Kjersti Flaa’s Celebrity Interviews Are Intended to Start Conversations

Kjersti Flaa says she never intended for her uncomfortable encounter with Blake Lively to get so much attention. Ms. Flaa, a Norwegian journalist who is based in Los Angeles, had been having a conversation with a fellow Norwegian reporter about celebrity interviews gone wrong when her conversation with Ms. Lively, which took place during the 2016 press junket for the movie “Café Society,” came to mind.

In a recent interview, Ms. Flaa, whose first name is pronounced SHER-sty, said she had decided to post the tense exchange with Ms. Lively to YouTube to “see what happens.” The clip, which runs four minutes and 17 seconds, is titled “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job,” and it has garnered more than 5.4 million views since it was published in August.

In the clip, Ms. Flaa congratulates Ms. Lively, who had just announced her pregnancy, on her “little bump.” A visibly annoyed Ms. Lively shoots back, “Congrats on your little bump.” Ms. Flaa was not pregnant.

Ms. Flaa said she had coincidentally published the clip while Ms. Lively was facing backlash for the tone of her press tour for the romantic thriller “It Ends With Us.” The timing instigated a new wave of criticism of the actress. And Ms. Flaa, a little-known junket reporter, was suddenly everywhere.

“Back then, when I did that interview, I never wanted to post it on YouTube, because I knew if I did, A, I would probably never be invited again by her publicists, clients or the studio again,” she said. “And B, I think it was a different cultural landscape eight years ago, and they would have attacked me instead of her, right?