The retrievability test decides everything
Before you choose a template, ask whether a reader can get to the interview. That one test sorts every citation. An interview you conducted, one that lives only on your recorder, counts as a personal communication in APA and Chicago. You cite it in the text or a note, and you keep it out of the reference list. A published or broadcast interview has a home a reader can reach, so you cite it by the format of that home.
One case breaks the rule. If you interviewed people for your own original research, APA says not to cite them as personal communications; you quote them directly from your data. That distinction matters most in a thesis, so the dissertation transcription guide covers it in depth. For a journalist quoting a source off your own recording, the personal-communication rule still holds.
Every clean citation starts from a clean transcript. If you're still turning the audio into text, the interview transcription workflow gets you a speaker-labeled, timestamped draft first, so the wording and the attribution are both right before you format anything.
Citing an interview in APA
In APA, split it by retrievability. An interview a reader can't retrieve is a personal communication, cited in text only. APA's guidance gives the format (Initials Surname, personal communication, Month Day, Year), with examples like (T. Nguyen, personal communication, February 24, 2020). It never enters the reference list, so the in-text note is the whole citation.
A recorded interview a reader can reach is cited by the format of its source. APA's post on nonrecoverable sources says it's preferable to cite works that are recoverable, so a recoverable interview gets a reference-list entry in the format for that source type. A podcast interview is cited as a podcast episode, a magazine Q&A as an article, a filmed one as a video.
A recorded episode gets a full reference-list entry. APA's podcast references page formats it under the host with a bracketed label: Hannah-Jones, N. (Host). (2019, September 13). How the bad blood started (No. 4) [Audio podcast episode]. In 1619. The interview sits inside the show, so the show is the container you cite.
Quoting a line from the audio? APA tells you to give a time stamp for the start of the quotation in place of a page number. A timestamped transcript hands you that number directly, so you're not scrubbing the file to find it.
Citing an interview in MLA
MLA does list the interview you conducted, which is where it parts ways with APA. The MLA Style Center places it in the Works Cited under the interviewee's name, with the descriptor Interview and a Conducted by line: Walcott, Derek. Interview. Conducted by Susan Lang, 22 Oct. 2002.
A published or broadcast interview treats the interviewee as the author and cites the interview inside its container. MLA's example of an interview in an edited collection reads: Saro-Wiwa, Ken. "English Is the Hero." No Condition Is Permanent: Nigerian Writing and the Struggle for Democracy, edited by Holger Ehling and Claus-Peter Holste-von Mutius, Rodopi, 2001, pp. 13–19.
Work from the current edition. The ninth edition of the MLA Handbook was published in April 2021, and its core-elements template uses Interview with a Conducted by supplement. Older guides that still print the Personal interview descriptor are out of date.
Citing an interview in Chicago (CMOS 18th edition)
Chicago keeps an unpublished interview out of the bibliography. The CMOS 18th citation guide groups it with personal communications, which are usually cited in the text or a note only and rarely listed in a bibliography. In practice, the interview appears in a note with the interviewee and date, and a bibliography entry stays optional.
A published or broadcast interview, by contrast, is cited by its source. CMOS's example of a radio interview puts the interviewee first as author, with an Interview by line: Buolamwini, Joy. "'If You Have a Face, You Have a Place in the Conversation about AI,' Expert Says." Interview by Tonya Mosley. Fresh Air, NPR, November 28, 2023. Audio, 37:58.
To point at a moment in a recording, Chicago uses a time stamp the way it uses a page number. The CMOS Q&A notes that time stamps save a reader hours of searching for the quoted material. And use the current edition: CMOS announced its 18th edition for September 2024.
How do you quote the words themselves?
Formatting the citation is only half the job; the quote has to be exact. APA's rule on errors in quotations is strict: a quotation must match the source's wording, spelling, and interior punctuation, even when the source is wrong. You mark the error with [sic] in brackets instead of fixing it quietly.
That only works if you're citing the exact words. Read the quote against the audio before you commit it, or pull the timestamped quote straight from the transcript so the wording and the start time are both locked. A misquote with a flawless citation is still a misquote.
Across all three styles, a start-time stamp does the locating work a page number does in print. Keep those timestamps in your transcript. An editor or fact-checker can then jump to the exact line and hear it in context, which is what makes a quote defensible.
