Ari Emanuel Dishes on His Hollywood Career, Paramount Merger and Relationship With Elon Musk

Ari Emanuel has failed a lot in his career. He flubbed his first job interview at Creative Artists Agency. He later left CAA to join a new agency that folded after just four years. He had to call off the initial public offering for the agency he co-founded, Endeavor, and, after taking it public, had to take it private again when investors struggled to understand his vision.

Still, Emanuel kept plugging away. He called, cajoled and bullied his way to becoming the most famous talent agent in the world. He signed TV writers (Aaron Sorkin), movie stars (Dwayne Johnson) and a future US president (Donald Trump).

Unsatisfied with simply being an agent, he embarked on a 15-year buying spree, swallowing one company after another, fueled by cash from the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and with help from his two key workmates: Patrick Whitesell and Mark Shapiro. In retrospect, many of those acquisitions didn’t make much sense. How exactly did professional bull riders fit alongside an agency for stylists? But the big ones, like Ultimate Fighting Championship, look increasingly like strokes of genius.

Now 65, Emanuel shows no sign of slowing down. He is the executive chairman of WME Group, a leading talent agency where Emanuel still signs clients. He is the chief executive officer and executive chairman of TKO Group Holdings Inc., the owner of UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment. And he is the founder and principal investor of MARI, an investment firm that just spent more than $6 billion on ATG Entertainment Ltd., a leading live-events company.

About a decade ago, Emanuel decided he wanted to add one more job: author. So he recruited J.R. Moehringer, the ghostwriter of bestsellers like Andre Agassi’s Open and Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog, to help write his memoir. It too went through fits and starts. The book was supposed to come out when Endeavor first went public. A pandemic, an IPO and myriad deals later, Emanuel has finally delivered his first book, Roll the Calls.

For anyone who has ever chatted with Emanuel, it reads like a conversation with the pugilistic and hyperactive mogul. He jumps from one topic to another, alternating between boasts, conquests and ad hominem attacks. Along the way, he takes swipes at Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg, CAA boss Bryan Lourd and Whitesell, just to name a few.

Throughout, Emanuel is also introspective, relaying moments of self-doubt, acknowledging struggles in his personal life and examining how his dyslexia and his competition with his brothers fueled his life.

Last week, Emanuel and I met for coffee at the Greenwich Hotel to talk about his career, his greatest rivalries and his relationship with Elon Musk. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The book is self-reflective in admitting personal failings, but you do not dwell on failure.

Well, I don’t. Of course you’re going to fail. Are you going to learn from it? People might not see me reflecting, but I definitely reflect or I don’t think you could be successful. You learn more from your failures. You wish you didn’t have to, but of course you do. And starting a business, all you hope for is that there’s less of them so that you don’t have to go through the pain.

What was the process like with J.R. Moehringer?

On the day of the election of Trump, we met at the Four Seasons uptown. Jennifer Walsh set the meeting, and we just started talking about my life and what makes me tick. Have you read Tender Bar and the Agassi book and Shoe Dog?

They’re incredible. So I was sitting there selling, trying to get him to say ‘yes,’ and he said ‘yes,’ like an idiot. Once a month, we would have an hour-long conversation where he’d start asking me questions about childhood moments. He made it easy even though I was nervous.

I opened him up to all my assistants. Some of them had folders that they had written. And then to friends like Pete Berg and Larry David and Mark Wahlberg, brothers. He came up with this, the way it’s written — the way I talk, as if it’s barely legible text.

You change the topic every three paragraphs.

Yeah, my brain.

Was there anything off limits?

Nope. He said to me, ‘I’ve never done a memoir with somebody who’s staying in the game.’ He goes, ‘What happens is you walk into a room, people think they know you, but you’re out of the game. Are you OK talking about the foibles?’ I said, ‘F--- yeah. I don’t give a f---.’ I don’t.

Why did you first become an agent?

I had graduated, didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was dating a woman. She decided she was going to go to law school at Northwestern. I had applied. I realized, f---, if I do this, I want to get married. I don’t want to get married to this woman. I don’t want to get married right now.

My dad was such a beautiful man. I had spent sophomore year or junior year in France. I said, dad, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ He goes, ‘here’s a credit card, here’s some cash, you can go, but when I call you, you have to come back.’ So I went to Europe, came back because he said get back here after nine months or a year.

I decided I’m going to move to New York. A friend of a friend was in the mailroom at CAA. Being from the Midwest, I didn’t know what an agent did. I had no clue that this profession, this world existed. When we were growing up, my father would take us to the movies. We’d go to theater, love the arts. The minute that happened, for some reason it kind of just clicked.

Your first job in LA was at CAA. Why do you always refer to Michael Ovitz as Mr. Ovitz in the book?

He has this great line, ‘Don’t call me Mr. Ovitz, call me Mike. My father is referred to as Mr. Ovitz.’ He used to always use that. I just thought that was so tactically smart. Like when he used to say all the time in staff meetings, ‘Big things are going to happen in three months in the entertainment.’ No sh--. But he understood the showmanship of it. He’s on Mount Rushmore. He was one of the masters.

He’s one of the rare people in the book though, where you go from hating him to coming back around.

He and I have become friends. It was just business. He didn’t do anything to me personally. He was there, and I was a pimple on the a-- of an ant. Mike was a great businessman.

How do you decide who to cut out of your life versus let back in? You bring Ovitz back in. But others, like Tom Strickler or Patrick Whitesell…

Thank God, Patrick finally admitted he actually did try to knife me in the back. I made the guy hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on the UFC, the WWE, all those things. And he was an incredible partner and an incredible agent. He was a talent agent. And as Ben Horowitz said in Hard Things About Hard Things — company moves on. He didn’t move on. The company had shifted, and it’s disappointing. If he would’ve come to me as a friend and admitted, ‘I’ve been absent. I need this for my own platform. Can I co-CEO WME?’ Of course, I would’ve had to say yes. No, he said, ‘You’re out, and this place is for sh--.’

I think he’d probably quibble with that.

He did quibble with it! But the great thing is, I don’t even have to explain it. Egon Durban, who is an incredible partner, went and had all the conversations. The conclusion was the conclusion. Patrick was the chairman of the company. If you had this great idea, we all want to make money. Let us hear it, and let’s go do it. You had a seat at the table and a vote. Just tell us this new strategy.

I always said, ‘Patrick and I,’ even though it wasn’t Patrick and I, to the outside community. Maybe I was lying to myself or insecure about myself emotionally, my dyslexia propping people up — not realizing, I can do this.

With Patrick, for most of your career, you were peers. You describe Mark Shapiro as your little brother.

When we were just an agency, Patrick and I were peers. He held his own. And the great thing about our relationship back then, he and I never fought about money. We just broke up the money equally. Sometimes, when we knew each other had a better year, Patrick would be incredible. Either, ‘You take some more money,’ or I would say, ‘P, you deserve some more money.’ He was very generous.

With Mark, we had gone into a different transition. We were operating businesses. Operating a business is different than representing somebody.

(When asked for comment, Whitesell said: “Financing a memoir and publicity tour to rewrite history is not original and everyone gets the joke. There was no betrayal. There were direct, transparent conversations about the company’s poor performance while Ari was CEO and need for a new strategy. Clearly those conversations were painful and uncomfortable for Ari but necessary.”)

As you’ve taken on more and more, did you have to cull your client list?

No. It goes from Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow, from Tyler Perry to Aaron Sorkin to Marty Scorsese to Pete Berg to Dwayne Johnson and Mark Wahlberg. I’m involved with all of them. You don’t want to know the calls this morning. You just have more capacity, and it’s easier for me now. If I need to get somebody on the phone, I can.

I remember meeting with you a few years ago where you said the only brilliant person in media was Elon Musk. You talk a little bit in the book about being concerned about his turn to the right, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the relationship. Where are you guys at now?

I have a lot of relationships.

Sure, the president.

The president. I know Peter Thiel and am friendly with Peter Thiel, Mark Andreessen, Elon Musk. It’s all over the place. I have clients that are to the right of me. So here’s what I would say. My father and my mother brought us up to talk. Talking is better than fighting, even though I don’t mind a good fight.

I’ve also learned a ton and tweaked my point of view. So if you want to live in an echo chamber, which some college students do because they don’t want people lecturing at their college, then be in a cult. I want to be in a society. And in a society, we sit in a world where I disagree with you, but we have a conversation.

You’ve taken very public stances on Mel Gibson, on Kanye.

Has he used…

Elon has overseen X as it has become a platform for that type of rhetoric.

That’s your opinion.

It's pretty well documented.

Well, you and I disagree with that. He would say he’s a free-speech absolutist. When I disagree with him on things that he has said on Twitter or things that are on there, I have that relationship where I can pick up the phone and say, ‘What the f---’s going on here?’ And have a real dialogue with him. And I would rather have that than to cut that off. He’s a human being that has changed the trajectory of society in a very positive way.

He has said some very nasty things about immigrants.

He has made statements to me and I said, ‘There’s no facts behind that.’ And the great thing about him is he also is not locked in. He has a point of view, opinions. It’s a healthy dialogue.

Where do you stand on Kanye’s attempted comeback?

Mel Gibson did the work, met with rabbis, did all the work. On Kanye, I’ve never seen a medical report that is bipolar in all the conversations. Maybe he is. I hope he’s taking his medication. Two, I’ve never seen him meeting with Muslim organizations, Jewish organizations, immigrant organizations where he has understood all the things that his statements have been painful towards those groups.

Is there any major figure that you would not talk to?

This is a very sad statement. The list is too long.

There’s no David Ellison in your book.

I like David. I care about David. I am in awe of him. With that father, that level of wealth, how he has turned out as a human being.

What do you think’s going to happen?

I hope that certain people put aside their political ambitions for the state of California for the entertainment industry to get to a deal. All the theater chains are in agreement, Charter’s in agreement, all the countries in the world. They’ve all approved the deal, realizing the numbers are the numbers. This is about politics and raising money and certain people positioning themselves, in my opinion — and about CNN. And there’s a way to handle at least the CNN piece.

An editorial board.

It’s easy. It’s been done. The perfect example is Fox, meaning the Wall Street Journal. I disagree with half the editorial board, and I agree with half the editorial board. I don’t want to live in a cult.

Is the movie business ever going to be as big as it was before the pandemic?

Bigger. There are going to be more films put out, and there’s going to be more creative coming into it because of technology. There’s going to be some dislocation for below the line stuff, which is upsetting, but it’s true.

Can any legacy studio compete with Netflix Inc. and streaming?

Well, that’s what I’m trying to accomplish with David Ellison, because I think we need four bidders. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount-Warner. And then we’ll see what happens with Comcast, Apple, etc.

Will Paramount ever make money on its UFC deal?

You should ask David Ellison. I think they are.

What’s a business you’re not in now that you want to get into?

I got a lot of work to do at TKO with what we’re doing there. We’re launching boxing right now. We’re figuring out other areas to go in. We still have a lot of cost cuts to do.

There’s so much there in a positive way. Look at the prices of teams. We own four leagues — and $12.5 billion for the Lakers? If just on the same multiple basis, we should be a $65 billion company. A little team is $12.5 billion. It’s actually insane.

Has WME suffered at all from you doing 10 million other things?

No, they’ve actually prospered.

When you meet someone, if they don't know you, and you introduce yourself, what do you say you do?

I don’t say what I do, ever. I don’t have to.