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The Hollywood Issue
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For our annual Hollywood Portfolio, we asked 23 of the year’s standout actors—legends and newcomers alike—to make a road movie with us. Behold, a Technicolor dreamscape on a desert highway. Plus: interviews with the stars and an essay by Mark Harris on the bold career paths of iconic fellow travelers Eddie Murphy, Renée Zellweger, and Jennifer Lopez.
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The creative force behind the hit ABC series Black-ish, Kenya Barris found his voice—and audience. No wonder Netflix lured him away to tell his story in #blackexcellence.
Eddie Murphy wears a tuxedo by Ralph Lauren, shirt by Budd Shirtmakers, and cuff links by Stephen Russell. Renée Zellweger wears a dress by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello and a necklace by Harry Winston, and, right, a gown by Valentino, sandals by Stuart Weitzman, and a necklace by Harry Winston. Jennifer Lopez wears a blazer and pants by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, shoes by Aquazzura, jewelry by Tiffany & Co., a beret by Eric Javits, and gloves by THOMASINE, and, right, a gown by Valentino and earrings, a necklace, and a ring (right hand) by Harry Winston. Hair products by Oribe (Zellweger) and R+Co and PSxDanielle (Lopez). Makeup by CHANEL (Zellweger) and TOM FORD Beauty and Scott Barnes Beauty (Lopez). Nail enamel by CHANEL Le Vernis. Hair by Danielle Priano (Lopez) and Jawara (Zellweger). Makeup by Scott Barnes (Lopez) and Fulvia Farolfi (Zellweger). Manicures by Tom Bachik (Lopez) and Alex Jachno (Zellweger). Tailors, Hasmik Kourinian and Tatyana Staraverova. Creative movement director, Stephen Galloway. Set design by Julia Wagner. Produced on location by Portfolio One. Styled by Samira Nasr. Photographed exclusively for V.F. by Ethan James Green in Los Angeles. For details, go to VF.com/credits.
On the Cover
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Kenya Barris Levels Up
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P HOTO G R A P H B Y JAC K ROB I N S ON / H U L TON A R C H I V E / G E T T Y I M AG E S
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Contents Issue No. 714
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BY RICHARD RUSHFIELD I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y CHRISTINA ZIMPEL
WME agent Ari Emanuel had a bold plan to reimagine his agency and take on the power structure of Hollywood. A failed IPO may force a rethink.
“If You’re Not Beautiful, You’re Finished” BY JULIE MILLER
Lee Grant was a rising star in the 1950s when she ran into hurdles— the blacklist, sexism, ageism. The Oscar-winning actress and director shares the truths of a lifetime.
126 “Playing himself, says Barris, was also a way to do ‘something I was really afraid of.’ ” “ K E N YA B A R R I S L E V E L S U P , ” P . 1 3 2
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The 1990 book by George Gilder that inspired superagent Ari Emanuel to embrace the streaming era. [p. 146]
P HOTO G R A P H S: TOP, C O U RT ES Y OF PAU L F ORT U N E; C E N T E R, B Y RON G A L E L L A / G E T T Y I M AG E S ; B OT TO M L E F T , B Y RO N TO M / WA L T D I S N E Y T E L E V I S ION / G E T T Y I M AG E S ; F OR D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S
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Contents Issue No. 714
Vanities
L A S H A N A LY NC H P HOTO G R A P H E D B Y C H R I ST I N A E B E N E Z E R ; DR E S S B Y ROK S A NDA ; S HOE S B Y M A NOL O B L A H N I K ; E A R R I NG S B Y E R D E M ; B R AC E L E T B Y VA N C L E E F & A R P E L S ; R I NG B Y A M R A PA L I . I L L U ST R AT ION B Y R I S KO . F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S
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Opening Act Lashana Lynch is James Bond’s next star spy My Stuff Inside the life and style of a beloved interior designer Books A new coffee-table book gets inside Fellini’s subconscious; plus binge-worthy novels Culture Mapping out Hollywood’s new clubhouses; a hometowninspired art exhibition; Armani’s foray into fine jewelry Style Rubies and diamonds inspired by Elizabeth Taylor Trending The red carpet, reimagined Beauty L.A.’s awards season prep includes Joker-approved dentistry and a serene new spa Fairground LACMA and Gucci joined forces for the ninth annual Art+Film Gala
Columns
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The Obamoguls BY JOE POMPEO I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y PA R K E R H U B B A R D
As a multiplatform former first couple, the Obamas have books, movies, podcasts, and more in the pipeline.
88 41 “Regret is an imposition from my Catholic childhood that I refuse.”
34 36 38 168
Behind the Issue Contributors Editor’s Letter Proust Questionnaire
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Editor in Chief Radhika Jones
Deputy Editor Kira Pollack Director of Editorial Operations Caryn Prime Executive Editors Eric Bates, Claire Howorth, Daniel Kile Executive Hollywood Editor Jeff Giles Editor, Creative Development David Friend Director of Special Projects Sara Marks Executive Fashion Director Samira Nasr Market Director Nicole Chapoteau Accessories Director Daisy Shaw-Ellis Entertainment Director Alison Ward Frank Legal Affairs Editor Robert Walsh Research Director David Gendelman Beauty Director Laura Regensdorf Design Director Justin Patrick Long Senior West Coast Editor Britt Hennemuth Production Director Mia Tran Copy Director Michael Casey Associate Editors Mary Alice Miller, Louisa Strauss, Keziah Weir Associate Legal Affairs Editor Simon Brennan Research Editor Mary Flynn Reporter-Researchers Brendan Barr, Michael Sacks Copy Manager Michael Quiñones Editorial Finance Manager Geoff Collins Senior Visuals Editors Tara Johnson, Cate Sturgess Entertainment Editor Caitlin Brody Senior Menswear Editor Miles Pope Special Projects Manager Ari Bergen Copy Production Director Anderson Tepper Special Projects Associate Charlene Oliver Production Manager Susan M. Rasco Assistant to the Editor in Chief Daniela Tijerina Accessories Editor Alexis Kanter Research Manager Taylor Smith Editorial Assistants Arimeta Diop, Danielle Walsh Assistant Fashion Editor Alexandra Delifer Special Correspondents Nick Bilton, Anthony Breznican, Bryan Burrough, William D. Cohan, Amy Fine Collins, Joe Hagan, Maureen Orth, Mark Seal, Gabriel Sherman Writers-at-Large Marie Brenner, James Reginato
vanityfair.com Executive Digital Director Michael Hogan Editor Matthew Lynch Deputy Editor Katey Rich Digital Managing Editor Kelly Butler Senior Visuals Editor Chiara Marinai Projects Editor Alyssa Karas Line Editor Katie Commisso Senior Hollywood Editor Hillary Busis Chief Critic Richard Lawson TV Correspondent Joy Press Senior Feature Writer Julie Miller Senior Staff Writer Joanna Robinson Film Critic K. Austin Collins TV Critic Sonia Saraiya Staff Writers Dan Adler, Laura Bradley, Kenzie Bryant, Yohana Desta Associate Editor Erin Vanderhoof Associate Line Editor Rachel Freeman Executive Producer Traci Oshiro Supervising Video Producer Christopher Klimovski Video Producers Justine Del Gaudio, Ella Ruffel Lead Producer Jarondakie Patrick Visuals Editor Lauren Margit Jones Assistant Line Editor Cynthia Orgel Senior Social Media Manager Daniel Taroy Senior Manager, Analytics Neelum Khan Social Media Manager Sarah Morse Associate Producer Maham Hasan Editorial Assistant Sarah Shoen
The Hive Editor John Homans Senior Editor Claire Landsbaum Senior Media Correspondent Joe Pompeo National Correspondent Emily Jane Fox Politics Correspondent Bess Levin Writer-at-Large T.A. Frank Staff Reporter Abigail Tracy
Communications Vice President and Head of Communications Corey Wilson Associate Director of Communications Rachel Janc Manager of Communications Jackson Chiappinelli Associate Manager of Communications Dane McMillan UK Emily Hallie
Contributors Social Contributor Jeffrey Tousey Production Manager Roberto Rodríguez Special Projects Consultant Matt Ullian Architecture Consultant Basil Walter Senior Designer Ashley Smestad Vélez Summit Contributing Producer Graham Veysey Special Projects Art Director Angela Panichi Associate Editor S.P. Nix Associate Visuals Editor Allison Schaller Art Assistant Justine Goode Visuals Assistant Madison Reid Fashion Assistants Paulo Cesar, Samantha Gasmer, Jessica Neises Contributing Photographers Annie Leibovitz Jonathan Becker, Larry Fink, Ethan James Green, Collier Schorr, Mark Seliger Contributing Artists Hilary Knight, Robert Risko Contributing Editors Kurt Andersen, Suzanna Andrews, Lili Anolik, Carl Bernstein, Peter Biskind, Buzz Bissinger, Derek Blasberg, Christopher Bollen, Patricia Bosworth, Mark Bowden, Douglas Brinkley, Alice Brudenell-Bruce, Michael Callahan, Adam Ciralsky, Rich Cohen, Sloane Crosley, Lisa Eisner, Bruce Feirstein, Nick Foulkes, Ariel Foxman, Alex French, Paul Goldberger, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Michael Joseph Gross, Bruce Handy, David Harris, Mark Harris, Carol Blue Hitchens, A.M. Homes, Uzodinma Iweala, Sebastian Junger, David Kamp, Sam Kashner, Jemima Khan, Wayne Lawson, Fran Lebowitz, Dany Levy, Monica Lewinsky, David Margolick, Bethany McLean, Anne McNally, Nina Munk, Fiona Murray, Katie Nicholl, Evgenia Peretz, Véronique Plazolles, Maximillian Potter, Lisa Robinson, Mark Rozzo, Nancy Jo Sales, Elissa Schappell, Michael Shnayerson, Richard Stengel, Diane von Furstenberg, Elizabeth Saltzman Walker, Benjamin Wallace, Heather Watts, Ned Zeman 30
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From the Editors
Behind the Issue
100 gowns. 400 shoes. 2 motorcycles. 1 tractor. And a cast to die for
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Clockwise from top: creative movement director Stephen Galloway and Alfre Woodard; shoes on set; Antonio Banderas; Renée Zellweger; V.F. entertainment director Alison Ward Frank and senior West Coast editor Britt Hennemuth; V.F. executive fashion director Samira Nasr and Taylor Russell; Taika Waititi. P HOTO G R A P H S B Y M IC H E L L E G RO S KOP F ( WA I T I T I ), K R I STA S C H L U E T E R ( A L L OT H E R S )
Late last October, Vanity Fair seized one cavernous hanger and three studios at Los Angeles’s Milk Studios to celebrate 23 of the year’s most exciting names in film in the magazine’s 26th annual Hollywood cover and portfolio. For his first Hollywood Issue, photographer Ethan James Green and set designer Julia Wagner created a surrealist Route 66—part Technicolor, part Ed Ruscha—for a stylized voyage through some of cinema’s greatest genres. There were tractors, Escalades, cacti, and motorcycles, as well as more than 100 gowns, more than 400 pairs of shoes, and enough carats of fine jewelry to require nearly a dozen armed guards. “Traditionally the fashion has always been through the lens of glamour and the red carpet, and this year it was really fun to play dress-up and create all of these interesting characters that we meet along the way,” said executive fashion director Samira Nasr. Senior West Coast editor Britt Hennemuth cast the portfolio; producers Tara Johnson and Michael Kramer kept the elaborate production on the road, along with entertainment director Alison Ward Frank. The actors were interviewed about their real-life journeys by Hennemuth, special correspondent Anthony Breznican, and executive Hollywood editor Jeff Giles (page 112). Says Hennemuth, “From movie stars to breakouts, this year’s Find more exclusive videos from our group will stand Hollywood shoot at VF.com. the test of time.”
Agenda
By Annabel Davidson
@vanityfairlondon
Exhibition
Turner the Tide
Panthère de Cartier ring Jewellery
Cool Cat
J.M.W. Turner didn’t just love to paint the Thames—he loved to paint on it, working aboard his little boat turned floating studio. Turner and the Thames: Five Paintings (until March 29) features five rare oils painted in this manner. Thanks to a generous loan from the Tate, these works are to be exhibited at Sandycome Lodge, the Twickenham house that Turner designed for himself. turnershouse.org
White Caviar Eye Extraordinaire by La Prairie Beauty
It’s been more than 100 years since the first panther was rendered in precious materials chez Cartier, with the big cat picked out in diamonds and platinum on a cigarette case. Since then, the beast has become a fierce icon for the Parisian house, and this year, a whole host of newcomers will join the Panthère de Cartier tribe, like this gorgeous curled-up feline of a ring. cartier.co.uk
Whiter than White
On the Thames by J.M.W. Turner, c. 1807
Whether you’re a La Prairie devotee or just want to pamper those peepers, the new White Caviar Eye Extraordinaire (launching February 17) is for you. Utilising the science of light, this rich cream reduces the appearance of a whole spectrum of unsightly tones, from brown spots to violet under-eye circles. laprairie.co.uk
Beauty
Jewellery
Looking Good
In the Stars
Containing 95 per cent active ingredients, Dr Sebagh’s Supreme Maintenance Youth Serum is the latest weapon in your arsenal to fight the effects of ageing. The powerful blend of antioxidants, grapeseed extract and Vitamin C can be mixed with any other serum in the range to create a bespoke application. drsebagh.com
Star-sign pieces are plentiful, but there’s something particularly special about these chunky astrological pendants from heritage Parisian jewellers and object makers, Goossens. Inspired by archival drawings from the house’s founder, Robert Goossens, each pendant comes on a thick, twisted chain, plated in 24kt gold and finished with a turquoise stone. goossens-paris.com
Lambskin puffer jacket by Rachel London Fashion
Best of British
Supreme Maintenance Youth Serum by Dr Sebagh
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Think fur means mink or fox? Lambskin is fur too, and this puffer jacket comes from one of British Fur’s foremost designers, Rachel London. There are all sorts of issues with the fur trade, but if you’re going to buy into it, choosing a designer who is a member of the British Fur Trade Association—a mark of strict adherence to sustainability standards— is the best start. rachel-london.com
Talisman Pisces medal necklace by Goossens Paris
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Contributors
HARRIS
“The Great Entertainers,” p. 112
Joy
PRESS
“Kenya Barris Levels Up,” p. 132
Awol
ERIZKU
“Kenya Barris Levels Up,” p. 132
Richard
RUSHFIELD
“Nerve Agent,” p. 146
Maureen
O’CONNOR
“Regrets Only,” p. 126
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“Interesting second and third acts are what really define stardom,” says the best-selling author of Pictures at a Revolution. “And if you’re as talented as the people on this issue’s cover, it makes sense that the deeper you get into your career, the more subtle and surprising your work will become.” Harris’s third book, a biography of Mike Nichols, will be published in late 2020. He is covering the Oscar race exclusively for Vanity Fair.
The V.F. television correspondent, who visited director and producer Kenya Barris on the set of his new show, #blackexcellence, says she never would have guessed that it’s also his first major acting role. “Watching Kenya riff on set with his screen wife, Rashida Jones, was a surprisingly playful experience,” she says. “They approach each scene as if it were an experiment, careening off in slightly different directions with each take.”
The Ethiopian American artist knew that his photographs of Kenya Barris “needed to symbolize the wisdom of the exchange” they had when they first met at an artist residency in 2018. “For me, the owl—which we joked on set was a bigger flex than the watch on his other wrist—parallels Kenya’s sharp vision and keen observation.” Erizku’s show, Mystic Parallax, opens this March at the FLAG Art Foundation.
Rushfield, who’s the editor of the entertainment newsletter “The Ankler,” has been an avid industry observer since he was 12 years old. For his piece in this issue about the fallout from blue-chip agency WME’s scuttled IPO and CEO Ari Emanuel’s next move, he spoke with the mega-agent’s former employees and says that he was “struck by the loyalty and affection they feel for him, given his reputation for bombastic behavior.”
O’Connor saw how life has—and has not— changed lately for Peggy Siegal, the publicist who socialized with Jeffrey Epstein. “She’d just had surgery to repair a condition caused by typing on her Blackberry,” the writer says. “Back in the ’90s, Peggy sought medical help for neck pain caused by holding her phone receiver between her ear and shoulder.” O’Connor will next cover Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial for VF.com.
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Mark
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Can Donald Trump really get reelected? Should Washington break up Facebook? Can Netflix win the streaming wars? Nick Bilton brings you inside the room where decisions are made, through in-depth, revealing conversations with the biggest newsmakers in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and in Washington. INSIDE THE
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Editor’s Letter
Hollywood 2020
I write this at the dawn of the ’20s, less roaring than blustering so far. The year 2020 always sounded so futuristic, and yet here we are, having closed out the Skywalker saga (and with it my childhood), and proved indisputably that Cats does not have nine lives at the box office. War drums beat, bush fires burn, and the great escapism of cinema offers respite and provocation alike. So here is our annual Hollywood Issue, celebrating a terrific year at the movies, and looking ahead to the next season in film. Every year V.F. travels the festival circuit from Sundance to Cannes, Telluride to Toronto, seeing movies and charting (and creating) buzz, and this time, as the slate of films unfolded, we were struck by the number of legends bestriding the screen like the acting colossuses that they are. Many appeared on our covers over the past 12 months—Laura Dern, Adam Driver, Lupita Nyong’o, Joaquin Phoenix— and three more came together for this cover, shot by V.F. contributing photographer Ethan James Green. I won’t wax lyrical about their performances—Mark Harris does that beautifully on page 112—but I will say that paramount on our minds when making that image was the versatility, persistence, and sheer scope of talent represented by Jennifer Lopez, Eddie Murphy, and Renée Zellweger. They are road warriors, not just of this season but of our era, and we’d follow them down any highway. Our trio kicks off a photographic road trip that I hope you’ll experience both digitally and in the magazine. Online the images create a surreal Route 66 scrolling through American film archetypes; in print they unfold into lush panoramas of our cinematic dreamscape. We feature newcomers and veterans alike, from Beanie Feldstein and Park So-dam to Willem Dafoe and Antonio Banderas. Behind the scenes in Hollywood, change is afoot, and we’ve got that covered too: from Maureen O’Connor’s account of the precipitous fall of publicist 38
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Margaret Qualley and Radhika Jones backstage at the Hollywood shoot.
Peggy Siegal, starting from the fateful moment last summer (on a yacht, natch) when she learned that her name would be linked with Jeffrey Epstein’s in the damning reports of his crimes; to Joy Press’s revealing profile of Kenya Barris as he prepares for his first Netflix show after leaving broadcast TV. Executive Hollywood editor Jeff Giles and VF.com editor Matt Lynch presided over the issue, which looks fondly back (remember the Fake Club, the ’80s Hollywood hot spot?) and perceptively forward (what’s next for Ari Emanuel and his power agency?). The movies have never felt more everywhere— they come not only to our multiplexes and art houses but to our home screens and our phones. And in February, V.F. brings our legacy of Hollywood photography to the exhibition space, in a show titled Vanity Fair: Hollywood Calling, mounted in partnership with the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. Iconic images from the magazine’s archives created by the likes of Annie Leibovitz, Collier Schorr, and David LaChapelle—depicting stars from Whoopi Goldberg and Tom Hanks to Michael B. Jordan and Ali Wong—pay homage to our legacy of creating and reflecting contemporary film iconography, capturing star power in glorious Technicolor and glamorous black and white. The show opens February 8, and we’ll see you there.
RADHIKA JONE S, Editor in Chief H O L LY W O O D
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VA N I TA S VA N I TAT U M
With a franchise that has been slick for so many years, I wanted to throw a human spin on it— to be someone who’s figuring it out.”
Gown and tie by Erdem; hair products by Vernon François; makeup by Dior Beauty.
Lashana Lynch, 32,
says of her star spy turn in the new James Bond film C ONTINUED ON PAGE 4 2
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CHRISTINA EBENEZER B Y
OLA EBITI
Vanities Opening Act FAN MAIL
“Her empathy and humanity as an actor bring magic to every scene.” —BRIE LARSON
“Lashana moves like a cat.” —DANIEL CRAIG
SHE WAS BORN in London to Jamaican
parents, and an early passion for R&B enticed her to drama school. “You can’t sing without acting and you can’t act without singing—it’s all sounds, accents, and emotion.” SHE FAVORED Brandy, Mariah Carey, SWV, and Boyz II Men: “I had a lot of fun singing with a hairbrush to those.” SHE STUDIED at the prestigious ArtsEd school and cut her teeth on London stages before American TV titan Shonda Rhimes cast her in the short-lived ABC series Still Star-Crossed in 2017. “It was color-blind casting at its finest. It doesn’t have to be exact, it just needs to be honest.” HER 007 TRAINING started early. “When I was only months old, my dad would sit me down under his arm on the couch and make me watch Bond.”
“We enjoyed jumping around Brooklyn— Lashana’s very much a Brooklynite, even though she’s from Britain.” — M E L I NA M AT S O U K A S
SHE’S HARD-PRESSED to pick a favorite.
“Daniel [Craig] brings the grittiness of London, which I absolutely love, but after Daniel it’s impossible to answer because they all bring something really spicy…. I did like Sean [Connery].” HER GADGET of choice would be “a time-traveling watch that could make me a fly on the wall anywhere.”
SHE HOPES HER character, Nomi,
brings a new layer of relatability to the world of espionage. “When you’re dealing with a franchise that has been slick for so many years, I wanted to throw a human spin on it—to deal with anxiety and be someone who’s figuring it out, completely on her toes.” SHE CREDITS Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who was recruited to polish the film’s script, with bringing an evolved female perspective to the Bond girls of the past. “She injected a natural richness into Nomi. Phoebe was able to cater to the women and bring something punchy, unique, and fresh.” THE BUZZ surrounding a modernized franchise has led some online trolls to be upset that the next 007 might be played by a black woman. “The good can be bad, and also sad,” Lynch says. “It’s healthy to talk about it because it reminds you, unfortunately, about where the world is right now. But also, of the work that we have to do as people who have a platform to speak.” UP NEXT she stars in Y, an FX series directed by Melina Matsoukas, based on the comic book series set in a postapocalyptic world ruled by women. “I would say many people in the world right now have dreams of a female-run world. And we actually get to fulfill that dream.”
—BRIT T HENNEMUTH
Cheers! Paramount’s Hollywood Cocktails book pairs their films with drink recipes. Here, three classics
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Beverly Hills Cop
The ne plus ultra adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s beloved thriller, replete with creamy fashion and ice-cold kills
A buddy comedy with a dash of romance, wrapped in a love letter to Chicago and doused in one of film’s great unsung soundtracks
Peak Eddie Murphy improv, sunny L.A., a gallery assistant peddling artisanal coffee—35 years and two sequels later, Netflix is now planning round four
AMERICANO
FERRARI NAMED DESIRE
ESPRESSO MARTINI
1 oz. Campari 1 oz. sweet vermouth 1 oz. club soda 1 lemon slice
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Pour Campari and sweet vermouth into a rocks glass filled with ice. Top with club soda and garnish with lemon slice.
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1 1/2 oz. bourbon 3 /4 oz. mint and lemon verbena syrup 3 /4 oz. lemon juice 4 dashes Angostura bitters 1 mint sprig
Combine bourbon, syrup, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker filled with ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a rocks glass filled with ice, top with bitters, and garnish with mint.
3 parts vodka 1 part Kahlúa 2 parts espresso Handful of espresso beans
Place vodka, Kahlúa, and espresso in a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously, strain into a cocktail glass, and garnish with espresso beans.
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PAG E 42 : I L L U ST R AT ION S : TOP, B Y L AU R E N TA M A K I ; B OT TOM , B Y J OR DA N A NDR E W CA R T E R . R E C I P E S A DA P T E D F ROM HOL LY WO OD C O C K TA I L S : OV E R 95 R EC IP ES C ELE B R ATING FIL M S F ROM PAR A MO U N T P ICTU R ES (C IDER M I LL PR ES S). PAGE 43: P HOTO G R A P H S B Y J E S S ICA A N TOL A ( 7 ); F ROM F I N E A RT I M AG E S / H E R I TAG E I M AG E S ( 6) , F ROM S L OW I M AG E S ( 9) , F ROM T E R A S OV _ V L ( 8 ), F ROM V I E W P ICT U R E S / U N I V E R S A L I M AG E S G RO U P (1 3) , A L L F ROM G E T T Y I M AG E S ; B Y J E H A D NG A ( D E R E G E ); F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S
Lashana Lynch enters the James Bond legacy at a pivotal moment in its history: No Time to Die, the installment out in April, will be the first film in the almost 60-year-old, $7 billion franchise to land in a post-#MeToo world. The British actress, who broke out as Maria Rambeau in Captain Marvel, has shaken and stirred Hollywood’s modern classic, arriving as Nomi, the new 00 agent and rumored heir apparent as Daniel Craig takes his last Aston Martin ride. Here, some insights gleaned from a conversation with a woman undercover.
Vanities
My Stuff
MIX MASTER
Interior designer Chiara de Rege, the aesthetic force behind The Wing and Carolina Herrera’s New York flagship, embraces the old and the new
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Listening to: Liz Goldwyn’s The Sex Ed. Desert island books: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and James Salter’s Light Years (2). Vacation spot: My family home in Piemonte, Italy (9). We donated half of it to the Italian National Trust and live in the other half. Plane must-haves: Cashmere blanket and eye set, Tata Harper’s Resurfacing Mask, and Shiva Rose’s Glow Face Balm. HOME
Architectural styles: I know this is a contradiction, but I am drawn to both beaux arts and 1930s.
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And I cannot imagine a world without modern architects such as Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, and Oscar Niemeyer (13). Furniture: Cristina Celestino’s furniture, tiles, carpet, wallpaper, lighting—she’s a renaissance woman. Career idol: Madeleine Castaing (6).
Recent addition: Maison C fabrics, adapted from the wallpaper line I cofounded with the artist Costanza Theodoli-Braschi (5). In bed: I love Olatz pajamas (3) and D. Porthault bedding (1). Flora: Bodega flowers arranged in vessels from antique stores upstate (7). Candle: Diptyque
Feu de Bois (11). Dish set: Wes Gordon’s Carolina Herrera tabletop line with Cabana (12). Four-legged friend: My 17-year-old Chihuahua, Klaus. He is a grumpy old man but my first baby and love of my life. ST YLE & WELL NES S
Perpetually worn accessory: My nonna’s wedding band (10) and FoundRae charms. Go-to shoe: Sneakers from my baby daddy (currently Off-White Nikes), Gucci loafers,
or Le Monde Beryl slippers (4). Supplements: Wooden Spoon Super Green Protein and anything Dr. Gabrielle Francis at the Herban Alchemist tells me to take! Workout: Walking through Central Park and Ballet Beautiful with Mary Helen Bowers. D I N I NG
Morning beverage: Bulletproof espresso before I take my daughter to school. Indulgence: Daily croissant (8). Restaurant: Sushi of Gari on the Upper East or Upper West Side.
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Vanities
Books Fellini on the set of La Dolce Vita; a promotional poster; Rizzoli’s new edition of The Book of Dreams, which includes an English translation and essays from collaborators.
SLEEP STUDY
A new edition of Federico Fellini’s The Book of Dreams offers a deep look into the director’s subconscious
W
hen Federico Fellini accepted the Palme d’Or for La Dolce Vita in 1960, the director was already embarking on a fresh creative process influenced by the teachings of Carl Jung. Newly interested in his own nocturnal fantasies, he began cataloging them in what would become a lifelong project, The Book of Dreams. Between romps with such characters as Ingmar Bergman, Charlie Chaplin, and a bevy of “big-butted women,” the filmmaker’s dreams are filled with the same existential search that pervades his oeuvre. “All that we can do is try to become aware that we are part of this unfathomable mystery,” he writes beneath a peaceful illustration of a starry sky. “We are a mystery —KEZIAH WEIR among mysteries.”
Cozy Up Fiction fit for bingeing, whether on a long flight or a long weekend at home 1 Amnesty by Aravind Adiga (Scribner)
In this smart twist on a classic whodunit, Danny, undocumented and working as a house cleaner in Sydney after fleeing Sri Lanka, has information about an unsolved murder. He must decide
whether to stay silent—or come forward and risk deportation. 2 The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Little, Brown)
Spun from real-life events, this lyrical novel
charts the aftermath of a fatal storm in a 17th-century Norwegian fishing village: a town almost exclusively composed of women and girls, and the violent witchburning newcomer hell-bent on their conversion.
3 The Exhibition of Persephone Q by Jessi Jezewska Stevens (FSG)
When a slightly aimless young woman living in post-9/11 New York is surprised to see herself in the untitled lead image of her former fiancé’s photography exhibit, she sets off on a quest to discover his motives—and, with help from interesting acquaintances, a larger truth. 4 Weather by Jenny Offill
librarian Lizzie, her classics buff husband, their son, and her brother, a recovering addict. Apocalypse (climate and otherwise) looms over the narrative, and yet it is funny and hopeful too. 5 Molly Bit by Dan Bevacqua (Simon & Schuster)
A slick page-turner that dives headfirst into the celluloid world of celebrity and obsession through the rags-toriches story of a star. — K .W.
(Knopf )
Time flies by in this wry story of a family—
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BEAUTY REST Austin Motel sleep mask, £54. (austinmotelstore.com)
PAG E 4 4 : P HOTO G R A P H S : C E N T E R A ND B OT TOM , B Y A L L I S ON S C H A L L E R ; TOP L E F T , F ROM U N I T E D A R T I ST S / G E T T Y I M AG E S ; TOP R IG H T , F ROM P HOTOF E ST . PAG E 4 5: A R T WOR K B Y T S C H A B A L A L A S E L F / C O U RT E S Y OF P I L A R C OR R I A S GA L L E RY ; F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S
In one dream, Fellini eats spaghetti with
Culture
Vanities
Rumors are swirling of a members-only bar (don’t call it a club), set to open later this year.
The London import founded by the late tech titan Paul Allen and musician Dave Stewart ho ts record-label exe s and screenwrite s poolside.
A cheeky oasis for power dining and private stays from the nostalgia experts behind the Sunset Tower Hotel.
The female-first wo kspace where Jay-Z and Beyo cé threw their alloween arty.
SHINE ON
Giorgio Armani cemented his status as a red-carpet go-to in the late 1980s (see: Diane Keaton and Michelle Pfeiffer), in part because his designs maintain a sleek modernity without tipping toward trendy. Armani’s new foray into fine jewelry— a suite of 78 pieces, including the crisp brooches in onyx and diamond shown here—is fitting, given his penchant for enduring classics. Jewelry, he says, is “destined to last over time.” Giorgio Armani High Jewelry Collection brooches in white gold, onyx, and diamonds (left) and white gold and diamonds; prices upon request. (armani.com)
Michelin-starred pop-up dining where entrepreneurs and producers can network in sleek corporate settings.
The latest Soho House outpost is a familiar postgame stop for sports fans and concertgoing members.
C H ARACT ER Sketch “I grew up in Harlem, and my experiences there have informed every part of my personality,” says artist Tschabalala Self, whose new solo exhibition, Out of Body, is on view at ICA Boston through summer. Self’s mixed-media paintings—evocative figures in vivid hues—are influenced not only by her “extremely energetic” home neighborhood, but also by a wide range of inspirations including the work of Horace Pippin, Sabrina Strings’s Fearing the Black Body, and Butterfield 8.
SECRET SOCIETY
From no-photo enclaves to women-only workspaces, a new breed of exclusive clubs fuels L.A.’s social landscape, where celebrities and creatives powwow and party. In a town that touts privacy, which will stay famous? H O L LY W O O D
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HENNIE HAWORTH
Sock (2018, left); Bellyphat (2016)
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Trending
STEP AND REPEAT
F I R ST FLU S H
Givenchy Le Rouge Deep Velvet lipstick in Beige Nu, £29. (harrods.com)
PAG E 46: P HOTO G R A P H S B Y J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E , ST Y L E D B Y K R I S J E N S E N ( C H L O É , G IO R G IO A R M A N I , GU C C I ) ; P HOTO G R A P H B Y N E I L S ON B A R N A R D / G E T T Y I M AG E S ( R E D CA R P E T ); F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S . PAG E 4 7: B AC K G RO U ND I M AG E © MG M / P HOTOF E ST
Vanities
G E T T I NG K N OT T Y
Chloé bracelet, £435. (chloe.com)
T WO TONE
Hemmerle earrings, price upon request. (hemmerle.com)
The red carpet is getting irreverent, taking pages from the mixed-up files of Bowie, Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, and Oscar Wilde. Glam, but make it playful
CL A SH HAP PY
GUCCI top, £2,630; pants, £785. (gucci.com)
THE MI S SIN G L I NK
Cartier Panthère de Cartier watch, £35,500. (800-CARTIER)
I N A CI NCH
Giorgio Armani shirt, £1,500; belt, £230. (selected Giorgio Armani boutiques)
DA I SY FR E S H
Louis Vuitton bow tie, £110. (866-VUITTON)
SILVER STATU S
CHANEL clutch, £2,230. (800-550-0005)
O L’ BLUE E Y E S
UZ Eye Opening Liner in Navy, £12. (uz.team)
RUFFLE UP
A look from the Dries Van Noten spring-summer 2020 collection: sweatshirt, £368; pants, £763; sandals, £629; belt, £540. (Opening Ceremony stores)
RE D A L E RT
Christian Louboutin shoes, £795. (christianlouboutin.com)
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Vanities Style
Cartier Magnitude High Jewelry transformable necklace in white gold, rubies, diamonds, and onyx; price upon request. (800-CARTIER)
ELIZABETHAN ERA
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lizabeth Taylor was a collector: of art (Modigliani, Van Gogh), of husbands (six), and of jewelry. In her 1985 Vanity Fair cover portrait, shot by Helmut Newton, she scintillates in the three-piece ruby and diamond Cartier suite her husband H O L LY W O O D
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A ruby suite draws inspiration from a Hollywood icon
Mike Todd gifted her as they summered on the French Riviera nearly three decades earlier. In 2011, when Taylor’s personal collection sold for a recordbreaking $115.9 million, Cartier bought back the pièce de résistance. Now, it’s put forth a reimagining of all three
P HOTO G R A P H
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pieces, with a necklace featuring seven cushion-cut rubies, and a ring and earrings sold separately. “You know,” Taylor told Dominick Dunne in her ’85 V.F. interview, “I can’t remember when I wasn’t famous.” With gems like these, we can’t either. —DAISY SHAW-ELLIS
HORACIO SALINAS
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THE LANGUAGE
of Light
Unveiled at Art Basel Miami Beach, Pablo Valbuena’s latest piece, an immersive kinetic installation commissioned by La Prairie, transcends usual language Words by F U N M I F E T T O
VANITY FAIR PARTNERSHIP
don’t think I can explain it with words.” It’s Art Basel Miami Beach 2019—the world’s most prestigious modern and contemporary art show—and Pablo Valbuena, the Spanish-born multi-disciplinary artist, is trying to verbally articulate his latest work, a commission by luxury skincare brand La Prairie. He apologises, as he laughs and admits to being somewhat out of his comfort zone, “I prefer my work to speak for itself.” Truth be told, his immersive kinetic art piece, spectacularly unveiled the night before on the glorious waterfront of Miami Beach, didn’t require words. Instead, it employed the language of light and the crashing of the sea. The name? “Wave”. The starting point was “The Shape of Light”. This philosophy, one which considers shape and how light interacts with it, is behind La Prairie’s illuminating White Caviar Collection. As Valbuena’s work famously explores light, this collaboration made perfect sense, explained Greg Prodromides, Chief Marketing Officer of La Prairie. “We select artists who share La Prairie’s values and Pablo’s main work uses light as a medium of expression. With the eye contour, light and shape are especially important.” This underpins La Prairie’s newest launch, White Caviar Eye Extraordinaire, an innovative cream that uses Lumidose, a breakthrough illuminating
“I
The starting point for Pablo Valbuena’s immersive kinetic piece was “The Shape of Light” CLOCKWISE
Above: viewers photograph Valbuena’s “Wave”. Left: La Prairie’s Pavilion at Art Basel Miami. Below: La Prairie White Caviar Collection. Opposite: Valbuena’s piece in Miami
molecule, to regenerate the eye area. That La Prairie should tell their story through the eyes of an artist is nothing new. The brand’s relationship with art goes back to its inception; Clinique La Prairie founder Dr Paul Niehans was an aesthete and the luxur y house takes inspiration from the timeless codes of the Bauhaus movement in its designs and packaging. This current venture is part of a continued series of artist collaborations. “Art is intrinsic to us,” explains Prodromides. “Each artist brings their unique artistic vocabulary.” This is exactly why Valbuena’s work required no words.
Need to know
The breakthrough formula of White Caviar Eye Extraordinaire includes “Lumidose”, the most potent inhibitor of tyrosinase (the enzyme responsible for melanin production), and Golden Caviar extract. This powerful combination boosts the skin’s luminosity, increases collagen production, firms and restores elasticity, enabling the eye area to better reflect light. It comes with a massaging Ceramic Pearl Tool that helps to deliver nutrients, remove toxins, de-puff the skin and alleviate dark circles.
Launching February 17. laprairie.co.uk
Vanities
Beauty
Killer Smile Joaquin Phoenix’s weathered teeth in Joker might be an unusual calling card for a celebrity dentist, but Jon Marashi, D.D.S., has no shortage of fans—Golden Globe nominees Tom Hanks and Renée Zellweger included. For Phoenix, he temporarily removed the actor’s bondings to reveal real-life chips. “Method acting for dentistry?!” quips Marashi.
Gwyneth Paltrow might be a steadfast supporter, but in Martha Soffer’s world, A-list is for Ayurveda, the Indian system of holistic well-being. This spring, the practitioner’s herbal creams and four-handed massages will take root at the new Surya Spa at the Santa Monica Proper Hotel. In Kelly Wearstler–designed rooms, Soffer will offer a meditative oil treatment called shirodhara and full-body panchakarma detox sessions. “Your skin just starts to glow,” she says of the red-carpet appeal.
Technicolor Definition
CITY SLICKERS
A town paved in red carpet knows how to go head to toe, from a star-favorite dentist to a new Ayurvedic spa By Laura Regensdorf
When colorist Alex Brownsell got her start, “bleaching was such a forbidden term,” she recalls of the once-bad rap. Years later, it’s the name of her beloved salon, Bleach London, slated to bring its painterly approach to Los Angeles this spring. Stocked with its in-house range, the space will have just four chairs and occasionally one Georgia May Jagger (an investor). “She’s like, ‘I want to be the receptionist!’ ” jokes Brownsell.
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Flashbulbs love a scarlet pout— if it lasts. After Tatcha’s plumping Kissu lip mask (£22), a coat of foundation “helps grab the lipstick,” says makeup artist Daniel Martin (Greta Gerwig is a client). Blue-tone reds—such as Rouge Dior Ultra Liquid Care in Poppy (£30), above—play well across skin tones; a lip liner and brush then lend definition. Blot and powder—but “don’t be precious!”
Fit for a Star
Jagger swings for pink, but Bleach’s new Green Juice (£8) quenches a thirst for a low-commitment pastel green.
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Scents of Place Can you bottle good vibes? Celine creative director Hedi Slimane melds palo santo and patchouli for Eau de Californie (£175): “an acoustic, solar perfume, a psychedelic utopia in tribute to California.” L.A. natural perfumer Emily L’Ami of Bodha taps a therapeutic vein with Vibration N°3 – Air (£98). Its golden resin and floral notes impart a “sense of luminosity and spaciousness,” she says.
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S A R A H M AYC O C K
A marathon awards season calls for crosstraining. Precision Run opens in Los Angeles this spring, bringing calibrated treadmill routines to its oxygen-enriched studios. Over at Rise Movement, Jason Walsh can make you a superhero (Brie Larson) or a pilot (Miles Teller in this summer’s Top Gun: Maverick). But the after-party moves are born at the Sweat Spot, run by Ryan Heffington (who choreographed Sia’s upcoming film, Music). There, dance class is “as much of a mental workout as it is a spiritual and physical one,” Heffington says.
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P HOTO G R A P H S B Y J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E ( B ODH A , C E L I N E , RO U G E DIOR ); R E F E R E NC E P HOTO G R A P H B Y S A M I R H U S S E I N / W I R E I M AG E ( JAG G E R ); F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S
Serenity Now
Steal the spotlight.
With a starring role in many a red carpet-ready skin care ritual, Dr Sebagh Supreme Maintenance Youth Serum contains 95% active ingredients— the highest concentration of any skin care product—that target signs of premature ageing, including Resveratrol, Vitamin C, hyaluronic acid and three powerful peptides to repair, boost collagen and restore radiance. Available online and at drsebagh.com
Vanities Fairground
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
At LACMA’s Art + Film Gala, a constellation of stars, many clad in Gucci, which presented the evening, coalesced to honor artist Betye Saar and filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón
was N a st Ke in ha Ale Miller gold valued at
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1. Anderson .Paak performed 2. Sienna Miller 3. Naomi Campbell and Billie Eilish 4. Leonardo DiCaprio, a gala chair, with Betye Saar
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ROGER KISBY
R E P ORT I NG B Y B R I T T H E N N E M U T H . I L L U ST R AT ION S B Y DA M I E N C U Y P E R S . F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F.C OM / C R E DI T S
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“L.A. is kind of a second home,” said Gucci’s Alessandro Michele. “I love seeing my friends in this energy with the California light.”
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Anderson .Paak served up a performance with dessert.
“There has never been a more important time to make sense of our mysterious world,” said Alfonso Cuarón, “and to bring order to the random nature of human existence.” 7
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5. The dinner scene 6. Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, admired Salma Hayek 7. Alfonso Cuarón 8. Tyler, the Creator and Zoe Saldana
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Travel OH, THE PL ACES YOUÕLL GO...
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A river passing through a landscape catches the world and gives it back redoubled: a shifting, glinting world more mysterious than the one we customarily inhabit. Olivia Laing, To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface C RI STI AN DIMI TRIUS
On the Cristalino River, Brazil continued on page 78
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Editor’s Letter
Think about a trip, any trip, say 20 years ago, but it could be more recent. What do you remember of it? I remember the empty early morning streets in Cairo, the slant of light, the golden dust motes in the air. I can’t remember where I stayed, but it would have been a hostel from my Lonely Planet as I still have that battered book on a shelf. I remember being astonished by the Pyramids, but even more astonished by the apartment blocks built so nearby. There was a backpacker bartering too hard with a local man peddling camel rides. I remember the smell of the camels, the tourist’s rough tone. I wonder if the camel-owner is still working there. I remember the train south, but not as well as I should. The Nile alongside, less blue than I expected. I remember stopping somewhere, Luxor I guess, and going off hiking in the rugged mountains. In fact I don’t remember stopping, but I do remember the hike. I met a good-looking shepherd who made me feel shy, and who accompanied me for a while and barked at anyone who approached me. He spoke to me in Arabic like I understood. When we parted he gave me a necklace of turquoise beads. I still have it in a box somewhere; I come across it time to time, and remember. Did I hire a bicycle? Or maybe it was that I wished I had. Anyway, I do remember peering over the edge of a cliff and looking down into the Valley of the Kings and seeing all the tourists as specks below, the tour buses like models. I don’t remember how I got from there to Aswan, but that was where I was meeting an old university friend from the States. We’d planned a rendezvous months in advance, as one did back then, and the only meeting place we could come up with in all of Egypt was the Old Cataract Hotel. So we marked a date in our diaries and promised to be in the lobby
NILE BE THERE
Michelle in Tahrir Square, Cairo
sometime on that day. I arrived early, forced to loiter for hours, trying to look purposeful. My friend arrived late. I don’t remember him walking in, or maybe I do: a silhouette in the panelled lobby against the light of the revolving door, if it was a revolving door. Or perhaps that’s made-up. We found a hostel, somewhere so cheap the room didn’t come with a fan. Or maybe the fan was so noisy we didn’t use it. We went to the river the next morning and asked a fisherman to take us downstream in his felucca. We slept on deck, while the fisherman slept below. I remember those nights, the inky water, only a few stars in the hazy sky, thinking how I would remember those nights forever. And I do. Back in Cairo we went to an internet cafe and there was an email about a job I’d applied for; they wanted to interview me by phone. We located a telephone exchange and I made a call that cost more than our night in the hostel; I had to shout to be heard while straining to hear the questions, delayed and echoing. I don’t remember saying goodbye to my friend, nor any parting shot. But I feel like my memories of that trip are strong, even if they don’t read like they are, and probably they’re mixed up with all my trips to Cairo since, layered upon each other, a melding of time and place, which makes them all the sweeter, more complex, more unforgettable. Travel for memories, no matter how much they fade. That’s reason enough. MICHELLE JANA CHAN
I’m coveting a Royal Enfield Classic right now. But the next best thing might be a motorbike trip with Vintage Rides to India, up to the peaks of Ladakh, or south to
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Tamil Nadu where these handsome, honest, heritage bikes are built, informing all my romantic notions of freedom on two wheels. @vintagerides
F A IR
After a groundbreaking peace accord, Mozambique may yet look to promising times ahead. One beacon of hope is Gorongosa National Park and its
pioneering wildlife programmes, including the recent reintroduction of wild dog, and perhaps hyena and rhino to follow. @naturalworldsafaris
In London, the Lanserhof at The Arts Club is the latest outpost of the flagship on Lake Tegernsee, Germany. This gym++ aims to pull together fitness,
medicine, health and beauty under one roof, but next year plot a trip when Lanserhof Sylt opens on one of my favourite islands in the Baltic. @lanserhof
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R ICA RD O SE RPA (L A DAKH); WIL L BOL SOVE R (NATUR A L WORL D SA F A RIS); HUBE RT MOI NE AU (MJC)
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Travel Worth Travelling For
ALL MODES LEAD TO ROME oma Guasta” has become an oft-heard lament. Rome is broken. Even for tourists, the Italian capital has become noticeably unkempt with blogs such as “Roma fa schifo” reporting on the urban decay, and the emergence of the hashtag #romadicebasta, “Rome Says Enough”, also a rallying cry. To the rescue is an unlikely gathering of some of Italy’s most glamorous fashion houses aiming to make their mark beyond the catwalk, and in less fleeting ways than with a seasonal collection. The latest show of support is Fendi taking on the €2.5m restoration of the Temple of Venus, the largest known temple of ancient Rome, inaugurated by the Emperor Hadrian. That comes on the back of their luminous upgrade of the Trevi Fountain. Bulgari was behind the makeover of the mosaic floors in the Baths of Caracalla, and more recently the Spanish Steps. “We wanted to give back to the city which has been feeding our creativity,” says Heritage Curator Lucia Boscaini. “Our founder Sotirio Bulgari used to go up and down the Spanish Steps from his apartment to the shop [on Via Condotti]. The restoration is a show of respect for these roots.” Boscaini says the City of Rome quoted them €1.5m to be involved in the cleaning and reinforcing of the curvaceous travertine and marble staircase. When the job came in 50 per cent cheaper than expected, Bulgari directed the surplus towards the restoration of the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina: four Roman temples ranging from the 4th to the 2nd centuries BC, which include the hall where Julius Caesar was assassinated.
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The project aims to open up the site, which is currently used to store historical artefacts, to the public for the first time. “This cooperation—between Rome’s institutions and private companies —is a way to preserve our city for the future,” says Boscaini. Handing over the preservation of patrimony is not without controversy. Nausicaa Cicero, an archaeologist, is saddened by the state of affairs. “It’s our government that should be preserving our heritage, but they don’t. What a contradiction: no money for archaeology in Italy!” Cicero and I are circling the upper levels of the Colosseum. The revival of this gladiatorial amphitheatre is being heavily
RESTORATION DRAMAS
Fendi models walk across plexiglass runways after the brand’s upgrade of the Trevi Fountain. Below: work at the Colosseum is funded by Tod’s leather goods
funded by leatherwear fashion house Tod’s. When complete, these upper galleries will be open to the public for the first time in 2,000 years. “I’m just glad someone is taking care of our monuments,” Cicero sighs. “It’s the best solution for now.” The Sovrintendenza of Rome says private investment in restoring monuments is nothing new. “Patronage enables the city to upkeep its countless treasures when budgets cannot cover all the costs,” says Teresa Franco, of this cultural heritage body. “Upkeep and enhancement requires enormous investment. Contributions from private investors is fundamental.” Gucci, headquartered in Florence, has undertaken projects there including the restoration of the Boboli Gardens, but is now coming to Rome, embarking on a €1.6m project to reclaim Rupe Tarpea, the terraced rock face of the garden at Campidoglio. It was here where, up to the first century AD, traitors were thrown from the cliff to the underlying Roman Forum. In spite of its position, many even in Rome don’t know this spot. The goal is to open the garden to visitors for the first time and for it to host cultural events. Monuments as venues raise questions. When Fendi hosted a catwalk show at the Trevi Fountain with models walking on plexiglass runways, some attested it was a new art form. Others said it was selling out. “Done respectfully, it can bring life to monuments of the past,” Boscaini argues. “We all want to be part of the life of this city.” M.J.C. Hotel Hassler Rome (hotelhasslerroma.com) has rooms from £682 per night, including breakfast. H O L LY W O O D
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GE T T Y I MAGES (MODEL S); TOD’S (COL OSSEUM)
The fashion houses of Italy step in to preserve the Eternal City
Dubrovnik. Laze in style. www.adriaticluxuryhotels.com
Hotel Excelsior Dubrovnik, Hotel Bellevue Dubrovnik, Villa Orsula Dubrovnik, Villa Agave Dubrovnik, Villa Sheherezade Dubrovnik, Hotel Dubrovnik Palace, Grand Villa Argentina Dubrovnik, Hotel Croatia Cavtat, Hotel Kompas Dubrovnik, Villa Glavić Dubrovnik, Hotel Odisej Mljet and Hotel Supetar Cavtat are Adriatic Luxury Hotels.
Travel Imaginings
FANTASY HOTEL
Picture the perfect place to stay: a dreamlike patchwork of details from properties all over the world
camp has drop-down decks with Fermob rocking chairs from where to watch raptors ride the thermals, on the rim of the Great Rift Valley. Glassware BELMOND VENICESIMPLON-ORIENT-EXPRESS
and hotel’s namesake on the other side of Place de la Madeleine. Choose from crispy cheese bites, toasted brioches with foie gras, Earl Grey tea biscuits, signature macaroons and dark chocolate truffles—all complimentary.
Lobby AMAN TOKYO Don’t be distracted by Mount Fuji, as seen from this 33rd-floor lobby. Equally spectacular is the view upwards: the heavenly-high vaulted ceiling soars 30 metres (in a city where square footage is an absolute premium) and the wonder is amplified because it’s made of a mesmerising grid of luminescent washi rice paper.
A classic. Refined, yet also heavy in the hand, these Art Nouveau crystal glasses stay put even if the train brakes hard. Minibar HOTEL FAUCHON, PARIS
View ANGAMA MARA, KENYA Pegged atop the Oloololo escarpment, on the edge of the Maasai Mara, this
A pearly pink armoire stocked with sweets and savouries by Fauchon, the legendary 133-year-old gourmet shop Mural LUNDIES HOUSE, SCOTLAND Claire Basler’s dreamy botanical artwork of cow parsley and fennel decorates the walls of this revelation of a restaurant in the Highlands. Bathroom products COMO SHAMBHALA BALI No better way to scrub up than with these big bottles of soaps, suds and body lotions, made with pure essential oils.
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against the backdrop of silence. Properly in the middle of nowhere— with polar bear footprints in the snow outside the door. Foot brush SONEVA JANI, MALDIVES Palm trees LE SERENO ST BARTHS After Hurricane Irma smashed up the island in 2017, including stripping the
The most endearing hedgehog with prickles to brush the white powdery sand off your feet at a hotel where shoes are forbidden.
Vehicle CHEETAH PLAINS, SOUTH AFRICA Game drives have been silenced by this fleet of solar-charged emission-free electric 4x4 Land Cruisers, meaning less disturbance for both animals and guests. foliage, the team here went on a mission to find perfectly un-straight palm trees, which had long been the signature look by the pool. The tropical tableau is back: sweeping, swooping palms with curves in all the right places. Location NORDENSKIÖLD LODGE, SVALBARD, NORWAY Allegedly the world’s most northern hotel. There is no electricity nor comms at this cabin and water is sourced from glacier ice, which you can hear crack H O L LY W O O D
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Pool SHINTA MANI WILD, CAMBODIA A totally unexpected 30-metre black steel bathtub-shaped lap pool hidden away in protected hardwood forest at this travelling camp-style lodge between the South Cardamom and Kirirom National Parks. Garden THE NEWT IN SOMERSET, UK A maze of hundreds of varieties of apple trees, celebrating the fruit of Eden, but this garden is even more bountiful and beautiful that that. VANI T Y
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Located in north-west Male` Atoll, just 50-minutes away by speedboat from airport, this dazzling NEW design hotel is a far cry from the simplistic rustic retreats of ‘old Maldives’ ! Edgy features make it feel fabulously fresh and innovative, whilst staying true to the authenticity of a wonderful Maldives resort experience. Split between the Sangeli‘s Main Island and the smaller island – One Banyan; linked by a string of overwater villas, you can navigate between the various facilities, at your leisure. Additionally, the PREMIUM HOLIDAY PLAN - The Serenity Plan™ provides an array of all-included treats along the way, from a daily mini-bar refill, two fine dining experiences a week, unlimited drinks, selected excursions & water sports...
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Travel Changing Your Mind By Michelle Jana Chan
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m walking along the glinting cobbled streets of the Portuguese capital and for a few moments it feels like the old days. It’s a bit shabby, the walls are graffiti-ed, nobody’s around. Then I turn a corner and am catapulted into the present. Here in Alfama, Lisbon’s historical district, there are often more tourists than locals. Ahead, sightseers walk in single file along narrow pavements and luridly painted tuk-tuks are parked by a church touting for business. The number 28 tram rattles past, a key transport route that locals have abandoned because it’s too cramped with visitors. It’s the speed of the growth of tourism that has taken the city aback. Five or so years ago, Lisbon was a backwater. Now it’s a magnet for artists, a gateway for surfers heading to the Atlantic coast and a next-stop for digital nomads. There’s not much cooler than that. I take a walk and discover Época, a rambling antique shop fronted by blue-and-white azulejo tiles. Inside, the owner Fernanda Coelho tells me there used to be 14 antique shops on this road, H O L LY W O O D
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From top: Augusta Street; the swallow is a Portuguese symbol of the pattern of migration and a longing to return home to Lisbon
from Portas do Sol to the Cathedral. “Now there are two,” she sighs. “Tourists don’t want what we sell. The cheapest thing I have is an antique tile for €45 and they say that’s too much.” “People say they want ‘local’, but Alfama isn’t local anymore,” says Sandra Henriques Gajjar, founder of Tripper, a blog about sustainable cultural tourism. “The area is a caricature of what it used to be. For locals, there’s also an eviction problem with landlords wanting to get rid of tenants to rent the spaces to tourists for more money on Airbnb.” The city government has responded, restricting the numbers of rental
Lisbon: reflections on an overloved city properties per owner and tightening regulations. Gajjar thinks they haven’t gone far enough. Others argue the housing crisis is only part of the story. “I was born here, I grew up here,” says Maria Braga, who has two Airbnb apartments. “Before, the city looked bad, there were places near my home I wouldn’t go at night. Now it’s safe and beautiful. Tourism has created an opportunity for Lisbon.” Carlos Afonso, owner of the new restaurant O Frade agrees. “People complain, but I think they’re not opening their mind to the new,” he says. “We could become a San Sebastian with our cooking, our fresh fish, our rich culture of wine. Tourists are helping reinvent the city.” Yet I notice a palpable shift in the sentiment: from boosting tourism to balancing tourism, a refrain heard in many places besides Lisbon but perhaps more acutely here given the sharp rise in visitor numbers. In the five years up to 2018, tourism in Portugal grew by more than 80 per cent to 30 million arrivals. Ten years ago Catarina Portas launched A Vida Portuguesa, a small chain of shops selling ceramics, glassware, jewellery and textiles, little sanctuaries of Portuguese heritage. “Factories were closing down, we were losing brands, and I wanted to do something about that,” she says. “Even where I live, everything was changing. The café disappeared, two popular restaurants, the drugstore. Now instead there are nine coffee shops selling avocado on toast. It’s true tourism saved a city that was crumbling, but now we are losing the Lisbon we know.” Fighting back, Portas is part of the initiative Lojas com História (shops with history), which supports independent businesses—such as hat-, glove- and candle-makers —helping them avoid eviction and bankruptcy. “We have protected 100 shops,” she says proudly. “We have to keep the soul of the city. Otherwise why would you come here?” Memmo Alfama (memmohotels.com) has rooms from £158. Flights with TAP (tapairportugal.com). VANI T Y
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2020
Vision
T H E VA N I T Y FA I R CHANGING YOUR MIND T R AV E L AWA R D S 2 0 2 0 with LEICA and ANANTARA
A journey. A picture. A moment. Open your mind to have it changed: herein lies a new way of exploring the world. These individuals do things differently. Remember when you had your last slightly madcap idea and nobody supported you, but you did it anyway? That’s their M.O. They’re infinitely imaginative, mind-bogglingly original and endearingly unaware of their courage. Here is the 2020 line-up: of dreamers, but also doers. By Michelle Jana Chan Photographs by C A T G A R C I A and B E N N O T H O M A 66
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VANITY FAIR PARTNERSHIP
Step by Step
GASTÓN UGALDE rovocative. Passionate. Political. Born in La Paz, this contemporary artist and activist has a deep connection to his homeland of Bolivia. “The mountains, the desert, this is where my art began,” he says. “I’ve been walking around my incredible country for 40 years, from the Andes to the Amazonian jungles.” Gastón works in performance, painting, sculpture, land art and
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photography, yet whatever his medium, his subject is his beloved country and its complexities. “Bolivia is unique in the Americas because 60 per cent of our population is indigenous,” he says. “That is what really influences me: our everyday life, farming practices, family rituals and cosmological visions of the universe.” It’s a Bolivia most tourists don’t even glimpse. His art includes a series of collages made from the coca leaf, and patchworks of Inca and Aymara blankets stitched
Salt of the earth: Gastón Ugalde celebrates his homeland through installations in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats
Green Light
A N TJ E V O N D E W I T Z n a world where outdoor blurs with high design, street fashion and mountain sport, VAUDE is standing out as the manufacturer of sustainable wear, changing our minds on what to buy and what to wear on our travels. An entrepreneur to the bone, Antje took over the family business 10 years ago and pledged that VAUDE would become Europe’s most sustainable outfitter. “I want to use my position to change behaviour, to engage myself in a world worth living in,” she says. The company, based in Tettnang, Germany, introduced a seal of sustainability, Green Shape, and a collection made of bio-based, recycled and natural materials. Last year, the German government, hand in hand with VAUDE, came up
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Seal the deal: VAUDE CEO Antje von Dewitz has created seals of sustainability to help consumers make informed choices
with a seal for German consumers. “We’re dragging other brands up with us, trying to raise consciousness,” Antje says. There is a specific VAUDE eBay site where consumers can resell used products. They also work with iFixit, an online repair platform, to extend product life. At their upcycling workshop, they reuse material remnants. Since 2012, the company has
together. But he may be best known for his installations in the Salar de Uyuni (the world’s largest salt flats), such as a stairway of salt blocks leading to nothing. To showcase the region further, he has recently begun guiding visitors into Uyuni, exploring and explaining the landscape to them. “I really feel like [my guests] become part of the artwork, that they’re not just observers but performers,” he says. “And if people are interested in my art, they are interested in my country.”
been climate neutral at their headquarters and the goal is to extend that worldwide. “Within five years, all our products will be made of recycled or natural-based materials,” Antje says, including jackets from castor oil beans and fleeces from wood fibre. “At the beginning, sustainability was a drag on innovation, but now it’s become a driver.”
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Flock Together
RUNE HØRSLEV-PETERSEN hen Rune opened his first ad agency, it had a very distinctive USP: an understanding of the youth market. “I was an expert in the young because I was young,” he says. “To get PR, I said that everybody would be fired at the age of 29. I’d have to fire myself eventually, too.” Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, he is not a typical ad man. “I can’t remember making anything that people would recognise as advertising,” he says. “I start a project, and then the communication comes because of the nature of the thing.” With a remit to boost tourism in the Faroe Islands, the small Danish archipelago in the North Sea, he dreamt up Sheep View 360, attaching solar-powered cameras to sheep who wandered around this “small, pristine hidden gem nobody had heard of. The concept was that the islands are so unexplored that even Google hadn’t been there,” he says. Given the small budget and
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The right track: Rune HørslevPetersen champions smart tourism in the Faroe Islands, which benefits locals
the goal of a big audience, Rune knew he had “to do something so spectacular or quirky that it became newsworthy. We believed it would get picked up, but we didn’t know to what degree.” Seven thousand news stories later (and a reach of two billion), Google visited the following year and plotted the Faroes on Google Street View. But, he says, it’s the Closed For Maintenance campaign of which he’s most proud. This saw the island shut down for a weekend, allowing only tourists who would volunteer to help fix paths, fences and viewpoints. Thousands applied
to be part of the movement. “It was less about boosting tourism and more about how tourism could benefit the Faroese,” he says. It was such a success, the islands will close for maintenance again in April, and other countries are looking to copycat the idea. “I try to do something good,” Rune says, “not just beneficial for a product or a company but good for the world.”
Gaining Ground
ANJALI AND JAISAL SINGH
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aisal’s was a barefoot childhood, spent running around the wilderness of Ranthambore National Park, watching his father and uncle at work, both renowned wildlife experts in India and documentary filmmakers. “When tiger cubs were born, my parents would pull me out of school so I wouldn’t miss them,” Jaisal says. “We’d sleep under a banyan tree, we wouldn’t even pitch a tent.” By contrast, Anjali grew up in the world of the automotive business, a huge conglomerate that she now runs. “It is all factories and conferences, nothing like the space that I long to be in,” she sighs. 68
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Thinking Twice
AUNG MYO CHIT AND JON MICELER e’s my best friend,” Jon says. “I couldn’t do this without him.” Aung chips in: “We have a strong bond and the same common ideas.” For the past 20 years, this unlikely pair have been actively trying to save the Asian elephant in Myanmar, to conserve the forest and to protect other wildlife such as the Irrawaddy river dolphin, gibbons, deer and hornbills. Both Aung and Jon are committed conservationists. Aung has worked for the Smithsonian’s Myanmar programme, while Jon, from the U.S., was with the World Wildlife Fund in Asia for decades. They understand how tourism might finance their conservation goals. For the last five years, they’ve been guiding visitors to the region on an ad hoc basis but they’ve recently launched two camps, under the name KnoWhere. At these, tourists can spend a few days walking with elephants formerly employed in the timber trade and now vulnerable to
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neglect or poaching. “We want to show that elephant tourism is viable without tourists riding,” Jon says. “The idea is also to educate the mahouts to value their culture, to value the animals’ existence,” Aung continues. “If locals work with us for four or five days, they’ll earn what’s equal to one month’s income. If their life is better, they will look after the area.” Aung also trains the community in the skills of guiding. “I have a vision of this programme
Born to rewild: Jaisal and Anjali Singh want to double the amount of protected wilderness
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Keeping an eye: Aung Myo Chit and Jon Miceler on a mission in Myanmar
creating more environmentalists in the country,” he says. Myanmar often feels weighted down with political problems but there are beacons of hope in the country, such as the work of these two men. “Tourism in Myanmar has a long history but this kind of tourism is new,” Aung says. “We have 40 national parks in the country but nobody comes to Myanmar to see wildlife. We hope we can change that.”
Together, they are a force. Jaisal opened his first lodge 20 years ago, before they met, but after coming together in 2006, they opened three more properties in quick succession, including JAWAI in the Aravalli Hills in southwest Rajasthan, their most ambitious conservation project. Working with local communities, private landowners and government, they are jigsawing together critical, albeit small, patches of contiguous land to create wildlife corridors, aiming to eventually link up with nearby Kumbhalgarh National Park. “When our guests see what we are doing, they become ambassadors for the project,” Jaisal says. “Without responsible tourism all this wilderness would disappear.” To my ear, it sounds like a conservancy, along the lines of the
East African model, an initiative untried in India. But if it works, JAWAI could be a template for the region. So far, they have managed to protect more than 50 square kilometres, and the workload is heavy—from trying to halt construction projects to purchasing tracts of land, shifting frontiers of national parks and aiming for a higher protection status for the area. As we parted, Anjali showed me their private app on her phone: a dynamic map of the JAWAI area, which shows updates of any land deals done. “We’re hoping to almost double the amount of protected wilderness that is already there,” she says. “We’ll keep chipping away. We want to be able to look back when we’re old and say we were able to get it done.” VANI T Y
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Travel Accessories
So you can
GEAR UP AND GO
POCKET ESSENTIALS Happy Plug earphones by Saint Laurent (ysl.com)
SPECS AND SHADES IN ONE Frames by Cubitts with Transitions™ Style colour lenses (transitions.com) PACK LIGHT Daylite Travel by Osprey (ospreyeurope.com)
Unburdening: if you’re the kind of traveller who drills holes in your toothbrush, this page is for you. We’re loving the lightweight, no matter the trip
SILK WEIGHT Ibiza Cream Crescent dress by Asceno (asceno.com)
GLAM UP IN A FEW GRAMS Metal, strass and resin necklace by CHANEL (chanel.com)
SOFT AS A PETAL GG Flora print silk scarf by Gucci (gucci.com)
ALL-OVER COVER Poncho by FJÄLLRÄVEN (fjallraven.eu) FLEXI FOOTWEAR AT 164g Primus Lite shoes by Vivobarefoot (vivobarefoot.com)
JUST 159g The Sans jacket by Mission Workshop (missionworkshop.com)
COMPACT STOWAWAY Latitude International Carry-On by TUMI (tumi.com)
DOWNY FEATHERS Kabru Light Vest IV by VAUDE (vaude.com)
MERINO NATURAL Tabi Tech Lite Crewe by Icebreaker (icebreaker.com)
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JUST ADD WATER Microdrink soluble cubes by Waterdrop (en.waterdrop.com)
PIN-SHARP POWER Trinovid-HD 8x42 binoculars by Leica (leica-camera.com)
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Sweet Spot A hotel doesn’t have to be new for us to love it
Travel The Edit
J ULI EN CA PMEI L (MAL LIOUHA N A)
MALLIOUHANA, Anguilla On the cliffs above Turtle Cove and Meads Bay, this hotel is still a Caribbean favourite, smart and chic, yet with an old-school West Indian vibe with its large airy rooms, eclectic mix of Chinoiserie and English colonial, and palette of mango and mint. Arriving into the tiered reception, you see the glorious Fauvist paintings by Haitian artist Jasmin Joseph, and the decorative quirks of old-style diving bells, wooden birdcages and mirrored mosaic tiling. It was in the restaurant here, more than 30 years ago, that the originality hatched when a three Michelin-starred French chef was hired and revolutionised cooking in the Caribbean with top-notch ingredients flown in, and local staff dispatched to Antibes to hone their kitchen skills and wine smarts. Dishes today are refreshingly local, including conch curry; crayfish and sea urchin ceviches; Johnny Cake burgers, and the island’s own Pyrat rum poured in the bar at sunset. Anguilla has hands-down the best beaches in the Caribbean and there’s a glorious pool with sunshineyellow cabanas and parasols, and a spa set among a tangle of vines. ANASSA, Cyprus On the Akamas Peninsula, in the arc of the eastern Mediterranean, this second-generation family-run hotel has that rare combination of beach and mountain—and the longest summers in Europe. It is laid out in the style of a traditional Cypriot village among olive groves and trellises of bougainvillea; centre stage is the Thalassa Spa based on the concept of a Roman-style health retreat with 18 treatment rooms and seawater pumped into the pool. There are long-stay weight reduction and detox programmes, personal training and a Tata Harper menu of treatments—and H O L LY W O O D
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Clockwise from top: Anassa, Cyprus; Malliouhana, Anguilla; Constance Prince Maurice, Mauritius
best of all, guided hikes in the foothills of the Troodos. From the kilometrelong beach there’s a fleet of power boats for water skiing and snorkelling trips, plus dinghies, Lasers and catamarans for Royal Yachting Associationapproved sailing courses. Breakfast is a showstopper of Cypriot fare including fresh strained yogurts, halloumi cheeses, avocado, organic honey on the comb, walnuts, olives, figs and pomegranates. CONSTANCE PRINCE MAURICE, Mauritius Named after a prolific spice trader who coursed the Indian Ocean routes, this property sits on the northeast coast of the volcanic island between pretty coves, sugar estates and fishing villages
where Casuarina and Veloutier trees cast shade. Among 60 hectares of lush landscaped gardens, some rooms are on the beach, some are stilted in the calm of the lagoon, and there’s a staggeringly beautiful pool ringed by thatch-fringed cabanas, as well as two championship golf courses and a Sisley spa. In the stellar floating seafood restaurant Le Barachois, reached by a lantern-lit boardwalk through mangroves, chef Guiliano Dubois smashes together with finesse the culinary heritage of mixed-up Mauritius, serving smoked ruby snapper and grouper tikka with turmeric and homemade faratha; there’s also a seriously heavyweight wine cellar and locally produced single estate Penny Blue VSOP dark rum. VANI T Y
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Four cities: uncontainable; moving and morphing; changing so fast, they’re sometimes described as if unfamiliar, at least unrecognisable, and yet they’re also birthing new memories for these four writers; cities loved so hard it can hurt to read about them. But it’s time we did.
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Travel Four Cities
LAGOS By Bernardine Evaristo
STEP HEN TAYO (MICHA EL CHI N A, SE LL ER); GE ORGE OS ODI/PA NOS (MODEL ON BEACH)
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y father left Lagos 70 years ago when Nigeria was still a British colony. As a mixed-race child of the 1960s and ’70s growing up in London, Nigeria was the mysterious country my father came from. It wasn’t until the 1990s that I visited Lagos for the first time, and a year later, took my father home after 44 years away. It was no longer the quiet, ordered city of his childhood but a noisy, lawless, sprawling metropolis. We found his former family house still standing in what used to be known as the Brazilian Quarter, once settled by freed African slaves and their descendants from Brazil, including my grandfather. When my father knocked on the door of an old friend’s neighbouring house, the man opened it, and they sat there on the stoop drinking and joking as if nearly H O L LY W O O D
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Above and right: “Lagos is a city alive with the incredible energy of resourceful people”
half a century hadn’t passed without any contact. I have since returned to Lagos a few times and late last year I attended the Ake Arts and Book Festival there. While the city is maddeningly congested with traffic, this festival was an oasis of artistic and intellectual riches. It’s a sign that Lagos is changing and taking shape as a creative force in
Lagos is in my blood and I am proud of this fierce, complicated, exciting city the world. The country’s infrastructure might not always work efficiently with potholed roads in some districts that are more like lunar craters, but last November alone there was the Lagos
International Poetry Festival, the Lagos Fashion Expo, ART X Lagos contemporary art fair, and the city is becoming more tourist-friendly with snorkelling trips, heritage tours and art galleries, such as the amazing Nike Art Gallery owned by Nike Davies Okundaye with thousands of artworks on display. I particularly loved visiting the Kalakuta Museum, the former home of Fela Kuti, the musician who pioneered Afrobeat and a political activist against corruption. He lived there until his death in 1997; his bedroom has been left intact with an unmade-up bed and clothes hanging on a rail. Lagos is a city alive: with the smells of suya, spicy meat barbecued on the streets; the constant noise of honking and daredevil traffic; the sheer volume of dynamic Nigerian voices; the incredible energy of resourceful people who have to fight to survive; and a heat that often cloaks the city in a hazy mist of humidity. Lagos is in my blood and I am proud of this fierce, complicated, exciting city, and proud of my father who passed on his Yoruba strength. Today my father’s childhood home has been demolished and replaced with a small hotel. My last known relative in the city died earlier this year. Time moves on and we are left with our memories and a world in perpetual transformation. VANI T Y
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“When I see an older model VW Beetle, I feel a jolt of recognition that ripples through me and sends me to that night in Addis”
ADDIS ABABA By Maaza Mengiste
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am a child but I am driving my grandfather’s VW Beetle, gliding through the cool Addis Ababan night, past the French Legation, to turn onto the dirt road that will lead me back home. Pale moonlight flattens against the rocky path before it recedes, defeated by the dark. I am much too young to be driving. It is difficult to see over the steering wheel, but this is a dream and only my heart—beating in anticipation—tethers me to my sleeping self. I know I will wake just as I guide the car toward our front gate. I have dreamt this many times, the nights lining up to number weeks, then months, then years, until one day, I realise I don’t dream it anymore. I slide noiselessly past the other homes still caught in the silence of deep slumber. Rows of eucalyptus stand like soldiers 74
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watching my advance. An owl coos, startled by the snap of stones beneath the wheels of the pale blue Beetle. The car crawls forward. I strain to sit taller to get a better look at the route I have memorised since early childhood, since I left Addis Ababa for good, and just as I see our gate as we pull up to my grandparents’ house, relief barrels through me and knocks me awake with the thought: I made it. If all dreams are rooted in reality then this dream is one of longing. Part of it is true: the night I left Ethiopia, I was in my grandfather’s VW Beetle. I sat in the back seat and stared at the
If all dreams are rooted in reality then this dream is one of longing
dirt road through the rear window. I felt it taking me further from the only home I knew and I was afraid that, if I shifted my gaze for even a moment, I would forget the route. That I would return was not the question. That I would not be able to guide myself to our house was the small terror that rooted itself inside me and bloomed continuously at night for years. Always: the same road, the faithful pale blue Beetle, my same heart leaping between my dream life and my bedroom, between Addis and America, between memory and forgetting. Perhaps this is why, when, to this day, I see an older model Beetle, I feel a jolt of recognition that ripples through me and sends me to that night in Addis and to all my subsequent returns to visit my grandparents and I can hear the rain on our corrugated tin roof and the sing-song calls of vendors in dizzying Mercato. I smell the rich aroma of spicy berbere, the tang of garlic and onions seeping from the many restaurants in the city and I feel the steady thrum of music bouncing out of hotels and nightclubs. I close my eyes and I’m on Churchill Road marvelling at the ambling pace of pedestrians and donkeys, in crushing traffic. Then all the other years tumble forward, and I am a teenager sitting next to my grandfather in that light blue Beetle, then I am a young adult watching helpless from an unfathomable distance as my grandmother passes away and then years later, my grandfather, too, dies without me by his side and with his death, that beloved car is sold and then our home is sold and then it is demolished by the new owners and all that’s left is that dirt road held in moonlight and my memory of the route back home, now sturdy as bone. H O L LY W O O D
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GI RMA B ERTA @GB OXC REATIV E
Travel Four Cities
Travel Four Cities
FREETOWN By Aminatta Forna
D OMI N IQUE FOFA N AH/@BAGSBYOUMUWA (MODEL S); MICHA EL D UFF (RI V ER N UMB ER T WO)
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reetown is a city I have known for 50 years and ours has been an on/off relationship, sometimes intimate, at other times distant. Cities are the future and Freetown, having languished in economic decline, has only lately joined the game. In recent years I went back once to find that a Chinese-built, four-lane highway had replaced the potholed dual carriageway to my parents’ house. I drove up and down it several times before I recognised the turn-off to where they lived. Some things, though, don’t change. In Freetown you are either an East Ender or a West Ender. East and West Freetown are partitioned by the government and commercial districts: Victoria Park; Government Wharf; Big Market, where, when I was young, I would buy gifts to take back to England for my school friends; and the many-canopied Cotton Tree, an actual tree which stands in the centre of the city and predates Freetown’s founding, marking the spot where the early H O L LY W O O D
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Above: Fashion shoot on a beach in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Below: Aerial view of River Number Two as it flows into the Atlantic
settlers decided to build their homes. The East End is composed of narrow streets lined with two- and three-storey houses painted in many colours, Lebanese traders’ shops, and bars composed of a counter and row of stools where the clientele sit with their backs facing passers by. A friend of mine describes himself as an East Ender—by upbringing but also by nature because he is a “night person”. Here you can dance to everything from SE Rogie to Sierra Leonian rapper Daddy Saj, and drink Star lagers until first light. On the other hand, the West is for the day, by which I mean the day after the night before. At heart I am a West Ender. I grew up on this side of town, though we lived once briefly in Kissy in the East End. The West End is dominated by Lumley Beach, a long sickle of yellow sand with a scattering of beach bars and hotels, quiet during the weekdays except for a few fishing boats. To return to Freetown is to find my past selves layered over the geography of the city. When I was a child, Sundays were spent at the beach. It was here— in the waters off Lumley—where I learned to swim, though I wouldn’t recommend it now; the beach has succumbed to a scourge of plastic jetsam. My parents used to play the tables at the Casino Leone at one end of the beach, which is still there though many punters now prefer the glitz of Lagonda Casino and Club. Though I’m not much of
a gambler, I like the old-world feel of Leone, though it was at Lagonda I had my one and only big win at the roulette table. Time and time again my number came in, such that the manager was called over. When he discovered I was playing with the smallest possible chips, he waved to the croupier not to worry. Still, I won enough to buy a bottle of Champagne at the bar. Lumley Beach is still where both East and West Enders congregate on Sundays. Children splash in the surf, muscled young men who call themselves personal trainers jog the length of the sands. Cruising the beach road are the glimmering Jeeps of the newly-rich younger
West Freetown is for the day, by which I mean the day after the night before generation who have made their money in import/export trade, and bruised Peugeots of those who have yet to. As darkness falls, the sound of the hits of local Afropop star Emmerson echo across the water. To eat in one of the waterside restaurants is to understand how cosmopolitan Freetown is now: Nigerians, Lebanese, Russians and other Europeans come here, sometimes together, to share Lebanese food, the preferred cuisine. But Toma is my favourite restaurant partly because it serves West African dishes, though often with a modern twist; it’s located behind an unmarked iron gate in Aberdeen, once an old fishing village, now a suburb of quiet houses behind whitewashed walls. It is a restaurant and also a boutique hotel. A boutique hotel in my old Freetown. I never thought I’d see the day. VANI T Y
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Travel Four Cities
ABIDJAN By Véronique Tadjo
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Above: A family walks along the waterfront in Abidjan
Putting the past to rest, the capital is rebuilding itself. Hope, loss and desire collide here vibrant neighbourhoods. Enterprising market women set up a few rickety wooden tables and chairs. Every morning they awaken at dawn to go to the docks several miles away to buy the fresh catches from the boats. Back at their eateries, they grill the tilapia or catfish and serve it with a spicy tomato and onion sauce, and sliced-up green peppers. Nowadays there are a whole range of maquis, some still with
simple settings, others more like proper restaurants with a menu and waiters on hand. But the atmosphere is always informal. This is where men come to talk about soccer and drink beer, where we get our news about the latest government reshuffle. I like to order the slightly sour attiéké, a dish similar to couscous but made out of grated cassava. It was created by the Ebrié people, the very first Abidjanis and has now travelled through the rest of West Africa. At night, on the waterfront, lights from the city centre dance softly on the surface of the lagoon. It is quiet. The streets have emptied, the heat has subsided and you can feel a distant breeze. Most people are sleeping, dreaming of new beginnings. H O L LY W O O D
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JOA N BA R DELE T TI/PA NOS
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bidjan has had many lives. Dating back to the 18th century, it was born as a sleepy village surrounded by dense forest, long since gone. In the 1930s, French colonial authorities developed it as a commercial wharf and after independence in 1960, the city made its name as Côte d’Ivoire’s prosperous capital and a magnet for West African migrants. For three decades, modern architecture, and expensive hotels and restaurants, were the city’s trademark. Called the “Little Paris” of Africa, people marvelled at the tall buildings and supermarkets full of imported goods. It was not difficult to find Camembert, Champagne and oysters during the Christmas season. That was before. Today a melancholy hides in the streets teeming with harried city-goers. A hazy sky, obscured by traffic fumes, might try to shroud the story of the civil war that erupted nearly 10 years ago when the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, lost the vote but refused to cede power. Abidjan was torn apart. It now wants to put the past to rest, of course. The capital is rebuilding itself. Business is back. There’s been a housing boom. Hope, loss and desire collide here. I have grown up in this city, I’ve watched it change in front of my own eyes. Over the years, I have left and returned, left and returned. Yet I always carry Abidjan in my luggage, it will always be the inspiration that feeds my writing. When I come back, I take myself to the city’s alfresco restaurants, here called maquis, that were founded in the courtyards of densely populated,
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Brazil
Aerial view of a section of the Pantanal— the world’s largest tropical wetland
A breath of
RIVERS RUN THROUGH IT
Michelle Jana Chan
journeys into the wilds of the richly biodiverse regions of the Pantanal, the Amazon and the Cerrado VANI T Y
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hen my guide Julinho was tired, I took the wheel, driving down the Transpantaneira Highway. This long straight road spears the heart of South America, passing herds of cattle and fields studded with termite mounds resembling the pale headstones of a cemetery. Yet there could not be more seething life in each of these sculptural shapes, some conic, others mushroomlike, with a million termites living in each colony. The next morning I was up at first light to track their predator, the giant anteater, which can eat 30,000 termites a day using a tongue said to be the longest of any animal’s in proportion to its size. On foot, unsure of which direction to take, we seemed to stumble upon the creature by chance, as it snuffled across a clearing, head down, slightly awkward, with that extraordinary froth of tail. It toddled into the cover of a copse where, my guide said, it would sleep for the day, its tail swept across it as a blanket and camouflage. In spite of the animal’s size, it seemed unbearably vulnerable to me. Even more so when I learned there are only 5,000 left in the wild. From here Julinho and I drove to Porto Jofre, deeper into the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland— part national park, part Unesco World Heritage site—and one of the greatest places to see jaguar. I was travelling just before the rains arrived and there were shrunken pools of water flocked with egrets, storks and roseate spoonbills. Anvil-shaped thunder clouds bubbled up at the horizon, where there was recurrent grumbling of thunder and an occasional lightning flash; from time to time I felt a random plop of a single fat raindrop, or two or three, but magically no more. We saw the miracle of a rainbow, the entire bow looping around us, before it doubled, the second rainbow’s colours almost as strong as the first. When 80
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Then we saw our first jaguar, the giveaway pale flash of its belly in the darkness of the trees, its eyes on us, catching the light like moonstones. We idled nearby and through my binoculars I studied the complex patterns of its rosettes, its staunch build, and its jaw, said to be the strongest bite force of any cat relative to its weight, which can take down caiman and anaconda. It’s how the animal gets its name: the local word yaguar means “he who kills with one leap”. That night we camped on t he riverside bank of a patch of land owned by Carmindo, a friend of Julinho, who earns his wage making fish bait. He and his wife Lisette and their tiny dog Bebe welcomed us at the bank. We pitched the tent beside their modest wooden home and oversized chapel. The old man prepared dinner, three pots atop a wood-fuelled oven: one boiling fish heads, another boiling fish tails, the third frying the bodies in oil. We ate hungrily, while our hosts drank their way through the case of beer we’d brought. “This beer is hotter than me,” Lisette complained, which made me laugh. Five or six beers later, conversation between them spiralled into a row. “Only I know how much I suffer,” she said, glaring at her husband. I fell asleep to their bickering and the strange hum of a Rufescent tiger heron, like tinnitus in my ear; then woke to howler monkeys, chacalaca birds and the taste of smoke in my throat. Julinho told me the burning is mostly the traditional, seasonal sort, although
admitted some might be the clearing of new land for agriculture. Life on the river does not seem to have changed much, but attitudes have. When Julinho and Carmindo were boys, their grandfathers hunted jaguar with spears. “Ocelot skins were traded for sugar, capybara oil was used for street lamps in São Paulo,” said Julinho. “I was born in nature, I was raised in nature, but I didn’t have a sense of conservation. That’s all changed. Farmers don’t even shoot jaguars anymore. They’re high value now because of tourism.” I fly an hour north to the Amazon, a name rooted in myth, and perhaps conjuring something similar today given its outsized role in our planet’s carbon and water cycles, and the crisis of climate change. Some believe the world’s largest contiguous rainforest,
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I studied the complex patterns of the jaguar’s rosettes, its staunch build, and its jaw, the strongest bite force of any cat
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PREV IOUS PAG E: M A N TA PHOTO/GET T Y I M AGES (PA NTAN AL). THI S PAGE: SAURI N MUN SHAW/SHUT T ER STO CK (JAGUAR)
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the wet season really gets going, three metres of rain falls in three months. The highway ends at the Cuiabá River where we found our boat tied up. Julinho was still tired—after back-to-back trips all season—so I drove the flat-bottomed aluminium launch, avoiding sandbanks and floating tangles of purple hyacinth. I slowed down to watch an ungainly jabiru stork; giant river otters at play, clambering up muddy banks, sliding back down; there was an anhinga, like a cormorant, drying its open wings; a solitary capybara, like a huge guinea pig, on its haunches with perfect posture sat among the reeds. I loved being at the wheel; tourism has become so regulated that experiences like this can become the most freeing.
CLOUDS OF MYSTIQUE Above: the Amazon rainforest plays a giant role in the planet’s carbon and water cycles. Below: roseate spoonbills in the Pantanal
PUL SA R IMAGEN S/A L A MY STO CK PHOTO (A MA ZON CA NOP Y); RICHAR D MC MAN US/GE T T Y I MAGES (SPO ONB IL L S)
the size of India-and-a-half, holds the secrets to saving the planet, given its powers as a carbon sink, even a rainmaker. There is nothing quite like exploring the rainforest by foot. My father is from the Amazon and being here feels
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intimate, familiar. I like how this place heightens my senses, how I have to watch my step. A leaf moving, and the swish of a boa. A posse of bullet ants. But also the white of a mushroom sprouting. The impossible blue of a morpho butterfly. The mustiness of leaf litter, punctured by the aroma of something sweet, a flower I cannot see. A hummingbird stops to stare at me at eye level, buzzing like a drone, head cocked, then zooms
away. One feels constantly watched. Where I was in the Cristalino Private Reserve, there are elevated metal platforms above the canopy for visitors to take in views of the green expanse, flashes of yellow cambarĂĄ blossoms. Turquoise tanagers f litted about; a family of white-whiskered spider monkeys made the same irrepressible noise as a school playground. There was smoke here too, a plume in the distance, rising up like a signal, settling as dense bands on the horizon. Back down on the forest floor, I stood before a Brazil nut tree. Fifty metres tall and 800 years old. I put my palms upon it, almost in prayer. On the ground was the nut, around the size of a coconut. The boat driver opened it up for me later. It took 27 hard strikes with a machete before it cracked. Out of it we rattled 18 Brazil nuts, as we know them from Christmas, but these are really the seeds. Without a nutcracker, they also need a few thrashes to open. Inside, the edible part was moist, slightly soft VA NIT Y
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and stronger in flavour. I ate a few and pocketed the rest for Christmas. It’s a marvel that this tree is able to propagate at all, but it turns out the little agouti, a rodent no bigger than a hare, can hook its strong teeth into the shell and split it open. This industrious scurrying little creature is responsible for Brazil nut trees growing all over the Amazon and might inadvertently be helping save the region. It’s easier to harvest the Brazil nut by foraging, than growing plantations of the trees. The same goes for other highly prized fruits of the forest, such as acai for its berries, cumaru for its oil, native cacao and an essence from orchids. The Amazon needs some saving grace given what’s going on at the heart of power. President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate-change denier, took office in 2018 with an anti-environmentalist agenda, proclaiming “there won’t be a square centimetre demarcated as an indigenous reser ve” under h i s leader sh ip. The i nd i genou s communities are notably the greatest custodians of the Amazon, a bulwark against land-grabbers; the President views their reserves as fair game. In August last year, he fired the head of the National Space Research Institute, after scientific data was released showing a significant increase in deforestation since he took office. 82
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The indigenous communities are notably the greatest custodians of the Amazon, a bulwark against land-grabbers
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S A MUEL ME LI M (TOW ER); G LOBA L PICS/GE T T Y IM AG ES (MACAWS); MIC HELL E JAN A C H AN (POD)
EMERALD FOREST Clockwise from above: View over the forest floor from the canopy tower in Cristalino Private Reserve; red-andgreen macaws; a cacauí seed pod
One night, after a trepidatious walk in the forest by flashlight, I ran into Renato Almeida do Arcuedo, who studies termites at the National Institute of Amazonian Research. “When you have a president who doesn’t accept global warming, when there is no respect for science, then how can we work?” he asked. “The grants have been cut, our research isn’t valued. There’s even a risk to our life.” Yet where we are on the banks o f t h e C r i s t a l i n o R i ve r s e e m s safeguarded. Vitoria da Riva Carvalho, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who bought this land to ringfence it for conservation, told me the protest is becoming more powerful: “When a government gives a sign for people to do anything they want, then they do, and they are. But now we’re being threatened, the conservation movement is getting stronger.” I travelled to the capital Brasilia to speak to a lawyer, Juliana de Paula Batista. “We are living with the first government openly opposed to indigenous rights,” she said. “In 11 months [Bolsonaro] has undone 30 years of legal work in that fight.” She is accompanying José Kayabi, a community leader from Rio Teles Pires, not far from the region of the Amazon where I have just come from. “I am in Brasilia because the soya farmers are invading our land,” he told me. “Being far away we are very vulnerable so I must come here to tell people myself. It is the only way to win this.” Do you think you will win this?” I ask. He looks at Juliana apologetically. He shakes his head. “I’m tired of the fight. I’ve been fighting my whole life.” It is hard to keep hope given the statistics and the political climate.
A NGEL O GA ND OLF I/NATU R E P ICT U RE LIB R A RY/AL AM Y STO CK P HOTO (T R UMPE T TRE ES); L UCI ANO LI M A (B RO CKE T DE E R, MA N ED WOL F)
Some fear that Bolsonaro’s uptick in deforestation might even trigger a self-perpetuating dieback, turning the Amazon into a woodland savannah. By chance, I was travelling next to the savannah, east of the capital. This is the Cerrado, another vast ecosystem covering a fifth of Brazil’s landmass, the name translating as “closed” because of the tangled woodlands and gnarled shrubs. It’s a mysterious place. Because of the extreme climate—sharp swings in precipitation and spontaneous bushfires—much of the biomass is underground for protection, earning it the term the “upside-down forest”. Astonishingly, the aquifers hold more than 10 per cent of the world’s freshwater. Travelling by four-wheel-drive across the scrubby woodland, interspersed with plateaus of grassland, I studied the craggy bark of trees, evolved to be fireresistant, and looked upon veredas, open areas where the buriti grows, a large fan palm that is a favourite nesting tree for macaws. The Cerrado might not have the immediate allure of the Amazon, but it is captivating in its own way. I was hooked when I caught sight of the maned wolf: a slender, shaggy, long-legged loner. There are also jaguar here, ever adaptable, as well as the giant armadillo and ostrich-like rheas. In fact, five per
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SAVANNA FROM HEAVEN Clockwise from above: pink trumpet trees in the Cerrado—the mysterious home of five per cent of the planet’s flora and fauna, including brocket deer and the maned wolf
cent of the planet’s animals and plants are native to the Cerrado, yet there is little being done to look after it. It is being destroyed four times as quickly as the Amazon. For every stretch of intact Cerrado I passed through, I came across a fenced boundary and, on the other side, endless tracts of soya beans to feed livestock overseas, or cattle to supply beef to the world’s growing middle classes. The natural landscape is making way for pasture and farmland, cleared the easiest way, by fire. “Every day I see a fire in the Cerrado I feel like a library is going up, but with books inside that we haven’t even read,” said my guide Luciano. It was here in the Cerrado where I saw the biggest blaze. We’d driven to a ridge for the sunset, but instead we watched the fire rage. Luciano made a few calls on his mobile phone, but then shrugged, not out of indifference, but helplessness. The journey here—to the confluence of these three quintessential Brazilian ecosystems, landscapes of wetland, rainforest and savanna—feels like a smashing together of all that is right and wrong with the world: the wilderness; the indigenous communities alongside; the farmers putting food on our tables. Tourism, unusually for a patch on the planet as wondrous as this, plays a minor role with only an odd lodge and unstructured boat trips; in some ways, this area feels forgotten. As the natural habitat disappears, there is the clichéd argument of a vanishing trove of genetic information and unknown cures for diseases, but of course the best reason of all to save this place is because it’s here. On my last day in the Cerrado, I heard the pretty scaled dove, in Brazilian Portuguese the fogo apagou. Its call sounds like it’s saying those words over and over, which translate to “the fire is out”. If only it were a sign. South American travel experts Dehouche (0871 284 7770; dehouche.com) offer a private 14-night Wild Brazil itinerary from £7,845 per person, in the Pantanal, the Amazon and the Cerrado, including stays at Cristalino Lodge, Pousada Trijunção, and two nights in Brasilia. The trip includes specialist guiding; private transfers by road and air; most meals, and return flights from London to São Paulo with British Airways. VANI T Y
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he world’s most perfect speck. Both volcanic and of coral, here are 10 astoundingly beautiful square miles, 10,000 people and a beach for every whim.
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There’s the sweeping curve of Anse des Flamands with its castaway offshore islets; lovely low-key Lorient with knee-deep rock pools for paddling in; the shifting, undulating dunes of Saline; and Gouverneur, searingly good-looking, where waves seem almost designed for bodysurfers. Hawksbill and green turtles bob about in the waters off Plage de Saint-Jean, which is split by a promontory—plane-spot Cessnas taking off from the short runway on one side, and dance on the sands to the beats from the beach bar on the other. There’s kitesurfing at the lagoon of Grand Cul-de-Sac; a wild rugged coastline along La Côte Sauvage in the southeast; and Colombier, a half-hour trek from 84
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St Barthélemy in the French Antilles
the road, where you might share the trail with giant tortoises as you flip-flop along ridges beneath rocky overhangs, then round a corner to discover hypnotically clear waters, iguanas on the foreshore and pelicans soaring above. Meanwhile, the perpetual prevailing trade winds blow: warm, salty, sometimes soporific, sometimes arousing. For those longing for some wind in their sails, the St Barths Bucket, a four-day regatta with six classes of yachts, is coming up in March. Then, a month later, there will be a strong showing of 80 boats competing in Les Voiles de St Barth, led by the Maxis and Super Maxis. If you’re not on a deck, then the place to be is Eden Rock, the hotel marking a renaissance after Hurricane Irma tore it apart back in 2017. From the new tiered beach restaurant, there will be ideal views of the racing, with schooners, sloops and ketches running with the wind. Ah, the French West Indies. There’s a lightness of being here, a real sense of the make-believe. “Elle n’est pas belle, la vie?” can almost be heard on the breeze. M.J.C. H O L LY W O O D
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CHRI STOPHE JOUA NY COURTESY OF LES VOI L ES DE ST B ARTH R ICHARD MILL E
Wish You Were Here
CONDENASTJOHANSENS.COM TIVOLI CARVOEIRO, ALGARVE, PORTUGAL
The Obamoguls Propelled by still-potent political hope, Barack and Michelle have gone multiplatform
Empire Building By Joe Pompeo
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o a player like Donald Trump, deals that sweet had to be fishy: “Look at the Obama Book Deal,” he implored lawmakers this past September, “or the ridiculous Netflix deal.” It may be particularly galling to Trump that, where it took him the better part of two decades to become a multiplatform media powerhouse, Barack and Michelle Obama have essentially done it in two years. In addition to their political and philanthropic activity, they’re making movies and shows for Netflix, podcasts for Spotify, best sellers for Penguin Random House, mega-events for Live Nation—and making themselves super rich along the way. Their explosion of personal wealth may be head-turning, but the Obamas have managed to do it without sacrificing too much of their ethical cachet. Their budding media portfolio has a certain recombinant brilliance, fusing familiar elements to create a new cultural prestige—something with the potential to further magnify the Obamas’ already outsize influence. Those quasi-political feelings Barack Obama inspired on the stump are still what they’re selling. As he put it, a touch more earnestly, in a brief YouTube video last summer: “One way of looking at what we’ve both been doing for the last 20 years, maybe most of our careers, was to tell stories. You want to be in relationships with people, and connect with them, and work together with them.” If getting rich is a by-product, so be it. The Obamas are putting a new spin on an old playbook. Former first couples have been parlaying their White House credentials into lucrative next 86
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acts for decades, primarily through board seats, best sellers, and the public-speaking circuit. But a confluence of circumstances makes the Obamas’ postpresidential livelihood a sui generis proposition: Barack Obama’s proven gifts as a best-selling author; Michelle Obama’s saintly popularity, which rivals or exceeds her husband’s; the rise of streaming entertainment and social media as mass distribution engines; the intense nostalgia felt by more than half the country for the era in which the Obamas reigned. Even by the remunerative standards of presidential book writing, the $65 million that Penguin Random House reportedly paid Barack and Michelle Obama was unprecedented, as was the rock-star-level arena tour that Michelle Obama embarked on to promote her book, Becoming. Barack
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Clockwise from top left: The Obama campaign’s emotional uplift has been translated to Spotify podcasts, Penguin books, and Netflix shows.
Obama’s presidential memoir has been coming along more slowly. It’s not lost on the Obama brain trust that publishing it in the middle of the 2020 campaigns could be helpful to the Democratic nominee, but ultimately, “the timing is driven by the writing process, and it will come out when it’s ready,” an Obama confidante told me. As for their other media endeavors, the Obamas’ multiyear content deal with Netflix is rumored to rival their publishing payday. Their agreement to make podcasts for Spotify isn’t quite as lofty, but it is still said to be in the $10 million to $20 million range, according to sources in the audio
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P HOTO G R A P H B Y B I L G I N S A S M A Z / A N A D OL U AG E NC Y / G E T T Y I M AG E S
scene. Additional media projects will presumably follow, all under the banner of Higher Ground Productions, which the Obamas incorporated last year. The whole thing is an enormous bet on a sort of premium civic storytelling— an intersection of literary sensibilities and leftish, ameliorative politics. The Obamas, who declined to be interviewed, hired two veteran producers, Tonia Davis and Priya Swaminathan, to run the film and television part of the company, which is headquartered in West Hollywood. Dan Fierman, formerly of MTV News, recently came on board as head of audio. Sam Fischer, a veteran Hollywood lawyer and Obama fundraiser, is Higher Ground’s dealmaker. The Obamas chose the name in homage to Stevie Wonder. Higher Ground is generally steering clear of overtly political content, gravitating instead toward a more earnest oeuvre that preaches the gospel of empowerment: a Frederick Douglass biopic, a documentary about the origins of the disability rights movement, a global food series for preschoolers. The company’s inaugural production, American Factory, about a shuttered GM plant, garnered a fair amount of Oscar buzz. Projects like these are like a plate of broccoli, but the Obamas’ power is such that they can theoretically convince huge numbers of people to devour that broccoli. Sam Dolnick, a New York Times editor who develops film, television, and audio projects, said the goal for adapting the paper’s Overlooked obituary series into a Netflix show with Higher Ground was to reach as many people as possible. “We made a bet that the Obamas’ imprimatur would help significantly,” he told me. At the same time, Higher Ground has made a point of letting creators know that frivolity isn’t verboten. Someone who’s taken a meeting with them told me, “They’ve said, ‘Barack and Michelle watch everything. They love things you’d never think they love, and we’re open to that. We could even do a horror movie, or a big comedy.’ But the reality is, when you actually look at a horror movie, people have to die brutal, disgusting deaths. Do you really want your name H O L LY W O O D
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“It’s got the Democratic halo, but there’s this bourgeois element.” on that? And jokes, by their nature, kind of have to offend someone. It’s a hard line to walk.” As in politics, luck played a major role. The Obamas arrived on the media scene just as the streaming wars drove up prices for content of all kinds. Executives from Apple and Amazon were reportedly in pursuit. So was HBO—Richard Plepler put up flares as the Obamas were leaving office, but it was already more or less a given that the first couple were Netflix bound, considering their long-standing close rapport with Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos. In particular, Sarandos and his wife, Nicole Avant, had gotten to know the Obamas during their administration, hosting a fundraiser at their Beverly Hills home that brought in more than $700,000 during the 2012 reelection campaign. “The relationship with Ted was a large piece of this,” said the Obama confidante. Plepler, who left HBO to start his own production company, told me, “They have great taste, access to the best talent, and global distribution. If you have all of those three, it’s not hard to see them succeeding at this. I would bet on them.”
A more cynical assessment is that the Obamas are in the game of big-time wealth accumulation. To be fair, they’re still heavily engaged in political, civic, and philanthropic endeavors: voter registration, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, the nonprofit Obama Presidential Center on the South Side of Chicago. But at the end of the day, all indications are that they want to be Al Gore rich, not Jimmy Carter rich. Even some of their fans may question whether that jibes with the core goodness and idealism that has made them so beloved. As another Hollywood source who took a meeting with Higher Ground put it, “It’s got the Democratic halo, but there’s this bourgeois element.” Those closest to the Obamas reject that notion. “Their paths have always been driven by public service,” says Valerie Jarrett, “and these resources give them an opportunity to have even more of an impact. If they’re a force for good and are able to do well and make money at the same time, I think that’s what we should hope for from all business leaders.” While neither of them has said much, thus far, about Trump and 2020, the energy and passion of our current political moment is sure to make their upcoming adventures in the media space all the more provocative. In the fall, Barack Obama took some baby steps back toward the political arena, appearing at a handful of fundraisers to galvanize the faithful—possibly a welcome distraction from writer’s block. At one such intimate donor confab in late October, he swung by the NoHo pad of Alexander Soros for a NDRC dinner with Eric Holder and Terry McAuliffe, issuing a salvo about voting rights: “I vowed to myself we wouldn’t be caught sleeping next time.” Obama won’t be sleeping. After the Democratic National Convention this summer, the general election will be in full swing and Obama will be out there campaigning for the chosen candidate. Higher Ground will have more projects in the market, and maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama’s memoir will be on shelves. By then, the Obama media footprint could look almost Trumpian. VAN IT Y
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Money Matters
By William D. Cohan
Trading Places The frothy marriage between Hollywood and Wall Street may be too hot not to cool down
O
fficially, Will Smith was on hand to promote his new film Gemini Man, but it’s increasingly hard to tell which is his day job. Smith, the actor and rapper famous for such movies as Hitch, I Am Legend, and Men in Black, was onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, on October 2 in San Francisco, conducting an impromptu Bake-Off between four entrepreneurs to see who would get a cash infusion from Smith’s venture capital fund, Dreamers VC. Of course, since movie stars trying their hand at venture capital is now one of Hollywood’s hottest things, Smith wasn’t the only actor disrupting the Disrupt conference. Joseph GordonLevitt was also there talking about HitRecord, an online start-up dedicated to creative collaboration. Maisie Williams, Arya from Game of Thrones, was discussing Daisie, an app for which she had just raised $2.5 million that, like HitRecord, is dedicated to creative collaboration. Ashton Kutcher, the grand old man of actor investing, was also on hand; Kutcher was one of the judges of Startup Battlefield, a kind of American Idol for tech start-ups. Smith started Dreamers VC, which has around $100 million to invest, in July 2018 with Keisuke Honda, a Japanese soccer star, using money from Japanese investors looking to get in on early-stage U.S. start-ups. “We just hit it off immediately,” Smith said at the TechCrunch conference about his partnership with Honda. “We felt like there was a beautiful intersection between being able to create businesses but also to stay focused on solving problems of the world.” They had each 88
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been investing on their own but decided to join forces. “Our values were in alignment,” Smith said. Smith and Honda lead a team of five professionals—including Melissa Danis, the chief of staff who looks like a Hollywood actor, and D.A. Wallach, a Harvard-educated singer/investor who looks like a young Bob Dylan and who also has an investing partnership with Ron Burkle, the Los Angeles supermarket-buyout billionaire. On its website, Dreamers lists 38 investments, including those in Boba Guys—they have retail stores that make and sell boba milk tea; in Elon Musk’s The Boring Company, which is hoping to build urban tunnels to alleviate traffic; and in Just Water, a politically correct packaged-water company. At TechCrunch, Smith jokingly ratcheted up the pressure on the four entrepreneurs as they were sharing their 45-second elevator pitches. “It’s only an opportunity of a lifetime,” he told them, “and everything rides on this. So just relax into that.” First up I L L U ST R AT IO N
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was AirBie, a start-up that hopes to be the Uber or Airbnb of bicycles. Then there was Bidder, an app that connects Latino construction workers with job opportunities. Smith seemed particularly struck by the appearance of Cody, the Bidder presenter. “You should sell your handsomeness along with your product,” Smith said. But it was Kofi Frimpong, the cofounder of Socionado, which helps small companies beef up their online social media and marketing presence, who really blew Smith away. “I’m in!” Smith announced. “I’m in.” He hopped right up and stood next to the more physically imposing Frimpong. “Let’s rock a selfie,” Smith said, adding that Frimpong could post the picture to his social media accounts and that Dreamers would invest $10,000 in Socionado. In an interview a month later, Frimpong was still buzzing about the experience. He says it all happened serendipitously. “Trust me,” he says, “if I knew I was presenting onstage H O L LY W O O D
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in front of Will Smith, I would have gotten a haircut.” By early December, a plan was in place for an investment in excess of the promised $10,000. But there are tangible benefits, besides money, to Smith’s interest in the company. The picture of them together, posted to LinkedIn by Frimpong, “is approaching about a million views,” he says, plus supercharged traction on Instagram and Twitter. The symbiosis between show business and Wall Street is at a frothy peak, as actors like Smith, GordonLevitt, and Williams, among others, ramp up their involvement. It’s a favored hobby for entertainers in their downtime, and for Wall Street types anxious to hang out with the glitterati. Ben Horowitz, the cofounder of Andreesen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, is a big fan of Nas, the rapper, and they have been investing together for years, including in the companies Rap Genius and Bevel. “He just loves him,” one longtime Hollywood observer says of Horowitz’s relationship with Nas. Venture capital can also be highly lucrative (at the moment). Ed Norton’s private equity investments have seriously amplified his wealth. Thanks in large part to his early investments in Uber, CrowdRise, EDO, and Kensho, an analytics and artificial intelligence company that S&P Global bought for $550 million in 2018, Norton has a net worth estimated at around $80 million. In many different show business fields, the talent now believes it’s also the brains—and in many cases the talent is right. The latest mind-blowing example of Hollywood colliding with Wall Street is Kylie Jenner, the youngest Kardashian sister, who is all of 22. Back when she was merely 18, Jenner started Kylie Cosmetics to market and sell makeup to her millions of Instagram followers. It was no fluke. In its first 18 months, the company generated $420 million in revenue. In November, Jenner sold 51 percent of Kylie Cosmetics to Coty, the publicly traded cosmetics company, for $600 million, a price that valued the entire company at nearly $1.2 billion. In March 2019, Forbes named her the world’s youngest H O L LY W O O D
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self-made billionaire. “The whole Kardashian thing, they are a machine,” says Chris Silbermann, the managing partner at ICM Partners, the Hollywood talent and literary agency. “That’s just business. They’ve run companies. They know how to build brands, run brands, leverage their social media platform. That’s the top of the pyramid in terms of how to do this.” The premier actor-investor has long been Kutcher, who makes occasional appearances on CNBC’s Shark Tank,
“It’s usually a forward-looking indicator that returns are about to pl ummet.”
alongside professional investors such as Barbara Corcoran, Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary, and Lori Greiner. Although Kutcher declined to be interviewed, Cuban, his fellow Shark Tank star, emailed me about Kutcher, the investor: “One of the best. He is a learner. He reads, pays attention to what is happening around him and looks for investments that can deliver and or disrupt. I’m really happy to have worked with him and would do more.” Kutcher’s been investing in venture capital deals for a decade and he’s good at it. He’s the cofounder, along with Guy Oseary (the manager of Madonna and U2), of A-Grade Investments and a second fund, Sound Ventures. Burkle was the third founding investor in A-Grade. Burkle invested $8 million; Kutcher and Oseary invested $1 million each. (The first three letters of A-Grade correspond to the first three letters of the three founders’ first names.) Six years later, in 2016, Kutcher was on the cover of Forbes, being celebrated for his canny investments in Uber,
Airbnb, Spotify, Skype, Pinterest, and Warby Parker, among others, and because he and Oseary had managed to turn the initial $30 million in A-Grade into $250 million, or a return of more than eight times the initial investment. While Kutcher has been playing the game for years, the field is definitely more crowded these days. Could it be the modern-day equivalent of the old Wall Street saw about how, in 1929, Joseph Kennedy Sr.—the father of the future president of the United States as well as the future first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission— realized it was time to sell all his stocks (and preserve his multigenerational fortune) when the guy shining his shoes offered him stock tips? While Silbermann advises his Hollywood clients to steer clear of private equity investments because it too often takes them away from what should be their primary focus, their acting careers, he does not think the new wave of actors investing in deals is indicative of a market top. He says it doesn’t seem as crazy now as it did during the dot-com bubble. “Nineteen ninety-nine felt, This is fucking crazy, and everybody was going in every deal,” he says. But Scott Galloway, the iconoclastic professor of marketing at NYU’s Stern School of Business, thinks this so-called “sector surfing,” where professionals from one industry think they can make a go of it in an unrelated profession, is a sign of a market top. “Sector surfing is a sport,” he says. “It’s not an investment strategy. So Jeff Bezos getting to go to the Academy Awards, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just going to cost him billions of dollars. “The majority of the people who are successful in private equity are people in private equity,” Galloway continues. “But whenever you have a sector that outperforms other sectors, it immediately draws people from other industries, and everybody likes hanging out with actors. Actors almost always have a free entry pass to any sector they decide is interesting. But it’s usually a forward-looking indicator that returns are about to plummet.” Added one Wall Street lawyer, bluntly, “I think these guys are going to get their heads handed to them.” VA N IT Y
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Murphy R E N É E Zellweger J E N N I F E R Lopez F L O R E N C E Pugh T A I K A Waititi D A N I E L Kaluuya M A R G A R E T Qualley Awkwafina L I L Y - R O S E Depp L A U R A Dern W I L L E M Dafoe J E N N I F E R Hudson A L F R E Woodard R O M A N Griffin Davis N O A H Jupe O A K E S Fegley D A ’ V I N E J O Y Randolph L I L I Reinhart Park S O - D A M T A Y L O R Russell A N T O N I O Banderas A U S T I N Butler B E A N I E Feldstein EDDIE
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We open on
A H I G H WA Y at sunset.
V. F. asked 23 of the year’s most extraordinary actors— some of them legends, some of them embarking on their first major roles—to make a road movie with us.
They nailed it. Welcome to the 26th annual
H O L LY W O O D I S S U E Photographs by ST Y L E D
B Y
S A M I R A
N A S R
S E T
ETHAN JAMES GREEN
DES IG N
B Y
J U L I A
WAG N E R
EDDIE
Murphy
DOLEMITE IS MY NAME
RENÉE
Zellweger JUDY
JENNIFER
Lopez
HUSTLERS
Murphy’s tuxedo by Ralph Lauren; shirt by Budd Shirtmakers; cuff links by Stephen Russell. Zellweger’s gown by Valentino; sandals by Stuart Weitzman; necklace by Harry Winston. Lopez’s gown by Valentino; earrings, necklace, and ring (right hand) by Harry Winston.
FLORENCE
Pugh
LITTLE WOMEN MIDSOMMAR
TA I K A
Waititi
JOJO RABBIT
DA N I EL
Kaluuya
QUEEN & SLIM
Pugh’s dress by R13; bikini top by Fendi; shorts by Levi’s; jewelry and belt by Lisa Eisner Jewelry. Waititi’s jacket by Bode; shirt and shorts by Reyn Spooner; boots by Merrell; socks by American Trench. Kaluuya’s jacket by TOM FORD.
MARGARET
Qualley
O N C E U P O N A T I M E … I N H O L LY W O O D
Qualley’s ensemble and headpiece by Gillian Gardner for Show-Off Las Vegas; necklace by De Beers Jewellers; tights by FALKE. Awkwafina’s dress and harness by JW Anderson.
Awkwafina THE FAREWELL
L I LY-RO S E
Depp
THE KING
L AU R A
Dern
LITTLE WOMEN MARRIAGE STORY
Depp’s clothing by CHANEL; jewelry by CHANEL Fine Jewelry. Dern’s coat by Max Mara; dress by Bottega Veneta; earrings by Jennifer Fisher; necklace by Wempe.
Dafoe’s clothing by RALPH LAUREN DOUBLE RL; hat from JJ Hat Center. Hudson’s dress by Versace; sandals by Giuseppe Zanotti; earrings by Graff.
WILLEM
Dafoe
THE LIGHTHOUSE
JENNIFER
Hudson C AT S
( Bottom) ( Top)
ALFRE
Woodard CLEMENCY
ROMAN
Griffin Davis JOJO RABBIT
NOA H
Jupe
FORD V FERRARI HONEY BOY
OAKES
Fegley
THE GOLDFINCH
Woodard’s opera coat by Richard Quinn. Griffin Davis’s jacket from Stock Vintage; jeans by H&M; necklace by Miansai; rings by David Yurman (middle finger) and Tiffany & Co. Jupe’s jacket from Stock Vintage; jeans by J Brand; sneakers by Converse. Fegley’s jacket by Schott NYC; T-shirt and jeans by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; necklace by Miansai.
Gown by Monique Lhuillier for 11 HonorĂŠ; sandals by Sophia Webster; earrings by Chopard; bracelet by David Yurman.
D A’ V I N E J OY
Randolph
DOLEMITE IS MY NAME
LILI
Reinhart HUSTLERS
Park
SO -DA M
PA R A S I T E
TAY LOR
Russell W AV E S
ANTONIO
Banderas
PA I N A N D G L O R Y
Reinhart’s dress by GIAMBATTISTA VALLI; boots by Miu Miu. Park’s dress and choker by GUCCI; boots by R13; briefs by LA Roxx. Russell’s clothing by Dries Van Noten; boots by Miu Miu; gloves by Dawnamatrix. Banderas’s coat by Ermenegildo Zegna; shirt by Givenchy; pants by Hermès.
AUST I N
Butler
O N C E U P O N A T I M E … I N H O L LY W O O D
BEANIE
Feldstein
BOOKSMART
Butler’s clothing by Alexander McQueen; boots by CELINE by Hedi Slimane; ring by David Yurman; scarf by Manner Market. Feldstein’s blouse and skirt by Rodarte; sandals by Giuseppe Zanotti; earrings by BULGARI High Jewelry; necklace by De Beers Jewellers.
None of them did it the easy way, and they’re here to tell you that there is no easy way. Jennifer Lopez, Eddie Murphy, Renée Zellweger, and eight other luminous, multitalented performers get their old-school glamour on and talk candidly about what it takes to build a career in Hollywood—and to survive it
THE GREAT
E N T E R TA I N E R S BY THE TIME ACTORS ARE READY to give the performance of
a lifetime, they usually understand a great deal about lifetimes. It’s impossible to watch Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers, Eddie Murphy in Dolemite Is My Name, or Renée Zellweger in Judy without realizing that you’re in the presence of both mastery and ease. That combination is the result of a journey, sometimes a long one, into an actor’s prime. Very often, there are bumps along the way—the rises, the disappointments, the comebacks, the odd detours, the triumphs, the mistakes, the loops that can trap you before you realize they’re loops, the odd whims or phone calls or spur-of-themoment decisions that can change your trajectory forever. All entertainers eventually understand the vicissitudes of a career, but few understand it as vividly as the three people on our cover. If you doubt it, let’s jump back 25 years and check in with them. In 1994, Murphy was a superstar who had already had his breakthrough on Saturday Night Live, turned it into blazing success in a dozen movies, most of them hits, and was making Beverly Hills Cop III and getting his first peek into the abyss of diminishing returns. Lopez had taken her first big upward leap—all the way from Fly Girl (for millennials, that means backup dancer) on the Fox sketch-comedy series In Living Color to costar of Hotel Malibu, a CBS summer replacement series that lasted all of six episodes but was, at least, an acting gig. And Zellweger, a recent college graduate, had finally gotten her big break—a role alongside another Texas newcomer, Matthew McConaughey, in Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, which meant that if her luck held, maybe she wouldn’t have to go back to cocktail waitressing. As any of them will tell you, it hasn’t been a straight line to 2020. Lopez became an international music star but also endured the Gigli years; Murphy won an Oscar nomination for Dreamgirls but also got to a point where the prospect of going before the cameras one more time made him so unhappy that he walked away from it, and Zellweger won an Academy Award 112
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By
MARK HARRIS
B Y B R I T T H E N N E M U T H , B R E Z N ICA N & J E F F G I L ES
I N T E R V I E W S
A N T HO N Y
Photographs by S E T
ETHAN JAMES GREEN
ST Y L E D B Y S A M I R A N A S R DES IG N B Y J U L I A WA G N E R
THE TRANSFORMER
RENÉE
Zellweger
Hometown: Katy, Texas Film: Judy Your brother first got you into a school play. He’s always been protective of you, hasn’t he? Very—but he also helps me keep perspective, like with my first big, public breakup. He picked up all the tabloids, and we were riding in the car home, and his shoulders were shaking, and I thought, Oh gosh, he’s crying, too! And I look over. He’s laughing! He thought it was the best thing in the world—all the things that the tabloids say that you said and did. He started reading them out loud in a ridiculous voice. And we were both laughing till we were crying. I’ve looked at it that way ever since. Gown by Valentino; necklace by Harry Winston.
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for Cold Mountain but later reached a point where she felt she could only regain her life by taking five years off from making films. None of them are asking for sympathy, but all of them can explain that being looked at for a living is a complicated and challenging business. So it’s particularly satisfying to see each of them experience a glorious midcareer resurgence that also seems to be an embrace of who they are rather than an attempt to hide or alter it. They’re not playing themselves—as Murphy says, “No actor is who you think that person is”—but they’re using themselves, and doing it more effectively than ever. The hard shell of glamour, and the ambition, drive, sexuality, savvy, and churning emotion just underneath it, are traits that other actors might try to alter, but in Hustlers, Lopez embraces them and then pours them into her character. Murphy roars through Dolemite Is My Name like a man who has rediscovered the joy of playing someone larger than life, and of making people laugh. And although people have been justifiably wowed by Zellweger’s precise and physically detailed transformation into Judy Garland in Judy, at heart, her performance embodies the tremulousness and compassion and empathy that have always been integral to her most memorable work. It doesn’t seem coincidental that in 2019, all three actors gave benchmark performances not only playing real people, but playing real people who themselves are performers, who understand the liberation of transforming oneself into someone else and of inhabiting an invented persona, but who also get what hard work it is. They’ve been there. They’ve sweated it. They have more than earned this moment. to be said for coming at acting in a roundabout way, as Lopez, Murphy, and Zellweger all did. Nobody who sees the work done by Little Women’s Florence Pugh, 24, or Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein, 26, or Queen & Slim’s Daniel Kaluuya, 30, would deny that they all seem PERHAPS THERE’S SOMETHING
THE RENAISSANCE MAN
EDDIE
Murphy
Hometown: Brooklyn Film: Dolemite Is My Name What’s a side of you we’ve never seen? I’ve played everything from an old lady to a donkey and everything in between. Middle-aged women and old Asian people and an old Jewish guy. I even played a spaceship—it was in that movie Meet Dave. The movie wasn’t shit, but I did play a spaceship. I’ve been the professor, I’ve been the cops and I’ve been a robber, and I’ve been a doctor talking to the animals. To be an actor and to get to play so many different types of things…but when I’m on television, when I’m in a movie, that’s a persona. No actor is who you think that person is. Tuxedo by Ralph Lauren; shirt by Budd Shirtmakers; cuff links by Stephen Russell.
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born to be doing exactly what they’re doing. But starting out your life wanting to do something else can make the turn to acting a decision that’s enriched by your other passions and experiences—it’s what Jennifer Hudson has been discovering in the 15 years since she broke through on American Idol, and Awkwafina in the last couple of years, as she’s turned from rap and comedy to acting. It’s okay not to grow up hellbent on being a movie star. Maybe it’s even a good thing! Lopez started as a dancer and singer and says her influences were James Brown, Diana Ross, and “the explosive kind of performance energy of Tina Turner.” Long before she knew the word hyphenate, she was enthralled by “the versatility of singing and dancing and acting, of Barbra Streisand having a recording career and a movie career.” Singing and dancing takes strength, confidence, showmanship, and control over one’s body and posture and breathing—which was good training for her thrillingly assured work as Hustlers’ Ramona. As Lopez puts it, the role was “the first time I got to play a character who was unapologetically out for herself and kind of bad, actually taken over by greed…. She was so many different things. That was really new for me.” Murphy’s influences have always been comic performers. Rudy Ray Moore, the man he plays in Dolemite, is one of them. “I’m part of the same chain as him, and Richard Pryor, and Dick Gregory, and Bill Cosby, and Dave Chappelle, and Chris Rock, and Martin [Lawrence],” he says. “We’re all linked together.” Murphy sees his place in that time line as a kind of responsibility, one that he has paid forward and backward. “I buried so many people over the years,” he says. “For some strange reason, a lot of people in show business, when they die, don’t have their stuff in order. For Redd Foxx, I had to physically pay for his funeral and his headstone and all that stuff.” For Moore, who died in 2008, Murphy’s performance offers a different kind of tribute—as huge and rich and funny and unafraid to court preposterousness as it is, it’s also an act of real empathy for someone who didn’t get the lucky moment, the fateful audition, the magic phone call, and had to create his own big break. And for Zellweger, “acting,” she says, only half joking, “was the fork. I didn’t mean this at all. This was a big mistake!” Ask her to name her childhood heroes and she cites “any athlete, especially the gymnasts, oh my gosh, Olga Korbut, and Nadia Comăneci, and then Mary Lou Retton…I did the sport when I was small. I know the degree of difficulty and commitment, the level of focus it requires, and alchemy, how many things have to come together perfectly in a moment in order for it to work.” Zellweger calls herself “a failed journalist” (“I went to school to write, and here we are!”), and you can see strains of both of those passions in her performance in Judy—the absolute physical precision and the reporter’s desire to understand and convey the reality of another person and her circumstances. NONE OF THEM, CLEARLY, have ever been afraid to pivot. For
Lopez, her career as a music performer has always been a parallel passion, not something to fall back on but rather another side of herself to turn and return to. But that didn’t make the hard moments or wrong calls easier. More than 15 years later, she still kicks herself for passing on the leading role in the movie Unfaithful. “I should have known that Adrian Lyne was going to kill it, but I didn’t,” she says. “Diane Lane was so perfect for it, and it was obviously meant to be her, but when VA N IT Y
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born just three months apart, are both 50 now, and neither seems remotely afraid of that number. Zellweger says, “I like to challenge myself physically every day with something—I’m a runner, so yeah, if you throw a hill at me, I’ll take it.” And last fall, Lopez called attention to the passage of time by wearing the “jungle dress”—the famous (and famously revealing) Donatella Versace gown that excited so much interest when she wore it to the 2000 Grammys that it resulted in the creation of Google Images. Many performers might avoid then-and-now photos; Lopez loved it. “The second time I wore it and walked out there, it was such an empowering thing,” she says. “Twenty years had gone by, and I think for women, knowing you can put on a dress 20 years later—it resonated. It was like, ‘Yes, you know, life is not over at 20!’” (Wait a few decades and you might even get to headline a Super Bowl halftime show.) As for Murphy, the effusively proud and sentimental (brace yourselves) grandfather is now planning a stand-up comedy tour, his first in decades. At 58, he considers himself “at the tail end of the middle.” That self-assessment doesn’t seem at all unreasonable when contemporaries like Laura Dern, Antonio Banderas, and Willem Dafoe (52, 59, and 64, respectively) are all reaching pinnacles with work that feels deep and informed by experience and perspective. What’s especially inspiring is the degree to which these three stars all seem to have developed distance without detachment. They care about their work passionately, but that’s only because they’ve made passion a precondition for doing the work in the first place. If they don’t feel it, they’re happy to go home, where they’ve got lives they care about at least as much. Murphy, who LOPEZ AND ZELLWEGER,
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lost his older brother Charlie to leukemia three years ago (Dolemite Is My Name is dedicated to him), says nothing is more important than his family and offers some sobering words of caution to anyone who might let an eyes-on-the-prize mentality define them. “The people I knew around my age who had impact in their areas—Michael and Prince and Whitney—they’re gone,” he says. “And without getting into what they did and why they’re not here, what they had in common was that their career, their life as artists, was all-consuming. The center of their whole shit revolved around them as artists, and everything else suffered as a result. Your personal relationships, your finances, substance abuse problems. All that stuff is because show business can’t be the center. That’s the recipe for an early exit.” Perhaps that’s why when Lopez is asked about goals she still wants to fulfill, she looks in an unexpected direction: “It’s always a career thing that they ask about, and I think, Oh, yeah. Direct. But if you’re saying bucket list, I would say I would love to live somewhere other than the United States, in a small town in Italy, or on the other side of the world, in Bali. Find another life where it’s a little bit more simple and organic and where I get to ride a bike, and buy bread, and put it in my basket, and then go home and put jelly on it, and just eat and paint, or sit in a rocking chair where there was a beautiful view of an olive tree or an oak tree and I could just smell. I have fantasies like that.” That may have to wait. It’s easier to imagine Lopez—and her colleagues—diving back into work, not because they have something to prove but because they don’t: They just want to do their own thing, on their own terms. “No one’s going to invite you to do it,” says Zellweger. “You shouldn’t wait. If it’s something that’s your passion, then do it. That really is the truth. No one’s ever going to anoint you and say, ‘No, no, no, you do have the skills to do this, you really do,’ even before you’ve checked off all the things on your list that you think will validate you or substantiate you or your desire to participate. There’s always going to be someone who tells you not to do it. Be around a bunch of people who tell you you can.” T H E F O R C E O F N AT U R E
JENNIFER
Lopez
Hometown: the Bronx Film: Hustlers
To hear more from the Hollywood issue portfolio stars, head to VF.com.
Who are the entertainers that you’ve looked to for inspiration? Growing up, I was really taken by the Barbra Streisands of the world, the Tina Turners. And I would say Diana Ross, I would say James Brown, I would say Janet Jackson. I loved my mom, who introduced me to musicals and movies and fairy tales and the stories of all these different lives. People who are multifaceted or have an explosive energy onstage or on the screen…. I think that’s what I’ve always emulated as a performer. Gown by Valentino; earrings, necklace, and ring (right hand) by Harry Winston.
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I think about that, I was offered it, and I had the opportunity…. I want to literally, like, shoot my toe off. I do.” Murphy and Zellweger faced darker periods—moments when the exuberance with which they entered their profession all but vanished. Neither was afraid to do the unthinkable and save themselves by walking away. “About eight years ago,” Murphy recalls, “I said it’s time to take a break and not really be pushing at movies. Getting it right with the director and the writers and having everything work together…that takes a lot of effort, and it’s strenuous. I had gotten to the point where I was just so burned out on the process of making a movie that if I was a little boy, I would have started crying.” After a couple of years of saying, “It’s time to back off and sit on the couch and just be Dad”—he’s got 10 kids, ranging in age from 1 to 30—he felt ready to go back to work. “I just want to do stuff where there’s an emotional hook, and not just because, you know, somebody flashed big dollar signs in front of you,” he says. At almost exactly the same time, Zellweger was going through her own journey, and doing it far from film sets. “When you repeat yourself in your profession, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for discovery and growth,” she says. “That’s not to say it’s not possible to branch out and be challenged by new things. But [I realized that] there was not time for the things I wanted to experience if I was to keep doing what I had been doing. I just hadn’t found a way to allow for those things that are important and nurturing.” So she stopped; she made no movies for six years, and she tuned out noise from an industry that wondered why she had walked away. She didn’t step back on a set until “I recognized myself again, when I had a life instead of just a profession. When I had friends who I saw on a regular basis.”
THE LEADING MAN
DA N I E L
Kaluuya
Hometown: London Film: Queen & Slim
Has there been a particularly low moment in your career? It was a year before Sicario. I looked at giving up. I didn’t know how healthy this was for my psychological well-being. Rejection is fine. I thought the reasons were bankrupt— it was racism, essentially. It was like they were saying, “We don’t want black leads.” I had done the stage. Done Black Mirror. Done a studio film. I thought, Oh, they want me to hate myself! I had to reassess. How do I do this by being myself? I was playing a game that didn’t suit me. When you’re playing a game that doesn’t suit you, you don’t win. Even if you win, you don’t win. Tuxedo and bow tie by TOM FORD; shirt by Budd Shirtmakers; necklace by Tiffany & Co.; watch by Rolex; dress set by Stephen Russell.
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THE SHOWSTOPPER
JENNIFER
Hudson
Hometown: Chicago Film: Cats
What’s been a perfect moment in your career? Last night, I had a moment. I said, “Jennifer, do you realize you’re in the film Cats? You’re singing Memory, that iconic song. Do you realize you’re playing Aretha Franklin in a movie in the middle of that? Do you realize you have all these photo shoots?” My friend Walter is my partner…. He was always determined for the world to hear me sing. When we were kids, we would sit in his car and we would use his grandmother’s credit card to buy me clothes to perform in. We had this whole idea of how this industry would work for us one day. And now I’ll be like, “Do you realize we made it? We really made it.” Dress by Versace; sandals by Giuseppe Zanotti; earrings by Graff.
THE CHAMELEON
WILLEM
Dafoe
Hometown: Appleton, Wisconsin Film: The Lighthouse
What’s been a perfect moment in your career? The Last Temptation of Christ was a wonderful project. You try not to have favorites, but that experience demanded a lot of me and I work best when a lot is demanded of me. I got a call that Martin Scorsese wanted to talk to me. I was shocked initially. I said, “What role?” And my agent said, “You idiot—Jesus.”
Tuxedo by New & Lingwood; shirt and pocket square by Charvet; shoes by Giorgio Armani; tie by Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; socks by Pantherella.
THE PRODIGY
FLORENCE
Pugh
Hometown: Oxfordshire, England Film: Little Women
What’s been a perfect moment in your career? I would watch so many things as a kid—so many child actors—and I’d go, Oh, shit, I would have loved playing that role! The first actress I ever watched where I thought, Oh my goodness, no one else could have done that was Saoirse in Atonement. I remember thinking, If I get to work with her one day that would be the most magnificent thing—and last year I was on the set of Little Women with her. We have a no-soppy rule in our friendship, because we’re so bro-y with each other. But I wrote it in a card and she sent me a text, like, “You goon!” She’s a magical person and a magical actress. Clothing by Giorgio Armani; earrings by Ana Khouri; ring by Cartier High Jewelry.
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THE OPEN BOOK
BEANIE
Feldstein
Hometown: Los Angeles Film: Booksmart
Has there been a particularly low moment in your career? I don’t know if this counts because I was very little, but when I was nine, I had huge nodules on my vocal cords. I was a nine-year-old that loved Stephen Sondheim more than anything else in the world. I lost the ability to speak and sing, and they didn’t know if I would get it back. I was on the floor of my doctor’s office, wailing. That anxiety over my voice—that panic—lives in me every day. I still sort of see myself as that nine-year-old trying to build back something that she lost. Blouse by Rodarte; brooch (in hair) by Beladora; earrings by Chopard; necklace and ring (ring finger) by BULGARI High Jewelry; ring by Tiffany & Co.
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EL VIAJERO
ANTONIO
Banderas
Hometown: Málaga, Spain Film: Pain and Glory
What was a decision that changed your life? It was the day that I decided to leave Málaga and go to Madrid to be a professional. I hopped into a train called Dos Corazón. I would say I was 19. My mother, she sewed inner pockets in my pants so if somebody assaults me, they wouldn’t find the money. I remember my friends there in the station—they brought me cigarettes. And I remember the train did a clunk and very slowly I saw my friends going away. I remember thinking, This is the last day of me as I was. When I come back here, I have to be another me— someone who comes not with empty hands, somebody who brings something. Clothing by Givenchy.
THE QUEEN
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Dern
Hometown: Los Angeles Films: Little Women, Marriage Story
What was a decision that changed your life? I think it was early on—choosing to work for filmmakers and be taught by filmmakers as my education. And that meant taking very little money, taking three scenes in the movie for Peter Bogdanovich versus the lead in a Brat Pack movie. In the ’80s, other people became famous very quickly. But I look back on my career—and I look back on what I learned from my parents, Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd—and it was such a sublime moment of saying, “I’m here to learn. I’m here to grow. I’m here to work with auteurs and be of service to the story, whatever part I am.” Gown by Jason Wu Collection; earrings by Wempe; necklace by CHANEL Fine Jewelry.
THE ORIGINAL
Awkwafina Hometown: Queens Film: The Farewell
You’ve been getting more comfortable with people knowing you by your given name, Nora, rather than by Awkwafina. When I first started as Awkwafina, there was a more distinct duality, where this is the one that’s performing and this is the one that’s at home having a panic attack. But as I get older, I think they’re the same person. Dress by Marc Jacobs; sandals by Roger Vivier. Pages 94–125: Hair products by R+Co and PSxDanielle (Lopez) and Oribe (all others except Murphy); makeup by CoverGirl (Reinhart), TOM FORD Beauty and Scott Barnes Beauty (Lopez), and CHANEL (all other women); grooming products by Boy de CHANEL (all men except Murphy); nail enamel by CoverGirl (Reinhart) and CHANEL de Vernis (all other women).
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For years, publicist Peggy Siegal was an essential New York party host and omnipresent player in the annual Oscars swirl. Then her past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein came to light. Will she ever live it down?
ON THE SCENE
Peggy Siegal, far right, with, from left, Oliver Stone, Sandy Brant, Ingrid Sischy, Terry Gilliam, and Edward Pressman at a Vanity Fair party at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Cap d’Antibes, 2010.
Regrets Only By
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when her life fell apart. She’d flown from London to Italy in early July to attend a dinner Larry Gagosian was hosting at Villa Malaparte, the cliff-top mansion overlooking the Gulf of Salerno where Jean-Luc Godard filmed Contempt. Siegal, a Manhattan-based movie publicist and professional host to the New York establishment, was to stay on a friend’s Feadship until the party. Then she would go to another friend’s home in the South of France to celebrate her 72nd birthday. Then back home, then to the Hamptons, and then to the Greek island of Patmos. At summer’s end, she would attend film festivals in Telluride and Toronto. For decades, the Peggy Siegal Company has been a linchpin in successful Oscar campaigns. Her exclusive screenings, and the buzz and bonhomie they inspire, are crucial for pushing members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to vote for films she promotes. When Oscar season is at its height, Siegal has been known to host five events per week. The day of Siegal’s flight from London to Naples, New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor contacted her about disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s social life. Four days prior, federal agents had arrested Epstein on sex-trafficking charges when his private jet landed at Teterboro Airport. For decades, Epstein had cut a shadowy figure in New York and Palm Beach with his mysterious fortune and connections to power players including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and retail billionaire Les Wexner. In November 2018, the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown had drop-kicked Epstein back into public consciousness with a reexamination of his 2008 guilty plea for soliciting sex from a minor, and the sweetheart deal Miami prosecutors gave him despite evidence that he’d molested dozens of teenage girls in Palm Beach. Siegal knew Epstein. He attended a handful of her events, they traded favors, and in 2010 she hosted a dinner in his home to honor Epstein’s then friend Prince Andrew, with whom Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre has said she was forced to have sex. (Andrew denies this.) The prince would later discuss that party in the disastrous BBC interview that preceded his “step back” from official duties in November. Siegal also knew what it meant that Kantor, who with colleague Megan Twohey won a 2018 Pulitzer for reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s alleged
predations, wanted to speak. Now that the FBI had raided Epstein’s seven-story Manhattan town house—and locked safe full of photos—Epstein’s crimes had ignited into a full-blown frenzy that seemed to expose daily a fresh set of prominent figures with links to a wealthy predator. Siegal’s ensuing fall may illustrate the extent of public disgust for the leeway Epstein enjoyed. Or, depending on whom you ask, the moral expectations of post-#MeToo Hollywood—or, the velocity of media judgment; the perils of false friends; sexism; ageism; or how easy it is to dismiss notoriously dismissive people. After the Times reached out, Siegal consulted a friend who is a lawyer. (She’d only sought his legal guidance once before, when the TSA had revoked her Global Entry privileges for failing to declare clothes purchased in Europe.) “I felt very threatened as to why people were calling me when hundreds of people knew him,” Siegal said when we met in the fall. The lawyer referred Siegal to Matt McKenna, a crisis P.R. specialist who once worked for Clinton. Soon after, Siegal briefly retained Libby Locke, a defamation attorney. McKenna advised Siegal to speak to Kantor for the article. “There was no question that there was going to be reporting about Peggy, and I wanted the first foundational story to be in a paper of record,” McKenna later told me. The article ran on the paper’s front page on Sunday, July 14. An accompanying photo showed Siegal in a fur shrug and gold kitten heels. “It made me look like a society lady,” Siegal said. The article described her as one of the “social guarantors” who gave Epstein a veneer of respectability. “He said he’d served his time and assured me that he changed his ways,” Siegal told the paper, which also quoted her saying Epstein, in recent years, “was in complete denial.” Siegal considered the article a disaster: “I’m now being positioned on the front page of the New York Times, along with people who really knew him financially, socially, and possibly sexually.” Hollywood’s trade press came next. Struggling to communicate with her Stateside crisis team, Siegal fell into what she classifies as an emotional spiral. “I’m still in the friggin’ hull of this boat!” Siegal recalled. “I go out for meals, but at the end of the day, I’m back in the hull of the boat.” One week after the Times report, the Hollywood Reporter published an article on Siegal’s “symbiotic relationship with a sex offender.” Anonymous former employees described gifts, favors, and an overheard speakerphone conversation between Siegal and Epstein. “OMFG Jeffrey Epstein,” the Reporter quoted a former employee’s G-chat from July 2010, Epstein’s last month under house arrest in Palm Beach. “She’s like, ‘You’re not dating anyone, right?’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I am, but you know, she’s very young.’ And she’s like, ‘Stop!’ ” Siegal told me she has no recollection of that conversation and characterizes the sources as disgruntled ex-employees competing for her business. She maintains that she never worked for Epstein—never had a salary, never had a contract—and that the only thing they exchanged were favors. Siegal read the article at four in the morning. “I’m going, this can’t be happening,” she recalled. “This is what it’d be like to go
to your own funeral. Or to be a casualty of war. I mean, if I had been in Nazi Germany, it could not have been worse,” she said, invoking ancestors who died in the Holocaust. “I thought, Oh, my God, I’m on the train station. I’m getting on that train and I’m going to the camps. And this is exactly what came to mind. This is the kind of political, social, horrific nightmare that came to fruition…. Life has come full circle. I’ve finally been attacked for nothing more than being Jewish, or being a woman, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Three days later, Variety reported that three studios had distanced themselves from her. FX had worked with Siegal, but Variety reported that it was “highly unlikely” they’d hire her again. Annapurna “dismissed” Siegal from work on Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Siegal says, technically, she had not yet been hired.) Two events for Netflix’s Ryan Murphy TV show The Politician were already in the works; Siegal’s name was removed from invitations that had not yet been sent. All told, Siegal believes that in less than a week, she lost around 10 jobs. An executive who had previously retained Siegal told me about calling his peers about her at the time: “Your gut is saying, ‘There’s no way we’re going to associate our movie with her.’ But it’s a gut check.” There’s no reason to risk outraged guests when you could just as easily hire one of Siegal’s competitors. “An unforced error on an Oscar campaign is stupid,” said the executive. “I sent, I don’t know, 100 emails to every marketing person, every publicity person, everyone that had done business with me over the past 25, 30 years,” said Siegal, who has landed only one paying job since. “This was the universal excuse: ‘The corporate lawyers would not allow us to hire you because we are a publicly held company, and we cannot endanger the reputation of our publicly held company with anyone that is associated with Jeffrey Epstein,’ ” she said. “I finally turned to a lawyer and said, ‘Who are these people?’ ” Siegal continued. “And the lawyer said, Nobody. It’s just an expression.”
she has informally consulted colleagues, including New York power publicists Leslee Dart, Cynthia Swartz, and Susie Arons. And it’s why she would converse on the record only in the presence of Bert Fields, a 90-year-old showbiz lawyer whose clients have included Tom Cruise and the Beatles. Fields hosted our interviews in his 12th-floor dining room. (In another room, Fields’s wife, the art consultant Barbara Guggenheim, took phone calls.) Siegal remains conflicted about whether participating in this article will save her or destroy her. But she also believes that her account is her best shot at keeping the lights on at the Peggy Siegal Company. “Until you, or I, or anybody else can get the truth out that I have been unjustly accused as a woman, then I have no business,” she said. “I go out seven nights a week. I have an apartment on the Upper East Side. I have no family. My life is my work. It’s always been that way.” The first time we met, Siegal was brittle. She cycled through what felt like the whole spectrum of human emotions. She ranted, lamented, pounded the table, cracked jokes, grew tearyeyed, reviewed movies, and praised her friends. The second time, she was in better spirits. Her hair was curled and she’d come from a Citymeals on Wheels luncheon honoring Wendi Deng Murdoch. She wore a rib-knit sweater tucked into a voluminous tweed skirt. Her appearance was as youthful as I’d been led to believe. (Siegal has celebrated birthdays by distributing
“This is what it’d be like...
state the obvious: Peggy Siegal would rather not be sitting in her new attorney’s apartment on Central Park South, giving me the blow-by-blow of her ostensible professional death. As a publicist, Siegal knows that image is everything. Revealing that her company is collapsing—she’s laid off eight employees and is down to just one assistant—could be what ends it. That’s why, in the last six months, Siegal says
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ALL THAT GLITTERED
Cate Blanchett and Siegal at a Chanel event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015.
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guidebooks to aging—most recently, How to Look Like Me at 70— that feature her favorite plastic surgeon and beauticians. Listings include “the best toe reductions,” “my third set of veneers,” “a new neck,” and “a newer neck.”) “I used to be a powerful woman, but now I just go to lunch with other powerful women,” Siegal announced, displaying the event’s program. For the record, here is Peggy Siegal’s Jeffrey Epstein story, according to Peggy Siegal: She no longer remembers when she met Epstein. (A statement released in July indicated the year as 2005. Siegal told me she does not recall making that statement.) In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting a 16-year-old for sex after an investigation that began with a complaint from a 14-year-old. Siegal says she knew he served time for something in 2008 but can’t remember whether she knew he pleaded guilty to soliciting sex with a minor. “I had no idea about the underage girls,” she said. She knew that his prison sentence was part-time. Epstein served 13 months in Palm Beach County Jail with work releases that allowed him to leave for 12 hours a day. He returned to New York in 2010. “I’m sure I had said something like, ‘You better change your ways,’ ” Siegal said. “I mean, I knew him, but I didn’t know much about him. Yeah, I spoke to him on the phone. He came to some screenings. I was never privy to his private life. I knew nothing about the girls. Nothing at all.”
In the July statement, released through McKenna, Siegal said she and Epstein were “social friends.” She defined the term for me: “I can call them on the phone. They can call me. I can send him an invitation without being embarrassed because it’s not a cold invitation. I can greet them at the door. I can talk to them after the movie.” To believe Siegal had no idea about the girls requires some credulity. Before and after Epstein’s guilty plea, Siegal spoke glowingly of him in articles that described his alleged crimes and the ages of his victims. Either she didn’t read those articles, or she didn’t absorb much of the information above and below her name. A 2011 story about Prince Andrew’s 2010 visit to Epstein— during which Siegal played host—appeared on the front page of the New York Post with the headline “PRINCE & PERV.” News coverage at the time of the visit was thorough and straightforward. The prince’s ex-wife, the Duchess of York, clarified that she “abhor[s] pedophilia.” “It’s so much easier in hindsight, 10 years later, to digest all this information and say, ‘Well, of course they knew that,’ ” Siegal said. “The times have changed so much, in the past five years, that [which] was normal bad behavior between genders is completely out of the realm of possibility today.” Gossip columnist George Rush, then of the New York Daily News, remembers speaking to Siegal about Epstein while his original criminal charges were pending. “I don’t know whether that was willful blindness, or she really just didn’t take the time to find out,” Rush said of the accusations against Epstein. Sitting at Bert Fields’s table, Siegal did her best to explain how Epstein hid in plain sight in her social circle. But to understand how Epstein fits in, Siegal said, I would have to understand the life of a woman who built her career before #MeToo. In subsequent weeks, she devoted herself to self-explanation, sometimes calling and emailing daily. On Thanksgiving, she sent a soul-searching 1,200-word email that used the story of the holiday as a parable for her plight: a legendary dinner party that, in retrospect, masked a much darker reality. “The men are fine,” she said, referring to Epstein associates such as Gates, Wexner, and Leon Black. “They’re moving on with their billions, and their jets, and their families, and their businesses. It’s—it’s a little—it’s just odd that a single woman who’s done nothing but kill herself for filmmakers has had to suffer like this. It’s completely unfair.” “I am a publicist, in the perception business, and I have been a victim of perception,” she said.
...to go to your own funeral.”
OFF THE TABLE
Siegal speaks to Anne Hathaway at a New York City Ballet gala celebrating Valentino, 2012.
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IEGAL GREW UP in a Polish Jewish family in Engle-
wood Cliffs, New Jersey. She landed her first job at 16 as a showroom model for Seventh Avenue dress company Suzy Perette. “All day long, I put the dresses on, and took the dresses off, and twirled around the showroom,” she said. To understand her childhood, Siegal instructed me to watch the 1969 film adaptation of Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus, starring Ali MacGraw as a Jewish American Princess. Her conversations are peppered with such suggestions, underscoring what the director Barry Levinson described as her “honest enthusiasm” for film. Her father’s family owned a light bulb factory that resembled “a scene from Norma Rae.” Their family in Poland, all of whom died in the Holocaust, had a foundry “exactly like the factory in Schindler’s List.” “She is absolutely, compulsively, and dedicatedly interested in movies and show business,” said actor and producer Bob Balaban, who has known Siegal for 40 years. “And royalty, basically. But really movies.” Siegal’s mother raised her to believe “you’ll go to college, you’ll work for a year or two, you’ll design a few dresses, and then you’ll get married.” After attending Syracuse University, she moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion, at one point designing her own accessories line. Then she met publicist Bobby Zarem and went to work for him. She hung out at Elaine’s and delivered society news to gossip columnist Aileen Mehle. She
Siegal—and much of Hollywood—adopted his laser focus on appealing to voting members of the Academy. Siegal tailored her events to appeal to members of the Academy, earning more business and sway along the way. “She’s a bulldog. Or, better, a dog with a bone,” said Rain Man producer Mark Johnson. “If you couldn’t make a screening, and you couldn’t make the next one, it became too difficult to keep saying no to her, because she would just put such guilt on you.” “The fact that she gets under people’s skin is kind of why she’s great to work with,” said a different producer, arguing that publicity favors the bold. Chuckling, the producer described Siegal’s annual tradition of arriving at the Oscars red carpet hours before the ceremony begins so she can greet and photobomb celebrities. In 2016, she hid on the floor of actor Alicia Vikander’s SUV to sneak into Guy Oseary’s Oscar party—from which she’d been banned two years prior. (“For the sin of being a publicist,” she said.) She later documented the feat in her Oscar diary for Avenue magazine. Not everyone finds Siegal’s aggression charming. Many describe her as “brusque.” She has been known to berate her staff, others’ staffs, chauffeurs, assistants, and defiant guests. “She rules with access and fear,” said a professional contact who has experienced both. Her singular focus on A-listers comes at the expense of those she deems unworthy of her attention. “This is one of the reasons why people would think I’m a terrible person,”
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“I keep thinking, What did I do to deserve this?” studied New York society and the overlapping galaxies within it: film, fashion, art, finance. Each swirled alongside the others, interacting and colliding daily to shift the city’s center of gravity one way or the other. After Zarem, she worked for the publicist Lois Smith. Her first two clients were Billie Jean King (“adored me”) and Liza Minnelli (“hated me on sight”). Film became Siegal’s specialty. She worked on E.T. in 1982, moved to Los Angeles to work for Steven Spielberg, then came home to New York to launch a P.R. firm with Smith as her partner. Their first film was The Big Chill, which opened the New York Film Festival in 1983 and earned three Oscar nominations. Smith left Siegal in the mid ’80s , and Siegal distinguished her business by leaning into events. She specialized in salon-style film screenings that brought together influential people from different social universes. Discussions of Siegal’s power invariably revolve around her list, a database of tens of thousands of potential party guests, categorized by the power tribes to which they belong: media, finance, actors, producers, and, of course, voting members of the Academy. She performed a sort of analog version of social media, encouraging influential people to influence one another. “She’s come up with this thing where she curates events with interesting host committees,” said Balaban. “For instance, she might have well-known bankers or business journalists host a screening of a movie like Wall Street or The Big Short.” Guests at a 2015 event for Levinson’s Rock the Kasbah included Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, John Mellencamp, Jimmy Buffett, Jann Wenner, and Bill Clinton. As Siegal likes to say, “The mix is the message.” When Oscar campaigning emerged as a multimillion-dollar subindustry in the 1990s, Harvey Weinstein led the way, and H O L LY W O O D
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said Siegal. She says she knows every name that has appeared in Page Six in the last four months, and Vogue in the last year, but doesn’t always know the names of her employees. “Sometimes I put a little sign by [my] desk of all the girls because I’m going, this one, this one, this one,” she explained. “Probably I would be a better person if I had more small talk with them, and more empathy for them, and cared more about them,” she said. “I don’t have time because my business is so competitive.” She demonstrated what updating her list looks like: “Here, put these guys in the computer,” she would say as an employee typed. “This one’s dead. This one’s hot. This one is so-and-so’s daughter.” Star seeking yielded high-flying friends. A person who knows Siegal described their phone conversations as glitterati Mad Libs: Hello, I’m in [fabulous location] with my dear friend [ultrarich person] and we’re on our way to [exclusive event]. An abbreviated list of names Siegal dropped in my presence: Barbra Streisand, David Geffen, Gloria Steinem, Andy Warhol, Julian Fellowes, Nora Ephron, Calvin Klein, Sienna Miller, Barry Diller, Eddie Murphy, Barbara Walters, Peter Brant, Mitzi Newhouse, Jerry Bruckheimer, Dolly Sinatra, Queen Elizabeth’s third lady-inwaiting, and several people she seemed to think could make or break my career. Locations included Luxor, London, Cannes, St. Barts, Michael’s, Studio 54, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s apartment building, the owner’s box at MetLife stadium, and the San Vicente bungalows. (Owner Jeffrey Klein “is a great friend of mine.”) While Siegal was building her mix, Epstein was building his on a parallel track. He too had a reputation as a heat-seeking missile, particularly for scientists and statesmen. By the time he met Siegal, Epstein’s social status was snowballing: He had become friendly with so many C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 5 9 131
His funny and complex show Black-ish enchanted Michelle Obama—and enraged Trump. Now, the showrunner starts his new chapter at Netflix, playing himself on #blackexcellence and helping reinvent television
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Coat by Versace; sweater and pants by Louis Vuitton; necklace by Saint Jewels.
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Kenya
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Kenya Barris has never acted before but was inspired by the example of Larry David.
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Kenya Barris expects the worst. “I’m always nervous,” he tells me. “I always think I’m going to fail.” It’s late October in Los Angeles. We’re standing on the set of #blackexcellence, the upcoming Netflix comedy series that Barris not only created but also stars in as…Kenya Barris. He zips his navy-and-orange Nike tracksuit jacket over a thick gold chain and gestures around the set. “This,” he says, “is probably going to fail.” Possibly he’s joking. Possibly he’s not. Either way, his résumé suggests that he’s wrong. Barris is the man behind the ABC sitcom Black-ish and its spin-offs Grown-ish and Mixedish and cowriter of the surprise smash movie Girls Trip, which sparked Tiffany Haddish’s ascendancy. He has half a dozen major movie screenplays in the works and at least as many television projects. His work is funny and rich enough for Michelle Obama to call Black-ish her favorite show, while Donald Trump rage-tweeted, “How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled ‘Blackish’? Can you imagine the furor of a show, ‘Whiteish’! Racism at highest level?” Clearly, Barris is doing something, and possibly everything, right. After an unexpected break with ABC—about which both sides have been studiously cordial—Barris signed a massive deal with Netflix, which has launched him into the showrunner stratosphere. Along with Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes, who have also taken up residence at the streaming giant, he’s part of a great migration away from network television and will help the company dominate an increasingly mobbed streaming universe. Not that any of this makes him any less angsty. Barris stands an imposing six-foot-three but slouches slightly, as if he’s used to bending down to talk to people. He has a neatly trimmed graying beard and tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves. Bravado and a gentle, almost Eeyore-ish anxiety seem to battle it out beneath his skin. He is a man who would rather brace for calamity and let the universe pleasantly surprise him. Later, he will tell me that his mantra is “We’ll see what happens.” Barris has never acted professionally before, on top of which he’s making a show about his family (he has six kids) at a time when, off-screen, he is in the midst of a divorce from his wife, Rania Edwards-Barris, M.D. All this might be adding to his sense of precariousness. Barris had initially planned to cast an actor in the #blackexcellence lead but found inspiration in one of his heroes, Larry David, who emerged from behind the scenes of Seinfeld to make a mockery of his own life on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Playing himself, says Barris, was also a way to do “something I was really afraid of.” And so nearly every morning for five months, he made one of the more 134
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surreal commutes in human history, leaving his family’s glass house in Encino and stepping into a nearly exact replica across town at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. The #blackexcellence set duplicates Barris’s real home down to the gray, L-shaped modular sofa that dominates the living room, the Warhol-ish portraits of hip-hop trailblazers by Knowledge Bennett, the sleek turquoise pool, and the piano festooned with whimsical drawings by Hebru Brantley. “It’s totally bananas!” marvels Rashida Jones, who plays Barris’s fictional-ish wife, Joya, on the show, as well as writing and directing on the series. “It’s like a Black Mirror episode. I feel like I’m going to get a letter that says, ‘Well, you were partaking in a very large psyops experiment!’ The man walked out of his home in the morning, and then back into his home at work. I don’t understand how he is okay…but clearly this is how he’s chosen to process his life.”
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the #blackexcellence hashtag has been used to celebrate everything from high school graduations to job promotions to flashy new suits. On the 2011 track “Murder to Excellence,” Jay-Z and Kanye West exulted, “Black excellence, opulence, decadence/Tuxes next to the president.” But, of course, the phrase is also loaded with complications in a country like this one. As poet Claudia Rankine once wrote in a New York Times essay about Serena Williams, “There is a belief among some African-Americans that to defeat racism, they have to work harder, be smarter, be better. Only after they give 150 percent will white Americans recognize black excellence for what it is.” Even then, she notes, they are subject to the white gaze. Black excellence is “not supposed to swagger, to leap and pump its fist,” and the daily pressure of representing blackness in a racist culture can wear a body down. How to translate a hashtag into an idiosyncratic comedy about the pleasures and pressures of a prosperous African American family? Where Larry David’s character on Curb cluelessly fuses entitlement and perpetual grievance, sees himself as the aggrieved party in all situations, Barris’s doppelgänger is fully aware of his precarious position as a black man in Hollywood. In a scene at a fancy L.A. restaurant, he imagines how the chic folks see his boisterous family, then feels self-conscious as he and an even more successful white TV producer each wait for their cars afterward. The valet hands Kenya the keys to his ostentatious Acura NSX sports car, while the white dude gets into his dirty Prius and gives him a patronizing thumbs-up. V E R T H E Y E A R S,
That moment at the valet was inspired by a real experience with Jeffrey Katzenberg. Barris didn’t think that the mogul was being condescending, he says, “but in my mind, all I heard was, ‘Hey, look at the black guy spending all his money on a car!’ I wanted to take it and burn it up in the middle of fucking Fairfax.” But it’s a no-win situation. “If I pull up in a shitty car, I’m a black dude in a shitty car. If I pull up in this car,” he says, gesturing toward his garage, “I’m just a black dude who spent all this money on a car.” Having driven up Barris’s driveway in my white woman’s Prius (one desperately in need of a car wash), I tell him I feel sheepish. “That’s the whole point,” he says with a chuckle. “You can do that.”
P HOTO G R A P H S : TOP, B Y RON TOM / WA L T DI S N E Y T E L E V I S ION / G E T T Y I M AG E S ; B OT TOM , C O U R T E S Y OF K E N YA B A R R I S
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in South Central L.A. with “two completely different belief systems”: His mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, his father a black Muslim. He started writing when he was a little kid, creating comic books with his best friend and selling them for a quarter along with a Blow Pop. Although his fellow students initially just wanted the lollipops, they soon got hooked on their stories of Robin Hood–esque criminals. Barris had asthma and spent a lot of time at home losing himself in the set of World Book Encyclopedia that his mother, who sold insurance and later real estate, had saved up to buy. He had good reason to seek escape. His younger brother had died of leukemia, and his father was physically abusive. One night after his parents divorced, Barris’s father broke into the house and his mother shot him. Barris was six years old at the time. His father survived, and the family never talked about the incident—until 2016, when he told The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum this story and the magazine’s fact-checker insisted on confirming the details with both parents. Barris panicked. “I was like, ‘Guys, I’ve never had this conversation with them.’ ” He ended up arguing with his mother about how many times she had pulled the trigger. His mom said twice. Barris remembered six. Stretching out on the gray velvet couch in his living room, Barris grows vehement. “I was six years old, and this is my version of the story I’m telling!” he remembers explaining to his mom. “I ARRIS GREW UP
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had to have a real talk with my therapist. I was like, ‘But it’s my life too.’ ” These are quandaries he regularly grapples with as a writer of semiautobiographical material. “You take aggregates and archetypes of people you know and make them part of your characters. You try to tell the most honest version of your story.” I point out that some of what he does now involves processing and reimagining stories about his family, and yet this primal trauma from his childhood never got discussed. “Never, ever,” he says. “I think if I didn’t have writing and my job, I would probably be in the hospital. Because I have been through a lot of personal trauma growing up, as I think a lot of kids where I grew up did.”
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to two decades toiling in other people’s writers rooms, working on series like Soul Food, The Game, and I Hate My Teenage Daughter. He wrote 18 pilots of his own before he landed one on the air with Blackish. (He did make bank along the way by helping create the reality TV juggernaut America’s Next Top Model with his friend Tyra Banks.) The fact that his show about a thriving black family was watched by many white folks was crucial to him. “People might get upset at me for saying it, but it was incredibly important to ARRIS SPENT CLOSE
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Above: Barris on the set of #blackexcellence with sons Bronx, Kass, and Beau. Top: shooting a 2016 episode of Black-ish with Miles Brown, Marsai Martin, Tracee Ellis Ross, Anthony Anderson, and Marcus Scribner (in hat).
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me that my show was on ABC after Modern Family,” he says. “As much as I really, really want my people to watch, I know they’re going to tune in. I also want other people to see us… being unapologetically black.” A sharp-witted, politically conscious sitcom in the classic mold of Norman Lear (one of Barris’s role models, along with Spike Lee), Black-ish drew laughs from the quandaries of Andre “Dre” Johnson Sr., an advertising executive, and Rainbow Cinnamon Johnson, or “Bow,” an anesthesiologist, trying to raise their black kids in an upper-middle-class white Los Angeles enclave. (“Rainbow” is also the nickname of his real-life wife.) Now in its sixth season, the series has received 15 Emmy nominations and wrangled with police brutality against African Americans, gun control, postpartum depression, the N-word, and intersectional feminism. That has made it unusually polarizing for network prime time. At ABC, Barris made compromises, as every broadcast showrunner does. Then, after the 2016 presidential election, ABC announced its desire to speak to Trump voters and put in place a plan that centered on a reboot of Roseanne, which became Black-ish’s lead-in to the prime-time block. The association with Roseanne Barr and the stream of conspiracy theories she emitted via Twitter was bad enough. (The network agreed, ultimately evicting Barr from her own show.) But in 2018, Black-ish became a front in the very culture war it commented on when Barris butted heads with ABC over an episode called “Please, Baby, Please” that wove current events such as NFL players kneeling in protest and the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville into a bedtime story. Rather than allow the episode to air in a defanged state, Barris agreed to pull it. He then asked to be released from his deal with ABC/Disney and landed a reported $100 million overall deal at Netflix. “Trump had a huge part in me leaving,” says Barris, rubbing his beard pensively. “I have a really twisted personal relationship with him. He tweeted against me. I feel like I’m even getting audited more now!” He laughs, but the smile slides off his face almost instantly. He says that he’s gotten hate mail from racist supporters of the president whom he calls cicadas, droning louder and louder since Trump’s win. “I sometimes think, Can I say that? Is this going to affect my kids?” When I ask Barris about his conversations with Disney CEO Bob Iger, his tone grows diplomatic. “You’re looking at a situation in which the media world has never seen something like what we’re going through right now…. It’s as close to a George Orwell book as we’ve ever been. And the person who decides a lot of how mergers go through is our president. And so I think the idea of the reach and the influence that [Trump] has unfortunately affects a lot of different things.” I ask if he’s suggesting that Iger chose to placate the president because Disney had a merger with Fox pending. “I don’t really know,” he says. “I think they also felt I was ready to tell different stories. They did not have to let me go, but they did.” Channing Dungey was ABC’s president at the time; she left the network shortly after Barris did to become an executive at Netflix, where she’s overseeing some of his drama development projects. Reflecting on the ABC conflict, she says now, “This was very much about him telling the story the way he wanted to tell it and that wasn’t going to happen. And so it was a mutual decision to just move on.” The first African American woman to serve as a major broadcast TV chief, 136
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she looks back on Black-ish’s “Juneteenth” episode, about the way America honors the exploits of Christopher Columbus but not the day that American slaves were emancipated in Texas, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, as one of her proudest moments at the network. After it aired in 2017, Barris says CEO Tim Cook added Juneteenth to the Apple calendar. Barris is now hell-bent on making it a federal holiday. “Kenya is a very passionate person and he is a very emotional person and he has a big personality, and the combination of those three things can sometimes be a little bit explosive,” says Dungey. “Even in those moments where his passionate exuberance causes him to just be like”—she makes the sound of a bomb detonating—“what’s great about Kenya is that he is a tremendous collaborator. He loves to engage in the discussion and the debate.” When Netflix bosses Cindy Holland and Ted Sarandos first met with him about a possible deal, Holland recalls that Barris “talked about how for a long time in his career he’d been writing what he thought people wanted to see on television or what he thought audiences might want. After Black-ish and Girls Trip… he really had found his voice.” Barris says he’s not contractually beholden to Netflix for a particular number of projects. “I could do none!” he says impishly, before acknowledging, “I feel like I owe it to Ted and Cindy, because they bailed me out of a really bad situation.”
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N A HEAT-BLASTED fall day, #blackexcellence is filming in the plush white reconstructed interior of a private jet. When I arrive at the soundstage, three boys are perched in front of a bank of television monitors, intently watching three similarly sized actors on the screens. As soon as the take ends, Barris strides over and throws a soft punch at the smallest one’s shoulder. The toddler dissolves into delighted giggles, and it dawns on me that these are Barris’s real sons, Beau, 12, Kass, 9, and Bronx, 3. They’ve got the day off school because fires are engulfing the west side of L.A. and have spent the morning watching their dad pretend to fly to Fiji with his fictional family. The scene involves a lavish trip that Barris’s character hopes will wow his kids; instead, they are perfectly blasé. The only person actually impressed by this feat of financial excess is Kenya’s assistant. Barris breezes through several improvised takes in which he tells the assistant he’s just like family, then tries to shoo him away from using the fancy toilet in the back of the plane. “Captain has a rule that only immediate family can use it,” Barris says with a shrug. Afterward, while the child actors take a break, Barris’s real son Kass pats him on the shoulder reassuringly. “You said he couldn’t use the bathroom. That was funny, Dad!” In America’s Calvinist-descended capitalist society, wealth and worth are inextricably connected. #blackexcellence takes on
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writing and my job, I would probably be in been through a lot of personal trauma.” the clash of class and race in ways that sometimes make the characters look less than admirable. Jones says that whether or not you like or relate to the fictional Barris brood, she is glad they will be “struggling with their materialism” on TV and helping “to fill in the story that there’s different ways to be black in this country.” That, of course, was one of Bill Cosby’s motivations for creating The Cosby Show back in the 1980s, though class was rarely remarked upon in the series’s wholesome upper-middle-class milieu. Barris, who was partly inspired to apply to historically black Clark Atlanta University by Cosby Show spin-off A Different World, says he was devastated by the revelations about Cosby. “You have a lot of different heroes,” he says, meaning white people. “For so many of us, this is the only hero we had. There’s so few of us who get to get these opportunities to do these things. The weight and cost of them, it’s a lot.” Later, Barris returns to this theme and tells me that he “cried gutturally”
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Showrunner and lead actor Barris, photographed at home in Los Angeles. Suit by Versace; shirt by Dior Men; sneakers by Adidas Originals; watch by Audemars Piguet; bracelets by Saint Jewels. Throughout: grooming products by Charlotte Tilbury and Jack Black.
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on his recent visit to Tyler Perry’s massive production complex in Atlanta. His eyes well up even as he says it. “The idea that this guy, on an old plantation that became a Confederate base, has now built a black-owned studio that is bigger than Paramount, Warner Brothers, and Universal combined—a black man who can go get stories made without interference from outside forces…is beyond powerful.”
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at his home induces an unnerving déjà vu when you’ve just seen him on an identical set wearing an identical tracksuit. In real life, his bedroom is flanked by closets that would make Carrie Bradshaw squeal. Three-year-old Bronx’s room is a wonderland of kiddie street style with a black Captain America mural standing guard over his toddler bed, while the older children’s spaces are more muted. Barris is currently sharing custody of his six kids and has a room for each. “They have been incredibly resilient, and they seem to be doing better than I am, which is—not a good sign?” he says, laughing. “But they each decorated their rooms, which I’ve been told it makes them feel like they’re a part of the place.” I note the challenge of trying to create a show based on his family life when he’s in the middle of a divorce and ask if the parents on #blackexcellence will split too. “I wanted to leave it open,” Barris replies, “that maybe they will C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 5 8 ALKING TO BARRIS
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Paul Fortune’s 1980s Fake Club is the stuff of legend—stars, drugs, all-night dancing in a bus station—Hollywood, Cinderella-style. And it was, the designer tells LILI ANOLIK , the real deal
DANCE ALL NIGHT CLUB KIDS
Top row, from left: Linda Kerridge and Paul Fortune; Steve Strange, Perri Lister, and unidentified friend; Fortune (in cowboy hat), Holly Hollington (in white tee), Annie Kelly (in black bathing suit), and unidentified friends; Marsha Hunt and unidentified friend. Center: Jenny Shimizu (in stripes) and unidentified friends; Fake merch; Pinkietessa and Simon Doonan; Fake news. Bottom: Richard Sharah, Pamela Motown, and Jim Motown; Alan MacDonald (in patterned shirt) and unidentified friends; Sharah, Gerlinde Costiff, and Donald Dunham; Sylvie Temple and Amanda Temple. 138
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And now, for something really wild: THE FAKE CLUB 1743 Cahuenga Blvd. 462-9858 GRAND OPENING Saturday, March 6. 9:00 P.M.–2:00 A.M. Come as you aren’t. Except you could only Fake it for real, Fake it and mean it in the early ’80s. That grand opening happened back in ’82. And yet, because the Fake Club, Hollywood’s most glamorous, beguiling, lowdown, and louche—most secret too—nightspot was a state of mind as much as it was a physical location, the invitation still stands. So you’re on the list, among the chosen, a welcome guest. The Fake Club wants you. As long, of course, as you’re not you when you enter. Club rules.
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Paul Fortune Fearon, then 29, left London for Los Angeles in the summer of 1978: the movies. He wasn’t interested in making them or, heaven forbid, appearing in them. He was very interested, however, in living them. They’d shaped his way of seeing—every image viewed from a camera lens and framed; every person a character, and straight out of central casting; every situation a scenario in disguise, one that either played or didn’t—to say nothing of his sensibility. Hollywood was the spotlight, burning hot and unbearably radiant, that illuminated his imagination. He wanted to step through the screen as Alice stepped through the looking glass. And in the L.A. of the period, you could do just that. “The 20th century hadn’t caught up with the city yet,” he says. “It was the ’70s, obviously, but you could find places where it was the ’40s, even the ’30s—the people, the cars, the clothes. And there were these strange little demimondes you could get involved with or not. In the apartment next door was an old dame who was a chorus girl in 42nd Street and who was still in that world. Or you’d go into Vons and in the checkout line was Rita Hayworth, buying cigarettes. Or you’d be in the dry cleaners and there was Ella Fitzgerald.” The practical reason: London was in the toilet. “There’d been this massive crash. There were strikes and gas lines. 140
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It was always raining. Then I got to L.A. I could get a great apartment for $250 a month. And no one was here! The city hadn’t happened yet, wasn’t groovy. There was space, freedom, more sunshine than I knew was possible, and almost no history. It was like a big, weird blank canvas, and I could paint myself into the picture.” Jump-cut—or slow dissolve—to four years later. He had done…not much, actually. Made cactus lamps out of Plexiglas (Barbra Streisand bought one). Appeared as an extra (a Stetson-cologne-spraying salesman in Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart). Let the good times roll, and keep on rolling. “All I wanted to do was make rent and explore Hollywood and run around and take drugs and go to parties.” More notably, he’d shucked “Paul Fortune Fearon” like a shapeless winter coat and slipped into the sleeker, gaudier “Paul Fortune.” (Well, how far would Cary Grant have gotten if he’d stuck with Archie Leach? A name-in-lights type name wasn’t just de rigueur for an aspirant, it was sine qua non, the first step to self-invention.) He’d also acquired a boyfriend, Lloyd Ziff, art director of New West. Says Ziff, “Paul was an artist who hadn’t found his form yet. But he was handsome and charming, and he moved into my Laurel Canyon house.” And he didn’t move out when he and Ziff split, Ziff heading to New York and a job at Condé Nast. This house was key to Fortune’s development. It was where the man would make his move, the artist find his form. It was also something else. Says Ziff, “A set designer built it and John Wayne used to help. It was a kind of Mexican-Spanish hacienda nestled into the hillside. The master bedroom was built like a ship’s cabin—wood-paneled with a porthole. There were terraces and patios and a two-story living room that had a wall painted to look like rock, but wasn’t. It was this whole mishmash of styles and fantasies, and just wonderful.” Under Fortune’s auspices, it became a home for wayward (and overgrown) boys and girls, party guests turning into houseguests turning into long-term houseguests. Staying with him in the winter of ’81 was a young British woman, a stylist, named Sharman Forman. “I’d moved in with Paul, but I was still going back and forth to London. That’s when I saw these one-night, two-night clubs popping up. It was the New Romantic era—Duran Duran, Adam and the Ants. Vivienne Westwood was a friend and she was doing her pirate collection, dressing up these groups.” Fortune’s ear swiveled. Also staying with him was Alan MacDonald. “Alan had been my boyfriend in London. He was one of the beautiful kids who hung out at the Blitz club. There was nowhere to go in L.A. at night. The Whisky and the Roxy were too straight and rock-and-roll. The Masque was punk and punk was stupid and the music was horrible. There was a twinky disco on San Vicente. And that was pretty much it. Everything was separate—a place for if you were gay, black, in the film industry…. You’d wind up eating knishes at Canter’s because it was the only place open late.” Side note. The city was, at that moment, as delicately poised as Fortune himself: between its sleepy small-town past and its never-sleeps modern metropolis future; also between the anything-goes ’60s and ’70s—that brief post-pill sexual idyll when the body seemed to exist only for pleasure, biology and puritanism vanquished at last, and drugs were considered consciousness-expanding plus a guaranteed good time— and the chickens-come-home-to-roost ’80s, a decade largely
T H RO U G HO U T : P HOTO G R A P H S C O U RT E S Y OF S I MON D O ON A N ( D O ON A N A S Q U E E N E L I Z A B E T H ), S H A R M A N F OR M A N ( F A K E N E W S ), J OH N I NG H A M ( I NG H A M ), PAU L F O RT U N E ( A L L OT H E R S )
defined by two dire acronyms, A.A. and AIDS. Says Fortune, “We started to think, Why not do a London club here?” A DJ was found, yet another London exile, John Ingham, a rock critic, the first to interview the Sex Pistols. Then a venue, which Fortune happened upon when his Karmann Ghia broke down and he took it to a Hollywood garage. “Across the street was the Trailways bus depot, and in the depot was this bar. I needed to use a pay phone, so I walked in. It was, like, 10 in the morning, and already full of these desperate characters. But it was a good setup—a bar, a dance floor, a second bar. I asked the bartender how much to rent it out for a night. He said, ‘120 bucks.’ ” The club’s geography seemed like a play on the old cliché of starry-eyed, fresh-faced young beauties arriving in Hollywood by bus from non-coastal states to be either immortalized or, more probably, defiled and discarded. (Says Fortune, “The people who started Fake Club—me, Sharman, John—were all Brits because Brits got L.A. better than the locals did.”) In precisely the same way, the club’s name seemed like a play on the old Oscar Levant line, “Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.” (Says Fortune, “The idea of the name was, ‘This isn’t really a club. We’re just here a night or two a week. We’re not really club people. We’re doing other things.’ I mean, it was fake. We were just playing.”) To understand Hollywood is to understand that lies sincerely delivered are a higher kind of truth. The club was an instant smash. “People were desperate for something. We had no competition,” says Fortune modestly. There was a little more to it than that. For one thing, the club knew how to mix it up. So far as its look went. The décor was ’50s, and not retro ’50s, ’50s ’50s because the décor hadn’t been touched since the ’50s. So far as its sound went. Says Ingham, “It was the second British Invasion with the New Romantics, and I was playing loads of those bands. But I was also playing Blondie, Bowie, the Talking Heads, a ton of Thriller, and then throwing in older stuff, like James Brown. One day a New York friend called and told me about this weird, great record they were playing at Danceteria, so I jumped on a plane. The song was ‘Planet Rock’ by Afrika Bambaataa. I played a lot of the early New York rap and hip-hop. Fake Club became known for breaking artists in L.A.” So far as its ethos went. Says Fortune, “We had the waitresses in T-shirts I’d designed—‘Some Nights I Fake It.’ ” Except for Pinkietessa. “Pinkie’s look was Mae West if Mae West was an English freak. She’d serve a tray of cocktails in full makeup.” So far as its people went. There was the coat check girl. “It’s L.A., right?” she says. “There weren’t coats to get checked. So it wouldn’t be worth my while to make $3 or whatever it was I made in tips. Which is why I also sold quaaludes.” Not her only sideline. “Our coat check girl would bring out a rack of clothes,” says Fortune. “If a girl wrecked her outfit on the dance floor or just got bored with it, she could buy a whole new one.” There was the doorman/bookkeeper, Johno du Plessis. Say du Plessis, “I was strict at the door. Didn’t allow bad behavior. Or bad fashion.” Finally there was the bouncer’s bouncer. Says Forman, “One night a Trailways security guard started waving around a gun on the dance floor. He felt he’d been disrespected. We had my boyfriend follow him around, keep an eye out.” H O L LY W O O D
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Above: Pinkietessa (in black), Denise Crosby (harlequin), and Bette Davis Dancers. Right: Simon Doonan as Queen Elizabeth.
So far as its locale went. Says Fortune, “I’d closed up for the night. Right there on the street, a guy was getting stabbed.” Fake Club was a tarnished romance in the way that, say, Casablanca was a tarnished romance, as well as a send-up of the very idea of romance, tarnished or otherwise; a dream of a Hollywood nightclub set in a real Hollywood neighborhood; ironic and poignant simultaneously. “Who wasn’t a Faker?” says Fortune, less modestly, more accurately.
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And the Clash. The Go-Go’s. Jackson Browne and Daryl Hannah. Anthony Perkins and Berry Berenson. Musicians Marianne Faithfull and Chrissy Hynde. Artists Ed Ruscha and David Hockney. Writers Eve Babitz and Bruce Wagner. Photographer Herb Ritts. Models Janice Dickinson, Kelly LeBrock, Linda Kerridge, though not Britt Ekland. (“She tried to throw her fame about so I didn’t let her in,” says du Plessis. “I never needed to throw my fame about,” Ekland scoffs.) American gigolo Richard Gere, along with Gigolo’s poster creator, Paul Jasmin, and director, Paul Schrader. Anjelica Huston and Beverly D’Angelo (“The girls who liked to dance and get high,” says Fortune). Porn actor Leo Ford. The man who taught Michael Jackson how to moonwalk, Jeffrey Daniel. Pre-Barneys Simon Doonan, sometimes in Queen Elizabeth drag. Kevin Costner, then unknown. Actor EL GIBSON WAS A FAKER.
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PICTURE THIS Large photograph: Eddie Dodson. Top row, from left: Chris Kelman; Maripol and Benedicte Siroux. Center: Louise de Teliga, Sharman Forman, and Annie Kelly; John Ingham. Bottom: Ian Falconer and John Cameron Mitchell; Marisa Berenson and Paul Jasmin; Fortune, Jeff Judd, and two unidentified dancers; Juliette Hohnen and Madonna. 142
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Blackie Dammett and his boy, future Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Kiedis. (“On a lucky night, [I] got cozy with Susan Sarandon and Kristy McNichol in one of the club’s leatherette booths,” writes Dammett. “Another night, I wandered into the rear lounge and found my underage son leaning against the bar.”) The Interview crew—Andy Warhol, Joan Quinn, Lisa Love. Peter Morton, whose new restaurant, Hard Rock Café, Fortune christened by dropping a Cadillac through its roof. MTV had launched six months before, transforming music into something you saw as well as heard, and Fortune, by day, was art-directing videos, such as Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” (Forman did the wardrobe). The reason Boy George, Steve Strange, and Annie Lennox were there too. And Prince (“He DJ’d for us once or twice. Played his own songs,” says Fortune). Also, Ione Skye and Rick Owens, like Kiedis, not yet old enough to drink legally. (“I’d let the kids in the back,” says Fortune.) And then the clock struck two and the Fake Club turned back into a pumpkin, or rather, a bus depot bar. Says Forman, “You’d be full-throttle dancing and carrying on and the management would switch on the lights and it was done, had to be or the fire marshals would come.” Pas de problème. Everybody just moved on over to Fortune’s without losing the beat or their buzz. “My house was absolutely Fake Club after hours. Some crazy person would always show up and define the night.” Like Mick Jagger. Or Madonna. (Fortune: “I was friends with Maripol [a stylist] and I hung out on the ‘Burning Up’ shoot. I teased Madonna the whole time.”) And there was the constant stream of visitors. “Rupert Everett, John Sex, John Maybury, Ian Falconer—too many to possibly remember.” And overnight visitors. “The photographer Brad Branson lived with me for a while, and his boyfriend was George Michael, who I’d bump into in the kitchen in his red bikini underwear. George Michael was also the boyfriend of the coat check girl. That was later, though.”
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HE MAN WHO EMBODIED the spirit of the club perhaps most vividly, however, wasn’t famous, though he was a star. Eddie Dodson. Says Fortune, “Eddie had a great antique store on Melrose, except it was really a cover for the coke business in the back. He was this charming guy—Southern, a jokester, lots of women around him, and he’d manipulate them with drugs.” Not just the women, according to Forman. “One night Eddie took a gram of cocaine, threw it in the air. It landed on the dance floor. All the people fell to their knees and began snorting.” Dodson became addicted to his own wares. Louise de Teliga, Dodson’s girlfriend: “We were all doing piles of coke, but I’d left him by the time he got really crazy with the drugs. Then he and Marisa Berenson [model and socialite] dated for a while.” He started experimenting with a different felonious medium. Says Fortune, “Louise was the first to figure out that he was a bank robber. The biggest ever, apparently.” Dodson robbed a record-setting 64 banks in eight months, six in a single day. “And he didn’t even use a gun. He used a starter’s pistol—talk about faking it!” Not so tough to do when your life is no longer real to you, is a movie playing in the screening room of your mind, and you’re the lead, a devil-may-care gentleman outlaw. “Once Doddy picked up Marisa in his convertible,” says Jasmin. “He told her he had to run an errand. He robbed a bank, got back in the car,
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took her to lunch. She had no clue.” (Says Berenson: “This story is not at all true about me and Dodson.”) Dodson would go even further with Fortune. “Eddie robbed a bank and I was in the car. We were on our way to an auction, and he said he had to stop for some cash. I might’ve been arrested or shot. The money had a dye pack in it, and it exploded. I couldn’t leave the house for a week.” On February 10, 1984, the law caught up with Eddie Dodson. Or maybe it was reality. There was a standoff at the Farmer’s Daughter motel on Fairfax. The cops’ guns weren’t starter pistols, and they dragged Dodson off to jail and that was that. The rhapsody of sex, rebellion, fatalism, and the movies was over.
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at around the same time—December ’83. Physical and emotional limits had been reached. Says Fortune, “I was doing more music videos. One morning I got in the car, and I couldn’t get the key in the ignition. I thought, This has to stop.” It was bigger, though, than a change in Fortune personally. In the two short years of Fake Club’s existence, there’d also been a change in the culture at large. People were strung out. “The drug scene was dying, or at least going underground.” And freaked out. “We’d been aware of this mystery disease. Friends were disappearing. But we hadn’t quite figured it out, so we partied. Then it got serious.” The irony was, after Fake Club, L.A.’s club scene exploded. Making the loudest kaboom was Power Tools, founded in 1985 by Fortune’s former roomie Brad Branson and Matt Dike, with Jon Sidel joining later. So why did Power Tools rise to legend and Fake Club fall into obscurity? Did Fake Club come along too soon, before people realized a trend had begun and to perk up, pay attention? Or was it that Fake Club, which catered to a slightly older crowd, the 30-plus Boomers, was getting supplanted by a new generation? (Branson, Sidel, and Dike were all X-ers.) Or was Fake Club so close to a dream that it dissolved in the mind the way a dream dissolves, leaving behind no residue or ripple? Though Fortune continued to go to clubs, he never again ran one. He’d moved on. An easy transition for him, as it turned out. The directors of those music videos were suddenly rich. They bought houses. They knew Fortune could dress a set, so why not a house? Out of the blue, he had a whole new line of work—interior design—for which he’d become celebrated, his clients including Marc Jacobs and David Fincher. He’d also co-create Les Deux Café, remake the Sunset Tower Hotel, act in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Forman moved on as well. “I quickly realized that you couldn’t duplicate Fake Club. It was a mixture of magic and chemicals and people and timing.” Money too. Or lack thereof. Once word got out that these clubs were bringing in heavy cash, the artists and renegades were done for. Everything became formalized, corporatized. Fortune: “We opened Fake Club for a couple hundred bucks. It would take $20 million to open that same club today. And it wouldn’t be any better. In fact, it would be worse. A certain innocence, a certain esprit was lost. We had control. We didn’t have to listen to hedge fund guys or whomever. We could do it ourselves. That it wasn’t serious, that it wasn’t professional is why it worked, why it was special.” If you can’t Fake it, don’t make it. 144
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FULL EXPOSURE Top row, from left: Brad Branson and Leo Ford; John Maybury and Rupert Everett; Holly Hollington; Lisa Love and Hamish Bowles. Center: Linda Kerridge and unidentified friend; Alicia Bernard (at left), Buck Henry (in blue hat),
and Debi Mazar (in turban); Holly Hollington (with mouth open), Annie Kelly (in black bathing suit), Tim Street-Porter (sticking out tongue), and unidentified friends; Duggie Fields, Simon Doonan, and Kelly. Bottom: Wolfgang Tillmans (at left), Laila Kabulikan (in white tee), Louise de Teliga (in dark dress), Thom Browne (in blue shirt), and unidentified friends; Zoe Cassavetes and Ione Skye; Janice Dickinson, Donna Karr, and Jonathan Karr; Bruce Wagner and Cotty Chubb. H O L LY W O O D
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NERVE
WME’s Ari Emanuel planned to put his agency and the very power structure of Hollywood on the line with an audacious, now-scuttled public offering. With that future on hold and the likes of Netflix and Disney commanding more ground by the day, RICHARD RUSHFIELD takes the mood among the machers I L L U ST R AT IO N
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Ari Emanuel hatched a plan to use a talent agency to compete with Hollywood’s tech upstarts. 146
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The gloom
filling the Goldman Sachs conference room that Thursday was undeniable. This was supposed to be a celebration. After two decades watching the tech world run laps around Hollywood—and ultimately threaten to devour it—Endeavor Inc. and Ari Emanuel, the perpetual ambition machine who has served as its engine for decades, were about to break into the league of titans with that ultimate corporate bar mitzvah, an IPO—the first agency in Hollywood history to go public. The 7,000-employee media conglomerate forged long ago on the back of a boutique talent agency specializing in TV writers was to become a giant outside its own walled-off industry, backed by the public capital of investors large and small. After 24 years of relentless growth, this was the big event. They would acquire the capital not just to make those who had followed Emanuel and his hyperkinetic vision all these years very rich, but that would allow the company to truly compete with the very forces that have reshaped the entertainment industry in the last decade: Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. (In October, WME began representing Condé Nast Entertainment, a division of Vanity Fair’s parent company, Condé Nast.) Four months before, the IPO process had kicked off with customary Emanuel-esque fanfare and bravado, hailing the future of entertainment media. But there were signs for concern. The years leading to the finish line had seen the company’s first extended rough patch. Things arguably started in 2016 with the matter of Donald Trump, whom William Morris Endeavor repped in his previous life as a game show host. It certainly didn’t hurt Lew Wasserman when his former client Ronald Reagan entered the White House, but this was a different kind of calling card entirely. Then, like every company in Hollywood, Endeavor had been forced to take stock of its culpability in the industry’s power structure thanks to the #MeToo era that Trump’s election had helped presage. (They have had to publicly announce investigations into harassment accusations against two agents.) Add to that the matter of WME’s newest investor, Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Emanuel hosted on his grand tour of Hollywood in the spring of 2018. (As had Rupert Murdoch and Bob Iger.) The goodwill resulted in a $400 million investment, a check Emanuel felt compelled to return after the Saudibacked murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi six months later. In March came the Writers Guild dispute which saw TV writers fire their agents en masse over what they saw as agency overreach when it comes to packaging fees. The standoff has dragged on since. It had been a tough stretch on the personal front as well. Both Emanuel and WME partner Patrick 148
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Whitesell saw marriages end in recent years. The latter’s breakup became international tabloid fodder when word got out that his wife was having an extramarital affair with the Lord of Amazon himself, Jeff Bezos. Market forces weren’t exactly in WME’s favor either. In the weeks ahead of its planned IPO, high-flying tech launches built by charismatic founders had floundered or wrecked beneath sudden Wall Street skepticism. WeWork’s smashup, still unfolding as the Endeavor gang gathered in the Goldman offices, was so spectacular and tragicomic that it sucked the appetite for newfangled business models right out of the market. Then, on the eve of Endeavor’s pricing, Peloton hit the skids. The cultish home-workout brand downgraded its offering and prepared to open even below that new low. And yet on this day, all such matters—macro and micro— were back of mind as WME and its bankers set to crunching the numbers to arrive at a stock valuation. And then crunch them again. And again. Emanuel and the team worked the figures with the Goldman advisers, searching for a scenario, any scenario, that would produce an inside straight. Nothing seemed to work, and slowly the room began to realize that going public would mean setting a price far below what they had come for, and probably getting even less than that. For the many agents and executives of William Morris Endeavor who had followed Emanuel through the wilderness, working at reduced pay in exchange for equity, it was the jackpot deferred. And for many observers both in and outside the company, it was the unthinkable: The unstoppable Ari Emanuel had met an immovable object. Word quickly got out, and from one end of town to the other, the schadenfreude flowed. After decades of watching Emanuel grow, grow, grow—dangerously! recklessly! so many had warned—finally, the comeuppance. WME president Ari Greenburg was en route to the New York Stock Exchange for the traditional bell ringing and had to be called back. Someone forgot to cancel the In-N-Out truck that had been ordered for the next day’s soirée at the company’s headquarters. The would-be centerpiece of the celebration became a glum consolation. No zillions this year, but here’s a cheeseburger. In the days to come, stories ricocheted across L.A. of real estate agents who suddenly found their weekends free as WME agents canceled their appointments to search for that perfect upgrade in the hills. By December, the New York Post was reporting that a number of agents at the company were feeling burned and eyeing the exits. “The first rule of agenting is don’t count your chickens,” said one observer. “A lot of people had calculated the price tags on a lot of chickens.” Such sentiment shouldn’t come as a surprise in a town that’s never been rich in sympathy for one’s rivals. But speaking to other agents and industry players in the months since WME’s failure to launch has yielded much more than just the usual told-ya-sos and grave dancing. As of this writing, the entire entertainment industry is marching toward a cliff commonly called the streaming wars. After years of ignoring the disruptive potential of on-demand video and actively licensing their product to their usurpers, the button-downed mandarins of today’s Hollywood have finally taken note. Everyone is spending at levels never seen before to try to capture a piece of the new market, which may, in the course of things, displace not just traditional cable money but the entire movie business.
Does any of this add up? What lies on the other side of the cliff? No one knows, but it will certainly bring ruin and disaster for at least some of them. Is each little Hollywood fiefdom meant to sit patiently and wait to be swallowed? Since the ’80s, but really even back to the days of radio, agencies have supplemented their 10 percent commissions with packaging fees— an arrangement through which an agency bundles clients into one project and forgoes its usual commission for a share of the eventual revenue. The upside became so lucrative in recent years that it essentially paid for A-list agenting: offices, suits, cars, travel. The arrival of the streaming giants caused the packaging well to dry up. The streamers by and large pay huge prices for shows and their rights, which means no back end or ownership. For the agencies, that meant falling back on a business of working just for commissions. Endeavor’s push to grow and diversify can be seen as a need to have a product that’s more durable and independent of the goodwill of clients (whose own career life spans are getting shorter). Love it or hate it, WME’s moon shot had come to represent (and may yet still) a different kind of Hollywood future—one grounded in a romanticized version of its past as home to outsize egos and galactic ambitions. Emanuel’s fate presented a veritable whiteboard upon which so many in town could mark up their own existential anxieties. So have we reached the natural limits of how far a brash, swashbuckling showbiz mogul can go on energy and imagination? Or is a force of nature like Ari-dom not to be that easily derailed? ne can’t overstate just how big a splash Ari Emanuel (who declined to speak for this article) has made in Hollywood for so long now. From his very earliest days out of the training program at Creative Artists Agency and then as a young upstart agent with a 1,000-words-a-minute elocution at the midtier firm InterTalent, legends of Emanuel’s ambition have been a constant. By his mid-20s, Emanuel had become a devotee of the futurist George Gilder, whose 1990 book Life After Television anticipated the streaming era. Still barely more than a trainee, Emanuel brought the writer predicting a postnetwork world to speak at the agency, which was then living at the height of traditional network deals. It wasn’t all techno-futurism and media theory. A hard-charging, frattish culture took shape around the young InterTalent group. Trash talking at the weekly office basketball games was so fearsome that even hardened Hollywood players wilted before the put-downs. “There was one game where my agent’s assistant was fouling me hard—hard!—and calling me a useless moron,” recalls one occasional player. And when in 1995, Emanuel and three other agents broke off on their own to form the Endeavor talent agency, the legend only grew. “There was the hazing,” one early Endeavor employee recalls. “It was this group of guys who were all interconnected. They had the boarding school connections, a lot of Harvard. And you felt that when you went there. It was frat type guys running their company like a frat.” The antics would later be embarrassingly revealed in 2002 when agent Sandra Epstein sued the firm, alleging a culture of sex on desks, casual pot smoking, and one instance of an assistant being ordered to book prostitutes for his boss. The suit was settled out of court.
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The stories of Emanuel’s volcanic temper became a subgenre of their own: tales of him berating employees or rivals, lobbing projectiles across the office, or, as one observer remembers fairly recently, beating to death his laptop in his building’s garage. There are his health regimens. At six feet one and a lean 165 pounds, Emanuel practices a strict vegan diet with intermittent fasts. He works at a treadmill desk. In the mid-aughts, Entourage and Jeremy Piven introduced an exaggerated idea of Emanuel to the broader public consciousness. But not even a premium cable parody builds a legend like success. In 1995, Endeavor came into being as a nearly micro boutique with a specialty in TV writers at a time when the agency world was defined by the overwhelming shadow of Mike Ovitz and Ron Meyer’s CAA, unchallenged champion of the 10-percent world. Emanuel and his hard-driving partners grew their little boutique to the point where, in the important (soon to be all-important) world of TV series creation, they challenged and even surpassed CAA in deals. In 2009, the feisty start-up did the impossible and merged with—effectively swallowed up—the stalwart of Hollywood stalwarts, the William Morris Agency; still a formidable company, particularly in the music business, where Endeavor was weak. In the absorption, Emanuel and William Morris Endeavor became the first true rival CAA had seen, eventually joining it along with UTA, ICM, and Paradigm in the five-part hegemony that has presided since. The rivalry with CAA also created another comparison, between Emanuel and the great dealmaker of the previous generation, Ovitz.
“The first rule of agenting is DON’T COUNT YOUR CHICKENS. A lot of people had calculated the price tags on a lot of chickens.” In his 2018 memoir, Ovitz himself called Emanuel and Whitesell his “real heirs.” One can take this as a swipe at his own former protégés or as an attempt to aggrandize himself by association with Emanuel’s building of the sort of multipronged media company he was never able to turn CAA into. But the comparisons to Ovitz, a slash-and-burn business practitioner, have their limits. Emanuel, despite the yelling and laptop beating, engenders a remarkable loyalty from those around him. Former assistants gush, which is almost unheard of in Hollywood. Even outsiders who are extremely skeptical of his imperial designs can’t help but lavish praise. “Ari is the hardestworking man in this business. There is no one more dedicated to his company,” says one source I spoke with for this piece, having finished tearing down the greater Endeavor vision. s WME grew, Emanuel hatched a plan to use a talent agency, of all things, to combat the tech interlopers awakening to Hollywood’s potential. It’s a plan that demonstrates Emanuel’s singular place in Hollywood circa 2020. For more than a century, the film business has been a sanctuary for moderately unhinged C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 5 8
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Lee Grant, seen here in a 1970 TV movie, turned to directing to have a voice.
“IF YOU’RE NOT BEAUTIFUL, YOU’RE FINISHED” The Hollywood blacklist, sex on sets, ageism, sexism, the charms of Warren Beatty: The elegant, indomitable, Oscarwinning actor and director Lee Grant speaks the truths of a lifetime By Julie Miller H O L LY W O O D
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ing documentarian, Lee Grant is a lovely host—quick-witted, warm, and fiercely candid about the obstacles that life and Hollywood continue to throw into the path of women. Grant— who is now in her early 90s—made a sensational film debut opposite Kirk Douglas in 1951’s Detective Story, winning best actress at Cannes, as well as being nominated for an Academy Award. Then the blacklist struck. While giving a eulogy, Grant had suggested that an actor friend’s death had been hastened by the trauma of being questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee. She was largely sidelined between the ages of 24 and 36. Compounding her difficulties was an unhappy relationship with her first husband, blacklisted screenwriter Arnold Manoff, which Grant chronicles in her memoir, I Said Yes to Everything. When Grant returned to the screen in the mid 1960s, the ageism of the industry was debilitating. Still, she won the 1966 supporting actress Emmy for Peyton Place, the 1976 supporting actress Oscar for Shampoo, and earned two additional Academy Award nominations for The Landlord and Voyage of the Damned. In the 1980s, Grant pivoted to filmmaking, presciently shining a light on social issues like income inequality and poverty in America, most notably in her Oscar-winning 1986 documentary Down and Out in America. During my three-hour visit to her home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Grant gave me a tour of the artwork and personal photographs papering her walls, referred me to her Pilates instructor, and offered me sincere relationship advice. After settling into a comfortable corner of her bedroom, she talked passionately about a range of subjects. They included the horrors leveled at women in the industry; her memories from the sex-crazed set of Shampoo; and her happy second marriage, to producer and painter Joseph Feury. 152
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PAG E S 150–51: I M AG E F ROM A B C P HOTO A R C H I V E S / WA L T DI S N E Y T E L E V I S ION / G E T T Y I M AG E S . PAG E S 154–55: I M AG E F ROM T H E E V E R E T T C OL L E CT ION
ON TOP OF BEING AN OSCAR-WINNING actor and a trailblaz-
J.M.: In your memoir, you described a pivotal moment with your then husband that encapsulates so many themes about not just being a woman but being a woman in Hollywood: You were offered an acting job and your husband told you he would leave you if you took it. You were in your mid-30s. You’d been blacklisted and hadn’t worked steadily in years. And you took the job. L.G.: My first marriage was [with] somebody who had no need for me at all. He had two boys he didn’t want to give to the boys’ mother because he’d have to pay alimony, so he [wanted me to basically be] an au pair who would be there, cook dinner and take care of the boys so he could make a living. That’s exactly what I became until he said, “If you leave, we’re finished.” Thank God his feelings toward me were so evident that, at last, my pride wouldn’t let me go back there to take care of the children. I had no control over my life. I had a daughter who was about four at the time, and I knew that if I didn’t work, I’d lose her. My whole focus at that time was to keep Dinah. If I didn’t have her, I had nothing. I had no other means of making a living. The only thing I could do was act, and I had to look 29 for this part. You went to what, for the time, were great lengths to make sure you did look 29—you got a face-lift. Did you hear of other actresses doing the same thing? No, but I was sick. It was neurosis…. I was so panicked after being blacklisted from 24 to 36. I mean, think about that age. It’s your prime age as an actress. It’s the only age. At 36, you’re a character actress. I didn’t even enter Hollywood until 36, and I spent the next 12 years trying to hide my age every way I could— on my passport, on my driver’s license, in publicity. I really was panicked they would find out how old I was and not hire me. You get a little nuts. This was in the 1950s. Were you scared that something might go wrong during the face-lift procedure? No. It was, “Please, save my life.”
As women we’re taught that so much of our worth is appearancerelated. When you’re an actress, that pressure must be exponentially worse. That’s all that exists in Hollywood for women. If you’re not beautiful, you’re finished. You can be cute. You can be pert. But you have to be young. It’s not like with the English, where there is a different kind of measurement. In England, you can be a 90-year-old woman, respected as an actor, and work. You mentioned that at age 36, you’re considered a character actress…. I’ve never, ever, ever wanted to be the lead in movies. Never.
agent was gay. He couldn’t care less about me. He was crazy about Joey. [Grant married Feury in 1973.] Anjelica Huston spoke recently about the climate in Hollywood during the 1970s, and the parties that people like Jack Nicholson threw. That was our group. Brenda Vaccaro and Michael Douglas were together. The parties at their house were amazing—everyone you ever wanted to meet in your life. It was every week. The door opened and somebody from Paris would come in. Somebody from England. Some great comic. Every director. Everybody was kind of beautifully stoned. It was like an
In the middle of this party, she was writing her lists of what to get for the kitchen or something like that. I just saw him move right out of my life. Of course, she didn’t pay any attention to him, which was so much more attractive to him. In Shampoo, you won an Oscar for playing the mother of Carrie Fisher’s character. What do you remember about her, and more generally, about being on set? Her character played tennis, so she was in white shorts—her legs and arms were as white as her shorts were. She just was so exquisite with that little face, and her big, dark eyes. She had a mystery to her. The scene where Warren was in the
“I was so panicked after being blacklisted... I spent the next 12 years trying to hide my age on my passport, my driver’s license, in publicity....” Because the lead part is always attached to box office. No matter how interesting you are, if the money doesn’t come in at the box office, you don’t get your next movie. Take Faye Dunaway. She did Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky—[whom] I worship. Somebody comes along, only once a lifetime, and is able to rip the falseness off of what the industry was. But she was remarkable and got the Oscar for Network. Two pictures later, my agent, who was also her agent, was sitting in the dailies watching a film she was working on. He overheard [someone] saying, “Look at that fat pig.” There has been a deluge of horrifying Hollywood stories in light of #MeToo. Did you have any of those kinds of encounters? No. What do you attribute that to? Those years I was acting, the directors that were coming out—the Norman Jewisons, the Hal Ashbys—they were bringing a new kind of film. It wasn’t an atmosphere where old guys came on to you. My H O L LY W O O D
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open house in a golden time. It had love affairs to it but no breakups. What do you mean by that? I mean there was a lot of flirting, but nobody broke up—except Brenda and Michael. Brenda comes here for dinner all the time, by the way. Michael and Catherine [Zeta-Jones] were just here two days ago, having dinner. I have to show you the robe she gave me. [She runs to the closet and returns with a pink robe.] This is a [Casa] Zeta-Jones. What about your flirtations back during this period? I remember Warren [Beatty] calling me one time after [Shampoo] was over. He said, “What are you doing tonight? You want to go down to Brenda and Michael’s, and meet there?” I said, “Sure.” I thought to myself, The film is over. He’s such a cute, sexy guy. I drove to Brenda’s house. I was sitting on the couch talking to Warren when I saw his eyes wander over to a table in the middle of the house. I turned my head, and there was Dolly Parton. I saw myself being slowly dropped. She was so gorgeous.
bedroom with Carrie—the day before we did it, he took me aside, and he said, “You don’t know what’s going on in the bedroom between those two characters.” [Beatty wrote the script with Robert Towne.] I said, “You’re telling me what to think?” “No, but this is something you have….” He couldn’t stop, and he wouldn’t stop. I was so upset that night—that this was going to be my life for this movie, that he was going to tell me what to do and what to think—that I came in the next day, and I quit. I went up to him and I said, “I’m off the movie. You can’t tell me what to think.” Of course, he came over and said, “I’m sorry. It will never happen again.” What happened with that scene with Carrie was that I had come in with my hair in rollers for his character to take out. [My character] was so hot—so on fire with need for sex—that I didn’t give a fuck who he fucked in that room. I just wanted him to get upstairs and do me. That’s almost the way I [myself] felt through all of that film. The set was so hot that the hairdressers were having 153
hot dreams. It was like, whoa. I called a gay friend of mine who I’d always found so cute and so attractive, and said, “Come down from San Francisco, wherever you are, and make love to me.” He said, “You’re scaring me.” You mentioned being game to meet up with Warren after filming. Were there any other costars you were drawn to in that way? No. Joey was 12 years younger than me. He was a producer on commercials and was going to be traveling around the country for jobs. I knew that there was going to be some cute little girl along the way that he would, you know, spend an afternoon with, or try and pack it in with, or go to the bathroom in the airplane with. If somebody came along that I could not resist, I wouldn’t have stopped myself…. I like to flirt. It’s part of living. If he was serious about somebody, it would kill me. This is what I wrote for us when we got married…. [She gets up and returns with her and Joey’s framed marriage vows, which read: Q: Will you please continue to be my dearest friend—to be there when I am afraid or lonely or unwanted—as you always have been. To help me grow—even when growing separates us—and will you continue to acknowledge my freedom and solitary rights as I must acknowledge and respect your freedom and your solitary rights. A: I will try.] Are there any parts you wish you could be playing now? I have big problems remembering names. [During an intense meeting with House Un-American Activities Committee lawyers, Grant inadvertently mentioned two women; the terror that she had jeopardized their careers was so deep that recalling names continues to be a struggle.] That has spread to lines. I had a trauma when I did a Neil Simon play with Peter Falk. In the second act, I forgot my lines. It was on the Wednesday matinee of the week that we were closing. It had been running for a year. Every actor has had a 154
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moment onstage where the lines go and a costar is [usually] able to say something like, “Are you talking about eggs?” But Peter didn’t know how to save me. Peter turned to the audience and pointed at me with his thumb. All of a sudden, I was just exposed in front of these thousand people. The curtain had to come down. I tried two plays after that. I didn’t forget my lines, but I was not the great investigative actress I wanted and needed to be. I was scared. When you’re scared, you’re finished. How incredible that you were able to pivot to filmmaking. It took me out of actors’ hell. When I say “actors,” I mean every actor—the men, the women. You go up onstage and expose yourself. “He was good; he was bad.” “She’s getting old.” Being behind the camera and choosing what you want to explore, it freed me. You’re never free of how you look. You’re never free. I’m always…look at this stuff, you know? [She gestures to products piled high on her desk.] Makeup piled on makeup, all age-related. There’s about to be a retrospective of your films in Manhattan. How does that feel? It gratifies me so much. I’ve made great documentaries, really great documentaries and important ones. They were my war against the people who were blacklisting—to be able to speak with my own voice. Not acting, because, with acting, you’re saying other people’s words. At what point did you decide you wanted to make films? I had just come back from doing Voyage of the Damned and I got a call from AFI [American Film Institute] saying they were doing the first women’s directing workshop. I had an idea to do the play The Stronger by August Strindberg. Nothing has been that magical for me—to create a life out of four pages. When I was at the Los Angeles Film Festival for a presentation [of The Stronger], I was sitting next to Barbara Kopple. Her film came up—Harlan County,
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Grant in 1975’s Shampoo, for which she won the best supporting actress Academy Award.
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USA—about coal miners who were striking. I hadn’t seen that kind of documentary ever, and it was a life changer. I was comparing this jewel of mine to this great insight into people’s lives. I had so much to say that I couldn’t say because I was afraid I wouldn’t work again if I said it. That’s when I decided that was what I wanted to do. Your husband has grown with you. He produced your documentaries, including Down and Out in America, which won the best documentary Oscar. I was playing Mrs. Mussolini in Yugoslavia when Joey called and said that the documentary we wanted to do [was a go]. 156
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I remember saying, “Well, that’s such an important subject… if I can’t come back in time, let them do it [with another director]. It’s so important that.…” He said, “Are you fucking kidding me? Are you kidding me?” In your memoir, you wrote that the blacklist taught you how to fight the bad guys. What other bad guys have you had to fight? Well, as you and I know, we’re in a period that is rewriting and refilming exactly what I went through in the ’50s. Don’t forget that Trump said, “Where is my Roy Cohn?”—the guy who [helped create] the blacklist and was this shadow figure to Joe McCarthy.
To be a part of this, at this time in my life, and after Obama.… After Obama won the election, my friend Virginia wrote me a postcard about what it was like on the street where she lived when Obama won…people coming out and looking around and asking, “Is this real? Is this a dream?” That’s how I feel about the Trump thing. It’s difficult to know how to respond when so much is being threatened. I wrote a letter to the Times [criticizing the response to Al Franken], and then I thought about the #MeToo thing and there was a time when Rose McGowan attacked Meryl
I M AG ES: F ROM L E F T, F ROM M IC H A E L O C H S A R C H I V ES/G E T T Y I M AG ES , C O U RT ES Y OF A F I, F R O M S H U T T E R S TO C K , © C O L U M B I A P I C T U R E S C O R P O R AT I O N – R U B E E K E R F I L M S / A L A M Y, COURTESY OF LEE GR A NT, B Y ROB I N PL AT ZER/ONL IN E USA/T WI N IM AGES/GET T Y IMAGES
From left: In 1971, a few years after being removed from the blacklist; at the 1974 Directing Workshop for Women—she’s gone on to direct socially conscious documentaries; with Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night.
A LIFE IN PICTURES
From left: With Warren Beatty in Shampoo; a self-portrait; with husband Joseph Feury at the New York premiere of Dr. T and the Women, 2000.
Streep [because she worked with Harvey Weinstein for years]. The idea of women attacking women—that’s not #MeToo. The women friends I have—we worked together, we shared together, we mourned the loss of so many lives together. You don’t attack each other. I got scared. I sent the letter to Dinah, my daughter, to look at before trying to publish it. She said, “Don’t send it. At this time in your life, you don’t need to be attacked by the people you fought for.” ... I don’t know how to use Twitter. I don’t have that part of my brain. I can’t type. It left me feeling that I don’t have any weapons, and that I have no way of reaching out and saying, “Look at what you’re doing. How could you do this? [Especially] at this time.” Having carried yourself with such strength and grace throughout such challenging periods, what advice would you give to women coming of age now? This is a very scary world that my grandchildren are going into. H O L LY W O O D
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How do you protect your kids? I don’t know. I live in a castle that is so beautiful to me. [She gestures to her apartment.] It has all my friends’ pictures in it. All of my friends come to the kitchen. That’s the world I want to live in. I’m frightened of that world out there. There are Trumps all over the world now. There are devastating political abusers in every country, who are taking all the money, and are leaving the people with nothing. There are rebellions all through South America. There are fires from California to Brazil. There are people begging for work. There is a man taking our troops away from Syria, so that the few allies that we have there are about to be killed. We’re living in a world that is so ugly and so unequal, that to step out of this apartment is to face a kind of reality that I never thought would be there when I was a child. It was a wonderful world. I [grew up] under Roosevelt. They were kind.
They were elegant. They weren’t gangsters. These are gangsters. Female actors are still scrutinized for their looks, obviously—and not just by producers but by critics and even the public on social media. What do you think when someone like Renée Zellweger is criticized by complete strangers about her appearance? I hate that. That’s so petty. These are the things that worry me about the press—they don’t see what she’s gone through. They don’t see the thing that that person said about Faye Dunaway. “Big, fat pig.” They don’t see the skinning that women get in Hollywood for a wrinkle or a bag under the eye. They’re fucked. Renée Zellweger is a very charming actress. Lovely actress. Very unique. Did you see her in Judy? Yes—and, of course, she plays Judy Garland when she’d been ravaged by the demands of Hollywood and was running on fumes. That’s our lives, honey. 157
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divorce, maybe they won’t. I wanted to make it as fluid as a real relationship and a real family is.” Jones, a veteran of unorthodox comedies like Parks & Recreation and Angie Tribeca, says that playing Joya has been “fun and chaotic and really different than anything I’ve ever worked on,” at least in part because Barris’s emotional entanglement in the series keeps things off-kilter. During one scene I watched them shoot, Barris accidentally called Jones’s character Bow instead of Joya, Bow (or Rainbow) being his real wife’s nickname, as well as that of the character on CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 137
Ari Emanuel
geniuses to pursue their dreams on an epic scale. Very few of the type still roam free, certainly not at the helm of heavily capitalized companies. In the Entourage version of Emanuel’s life, the character ends up taking over a studio and becoming, effectively, king of Hollywood. In the real-life script of Hollywood circa 2020, those studio-chief slots, when they do come open, seem invariably to go to buttoned-down (and previously unknown) corporate types. The man who stands as the unquestioned leader of traditional Hollywood right now, Robert Iger, perhaps the most successful executive in showbiz history, is the anti– mad genius, a king of common sense. Hollywood has slowly ceded its claim as global grand visionary capital to Silicon Valley and watched while a succession of wunderkinds has created the modern world’s miracles from the realms of tech, not entertainment. Then a couple of guys named Reed and Ted dropped in on the industry with a mail-order CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 149
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Black-ish played by Tracee Ellis-Ross. This hall of mirrors he’s built is tricky to navigate. “I do get the sense that Kenya is working out a lot of his marriage stuff in this show,” says Jones. She was particularly struck by a scene in which Kenya lashes out at Joya, a lawyer who has become a stay-at-home mom, mocking her for being obsessed with her social media persona and all the trappings that come with money. “My character is trying to find her identity, to figure out how she fits into this weird world that is so different from the life that they thought they were creating together.” As for Barris himself, even just the sheer scale of his work life seems to be therapeutic. He has those movie screenwriting projects in his back pocket: The Witches and Coming to America 2 are scheduled to be released this year, with Uptown Saturday Night and Last Dragon in the works. Barris is also developing a stage musical about Juneteenth with Pharrell Williams for the Public Theater. At Netflix, under his Khalabo Ink Society banner, he’s executive-producing projects like the new sketch comedy show Astronomy Club, as well
as Kid Cudi’s forthcoming animated music series, Entergalactic. He’s hoping his Netflix slate can also include stories about slavery and the conversation about reparations. Sitting in his living room, staring at a glimmering painting called Infinite Blackness made of diamond flakes and ebony lacquer, he muses, “I could easily make that my life’s mission.” In addition to all this, of course, there’s the fact that Barris is not just a creator now, but an actor as well. On the set, he seems surprisingly charismatic and agile. Hale Rothstein, an executive producer on #blackexcellence who’s been working with Barris since The Game, admits that he’d been nervous about the decision to have him star. The second day on set, however, they were chatting about basketball while waiting for shooting to begin. “The director yelled ‘action’ and Kenya just completely switched on,” says Rothstein. “All of a sudden he was saying the words and I thought, Oh wow, he’s really an actor. This was the right choice.” Barris, of course, retains his right to be anxious and skeptical to the end. “The moment I think, It’s going to be great,” he says with a shrug, “shit falls apart.”
DVD business and in a few years had half the town working for them. When this all began to unfold, the agencies were still rich in the era of home media revenues and giant packaging fees from broadcasters, an arrangement that allowed them to own a percentage of the show in place of commissions and share in the resulting revenues. The streaming era might as well have been a seven-mile-wide comet. Recalls one agent, “The change of the last decade has been relentless and terrifying. In 2013, Netflix had one show on the air and they were the only streaming service.” Then HBO aired True Detective and, the agent says, “the walls came tumbling down between movies and TV.” Sensing a tectonic shift, WME saw an opportunity to go where no agency had gone before. The notion was to build on the hub of an agency what Emanuel has called a “21st-century media company”—a galaxy of entertainment and cultural businesses and servicing arms (media rights, legal support, etc.) that help grow those businesses, through which clients could build out and own the products of their talents in a variety of fields. Seeing a future in which two to five companies control and wholly own all of traditional entertainment, the Ari plan was to turn Endeavor into a counterweight to the streamers and studios, giving clients outside avenues to control their destinies. On came a slew of acquisitions that on their faces seemed to have little to do with the business of a Hollywood talent agency but might provide such opportunities down
the line: the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Miss Universe Competition, Frieze Art Fairs, Fashion Week, Professional Bull Riders. To Endeavor supporters, it was a recognition that the real competition for Disney, Netflix, or Apple won’t be other streaming services but the stars themselves, who, by creating industries around themselves and building international followings, become more valuable than just the next job they book. Think Dwayne Johnson or Rihanna. There were reasons no agency had gone there before. To start with: There are laws. The state of California in particular has traditionally, but not lately, enforced very strict rules against agencies creating conflicts of interest by controlling the means of production as they were. But the political representatives who oversee these matters had started to let things slide. With the amount of money Hollywood contributes to politicians in the state, Emanuel seems to have sensed they weren’t about to start getting tough again any time soon. But there were also unwritten rules. The moves put WME in contact with the third rail in agenting: It started producing its own movies and TV shows, via Endeavor Content, which had a hand in La La Land and Killing Eve, among many other projects. To detractors, this furious growth was megalomaniac Emanuel empire-building for its own sake. “Nothing is enough for them,” says one observer. “Ari’s on a mission to make himself a captain of industry, as opposed to leaving well enough alone at a time when you can make a fortune as an H O L LY W O O D
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agent.” Skeptics claim the Endeavor empire has ceased to serve the agency’s clients and become its own beast, demanding to be fed at the clients’ expense: forcing agents to funnel clients to in-house projects from the many corporate arms rather than pursuing better deals elsewhere. “At the head of the agency meeting it’s the same group of guys who own 100 percent of the voting stock needing to support all the branches of their company,” says one observer. “I don’t know what they are selling,” one veteran says. Endeavor says that if it ceases to operate in its clients’ best interest, they can walk anytime. Wall Street has never shown much interest in Hollywood talent agencies—and maybe with good reason. An agency is always one bad lunch with a movie star away from a wrecking ball through the balance sheet. As one veteran put it, “It’s a business where your merchandise walks out the door every night.” The audacity of Emanuel, many see, has been to tie around the agency such a collection of other stuff that the agency itself and the fluctuations of individual stars becomes less critical. (And indeed, in the current Endeavor, even without the IPO, the entire WME agency accounts for only about 30 percent of the company’s cash flow.) To the naysayers, it’s scale for the sake of dazzling investors in hope of luring Wall Street cash, and a dangerous distraction for
Peggy Siegal
socially desirable people that onlookers assumed he too was socially desirable. “Bill Gates sort of normalized it,” said New York publicist R. Couri Hay, who says he considered, but decided against, taking Epstein on as a client. “Because you figure, Bill Gates can meet him [and] be his friend for two or three years. So why can’t you?” “He was a very minor aspect of the mix,” Siegal said of Epstein. “He was one of thousands that came through. And in the billionaire level, hundreds of. He was nothing really special, except he was another wiseguy billionaire.” She paused. “Or said he was a billionaire.” Court records document Epstein’s assets at $550 million. CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 131
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the core business. To true believers, it’s the hedge against the very scary future Hollywood is mindlessly barreling toward. Amid all the dislocation and insanity, some around town wish that someone out there were trying something different, something crazy even. (And let’s not get totally ahead of ourselves. There’s still plenty of schadenfreude too. The TV writers gladly took credit for having a hand in WME’s launchpad sputter. Expert opinions vary as to how much is deserved.) But the heavily corporatized entities currently running the place have displayed little appetite—even in the face of looming disaster—for the craziness and big visions that have built Hollywood. Which brings us back to that IPO deferred. As Emanuel has told confidants, these giant streaming Goliaths are fated to attack each other for the same market while a whole new world of completely different entertainment experiences arises— Snapchat, live events, what have you. Which was the road Endeavor started down; one in which “talent agency” is no longer the core definition and one in which Emanuel positioned himself to become a hybrid mogul– studio boss unlike anyone else in town. With the IPO nixed, those plans may have to wait. From within the agency, sources paint a more determined future. While the disappointment is certainly palpable and still raw with anyone you speak to, people familiar with the company’s finances are unequivocal. Cash flow, they say, is ample
to sustain the business and service the debt. Its Moody’s rating remains top-drawer, and investment money is still available to fund further growth. In November, Endeavor made yet another acquisition, the Harry Walker Agency, a firm specializing in speakers’ engagements, and announced a program to buy back shares from its employees—compensating those who missed their chance for the big score. Further, they point to the fact that the company was able to pay back the Saudis and cut ties. (Uber, another of this year’s IPO class, seems unable to take the same leap, earning itself eternal blowback.) So is this the end of Emanuel’s worlddevouring ambitions? Has reality bitten hard enough that he’ll settle down, focus on tending to the agency, and play nice? As one industry veteran, an Endeavor skeptic, admits: “I don’t think a new IPO makes any sense at all but maybe it’s still doable. If you’re a great salesman, you can sell anything.” People who have talked to Emanuel recently report a man disappointed but unbowed, and looking at how this experience could make him and the company stronger. He recently told one colleague, “There is no such thing as failure. You learn from every experience. I’m not looking at how big my stack of cash is. I’m looking to grow something about where the world is going. People put it in economic terms, but success is about what you learn.” And in Hollywood, there is always, always another act.
By 2007, as the Palm Beach investigation was playing out, Epstein’s profile was expanding. For a New York magazine article that year, journalist Philip Weiss met with Epstein in the office of Manhattan P.R. heavyweight Howard Rubenstein, who has represented Rupert Murdoch, Leona Helmsley, and Mount Sinai Hospital. (A spokesperson for Rubenstein’s firm says that after Epstein’s conviction, the firm dropped him and stopped returning his calls.) Titled “The Fantasist,” the article described the criminal accusations against Epstein, which included using a vibrator on a 14-year-old girl. Siegal is the first Epstein friend quoted in the article, in a paragraph that noted that girl’s age. Two months later, Epstein surfaced at another Siegal event. He returned to Florida to plead guilty later that year. “No matter what it said in the paper, [that] was irrelevant to the fact that he wasn’t in the jail,” Siegal says in defense of her overall proximity to Epstein. “So how serious would you think that was?” The New York story provides a window into how Epstein’s social circle might have understood his crimes at the time. The article presented a theory that Epstein viewed and passed off his lechery as a version of the libidinous lifestyles that made
men like Bob Guccione and Hugh Hefner famous a generation earlier. Weiss ultimately paints an entirely monstrous vision of Epstein, but his early pitch to his subject was: “It’s the Icarus story, someone who flies too close to the sun,” as if sexual contact with minors was a symptom of overambition. (Epstein’s instantly infamous response: “Did Icarus like massages?”) I asked a different journalist, who ran in Siegal’s social circle at the time, whether the ages of Epstein’s alleged victims were common knowledge. “I think it was generally known,” the journalist said. “But it was like, ‘Oh, wow, you got away with it. Wow. Good for you.’ ” “There was a whole group of guys that were bad boys, that had very bad reputations,” Siegal told me. “They used to be called playboys. And my relationship with them was not about their social lives. I had a business to run. If they had legitimate social clout, and could make a difference and pass along a good word about these films, they were included in these events. I didn’t have time to get involved with the social lives of these guys.” More than one Siegal friend made a similar, if backhanded, argument: Peggy was too self-interested to enable Epstein. VAN IT Y
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Peggy Siegal “You know about the golden rule?” Siegal asked me during a discussion of men who abuse their power. Do unto others? “No. Those who have the gold, rule.” When Epstein returned to New York in August 2010, reporters noted his presence at a Siegal screening of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The guest list included Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Rudy Giuliani, and the late shopping mall magnate Alfred Taubman. The scene prompted one observer to joke to the Wall Street Journal about the “beautifully done meeting of the prosecutor and the felon.” (To be fair, they could have been talking about Taubman, who served time for violating price-fixing laws.) Epstein’s presence at Siegal events, or seemingly on her arm, periodically drew attention. The Hollywood Reporter dated its last such sighting to 2016. Siegal told the paper that Epstein had sometimes been a last-minute guest-list addition, in which case his name wouldn’t have appeared on the studio-approved list. During Epstein’s second month back in New York, Siegal attended a post–Yom Kippur break-fast at Epstein’s home. The Daily Beast’s Alexandra Wolfe reported that “a group of 120 friends brought their children over.” Siegal said she recalled only that the event was a “serious religious gathering.” Then there was the dinner for Prince Andrew. On the day of the party, in December 2010, Siegal said Epstein called to request her help. “And I’m like—” she fell into a hushed tone, “Prince Andrew? Yeah, I could do that. When is it?’ ” Tonight, said Epstein. “I thought it was strange,” Siegal said, “that someone who actually had a prince in his house as a houseguest—couldn’t figure out a few people to invite for dinner? I thought that was odd. On the other hand, I had my own selfish reasons because I wanted to tell Andrew about The King’s Speech.” She was promoting the film, which later won best picture. Its distributor was the Weinstein Company. Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding was coming up, so Siegal called three journalists: Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, and Charlie Rose. She also invited Chelsea Handler, Woody Allen, and Soon-Yi Previn. “I said, there’s this guy, Jeffrey Epstein. He has a huge house. It’s really beautiful, it’s one of the largest houses in New York, and he’s a financier.” And he was hosting a dinner for Prince Andrew. In the July Times article, Handler said, “It was just one of those strange nights.” Stephanopoulos described his attendance as a mistake. Siegal said Prince Andrew was “incredibly polite” but would not comment on his interactions with Epstein. Then she asked me if 160
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I’d watched the third season of The Crown, which she recently binged. “Peter Morgan is a genius,” she said. The New York Post published its “PRINCE & PERV” cover two months after the duke’s visit, prompting the Duchess of York to issue her statement abhorring pedophilia and to apologize for accepting money from Epstein. Around that time, Epstein hired another publicist, Los Angeles crisis manager Michael Sitrick, who has represented R. Kelly, Harvey Weinstein, and Theranos. Sitrick said that, knowing what he knows now, he would not accept Epstein as a client. He emphasized that his work for Epstein was “not a reputation restoration assignment.” He only fielded press requests, he said: “I never met him.” Nobody has accused Siegal of enabling Epstein’s criminal behavior. Siegal says the dinner party was a favor. Rather, she is accused of enabling Epstein’s rarefied social life, which he in turn presented to his victims to manipulate them. “More than being just a movie screenings guru, she’s an important social connector,” a New Yorker who has known and observed Siegal for years told me. “And if you’re kind of gross and second-tier, or if your politics are out of step with the dominant allegedly progressive ethos of New York, she can do a lot to ameliorate and ease the way.” Especially, this person theorized, “if you’ve got a private plane or a beachfront property.” (Siegal says she was never on Epstein’s jet or visited his homes in Palm Beach and the Virgin Islands.) I ran down a list of rumors and questions about Siegal’s relationship with Epstein. Did she see him with girls who appeared to be underage? No, but: “It’s very hard to tell their ages. You don’t walk into a room and say, ‘Oh, right, how old are you?’ ” Did she accept Epstein’s financial assistance when she traveled, as she confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter in July? “That’s a mistake,” said Siegal. “I thought I did, and I went back to the accountant. I never did.” How could she confuse that? “In my world, people send presents. In my world, people invite you to their homes in the South of France. They invite you on boats. Sometimes they invite you on planes.” Did Epstein help her during a legal issue with her brother over her inheritance? “Yes, he gave me help.” She would not specify its nature. Did she hire a young woman as an intern in 2018 on Epstein’s recommendation? I provided the woman’s name. “Everybody’s friend has a daughter who wants to be an intern. I don’t even know their names.” Some Epstein accusers have described performing jobs that might have resembled those of a household staff. Did Siegal notice that?
“You’re not supposed to notice the staff.” At a recent press conference, a woman who alleged she was 15 when Epstein raped her said: “It was clear from the time I spent with Epstein that something was very wrong with his lifestyle, and it didn’t take a victim to see that. We were not hidden.” They didn’t have to be. To socially ambitious guests whose attention, care, and compassion went in only one direction—up—they would have been invisible. “I didn’t have chains,” Virginia Roberts Giuffre said in her BBC interview “These powerful people were my chains.” Siegal contemplated whether her admitted inattentiveness is a personal failure: “Part of this, this—I don’t know whether guilt is the right word—but remorse, just this nauseous feeling, is that I didn’t see it. How did I miss it? I mean, I’m extremely articulate. I am extremely perceptive. I’m in the perception business, and it was right in front of me and I didn’t see it. And it’s very hard to believe that. But it’s the truth.” Epstein hanged himself in his prison cell on August 10. (Siegal does not believe Epstein committed suicide. “Where has the FBI hidden Ghislaine Maxwell?” Siegal asked, throwing up her hands. “I have been destroyed, and Ghislaine Maxwell is probably on some island, sunbathing!”) Less than a month later, at the film festivals in Telluride and Toronto, Siegal received no invitations to screenings or parties. Before a Jojo Rabbit showing in Toronto, she said “a dear friend” asked her to avoid the theater, lest her presence damage the reputation of a comedic movie about Hitler. Two months later, Siegal was uninvited from HBO’s premiere of the Ralph Lauren documentary Very Ralph at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. “These are dear friends of mine, treating me like I have leprosy,” said Siegal. To stay busy, Siegal hosted events pro bono for friends. She organized a fundraiser for a South African theater troupe that British director Stephen Daldry supports. She hosted a dinner for her dermatologist, Macrene Alexiades. At the Hamptons International Film Festival in October, she purchased 40 tickets to a screening of the Netflix film The Two Popes, invited a crowd that included seven voting members of the Academy, and hosted a dinner party at the East Hampton home of billionaire philanthropist Katharine Rayner afterward. If a studio hired Siegal to organize such an event, the bill would be between $20,000 and $25,000, she said: “I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.” Why did Siegal fall so hard, so fast? All of her detractors—and many of her boosters— brought up her churlishness. “I don’t think that Jeffrey really undid her,” said the longtime observer. “I think she mistreated people for so long, for so many years, so publicly, so H O L LY W O O D
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flagrantly, that the minute there was…this little thing that nonetheless revealed something bigger about her, everybody pounced.” Two people noted that those who work with her sometimes feel leveraged. “She gets the confidence of a fancy director who’s being nominated for an Academy Award, then she gets the director to call the studio and say, ‘You have to hire Peggy Siegal.’ And they hire Peggy. And they’re annoyed,” said a producer who believes Epstein provides a convenient excuse for them to avoid her. Some, including Siegal, point to sexism. Matt McKenna said Siegal’s gender made her a media target: “That it was a woman who helped Jeffrey Epstein come back? I think that narrative was too seductive for the trades.” Several people I spoke to argued that Siegal would not seem so “brusque” if she were a man and invoked seemingly unsinkable male Epstein associates such as Wexner and Black. But has gender protected those men, or has their status and wealth? Some men have lost prestigious posts: Joi Ito, director of the MIT media lab, resigned after his role soliciting donations from Epstein came to light. MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman stepped down amid controversy over leaked emails discussing a different scientist’s Epsteinrelated sexual assault allegation. Prince Andrew may have been forced into early retirement. “I think we wonder, are we somehow not giving her the pass that we would give to men?” said the observer who thought the scandal revealed Siegal’s larger issues. “But it’s like, no! She’s a person who had no issue kind of orchestrating the social reinvention of David Koch and Jeffrey Epstein,” this person said, referring to Siegal’s relationship with the late billionaire activist. “That’s a specific person. And sometimes ruthless ambition is loathsome.” There are publicists who rehabilitate criminal reputations for a living, a different publicist noted. But Siegal’s job is to bring people places. “She cultivates an audience. You want to feel good about that person.” When the mix is the message, there isn’t room for any error in judgment. Hollywood isn’t a town known for its vast reserves of loyalty. “For her business to be threatened because she invited Jeffrey Epstein to parties is just such bullshit!” a
producer who is fond of Siegal told me. “It’s morally reprehensible to take Peggy down because of what Jeffrey Epstein did. Every fiber in my body says that’s wrong.” He paused. “Unless, by the way, have you uncovered more?” Meanwhile, the film industry is changing. Intimidating bosses with big personalities aren’t tolerated as they once were. As theatrical releases lose their power, so do adjacent traditions such as screenings. And the Academy is changing too: Under pressure to increase diversity, the group has added thousands of new members in the last few years. Siegal’s power base, as she readily admits, is old white Jewish men—their votes still matter, but less than before. “She is one of the direct causes of #OscarsSoWhite,” said an ex-employee. Can Siegal make a comeback? Several people I spoke to pointed out that only a few months have passed since her P.R. crisis; maybe she’ll have better luck next year. “I have been told to go away,” Siegal said. “ ‘Go away for a year so everybody forgets.’ Well, I’d like to know where I should go.” A fellow publicist observed that Siegal may be her own worst enemy: Is she having a publicity crisis or publicizing a personal crisis? “She came up to me at a party and said, ‘You know I can’t get any work,’ this whole kind of pity thing,” said a person in Siegal’s social orbit. “Woe is me. Feel sorry for me. And you know what? I almost did.” But, “there are a lot of much nicer people that this happened to, that deserve our sympathy and support.” Siegal can talk for hours about being treated unfairly. During our interviews, she went out of the way to name three ex-employees she believes spoke to the press and are poaching her clients, including one she believes stole her list. Ironically, Bobby Zarem has long held that Siegal stole his list. He’s 83, working on his memoir in Savannah, Georgia, and still mad. (“I did not steal his list,” said Siegal.) In December, Siegal attended the world premiere of Cats, her first major studio premiere since her fall. It took work. She lobbied NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer by email before securing the invitation. Before the movie, she stopped by a cocktail party in the Manhattan home of Greece’s
exiled crown prince—across the street from Epstein’s town house. She observed that the lights were still on. Why not retire? I asked Siegal. Be a fulltime lady who lunches? She glanced at Fields, who is 18 years her elder and still goes to the office. “If I would be happy with that, I would have married a dentist 50 years ago and moved to Scarsdale like Marjorie Morningstar,” she said, referring to the 1958 film in which Natalie Wood, in the title role, plays a Jewish American actor deciding between career and marriage. Defying her mother’s vision for her, Siegal never married. At the end of our first sit-down, Siegal asked me to turn my recorder back on. The sun had set during our two-and-a-half-hour interview, prompting Barbara Guggenheim to joke that we looked like we were having a séance. To get that first job as a showroom model, Siegal said, she’d been forced to stand in a bra and slip in front of the store’s owner, who came too close, looked at her lasciviously, and touched her shoulder. “I was 16, and that was the first time I experienced fear of a man who I didn’t know,” she said. When she was 24, Siegal said, she would walk to the factory that manufactured her jewelry line. “The truck drivers always used to whistle. And I always used to say hi to them because I wanted to just be so cool.” One summer day, she said, one of the whistlers followed her. When she got into the factory building elevator, he jumped in, trapped her, held a knife to her ribs, and demanded to see her breasts. He pinned her to the wall. She screamed. He repeated his demand, and she kept screaming as he held the car on an empty floor. Eventually, he ran off, she said. She broke down and cried. “To this day, I will not stand in an elevator with a single guy,” she said. “I never went in a subway again. I took taxicabs everyplace. I never walked home alone after an event or a movie.” She was teary and shaking as she told me this. At our next sit-down, Siegal was more composed as she discussed Epstein’s victims. “The idea of these women, what he did to these women, is so incomprehensible to me,” she said. “To be a part of this, and to be accused of being part of this, it’s so humiliating.” “I keep thinking, What did I do to deserve this?” she said. “And then I say, ‘Nothing.’ ”
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1. dana Busch designs. One-of-a-kind sculptural works of art for the body. Precious, semi-precious and rare materials are harmoniously combined and meticulously hand fabricated, guided by nature’s beauty and Dr Busch’s intuitive aesthetic. Visit danabuschdesigns.com and also available at medicinemangallery.com (IG) @danabuschdesigns 2. Inspired by a boho-chic style, Kaia accesorios is an Argentinian brand by designer Cindy Alhadeff. Her collection features a wide range of handmade pieces that are trendy, unique and eye-catching. Visit kaiabsas.com or IG @kaiabsas to discover more of her beautiful designs. 3. iVy shores is a unique Australian brand, showcasing minimalist and contemporary collections of nature-inspired jewellery. Their growing range is feminine, classic and elegant, featuring natural freshwater pearls and fine gold detailing. Visit ivyshores.com.au Follow on IG @ivyshorescollections or email info@ivyshores.com.au for further information. 4. Founded in 2014, BarBedWire is an online jewellery boutique specializing in unique, modern fine jewellery by independent designers. Each collection is thoughtfully curated and the jewellery edit is hand selected for its originality, quality and timelessness. Discover more at shop-BarBedWire.com and follow on IG @shopbarbedwire 5. maKiKo WaKita fine jewellery is based in Los Angeles, California. The ‘Motto’ collection is made with cast of an 1800s desk seal intaglio with French, Italian or English sentiments, all set with quality white diamonds. Their solid gold fine jewellery is handcrafted using the lost wax technique, resulting in one-of-a-kind pieces. Making their pieces part of your own story and pass them down with a message for generations to come. Visit makikowakita.com and follow on IG @makikowakitala 6. Kinsey designs is a chic jewellery brand by designer Ali Kinsey. Each of Kinsey’s pieces is crafted with versatility in mind and made for every woman’s unique style. Their jewellery can be worn alone for an elegant and dainty look or layered to create a bold statement. To discover more visit shopkinseydesigns.com or Follow IG @kinseydesigns 7. mosuo is a brand that believes in the beauty and power of femininity. Their pieces are delicate, yet expressive, and look beautiful with an everyday outfit or a 5 cocktail dress. To discover more of their elegant pieces visit mosuo-shop.com or follow IG @mosuo_jewellery 8 . mon isaBelle is a beautiful fashion label that challenges the connection between raw metal, silhouettes, and reminiscences. Each piece is exclusively handcrafted by founder Lea Monsenego who uses fair-trade gold and recycled silver to create timeless and eye-catching fine jewellery. To discover more visit monisabelle.com and follow on IG @monisabellejewellery 9. Siberian born, based in Shanghai, andrey yarden known for his celebrities bespoke 8 commissions and his love for antiques reflected in a timeless and unisex style full of symbolism and inspiration from around the world. “the apple of my eye” bestseller ring combining delicately polished 18k gold hands holding an exquisite Japanese pearl – just another way to say “I love you”. Available with black Tahitian pearl option at andreyyarden.com (IG) @andreyyarden 10. Jana WorKshop is a unique and stylish jewellery brand based in Hungary. Their designer Jana creates handmade pieces that emphasise dynamism, minimalism and individuality. They mainly deal with custom orders but they also offer various collections. To discover more visit janaworkshop.hu, email janawrkshp@gmail.com and follow IG @janawrkshp 11. Blaze your own irrepressible trail with puro editions’ game-changing range of healing gemstone jewellery. Expertly crafted in Cheshire using labradorite, onyx, moonstone, pearls and more; Puro Editions’ dramatic Allure Collection brings you the chicest wrists in the room with the clearest head to match. Mention VF10 for an exclusive 10% off your first order at puroeditions.co.uk and follow IG @puroeditions 12. Unique and Elegant, US – based eraya diamonds is always inspired by the astounding beauty of nature and gemstones. The jewellery is dazzling one of a kind and is designed for every special occasion of your life by paying attention to every last 12 detail to ensure perfection, and will never let you down. Visit their top of line collections at erayadiamonds.com 13. niBiru collection, is a brand inspired by annunaki culture and born from luxury. Their pieces attract attention with their strong, bold and unique designs. Their Chilean, Milan based designer, Marcela Mayorga adds an antique and chic style to her exquisite sold gold and handmade designs. To discover more visit nibirucollection.com and follow on IG @nibirucollection 14. Wear exquisite fine jewellery and feel good about it. scéona offers an alternative to the traditional jewellery industry: by using only recycled 18kt gold and cultured diamonds to craft its minimalist designs, Scéona is respectful of the environment and the people. Discover more at sceona.com and follow on IG @sceona_ 15. amorVu is a fine jewelry brand creating distinctive earrings and rings for women and men. Their stylish jewelry is made to order, including metal and gemstone options enabling customers to personalize their piece. Amorvu sells worldwide. To view their exclusive collection, visit amorvu.com or IG @amorvujewelry 16. elaine Field is a luxury fashion brand, specialising in hand crafted jewellery and clothing created by Barbadian artist and designer Lara Rogers. Visit elainefield.com or follow on IG @elainefieldofficial and for further enquiries email info@elainefield.com 17. Designed and handcrafted in Andalucia in Southern Spain, proenza JeWellery combines uniquely coloured and shaped stones and a beautifully crafted gold-plated 17 setting to create exclusive, eclectic and sophisticated pieces, for every woman and every occasion. Discover more online at proenzajewellery.com and follow on IG @proenzajewellery 18. arte noVa JeWellery is a Portuguese jewellery brand, developed by a third generation of goldsmith manufacturers. Inspired by heritage and driven by the passion of the goldsmith art, focusing on creating history with 19 details as 19,2kt gold and 925 silver jewellery. Discover more at artenovajewellery.pt and follow on IG @artenovajewellery 19. the sattVa collection is a conscious lifestyle jewellery brand handmade by artisans in India, and part of each sale goes to support underprivileged children. Attune to the sacred feminine when wearing the Sri Yantra Collection, this yogic symbol represents the goddess energy; 20 invoking authentic power, radiance and abundance in the wearer. Discover more at thesattvacollection.com and on IG @thesattvacollection_ 20. danielle moosBrugger a California designer featuring her handmade rich green emerald and diamond necklace in solid 14k gold. Experience her full line at daniellemoosbrugger.com and IG @danielle_moosbruggerjewelry Use code: Sparkle for 20% discount.
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21. tashi adornments. A bridge between ancient and contemporary, 21 Tash Halicki’s bold and flamboyant Jewellery pays homage to old world style, culture and mythology. Each piece is handcrafted, full of colour, and imbued with a sense of spirit, while reminding us of the beauty of being perfectly Imperfect. Visit tashijewellery.com or follow @tashi.jewellery on IG. 22. sabine Werner JeWellery designs and lovingly handcrafts contemporary statement pieces in her studio located in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. She mainly works with sterling silver, resin and semiprecious stones. In her clean designs she combines simplicity with a touch of luxury to create wearable art. Discover more online at sabine-werner.com and follow on IG @sabinewernerjewellery 23. sacred birch is an LA based line of contemporary jewellery. A self-taught metalsmith, Lauren uses recycled 14k gold, fine silver and sterling silver. Fascinated by the duality of pearls and chain, her designs are made with a strong sense of invention and newness to elevate your style. Discover more at sacredbirch.com and on IG @sacredbirchjewelry 24. Enriched with gold, sienda JeWels take inspiration from the depths of the sea where shells, starfish and tentacles intertwine. All pieces are handmade in porcelain and are often accompanied by other materials including silver, brass, copper, fabrics and ropes. For Italian brand Sienda, luxury is about being daring and wearing something unique. Shop online at siendajewels.com and follow on IG @sienda.jewels 25. stamped by the coast specialises in handmade personalised jewellery for women, men and children. They are a North Norfolk based small independent business and pride 24 themselves on being affordable. They donate a percentage from each sale to WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Visit stampedbythecoast.co.uk and follow on IG @stampedbythecoast 26. aimee Fairman sculpts crystalline forms that capture suspended moments of nuanced colour and microcosmic nebulas of iridescence. Individually hand-cast in resin, the Australian artist sets her “Geo-Alchemy” creations on rose gold or sterling silver. Shop her unique pieces at aimeefairman.com and follow on IG @aimeefairman 27. g F Williams have been trading coloured stones for over 50 years. They specialise in supplying and advising people on making bespoke jewellery around gemstones. Visit gfwilliams.co.uk or follow on IG @gfwilliamsandco to get a taste of the wonderful world of 28 coloured gemstones. 28. palipa JeWelry. Hand-made, customised and limited-edition. 29 Inspired from spirituality, meditation and exotic travels. Eco-materials and natural stones are hand selected to compliment the lifestyle of the wearer, transcending the status of accessory to daily companion. 32 Visit palipajewelry.com and follow on IG @palipajewelry 29. rolanda alVes JeWels and gems is a jewellery brand based in Portugal. They make one of a kind pieces for one of a kind gemstones. To make you feel special and unique. Visit rolandaalves.com or follow @rolandaalves_jewels on IG. 30. Just a few steps from the Santo Domingo Plaza in Cartagena, Colombia, you will find lucy JeWelry, a store which is part of a XVII century mansion. An atmosphere where the refinement, innovation and cutting edge are combined in jewellery for its elegance and captivating originality. Visit lucyjewelry.co and follow on IG @lucyjewelry 31. aguJa y claVo JeWelry. Statement jewellery that is powerful, yet personal. Each piece is made to feel as if worn by women from the past while also remaining contemporary. Handmade with recycled precious metals and one-of-a-kind gemstones. Follow on IG @agujayclavojewelry 32. Avant-garde shades and edgy aesthetic characterise the first enri mars jewellery collection designed and handcrafted in Italy. A contemporary raw and 35 luxurious design in which silver perfectly match with gold and small diamonds for a genderless and timeless style. Shop his unique one-of-a-kind jewellery at enrimars.com and follow on IG @enrimars 33. london de specialise in bespoke diamond and coloured gemstone engagement rings and jewellery, handmade in their London workshop. They can create any design to order and they only deal in responsibly sourced gemstones, purchased directly from ethical sources. Contact them directly on 020 7859 4754 or support@londonde.com to arrange a free consultation in their Hatton Garden studio. Visit londonde.com and follow @london.d.e on IG. 34. VK JeWellery london creates modern and timeless fine jewellery to empower the contemporary woman. Sophisticated, yet elegant and on trend, their delicate handcrafted pieces take inspiration from Istanbul’s diverse landscape and reflect the mastery of the Grand Bazaar jewellery artisans. Explore the pure gold, diamond and semi-precious gemstones that characterise VK Jewellery at vkjewellerylondon.co.uk and follow on IG @vkjewellerylondon 36 35. Vösh design is a Mexican jewellery brand mixing trends, creativity and handcraft for the contemporary world. Visit voshdesign.com or follow @voshdesign on IG. 36. sandee b JeWelry. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. Sandee has created a line of jewellery that truly captures the essence of love, elegance, and simplicity encompassed in every piece. Infused with pure intention, Sandee hand selects each pearl during her visits to Tahiti and creates each design, often after divine guidance. Visit sandeeb.com or follow @sandeebjewelry on IG. 37. guillory is an effortlessly chic brand by Anastasia Komleva. Their pieces are perfect for the bold and stylish who want to stand out. Every piece is handmade with Swarovski crystals and conveys their unique, vintage and romantic style. To discover more visit guilloryjewelry.com or follow on IG guillory.jewelry 38. culture shocK JeWelry is an Indigenous-owned company that uses simplicity to make a statement. Their company strives to create high quality and stunning stainless steel jewellery for everyday wear. Creating authentic pieces for customers around the world, follow their journey, (IG) @cultureshockjewelry cultureshockjewelry.com 39. Inspired by Arabian culture and tradition, all shamsa JeWellery pieces are handcrafted in a traditional souq using 925 sterling silver or 18 karat gold. Have your own name or that of a loved one transcribed into this beautiful Arabic style of calligraphy. Discover more at shamsajewellery.com and follow on IG @shamsajewellery 38 40. reFramed JeWelry designed by Kinda Mouawad, combines Rock and Roll chic with elegant diamonds and daring designs to deliver elegance with an edge. It re imagines precious gems in a unique and unexpected way. Shop pieces at reframedjewelry.com and follow IG @reframedjewelry 41. square colored JeWelry fabricates metal and stone jewellery in sunny California. Handmade with high-quality materials to last over time in geometric and artistic designs. They have something for every occasion, shop online at squarecoloredjewelry.com and follow on IG @squarecoloredjewelry
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À La Mode alanna rose designs
Alanna Rose Designs is a high-end swimwear brand with attention to detail and a bold sense of style. Branching into sustainable swimwear for the environmentally conscious. Alanna Rose signifies luxury for the woman who wants to set trends not follow them. Shop the collection at alannarosedesigns.com and follow on IG @alannarosedesigns
anastasia Bones Anastasia Bones is a female owned and operated vegan clothing brand based in Miami, Florida. All of their clothing is ethically made by hand and each piece is unique and meant to make women feel beautiful, sexy, confident, and strong. Visit anastasiabones.com (IG) @anastasiabonescouture
siren swimwear Siren Swimwear is an international luxury swimwear brand that draws inspiration from the essence of the Bond girl. The brand was created after New York based designer, Katarina Palumbo, spent time in Key West drawing inspiration from the locals, who spend all of their time underwater. Designed in NYC and made in Miami, this swimwear brand captures the essence of Avant Garde design, whilst never compromising on flattering silhouettes and timeless elegance. Standing out and making a statement is never an issue in Siren Swimwear. Visit sirenswimwear.store or @siren_swimwear on IG.
landa LANDA is an exciting new label of beautiful and timeless handbags for the modern woman made with the highest quality raw materials and finest craftsmanship. Find your ideal day bag in buttery leather totes, mini bags and crossbodies. Visit www.landabags.com Instagram: bagsbylanda
uhana Uhana was born out of a wish to create quality garments that both fit and feel perfect. What started as a collaboration between designers Mira Vanttaja and Hanna Virkamäki has grown into a true community and a company that still stands for the values that it was built on: fairness, equality, sustainability and bold beauty. Visit uhanadesign.com or follow @uhanadesign on IG.
the gentleshrimp The Gentleshrimp is a unisex clothing brand that combines attitude, charm and modernism. Their t-shirts provide a classic fit with thick cotton fabric. Discover more smooth statements like these at thegentleshrimp .com and follow on IG @thegentleshrimp
mamaKaya Mamakaya, the best for you and your outfit. Stylish, diverse and different. Fair trade. Products come direct from the Wayuu tribe. These are women who work for them and many households. Mamakaya has been part of their culture and they work directly hand in hand with them. Love the art of the Wayuu tribe. Follow on IG @mamakayashop and visit mamakaya.com
spangelo designs Spangelo Designs specialises in gowns and cocktail dresses with demi-couture finishes. Custom designs available on request. Shop prêt-couture online at spangelodesigns.com and follow on IG @spangelodesigns Model: @sarahkruegerr Photo: @me.sublime
naZarene amiCtus “ROMANS 8:28” summer collection is a fusion of African and Asian fashion with cultural flair; featuring two distinct types of exquisite cloth of an orient baroque-damask rectangular oversized blouse over a 3D sheer inner body shroud that can be styled in many ways. A simple convenient yet noble look accidentally put together by basic skill of assemblage rich in both philosophy and history. Visit nazarenefashion.com or IG @nazarene.amictus to find out more.
BeQuartii
Sustainable luxury made in Paris by Bequartii. Designer and architect Iryna Krauze, creates impeccable cuts and lines in wool, silk, cotton and leather. Shop her first romantic and contemporary collection at bequartii.com and follow on IG @bequartii
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Para caya para caya is a mother-daughter sewing project turned accessories brand, inspired by their latina heritage and the earth. Their debut collection features sustainable handbags and jewellery made in peru. receive $35 off of every purchase of $200 or more with the code ‘neW35.’ visit paracaya.com or follow @paracaya on iG.
asPassia tagliente aspassia Tagliente is a luxury leather brand that produces elegant and exclusive handbags to add beauty into women’s lives. inspired by mermaids, who represent the divine feminine energy, aspassia Tagliente designs limited edition collections for the woman of today and the woman of the future. visit aspassiatagliente.com or follow @aspassia_tagliente on iG.
Origen designed and handmade by indigenous arhuacos, embera and Wayuu of colombia. origen Made in colombia, supports and encourages the recognition and ancestral value of the indigenous ethnic groups, as well as the millinary traditions of each culture. support them and visit origenmadeincolombia.com or follow @origen_mic on iG.
Artistic Licence 1. arte Mani studiO is an artisan duo from italy specialising in venetian plaster art, based in new Zealand. nicoletta Benella (designer) and Marco Baldisser (master artisan), fused their points of view to transform an unaffected ancient tradition, into a contemporary aesthetic. currently accepting commissions. visit artemani.co.nz and follow on iG @arte_mani_studio
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2. Patrick earle is a bold colourist who explores the joy and beauty of the visual experience. This painting ‘Trees’ is inspired by the walking in the woods in Guernsey. find out more at patrickearle.com or follow @patrickearle.art on facebook or iG.
4. Working with digital photography and exploring new ways to portray botanics, danish photographer egOn gade is using the high quality from of 100 million pixels to show the smallest details of the fantastic world of flowers. egon Gade has many years of experience in still life photography and the eye for simplicity. egon Gade artwork is displayed using handcrafted wooden frames. visit egongadeartwork.com to find out more.
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5. rOB sirignanO is an abstract artist working with paint in a very creative way to produce clean, yet disastrous works of art. rob worked closely with clients on commissioned artwork for carefully curated spaces – creating a colour palate that suits both the space and the individual. visit robsirignanoart.com and follow on iG @robsirignanoart 6. steVen nederVeen’s images capture a magical quality of the ocean, turning a vast horizon into an intimate portrait of waves and froth. steven’s mixed media work is featured internationally in galleries, art fairs, magazines, and many private collections. for enquiries, email steven@nederveen.ca or visit bau-xi.com/collections/steven-nederveen#. 7. detroit Baklava, born Brian lacey demonstrates the importance of art as communication. lacey establishes that ones work must not reject the environment from which it originates, rather provide context, and put the world around us into perspective. often working on large-scale public Murals with a collage-based approach, the notion of cyclical 7 growth through decay and reconstruction is explored through lacey’s use and application of a variety of mediums. visit brianlaceyart.com or @detroit_baklava on iG. 8. a.c. lindner paints naturalistic still life and animal subjects using traditional oil glazing techniques, a centuries-old process resulting in luminous and beautifully detailed finished oil paintings. for more information regarding paintings and bespoke services, visit aclindner.com or email lindnerstudios@yahoo.com
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To adverTise please conTacT classvaniTyfair@condenasT.co.uk or 020 7499 9080 x3705
3. los angeles based painter edie Beaucage crisply deploys multi-hued brushstrokes to set off characters in colour-field moments and fantastical spaces. Her work was exhibited at untitled art fair Miami, and is part of the creative artists agency collection. edie is represented in la by luis de Jesus Gallery. visit ediebeaucage.com and follow on iG @ediebeaucage
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Blooming Beauty 1
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1. Baszicare. Pamper yourself this holiday with Ortus and Artius. Ortus, an overnight eye masque, which aims to nurture skin and help replenish skin near the eye area for an elegant and refreshed look. Visit baszicare.com and follow on IG @baszicare 2. After over 300 years of making perfumes and colognes strictly and privately for kings and royalties in the Middle East, the PerFumist decided to offer their work to the public. Everything they offer is 100% limited, natural, and extremely rare. Visit theperfumist.com or follow @the.perfumist on IG. 3. dime Beauty offers this replenishing serum which captures the simplistic beauty of clean skincare. While this formulation embodies simplicity, it is much more than just a hydration serum. Hyaluronic acid itself has been known to act as a carrier for other ingredients, which can help to boost the performance of other products when used together. Visit dimebeautyco.com or follow @dimebeautyco on IG.
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4. studiO nine seVen tWO. Finally, an organic and non-toxic candle safe for everyone from IG @studionineseventwo. Forget the days when candles give you headaches and nausea and enjoy the clean-burning aroma of their all-natural coconut wax and luxurious fragrances. Shop the range at studionineseventwo.com
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5. nOel herBal skincare is a holistic practice offering a intuitive and simple approach to skin. Shannon (owner) thoughtfully curates plant based products, such as this Hydrosol face mist, adding hydration and comfort to your daily routine. Visit shannon-noel.com and follow @noel_herbals on IG.
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6. QuiensOyshOPPe is a minimalist lifestyle brand featuring beautifully scented soy candles that are handcrafted in small batches. Their simple yet vintage vibe allows them to complement any space and mood. Visit quiensoyshoppe.com to use code QUIEN10 and follow on IG @Quiensoyshoppe 7. marie sky cOsmetics is a brand that represents art, love and luxury. Quality should never be a compromise. They raise the bar with a variety of vibrant colours and specialise in lips featuring matte liquid lipsticks, lip liners, lip gloss and lip scrubs. Visit marieskycosmetics.com or follow @marieskycosmetics on IG. 8. dr. ankerstjerne is innovative Norwegian science: skin care has never been so easy to use! THE SET constitutes a complete skin care routine in only four products. Perfect for anyone who likes a bit of luxury in their busy everyday lives. Visit ankerstjerne.no or email hei@ankerstjerne.no
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9. nantucket candle cOmPany proves that history really does repeat itself. As a whaling capital and hub for business in the 19th century, one of Nantucket’s commodities were luxury candles made from whale and beeswax. This company was set up to continue this but in a sustainable way, using a coconut wax blend while keeping the local beeswax. They create scents infused with elements from the island’s most precious locations, keeping you on the island even when you’re off. Visit nantucketcandleco.com and follow on IG: @nantucketcandleco for more.
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10. chuckling gOat Sensitive Cleanser and Lotion is handmade in small batches on a Welsh family farm. Containing award-winning probiotic kefir, goat’s milk, honey, oat oil, healing essential oils and therapeutic herbs. Free from perfumes, dyes, chemicals, parabens, petrochemicals and phthalates. Suitable for eczema, psoriasis, acne or rosacea-prone skin. Visit chucklinggoat.co.uk and follow on IG @chucklinggoat 11
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11. Deep within its formulation skills, 100% made in Italy ÉlÈVe holds the secret of its cosmetic worth: the most wanted functional principles, the most powerful antioxidants and the best carriers. Their Antioxidant Oxygenating Serum Instant Filler Effect is the clear expression of this mix. It contains highly concentrated Cross-Linked Hyaluronic Acid that, straight after the application, shows a visible filling and enriching effect on wrinkles for a long time. Visit elevecosmetic.com and follow IG @elevecosmetic 12. Born from the struggles of the Founders struggles with Alopecia, the Rescue Scalp Serum promotes a healthy scalp, promotes hair growth and stops hair fall. mayur naturals is an all-natural, organic, vegan, gluten-free skincare, hair care and cosmetics system with a nutritive, therapeutic philosophy of ingredients. They help to provide a complete solution for anything you put on your entire body. Transform yourself, naturally. Visit mayurnaturals.com or follow on IG @mayur_naturals 13. FOrlle’d is a professional Japanese skincare brand based on nanotechnology, ionization and biofermentation. Seen here is Hyalogy Lift cream with biomimetic peptides and tourmaline powder. Follow @forlled_uk on Instagram and shop at forlleduk.com
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14. Poetic and modern. ateLier oBLiQue is a Berlin-based luxury perfume house. Unique Eau de Parfums and hand made scented candles represent the core collection. The invisible language of scents, timeless design and the craft that accompanies it, are the guiding theme of the brand. Available at Liberty London or atelier-oblique.com Follow @atelier_oblique to dive into a world of highclass fragrances.
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15. haoMa perfumes are free from all synthetics and certified organic. They are also vegan. Sophisticated and transcendent No.1 is Haoma’s signature blend, it will also enhance your wellbeing thanks to the pure essential oils in it. Truly magical and long-lasting with notes of Myrrh, Patchouli, Geranium, Frankincense and Cedarwood. Visit haoma.co.uk (IG) @haoma_uk 16. heinrich Barth’s Skin softening body cleanser. Rich lathering and revitalizing body cleanser infused with a blend of fig leaves and sage extracts evoking images of a summer on the Aegean islands. With this exclusive combination of botanical extracts, this gentle nourishing formula will leave your skin feeling superbly soft. Visit heinrich-barth.com
Vanity Fair’s Shortlist 1. Light Up Your Life with Beach LoVe candLes™ . They offer a luxury range of unique, beautiful and bespoke scented candles. In addition to their ocean themed candles, Beach Love offers designs for all occasions, including personalised photographs INSIDE the candles! The company couples the highest quality gel available with low smoke wicks to create amazing designs using hand selected seashells and ornaments. All fragrances are true to scent, and their products are affordable on any budget! Shop online at beachlovecandles.com or follow them on IG @beach_love_candles
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2. Moonrise candLe co is a father, son, small-batch soy candle company based in the United States. Combining natural scents with a neutral design, their candles offer a timeless comfort. Check out their signature collection at moonrisecandle.com or @moonrisecandle [IG].
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3. We love these Bewater bottles with crystals at their centre. This one is called Clarity with Amethyst and is just one of sixteen different crystal combinations that bewater offers. Perfect for someone who has an affinity for gemstones as well as anyone on the hunt for an on-trend and gorgeous gift or accessory. Visit bewater.com and follow on IG @bewater.water 4. aLiK & co. watches are uniquely crafted to pioneer a change in the fashion industry. Each watch is equipped with interchangeable straps, a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal glass, and a two-year warranty. Their contemporary design is suitable for any occasion and lifestyle. Shop now alikandco.com IG @alikandco
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6. Based in New York City, duchess oF caMeron is the finest purveyor of high-end Bespoke Cakes. With a notable client list, it’s no wonder these custom-designed cakes are in demand. These showstopper cakes are perfect as one-of-a-kind gifts or as centerpieces at your next event. To learn more, visit duchessofcameron.com and follow @duchessofcameron on IG. 7. BeL reBeL is a niche perfume boutique, based in Mayfair. You will find there a carefully curated selection of fragrances from all over the world, making it a perfect destination for those looking to gift others and indulge themselves. Buy online at belrebel.com and follow on IG @bel.rebel
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8. coLdFire presents a high-tech tactical Bifold Men’s RFID Wallet featuring genuine kangaroo leather, Carbitex CX6 Carbon Fibre and Dyneema reinforced lining, perfectly blended to deliver strength and protection in an ultra-slim package. The sleek design is complemented with a signature Titanium logo plate. Shop online at coldfirebrand.com and follow on IG @coldfirebrand 9. hugo & ceLine premium dog treats, food and ice cream from Sweden. All-natural ingredients and no scary additives, the products come in stylish design award winning packaging. Dogs all over the world can’t get enough of these treats. Get yours at Fetch or Ocado, or find your closest retailer at hugoandceline.com/retailers See happy dogtestimonials on IG @hugoandceline 10. PLrB creates high quality Menswear with modern updates on classic and tailored fits. The PLRB Lambskin Leather Racer Jacket in Salted Caramel is inspired by classic racing style but is updated with a few modern details as seen here on Actor and Entrepreneur Robert Ri’chard. All clothing and accessories are created to support the active lifestyle of today’s fashion conscious, modern urban gentleman. Visit plrbclothing.com or follow IG @plrbofficial 11. cherished newBorn PhotograPhy By aMy ward stands out by creating stunning images that are artistic and highly original, as well as timeless. She also donates part of her profits to charity. A gift voucher for a session with Amy is that perfect gift for any parent to be. Visit cherished-byamywardphotography.com or email info@cherished-byamywardphotography.com for further information.
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5. siLK theory PiLLowcase. Get 8 hours of amazing beauty sleep with the game changing Silk Theory! Their carefully curated Silk Pillowcases help lock in your hair and skin’s natural moisture, keeping your hair frizz free whilst also reducing the appearance of fine lines, helping you wake up to dewy, hydrated skin! Shop now at silk-theory.com or follow on IG @silktheoryuk
Proust Questionnaire
The director of Pain and Glory talks samba and social justice
Pedro Almodóvar
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hat is your idea of perfect happiness? A sudden summer breeze on a hot afternoon. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Federico García Lorca. Which living person do you most admire? Dr. Pedro Cavadas, a pioneer in face transplants and a specialist in the transplant of severed members. This surgeon from Valencia devotes his summer breaks to travel to Africa and tend to children who have been castrated in tribal conflicts. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Sincerity in its most brutal version. It isn’t always necessary. On what occasion do you lie? The few times I go to a movie premiere, or to a theater opening, in the artists’ dressing rooms. Which living person do you most despise? I don’t despise, I prefer to hate. And I hate Trump. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? In Spanish: “No doy crédito” (“I cannot believe my eyes”). In English I usually abuse “actually….” What is your greatest regret? If I make a mistake, I try to apologize. But regret is an imposition from my Catholic childhood that I refuse. When and where were you happiest? The first time I went into a samba school in Rio de Janeiro. The whole neighborhood was rehearsing in plain clothes the numbers they’d perform during the Carnaval. Which talent would you most like to have? To be a great novelist. What is your current state of mind? I miss my youth. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? You have to accept family the way it is. What is your most treasured possession? Memories. Materially speaking, 18 of the 21 films I have directed. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? All
miseries are unfair and unbearable, but migrants running away from war and slavery only to find First World doors closed seems intolerable to me. The other side of this problem is people condemned to unalleviated poverty in the First World, which seems horrible to me too. Where would you like to live? For the time being, in Madrid, where I feel most comfortable and organized. What is your favorite occupation? To rewrite, when I have the story for a script clear and defined. What is your most 168
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marked characteristic? I never give up. What is the quality you most like in a man? Originality and lack of prejudices. What is the quality you most like in a woman? The capacity to fight. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Don Quixote. Who are your heroes in real life? The
ONG Open Arms, whose members risk their lives and freedom to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. What are your favorite names? Antonio, Carmen, Soledad, Eurídice, and Fe (Faith). How would you like to die? Like John Huston, after shooting The Dead.
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