' explains Emma.
'When we did meet up, I would be to get her chatting about some showbiz gossip, even though I knew it was legal dynamite, just to keep her in the room. Then I could sneak in something I needed to know about,' she recalls.
Sarah's version of the truth was also something she soon got used to. 'I had to take stuff with a pinch of salt, because she'd tell me things and then I would speak to her family, to get a bit of background, and they would say it wasn't true.
'Even something as simple as where she was at a really important moment of her life, someone would later tell me she'd got it completely wrong. It was a lot of fact checking.'
Despite her frustrations, Emma admits that she couldn't help but warm to Sarah.
'I saw a different side to her while spending so many hours together. When she was in her home setting, the guards came completely down. I saw glimpses of the person behind the headlines,' she explains.
'Yes, her world was very different from mine, but there was a normal woman inside it all. As I listened to her full story, I began to understand wht her life must be like and why she behaved the way she did.'
Emma continues: 'She would do sweet things like buy my coffee, or drop me back to the train station after we'd finished speaking. Towards the end, it was more like I was meeting a friend for a catch-up.
'We'd discuss TV shows we're watching, making reality TV predictions, for example, and she asked questions about my life as well. I've had times where I've tried to bond with a celebrity in an interview by sharing a similar experience, and they are not interested, but she seemed to genuinely care.'
While she didn't proof read her book once the final draft was complete, Sarah did hear different chunks during the writing process. 'I'd read out a chapter to her aloud, and she'd flag any changes she wanted to make,' reveals Emma.
'I found it quite hard sometimes to write in her voice, rather than my own, so this was helpful.'
Much to Emma's surprise, once the book was finished, so was her 'friendship' with Sarah.
'It was odd going from spending so much time together to not speaking because it consumed my life. I did try to message Sarah after the book came to an end, but it said this number no longer exists,' she adds. More Trending
'She changes her number a lot; it wasn't personal, but she didn't make the effort to give me the new one. I was like, 'Okay, I guess we won't stay in touch.' But if I saw her out, it'd be nice to catch up.'
So what did Sarah think of the finished version, which went on to sell a reported 150,000 copies?
'She didn't ever sit down to read it,' admits Emma. 'She doesn't have the attention span, so I can't say if she was happy with it… her agent was though!'
Metro's Senior Features Writer Josie Copson is part of a small London book club, Read It, My Pony, which reads only one genre…
Since 2017, I've been part of a book club that exclusively reads celebrity autobiographies. That statement can often make people giggle, as perhaps they aren't the most well-respected genre and book clubs are often associated with intellectual conversation about Pulitzer-prize winning titles. However, I would argue that if you want to learn about what it means to be human, then all you've got to do is visit the Biographies and Memoirs section on Amazon.
My journey into the world began with Ja Rule's Unruly. The artist dominates my Spotify, but I was keen to know more about the guy behind the raspy voice. When I told a colleague what I was reading, she expressed interest in also flicking through the pages. She borrowed it and then we booked a meeting room for our lunch break, and dissected why longtime collaborator Ashanti wasn't given more pages, and if his claim that his father invented fat-free cheesecake was true.
Since then, we've acquired four more members, given ourselves a name (Read It, My Pony), and read about Daniella Westbrook's struggles with addictions, Gemma Collins' argument on why she's earnt her divaship, how Victoria Beckham became Posh Spice, and what led Lily Allen to quit making music. I've read about lives that couldn't be more different, but I've found they have some common threads…
Everyone wants to be special until they are, then they want to prove that they're just like everybody else. No amount of money or success ever makes someone happy. Love, or the pursuit of it, can often be the unravelling of powerful women. Even the most exciting jobs can be mundane. Nobody is immune to negative opinions.
Getting an insight into the worlds of women such as Cher, Shania Twain, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore and Jessica Simpson, and learning that they have their insecurities and problems too, reminds me that everyone is just doing their best to figure life out. They just have a few more eyes on them.
*Nielsen Bookscan **Name has been changed
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