Name: Ari Emanuel on Being the Real-Life Ari Gold, His Revealing Memoir and More
Uploaded: 2026-09-21T16:30:00Z
Duration: 9 min 25 s
Description: Endeavor co-founder Ari Emanuel sits down for The Job Interview with WSJ. Magazine to discuss his revealing memoir, how he found out about the Ari Gold character in ‘Entourage’ and why he thinks you should pick up the phone.

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Endeavor co-founder Ari Emanuel sits down for The Job Interview with WSJ. Magazine to discuss his revealing memoir, how he found out about the Ari Gold character in ‘Entourage’ and why he thinks you should pick up the phone. Photo Illustration: Nikki Walker

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260921/86002533-d6df-4e4f-a3ef-04bf455d50ff/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Endeavor co-founder Ari Emanuel sits down for The Job Interview with WSJ. Magazine to discuss his revealing memoir, how he found out about the Ari Gold character in ‘Entourage’ and why he thinks you should pick up the phone.

Ari Emanuel on Being the Real-Life Ari Gold, His Revealing Memoir and More

Look at me, I'm miserable. That's why I'm rich.

That's horrible. Did I say that?

Well, Ari Emanuel, it's quite a resume. You've repped some of the biggest names in entertainment. Oprah Winfrey, Mark Wahlberg, Larry David. You're famously the inspiration for the Ari Gold character in "Entourage." And now you're also the executive chair and CEO of TKO Group, which houses both UFC and the WWE. What is the secret to your success?

When you don't want to do something, just making sure that you do it. And that goes to consistency, but also just this will to kind of fight the voice in your head and get things done. I'll tell my office to call somebody. And they say, "Yeah, left word." And I said, "What in the conversation did I say leave word?" I said, "Get that person on the phone." You have to be agency for yourself.

What do you make of the idea that Gen Z doesn't like phone calls?

Oh, it just drives me crazy. And I tell my assistants like, "Call what..." And then they'll send a text. And I'm like, "Didn't I tell you to call? I think I told you to call them." And that's their definition of a phone call. I just can't handle it, but that's okay. I'm getting over it.

The memoir, "Roll the Calls," teeming with stories of high profile names, gossip you might only share with a close friend or a spouse. What motivated you to write the book now and reveal so much?

So I've been working on it for 10 years. When we were at William Morris, this woman by the name of Jennifer Walsh said to me, "You should write a memoir before somebody writes something about you." It does explain my craziness.

Any bridges you're worried about burning with the book? There's amusing words about Jeff Bezos, about Jeffrey Katzenberg.

I'm not afraid of any moment in the book. It's all honest. All the fuck-ups, fights, stupidity that I did. I'm definitely not perfect. Those are all true stories from my perspective, so I'm not worried about any of them.

The word appears 430 times in the book by our account. Was there a quota?

No. I mean, it's one of the great words in the English language. I hopefully used it appropriately.

Is it true that you were once banned from the Disney lot?

Well, that's a story. So Michael Moore is making his famous documentary. And Harvey Weinstein wanted to buy the project and his company was owned by Disney. Michael said to me, "You can't sell this to Harvey." Harvey goes behind, as I have sold it, goes behind my back and buys it off of Lionsgate. And Michael Eisner has lost it on me. And yeah, I was in a no-fly zone with Mickey.

One of the things you talk about a lot in your book is well, rage. And you call it a metric of desire. Tell me more.

I think it first started when I was growing up in high school. I was dyslexic. I was in special ed, and people didn't think I was smart. So when somebody calls you stupid, and you're sitting there saying, "I know I'm not stupid," but you get pissed off, that then triggered, I would say, a third rail when anybody treated me as if I was stupid, I would get into some rage. Either my competitive nature or whatever forced me to kind of prove everybody wrong because I was pissed off.

You still see it as a disadvantage all these years?

No, no, no. I actually think it's a... And I say this to parents that have young kids, "If you can get through it, it enables you to build teams. You think about things in an abstract way differently from people that read straight." There's a program now, a great program for dyslexic kids called Lindamood-Bell. And my brother Zeke, his daughter, who's a Rhodes Scholar, was dyslexic, put her through it. And what they do is just do a marathon on that part of your brain to enable you to start reading. Back in the day, they didn't have Lindamood-Bell and I had Marsha Emanuel. My mother was never ever going to let me not read, go to college, even though there was a lot of people saying that that was not going to happen.

Tell me about growing up in your family. What was that like?

You'd come home, and both my brother Rahm, and my brother Zeke are very intellectual, smart, competitive guys, and I was dyslexic. So my mom every quarter would put our grades up on the refrigerator. So when you came in the side door at our house, you'd be looking at A's and then the schmuck. And so if you didn't do well in my house, you would be grounded. It was that simple.

Your brothers took different paths, of course, into medicine, into politics. Tell me about the moment you knew you wanted to be an agent.

When I moved back to the United States, because I was in Europe for a while after graduating college, and a person in New York said to me he was working at William Morris in the mail room. For whatever reason, it was that aha moment. I said, "I could do that." I actually liked that because my parents used to take us to plays and my dad used to take me to movies all the time, and that just kicked it off. That was in '85.

What were some of your early hurdles or challenges in learning the business?

When I was at CAA, you'd be in the mail room, you're thrown out at that time delivering scripts or whatever. You had the Thomas guide, which people aren't going to remember, of how to get around. You're the last person, so you get the worst run. That was horrible. So I was in the mail room for six months, and then became head of the mail room and then was on a desk by this guy named David Tenzer and he was head of Business Affairs and Television. And I realized I didn't want to be in the movie business. Because they would give you like seven, eight scripts to read to cover over the weekend. Well, first of all, I'm a slow reader, then I had to write them. I mean, I didn't have any time.

When you were going off to try to start Endeavor, how do you evaluate that risk?

Back at the time, I read this book, "Life After Television," by George Gilder. He had explained kind of what he saw as the vision of the future of entertainment, that there's going to be infinite distribution. I had a pretty good client list. I thought even with my client list, we could all make the same amount of money. And if we got lucky and put shows on that worked, we'd reap the benefits. The delta was greater on the upside. So we just did it. And I liked the four guys that we started the company with.

When did you first learn about the Ari Gold character? When did you first realize that, "This is me."

Well, I had to sign a release. At the time I didn't tell my wife. And show happens. My family was in, at the time, our house in Rhode Island, and my wife calls me, "Hey, what is this show, 'Entourage?' Is there a character about you?" And I'm like, "Yeah, it's no big deal." I was hoping just to get past it that you didn't know if it was going to be success. There was only like six or eight episodes. Like a week later, I guess her friends called her. Shit hit the fan. I had to send her the six episodes. Wasn't the greatest moment of my life. I didn't do that. I didn't handle that negotiation well.

What were you feeling watching those episodes?

I've only watched like two or three episodes of it. It just makes me so uncomfortable. At the time, at the beginning, I didn't really want to watch how... I already knew I was crazy. I definitely didn't want to see it at an extreme in that show. I'm not sure it was an extreme, so.

Who do you think ultimately benefited more from "Entourage?" You, or Jeremy Piven?

I definitely, I didn't realize it at the time, but I think Mark Wahlberg said this to me, this is going to be me and Steve Levinson, his partner. This is going to be really beneficial as the show progressed. And young kids now watch it. They talk to me about the show. It's hysterical. And I have benefited greatly because of it.

Well, we do have a little skills test here.

Oh, wow. "I'm the only one with the balls to call that paper eater out on his bullshit." I thought that was mine. That's about Sam Cohn. He was famous for eating his notes. "Hug it out, bitch." That's Jeremy Piven.

Hug it out? No, not really. Let's hug it out, bitch.

"Nobody's happy in this town except for the losers. Look at me, I'm miserable. That's why I'm rich." That's probably me. I think that's me. That's a horrible comment. That's horrible. Did I say that?

Of course he's not happy. Nobody's happy in this town except for the losers. Look at me, I'm miserable. That's why I'm rich.

It sounds like me.

Okay. Ari, this is our last question for you. One you say that a good agent always asks.

Okay.

Are you happy?

Yeah, I am happy. That doesn't mean that I'm not curious. For the first time I'm calmer, not completely, and I'm even more curious than I've ever been.

Cultural icons explain how they started out and then climbed their way to the top.