Bob Colacello: you never know who you'll end up meeting at Interview, and as Bob Colacello, the magazine's former editor, reveals, you never know where those encounters will take you

CC: Knowing how much you admire Mrs. Reagan, was it difficult for you to address with her some of the unflattering things that might have been written or said about her?

BC: I'm not a person who likes confrontation, and I try to be diplomatic, so I'd say, "I'm embarrassed to even ask you about this." And she'd say, "Don't be. Because the way it's written is wrong, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to give you my side of the story." Like all politicians and many celebrities, though, she's become so used to being interviewed that there's the risk of falling into this repetitious way of talking about her life. So what I found I had to do was to target areas that she had not been interviewed so much about, people who never were in the story, like friends of her mother's. And when I'd throw something out like that it would open her up about a whole other chapter of her life, like growing up in Chicago.

CC: During the research for this book, were you ever able to talk to President Reagan?

BC: No, he was too ill. I'd met him a couple of times at White House functions, but I'd never really had a long talk with him or anything like that.

CC: Ron Reagan Jr. has become an outspoken critic of President Bush. How do you think Mrs. Reagan feels about that?

BC: I know she's very proud of Ron: He's always been the apple of her eye. The other day I called Mrs. Reagan to ask her some last-minute fact-checking things for the book, and that evening Ron was scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention. So I said, 'Nancy, everyone's asking me if you're supporting Bush. They assume Ron's got your blessing to speak at the Democratic Convention.' And she said, 'Well, of course I'm supporting the president, but do people really think I can tell a 46-year-old man what to do?'

CC: One thing I found so amazing in the chapter excerpted in Vanity Fair was the amount of detail you uncovered about the Reagans' courtship.

BC: I've been accused by editors of getting obsessed with finding one more detail, but I think that's what makes people come alive.

CC: Well, God is in the details, and you have really provided them in this book.

BC: I hope you feel the same way when the book actually comes out. You know, when this project was first announced, Liz Smith called me and said, "I have one question for you. How do you go from writing a book about Andy Warhol [Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, 1990] to writing a book about Ronald Reagan?" And I thought about it for a second and said, "You know, in some ways they're very much alike--they're these great American stories. Only in America could someone like Andy Warhol or Ronald Reagan come from realty poor families and rise to the top the way they did." Both were disparaged all along the way--Warhol as a fashion illustrator and Reagan as a B-list actor--yet both were able to completely revolutionize their chosen fields. Both were delegators, but both had a very strong vision of what they wanted to do. Some people saw those visions as simplistic, but sometimes the simple ideas are the most longlasting. It makes me feel like the whole thing's been a full circle--like I'm back at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, and my father doesn't have to want to break my leg any more.