In this paper we focus on the use of extended repetitions in political news interviews. Drawing on conversation analysis and discourse analysis we examine a corpus of examples where particular forms of repeated questions and/or answers appear within two main practices of political interviewing. We refer to these as the spectacular live interview and the non-live interview. Our analysis shows that the design of repetitions, which we describe as either ‘‘stripped’’ or ‘‘embedded’’, differs significantly in these practices as they are oriented to differing political/media communication work. We argue that the use of repeated repetition highlights a locally organized powerful form of control of the interactional event with implications for the professional status of the parties involved.