How to Cite an Interview in MLA (9th Edition)

Quick Answer: How to Cite an Interview in MLA

Start with the interviewee. If the interview is in a book, journal, magazine, radio archive, podcast, or YouTube video, fill that container. If you conducted a private conversation, do not invent a headline: use the description interview (or E-mail interview), then "Conducted by" and the date. In the text, cite the interviewee, and add a page or timestamp only when readers can open the same file. If the speaker asked to stay anonymous, skip the Works Cited list and use an endnote.

For one formatted pair, use How to cite an interview in MLA. To fill fields, use the interview citation generator. If your assignment is APA, stop and open how to cite interviews in APA.

The official author rule

Students often start with the journalist, the podcast host, or the YouTube channel. MLA 9 does the opposite. The Style Center states the rule in one sentence:

That is why a Toni Morrison interview is listed under Morrison, not under the people who asked the questions. The interviewer is optional extra information unless the interview is untitled and needs a contributor to make sense. Those handbook sections cover the generic description interview when there is no title.

A four-step check before you format

1. Name the speaker you are quoting. MLA almost always puts the interviewee first. Do not start with the host, the magazine, or the YouTube channel unless you are citing the program as a whole rather than the person's answers.
2. Copy the title exactly, or admit there is no title. A titled interview goes in quotation marks. An untitled interview uses the generic description interview, unquoted and unitalicized.
3. Decide whether the interviewer belongs in the entry. If the interview sits inside another work, MLA allows "Interview conducted by" as a supplemental element after the title. If the interview is not contained in another work, the interviewer can follow the description interview.
4. Cite the version you used. Use the magazine, book, journal, program, or platform you actually opened. Do not cite a reprint, transcript, or YouTube upload as if it were the original broadcast unless that file is what you read or watched.

Published interviews follow the container

Once the interview is recoverable, MLA's core elements do the rest: author, title, container, contributors, version, number, publisher, date, and location. The interviewer is not a required core element. Add the interviewer when it helps a reader tell two interviews apart or when the official source names the conversation that way.

Works Cited template for a titled, published interview

Interview collected in a book

The Style Center's book example is Ken Saro-Wiwa's "English Is the Hero," conducted by Diri I. Teilanyo and reprinted in an edited collection. Use this pattern when you found the interview as a chapter, not as a standalone periodical piece. The interviewer is optional; both official forms are valid.

Two collections, same interviewee

If you quote the same person from two books, make two Works Cited entries and add a shortened title in the parenthetical. The Style Center's interviews in book collections post (2 March 2021) uses Tom Stoppard. When the collection editor is not the interviewer, name the interviewer after the chapter title. When the book's author also conducted the interview, skip that extra phrase.

Interview in a scholarly journal

For a journal, keep volume, issue, date, and pages. The Style Center's in-text guidance uses Orhan Pamuk's PMLA interview. If the sentence already names Pamuk, the parenthetical can shrink to the page. If it also names the interviewer, repeat Pamuk in parentheses so the Works Cited heading is still findable.

Those two sentences are the official MLA Style Center examples (14 February 2018) for naming an interviewee in prose. When you quote the back-and-forth itself, MLA's dialogue layout puts the speaker's name in capitals before each speech, then the parenthetical after the passage:

MIRZE. How important is the idea of home to you?

PAMUK. It is very important. Why? Because I have been living in the same city, the same neighborhood, even in the same house, for all of my life. . . . Home, of course, is important to an immigrant, perhaps more important because that is what he left behind. But home is also important for the guy who is at home all the time. (Pamuk 179)

Literary magazine interview on the open web

Toni Morrison's Paris Review conversation is a standard classroom source because the title, interviewers, issue, and URL are all public. Cite the version you used. The web text is issue 128 (Fall 1993); do not invent a page range you did not see in print. Morrison's line about writing after dark is on that page.

Radio interview

Ta-Nehisi Coates's 13 July 2015 Fresh Air conversation is a dated NPR page with a transcript, so it is recoverable. The current page title is the episode title; Terry Gross is the interviewer, not the Works Cited author. The published page opens by locating Coates in West Baltimore. NPR later posted a 28 June 2021 correction on the page; cite the interview date of the version you used, not the correction date, unless you are citing the correction itself.

If you are citing the host's framing rather than the guest's answers, or citing the episode as a sound work, switch to the podcast citation guide and list the host first. The choice is about whose words you used, not about which template looks more complete.

YouTube interview

MLA treats a self-contained YouTube interview as a stand-alone work, so the video title is italicized, not placed in quotation marks. The official MLA Style Center example (26 May 2020) is Kanye West on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

Copy the uploader's account name exactly. If the video title already names the interviewer, you do not need "interview conducted by." For a recoverable recording, MLA also wants a timestamp in the in-text citation; the Style Center's time-stamp post (6 March 2018) answers that question with a yes, whether you watched the file online or on a disc. Do not invent a timestamp you did not hear. For ordinary uploaded clips that are not stand-alone interview films, see how to cite YouTube videos in MLA.

Unpublished interviews you conducted

If you are the only person who can replay the conversation, MLA still wants a clear trail, but it does not want a fake periodical title. The Style Center's untitled-interview pattern is the safest default. Interview is a description, so it is not quoted or italicized. The interviewer is a contributor after that description, followed by a comma and the date.

Those two lines are the official wording from How do I document an interview in MLA style? and How do I cite an interview that I recorded? (15 January 2025). The recorded-interview post is explicit about what not to cite:

Older campus handouts often print "Interview by" or "Personal interview." Those shortcuts are widely understood, but "Interview. Conducted by" is what the current Style Center shows for an untitled interview that is not inside another work.

A global note instead of a Works Cited entry

If one unpublished interview supplies most of your quotations, MLA also allows a note instead of a list entry. The Style Center example is:

Use the note when repeating the same private source would clutter the Works Cited list. Use a list entry when the interview sits beside published sources and readers need an alphabetical hook. In either case, do not cite your private recording as a video with timestamps. MLA says the entry is for the interview, not for a file only you can open.

E-mail, oral, telephone, and multi-day interviews

If the medium is the only way to tell two unpublished interviews apart, replace the bare description interview with a more specific one. The Style Center's e-mail pattern uses the description E-mail interview. Consecutive days become a range; non-consecutive days become a series.

Those four lines are the official examples from How do I cite an interview conducted by e-mail? (17 December 2018) and How do I cite a personal interview that occurred on more than one day? (26 September 2017). A later Style Center note updated untitled interviews that are not inside another work so the interviewer can sit in the contributor slot and be followed by a comma. That is why the current e-mail line says "Conducted by," not "By."

If you need the reader to know the conversation was spoken rather than written, the Style Center allows Oral interview as the description, the same way it allows E-mail interview. The oral-interview post (21 January 2019) still prints the older contributor phrasing:

Keep that official string as printed. For a new entry you write yourself, prefer the later "Conducted by" pattern unless your instructor asks you to copy the 2019 line. For a telephone or video-call interview you conducted, keep the same contributor-and-date pattern and change only the description. Do not add a city, a job title, or a made-up headline.

An unpublished e-mail is often clearer as an e-mail than as an interview. MLA's usual e-mail pattern uses the subject line as the title and "Received by" for the recipient. If the exchange was a planned interview conducted by e-mail, either description can work; pick the one that matches how you introduced the source in your prose. For the broader personal-communication rules across styles, see how to cite personal communications.

In-text citations for interviews

The in-text citation points to the Works Cited author, which is the interviewee. Add a page number when the source has stable pages. Add a timestamp only when you are citing a recoverable recording. Do not add a timestamp to a private file.

MLA versus APA and Chicago for the same interview

The most common mix-up is to import APA's personal-communication rule into an MLA paper. APA 7 keeps an unpublished interview in the text only. MLA 9 usually gives that interview a Works Cited line. Chicago 18 usually keeps an unpublished interview in a note. Published interviews are recoverable in all three styles, but they disagree about who counts as the author. This page is the MLA interview how-to, not the APA interview guide or the Chicago interview guide.

Special cases that change the entry

Untitled published interview

If a broadcast or archive file has no formal title, do not invent "Interview with X." Use the generic description interview, then the program or repository as the container. The Walcott example above is the untitled pattern; a titled Paris Review piece is not.

Anonymous or confidential source

If a person asked not to be named, do not invent a Works Cited heading and do not publish a private name in the list. The Style Center's anonymous-interviewee post (5 April 2018) forbids a list entry:

That official rule is stricter than a campus handout that tells you to list "Anonymous emergency-room nurse" on the Works Cited page. In MLA, the anonymity agreement lives in the note, not in a fake author element. An invented personal name is a citation error and an ethics error.

Transcript versus recording

Cite the file you used. If you read an official transcript, cite that page or URL. If you listened to the audio, cite the audio. Adding the word "Transcript" is useful only when the same interview exists in more than one form and the difference affects wording or pagination. For a published source, use the publication date of the version you used, not the date the conversation happened if those dates differ.

Common mistakes

• Starting with the interviewer. Unless you are citing the program rather than the answers, the interviewee leads.
• Writing "Interview with" in the Works Cited list. MLA's current supplemental phrase is "Interview conducted by," not "Interview with."
• Inventing a title for a personal interview. Untitled interviews use the description interview.
• Giving a private interview a fake URL or timestamp. If readers cannot open the file, do not format it as a YouTube video.
• Listing an anonymous personal interview on the Works Cited page. MLA wants an endnote, not a disguised author line.
• Copying APA's in-text-only rule into MLA. MLA can list an unpublished interview.
• Citing a web page you cannot name. If you cannot name a real container, you do not yet have a published-interview citation.
• Using the conversation date when a published source has a later publication date. For recoverable sources, cite the date of the version you used.

Ethics when you are the interviewer

A correct MLA entry does not replace consent. If you conducted the interview, you are documenting a person, not only a source type. Interviews you collect for a class project can still fall under institutional review rules, especially if you ask about health, school records, or other private facts.

• Get permission to quote and to name the person before you add a Works Cited line.
• Say how you will use the interview and whether a recording will be stored.
• Offer anonymity when the topic could cause harm, and keep the citation consistent with that promise: an anonymous source gets an endnote, not a list entry.
• Quote from notes or a recording you were allowed to make; do not clean up a sentence into something the person did not say.
• Ask your instructor or IRB office whether a student interview project needs review. Many classroom oral histories do not, but that is an institutional decision, not an MLA rule.
• Treat interviews as primary sources you created, then evaluate them for memory, prompting, and bias.

Copy-first checklist

Related guides

• How to cite interviews in APA
• How to cite interviews in Chicago
• How to cite personal communications
• How to cite podcasts in MLA
• How to cite YouTube videos in MLA
• Primary versus secondary sources

Sources and further reading

The examples on this page come from recoverable publications or from the MLA Style Center's own sample entries. Several Ask the MLA posts still carry an eighth-edition note; the current handbook is the ninth edition, and the 7 June 2016 interview template plus the 15 January 2025 recorded-interview post are the ones to follow when an older line says "By" instead of "Conducted by." Check those posts before you follow a campus handout that still says "Interview by," that lists anonymous interviews, or that omits unpublished interviews from the Works Cited list.

• How do I document an interview in MLA style? — author rule, sections 5.23 and 5.28, Saro-Wiwa, and Walcott. Published 7 June 2016.
• How do I cite an interview that I recorded? — global note versus Works Cited entry, and no timestamps for a private file. Published 15 January 2025.
• How do I cite an interview found on YouTube? — italic stand-alone video titles. Published 26 May 2020.
• Should a time stamp be given in an in-text citation for a video? — yes, for a recoverable recording. Published 6 March 2018.
• How do I cite an interview when the interviewee has been attributed in my prose? — Pamuk in-text patterns. Published 14 February 2018.
• How do I cite interviews of the same interviewee taken from two different interview collections? — Stoppard collections. Published 2 March 2021.
• How do I cite an interview conducted by e-mail? — Helen Smith example. Published 17 December 2018.
• How do I cite a personal interview that occurred on more than one day? — date ranges and series. Published 26 September 2017.
• Do I need to indicate that I conducted an interview orally? — Oral interview description. Published 21 January 2019.
• How do I cite a personal interview when the interviewee wishes to remain anonymous? — endnote only, no Works Cited entry. Published 5 April 2018.
• Toni Morrison, The Art of Fiction No. 134 — The Paris Review, no. 128, Fall 1993.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates on Police Brutality, the Confederate Flag and Forgiveness — Fresh Air, 13 July 2015.