Celebrity Gossip Girl Regrets ‘Using the Talent That [God] Had Given Me for My Own Glory’
By Movieguide® Staff
Journalist Marlise Kast began her career as a reporter, writing tabloids for The Globe. Despite her knack for the job and a successful career, Kast shared how the work went against her faith in her 2007 book, “Tabloid Prodigy.”
“I went into the business when I was 21,” Kast told CBN in 2007. “I knew I wanted to be a writer and I felt like this was the quickest way into the job.”
Although the assignments took Kast off guard initially, she quickly rose to be one of the top reporters at The Globe.
“I was a little bit caught off guard at the beginning realizing that I would have to pull phone scams and claim to be people that I wasn’t in order to get this story,” Kast said. “But somehow I found that I was addicted to the business. It was the adrenaline rush for me.
“Generally, we would have sources who would call into the office and say, ‘We have an idea that this is happening you have to check it out and see if the story is true or not.’ That’s where I would come in,” Kast said. “And my assignment would be to find out if the story was true and to usually go undercover to get the truth.”
Despite her initial questions of the tabloid’s methods, Kast said she started to love the work and had to pay off her editors for giving her a shot at the publication.
“I felt like I was indebted to my editors for believing in me because I really didn’t have any history with writing and I wanted to be a journalist and I felt like them giving me a paycheck to write was my dream,” Kast said. “I just wanted to keep turning headline after headline and at the peak of my career, I was turning between two and seven stories a week.”
However, Kast eventually realized that her current career and the roots of her childhood faith could not coexist.
“I think on some level, I regret every story,” Kast confessed. “I felt like I had a talent, I was good at something I wasn’t supposed to be good at… and so towards the end of my career, my editor said, ‘We want you to become Leonardo DiCaprio’s neighbor.’ I ended up doing a full eight-page investigation, and, as a result, the FBI came in, and they went into the hotel, and all of my sources who I paid $5,000 each to give me the information, they had all cracked under pressure and they all lost their jobs.
“I had to realize I affected all of those lives with my pen, and it wasn’t only the sources and the celebrities, but I think one person who was being impacted by this for years was me,” Kast added. “I eventually had to step away from it and say, ‘What am I doing? Who am I?'”
Kast’s parents, who were ministers and missionaries, prayed that their daughter would make her faith a priority in her life.
“They weren’t happy at all, but my parents just kept praying for me, and they told me all the time, ‘We’re praying for you. We know you’re gonna come home,'” Kast recalled. “For them, it was this idea that this is the prodigal daughter, she has to come back to where she came from.
“My whole life I was spoon-fed the Truth,” she added. “There was always that nugget of faith and I knew who I was, I knew that my roots were based on Christ, but I wasn’t nurturing that, and so as a result, the soil went dry, and I took my own path and I made my own decisions.”
But the truths that Kast was taught as a child convicted her about her job at The Globe.
“Deep down, I knew that what I was doing was wrong,” Kast said. “I knew that my mother always told me, Jeremiah 1:4, that God had had a plan for my life before I was even formed in the womb, He knew what I was supposed to do and I was using the talent that He had given me and for my own glory.”
She continued, “One day, my editors gave me a photo, and it was of Madonna. They had the headline, and they wanted me to write a story to that photograph, but this photograph, in my opinion, had been stretched, and I said, ‘I can’t write this. This isn’t true.’ I stood up in boldness, and I looked my editor in the face I said, ‘I can’t do this.’
“She said, ‘You have one hour to do it, and if you can’t do it, you can pack your bags and get out.’
“So I went back, and I prayed and I cried, and I eventually wrote a letter of resignation, and I believe that was probably the best writing I ever did for the tabloids,” Kast said.
“It was completely surrendering to Christ and embracing who God made me to be.”
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Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.
What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.
You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.
Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.
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