How to Cite an Interview in APA, MLA, and Chicago

You interviewed a professor for your research project, or you’re quoting an interview someone else conducted and published. Those two situations look similar on the surface – both involve a person answering questions – but they follow almost entirely different citation rules. An interview you conducted yourself isn’t a published, retrievable source the way an interview someone else recorded and printed is, and every major style treats that distinction as the first decision point before anything else about formatting.

Two Kinds of Interviews, Two Sets of Rules

Before formatting anything, identify which situation you’re in: did you personally conduct this interview as part of your research, or are you citing an interview that was already published, broadcast, or posted by someone else? A personal interview you conducted exists only because you created it – there’s no URL, no publication, nothing your reader can independently verify. A published interview has an author (usually the interviewer or the publication), a publication date, and a retrievable location, closer to citing any other article.

Here’s the published-interview example we’ll use throughout: a piece titled “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic,” in which journalist Victor Lindqvist interviews climate scientist Dr. Helena Marchetti, published in Nordic Science Review on March 3, 2025.

APA 7th Edition

Published Interview

APA treats a published interview like any other periodical piece – the person who conducted and wrote up the interview is the author, not the interviewee, since they’re the one who created the published work:

Lindqvist, V. (2025, March 3). Rethinking climate models for the Arctic: An interview with Helena Marchetti. Nordic Science Review. https://nordicsciencereview.example/marchetti-interview

• The interviewer is the author; the interviewee’s name appears in the title, not the author position
• The publication title is italicized, matching any other periodical citation

Personal Interview You Conducted

APA treats an interview you personally conducted as a personal communication – it isn’t retrievable by your reader, so it never gets a reference list entry. Cite it only in the body of your paper:

(H. Marchetti, personal communication, March 3, 2025)

Because personal communications have no reference list entry, your reader relies entirely on the in-text citation for identifying detail – include the interviewee’s full role or credentials nearby in your prose if it matters to your argument.

MLA 9th Edition

Published Interview

MLA gives you flexibility about which name leads the citation. If the interviewee is the focus of your discussion, lead with them:

Marchetti, Helena, interviewee. “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic.” Interview by Victor Lindqvist. Nordic Science Review, 3 Mar. 2025, nordicsciencereview.example/marchetti-interview.

If you’re discussing the piece as Lindqvist’s work – his framing, his questions – lead with the interviewer instead and drop “interviewee”:

Lindqvist, Victor. “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic.” Nordic Science Review, 3 Mar. 2025, nordicsciencereview.example/marchetti-interview.

Personal Interview You Conducted

Unlike APA, MLA still creates a formal Works Cited entry for an interview you conducted yourself – MLA’s philosophy is to document what you consulted, even when a reader can’t retrieve it independently:

Marchetti, Helena. Personal interview. 3 Mar. 2025.

No URL, no publication – only the interviewee’s name, the type of interview, and the date.

Chicago 18th Edition

CiteTools renders Chicago 18 notes and bibliography. The author-date example below belongs to Chicago’s separate system.

Published Interview (Notes-Bibliography)

Footnote:

1. Helena Marchetti, “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic,” interview by Victor Lindqvist, Nordic Science Review, March 3, 2025, https://nordicsciencereview.example/marchetti-interview.

Bibliography:

Marchetti, Helena. “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic.” Interview by Victor Lindqvist. Nordic Science Review, March 3, 2025. https://nordicsciencereview.example/marchetti-interview.

Published Interview (Author-Date)

In-text:

(Marchetti 2025)

Reference list:

Marchetti, Helena. 2025. “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic.” Interview by Victor Lindqvist. Nordic Science Review, March 3. https://nordicsciencereview.example/marchetti-interview.

For the complete comparison of Chicago’s two systems – including which one your course likely expects – see our Chicago style citation guide.

Personal Interview You Conducted

Chicago treats a personal interview the way it treats any unrecoverable personal communication – a footnote only, with no bibliography entry:

1. Helena Marchetti (climate scientist, Arctic Research Institute), in discussion with the author, March 3, 2025.

Broadcast and Video Interviews

Interviews aired on television, radio, or streamed as video follow the published-interview pattern above, with the broadcaster or program credited the way a publication is:

APA: Lindqvist, V. (2025, March 3). Rethinking climate models for the Arctic: An interview with Helena Marchetti [TV interview]. Nordic Broadcasting Corporation.

MLA: Marchetti, Helena, interviewee. “Rethinking Climate Models for the Arctic.” Interview by Victor Lindqvist. Nordic Broadcasting Corporation, 3 Mar. 2025.

If the interview you’re citing was released specifically as a podcast episode rather than a broadcast segment or print piece, use our podcast citation guide instead – podcasts have their own conventions for host, guest, and episode numbering that don’t map cleanly onto the print-interview format above.

Group and Panel Interviews

When multiple people are interviewed together in the same piece, list every interviewee in the order they appear in the source, connected the same way you’d connect multiple authors in your style:

APA: (H. Marchetti & D. Okonkwo, personal communication, March 3, 2025)

MLA: Marchetti, Helena, and David Okonkwo. Personal interview. 3 Mar. 2025.

For four or more interviewees, most styles allow the first name followed by “et al.” in-text, with all names listed in the full reference entry where one exists.

Style Comparison

Common Mistakes

1. Citing yourself as the author of a personal interview. You conducted it, but the interviewee is the source – credit them, not yourself.
2. Adding a reference list entry for a personal interview in APA. APA keeps unrecoverable personal communications out of the reference list entirely.
3. Crediting the interviewee as the author of a published piece in APA. APA credits the writer who conducted and published the interview, not the person answering questions.
4. Forgetting the interview format label on broadcast interviews. APA expects a bracketed descriptor like [TV interview] the same way it expects one for other audiovisual formats.
5. Misplacing the interviewer credit. Chicago puts the interview title before “interview by” when the interviewee leads the citation.

Once you know whether the interviewer or interviewee leads your citation, sorting it correctly into your reference list follows the same rule as any other entry – alphabetize by whichever name comes first. Our guide on alphabetizing a reference list covers that sorting logic along with the edge cases that come up most often.

APA Style documents the personal communication rule directly, and The Chicago Manual of Style covers interview citations in both of Chicago’s systems if you need the source manuals themselves.

Try It with CiteTools

Published interviews need different elements than personal interviews. Paste a published interview’s URL or DOI into CiteTools.io, then review each credited role.