It’s less than four days out from the Opening Ceremony, the official start to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, when Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir sit down to have a virtual chat with For The Win. It’s what they described as the first day of their Olympics, sitting on a gray couch at NBC headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, where they’ll cover the Games instead of in person rinkside.
Of course, they look fabulous, as they sidle up next to each other. Weir apologizes for slouching: “My hair won’t fit in the frame if I sit up straight.”
They’re prepping to cover their fifth Olympics together — third as figure skating analysts at the Winter Games — along with Terry Gannon as lead play-by-play commentator for Olympic figure skating.
Lipinski and Weir as a duo have become broadcasting staples when it comes to figure skating with an ability to simplify the sport for the less familiar. Figure skating is what they do, with Lipinski as the 1998 singles Olympic gold medalist at the Nagano Winter Games and Weir being a three-time U.S. champion and two-time Olympian (2006, 2010).
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The pair are also fashion icons who have become famous for their dazzling on-air looks, complemented by sparkles and flair. But looking fabulous every day takes work, time and coordination, and they shared backstage details about how it all happens — including adjoining rooms and packing 17 total suitcases.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
FTW: You're covering the Olympics from afar this time, broadcasting from Connecticut instead of Beijing. How are you approaching this differently?
Tara Lipinski: For us, it’s not going to matter that much. Obviously, being at an Olympic Games, being in an Olympic arena, there is a difference. There’s a slight change in the energy, if you will, of what you get when you’re sitting in an Olympic arena. I don’t know if people really know this, but we’ve worked from NBC headquarters in Stamford for years, and we’ve done so many events.
So many times when it’s Grand Prix of France, people think we’re there, but we’re really doing it from Stamford. I’m still gonna be on the edge of my seat grabbing Johnny’s hand, probably standing up. And we may not be in an Olympic arena, but it will not make a difference for me.
Johnny Weir: Mentally, I think we’re both at the Beijing Olympics — doesn’t matter where we are. We lived the lives of these athletes, we’ve walked in their shoes, we know exactly what emotions are going through their hearts in their heads. So mentally, for us being there isn’t hard for us at all. And the fact that we get to do this together and with Terry Gannon, it’s going to raise the energy for us up because we’re going to feel like we’re in a normal booth like we always are.
TL: Truly, Johnny? I feel like we could be calling the event from our hotel room in onesies, and we’d have the same energy. So we’re pumped.
JW: We know what’s at stake, we know what this all feels like, and that is an emotion and energy that we worked our whole lives for that will never go away. We could be 95 years old watching the Olympics, and we would still feel like we were when we were 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 years old. Yes, I learned to count.
(John Berry/Getty Images)
FTW: You both often coordinate outfits when you're broadcasting together. How do you plan that? Who takes the lead on that?
JW: Raspberries and cream today! For me, it’s always been important in our partnership — I work with a woman, and the pressures on women and entertainment are so much more severe and so much harsher and that spotlight shines so much hotter on women. And I want Tara to feel confident and beautiful and living her best life and being her best self when we go out there.
So I like to let her take the lead, and then I find a way to bounce off of that. And of course, we have our matchy-matchy cuteness, and we’ll have themes to our outfits for the day. But first and foremost, it’s that Tara feels like a queen when she’s out there.
TL: He really is the perfect gentleman. If you ever meet Johnny Weir, that is the first thing you’ll notice. He’ll run and open a door for someone, wherever he’s at. So I’m very lucky. But it’s so much fun.
What we do is we have adjoining rooms, we have our wardrobe racks, we we lay everything out. And then we sort of think about what event we’re calling the next day. And we huddle in our rooms and and mix and match and try to see what what we’re going for. Obviously, it’s all about the skating, and I think the audience knows that. And that’s where our focus is, but it is fun to add a little sparkle to the broadcast.
JW: And it’s putting our Sasha Fierce on, really. It’s like putting our armor on. We get our hair done, we get our makeup done, we put those clothes on and we are in it. We’re ready. Our focus is, of course, on the skaters and the competition that we’re watching, but we like to give people the full gamut of what they can have from the best sporting event in the world, the best spectacle in the world, which is the Olympics. So if we showed up just in casuals, we wouldn’t be doing our sport and our lives justice.
TL: I feel like we have gone with tradition with figure skating, as well. Obviously, what you see on the ice, the athletes are fierce athletes doing incredible technical feats, but they’re wearing a gorgeous, rhinestone dress. So I feel like if we match the skaters and we’re bringing out the sparkle, then we’re doing our job.
FTW: So how many suitcases did you bring with you to Stamford, Connecticut, and is it about the same as usual?
JW: We’ve really matured. I think we’re at 17 total between the two of us. I brought 10, where for Tokyo, I took 13. But also I was able to drive myself to the Olympics. I live on the East Coast, so I was able to get to Connecticut really easily and just only bring what I needed. I didn’t need like a carry-on, and I didn’t need this for air travel and that for air travel. I could just bring the stuff I really needed, and that was a nice change. But we still bring everything, really.
TL: A whole closet.
JW: You can never be too prepared.
(Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP)
FTW: You said there's often a theme to your on-air looks. Is there one you have in mind for the Beijing Olympics you're really excited about? Without spoiling!
TL: We always have an inner theme working, whether it’s we’re matching colors or we’re matching texture or we’re just going with a fun vibe. I feel like every Olympics we have a Valentine’s outfit, don’t we?
JW: Yeah.
TL: That’s one of my favorites.
JW: So lots of pink and red. But to celebrate Tara’s anniversary for the women’s free skate, every year, we wear gold in honor of her winning her gold medal.
TL: Again, like, why is he so cute?
FTW: During the U.S. championships, you both had bejeweled face masks and headsets — will you be wearing those during the Olympics too?
TL: We have our headsets bedazzled. Someone has a bedazzler here at NBC, and they do a fantastic job.
JW: They surprised us starting in South Korea at the [2018 Pyeongchang] Olympics by just adding sparkles to pretty much everything that we touch.
TL: Everything.
JW: And then they started adding one rhinestone at a time to Terry Gannon’s work stuff — his microphone, his headset — and it’s just the funniest thing. It definitely elevates our booth to have rhinestones all over the place, but we had no part in it.
TL: We didn’t, but we love it.
JW: We never said to anyone, like, “Can we have a sparkly mic?” But we love it, and I do think we’ll have something special for people in the gold medal rounds at this Olympics. We might have some gold rhinestones sleeve for our microphones.
