Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2021 i Vanity Fair

“I PUT ON makeup today. That’s a first step.” The year is 2009, and Kim Kardashian, impish in an oversized T-shirt and full lashes, is off to a modest start in an early episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Kris Jenner scolds her daughter (classic reality TV) for missing a meeting about her debut perfume. Kardashian’s quip about makeup is mock serious: contouring as minor achievement. In today’s light—given Coty’s $200 million investment in KKW Beauty’s cosmetics and fragrance empire, with skin care due next year—it reads as prophecy. “Famous for being famous” was the early descriptor for the ur-influencer family, whose lives have unfolded across every available platform. (As KUWTK wraps its 14-year run this spring, a multiyear Hulu deal spells more ahead.) But that fails to register…

IN LATE DECEMBER and early January, as COVID-19 vaccines were just beginning their chaotic rollout to the states, a furtive scramble took place inside the Trump White House. One after another, political appointees at very high levels approached chief of staff Mark Meadows and members of the National Security Council to ask a favor: They wanted to be on the list. It was, to be sure, the ultimate VIP list: On it were the names of U.S. government officials whose work was considered so essential that they needed to be vaccinated against COVID-19 from a limited supply that would otherwise have gone to the general public. The allotment was intended to protect career staff who could not telecommute (such as White House butlers), critical workers in the field (such as…

IT HAD BEEN NARROWED DOWN to four actors for the two lead roles. We were broken into pairs. I was teamed with an impossibly handsome young actor named Rob Lowe who was auditioning to play my rich roommate and the son of the woman with whom my character would have an affair. The film was called Class. I was back in the dizzy and disorienting world of “what-the-hell-is-going-on-and-how-did-I-get-here,” which suited my character perfectly. Rob and I were sent off to spend an hour together in an effort to create chemistry while the other pair of actors were put through their paces. We wandered through the nearby Water Tower Place, where I was soon to shoot a memorable (at least to me) love scene in a glass elevator. Rob had recently costarred…

Camonghne FELIX “BLUE NOTES” P. 66 Felix spoke to director Barry Jenkins about his new series, The Underground Railroad, and found him to be deeply in touch with the poetics of filmmaking. “He sees Black people, and while episode one may feel suffocatingly painful at times, the story opens up,” Felix says. “He would not let Black trauma be the guiding vehicle of this story. Black victory is.” Andrew McCARTHY “BRAT, UNPACKED” P. 92 McCarthy describes writing his new memoir, Brat, as turning over a rock that he’d been afraid to look under for too long. “Revisiting the past is a funny thing,” says the author and original Brat Packer. “You realize that you’ve mentally written a narrative for your life and in some cases moved reality around to suit…

BACK IN JANUARY 2015, when I was a reporter for CNN, I did a weekend live shot from the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, one of those political cattle calls where Republican presidential hopefuls take turns onstage professing their Christian faith before a crowd of people harvested from a Grant Wood painting. Most of the supposedly serious 2016 contenders had flown to Iowa: Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee. Like most very savvy political journalists at the time, I laughed off Donald Trump’s appearance as just another thirsty White House tease. And having covered Sarah Palin up close since she was chosen as John McCain’s running mate, I knew her best shot at the Republican nomination was back in 2012. Soon after the segment aired, CNN president…

DIA MRAD HAD a decent day job photographing homes for a real estate company in Beirut’s classic Ashrafieh district. But he couldn’t resist turning his camera toward palatial villas in the area that were very much off the market, icons of 19th-century Lebanese architecture whose occupants were reluctant to let him in. August 4, 2020, changed that, when just a couple kilometers away, 2,750 tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate detonated at Beirut’s port. One of the strongest nonnuclear explosions in history, it decimated an entire section of the city and killed more than 200 people—a stunning blow to a country already mired in an economic crisis that had sparked a historic wave of anti-government protests. After the blast, Mrad’s photographs of these architectural treasures began to circulate online, alongside…

Which historical figure do you most identify with? I think Bette Davis and I would have been friends. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Of course I’m going to go with obedience. Which living person do you most admire? I’m astounded by the young activists, ecologists, poets, movement leaders, peaceful marchers, change makers everywhere. It’s like watching a garden bloom. On what occasion do you lie? Omission. I’d be a crummy Catholic. What is your greatest extravagance? Heating my pool. What is your favorite journey? To the kitchen with my kids. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Love bug. Fucker. Jesus H. Christ. Get off me. What are your favorite names? Roan, Laird, and Quinn. What is your current state of mind? Rather zen, thanks for…

After a lifetime of relative seclusion, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, the 24-year-old eldest daughter of Madonna and “fitness guru” Carlos Leon, as Leon calls her dad, is suddenly larger than life. Specifically, she is 20 feet tall on billboards across the country as the new face of Marc Jacobs. She’s also starring in a viral Stella McCartney campaign, and is finally on Instagram. Over FaceTime during a visit home to Los Angeles, complete with unintentional cameos from Mom and a few of her six siblings (“I’m doing an interview, can’t chat”), the trained dancer and self-proclaimed “Latin from Manhattan” is refreshingly candid and intentionally provocative, with her contrarian sense of humor on full display. SHE GOES BY Lola to her friends. AS A “LANKY kid,” she started ballet classes at…

BEFORE SHE WAS Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle referred to herself as “Rango’s mermaid.” The phrase comes from French-Cuban writer Anaïs Nin’s autobiographical novel The Four-Chambered Heart, which Meghan quoted often in her Suits era: “I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” Meghan wanted more than middling cable TV success. Elizabeth Tuke, her publicist from 2014 to 2016, encouraged her to go out for blockbusters. “You could be the next Megan Fox,” Tuke told her. Instead, she embarked on a USO tour to Afghanistan, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and England; traveled to Rwanda to build wells for clean water; and campaigned against menstrual poverty among schoolgirls in India. “She is this superambitious woman,” Tuke added,…

His brain died at 11:47 p.m. AT NINE O’CLOCK on Sunday night, Supreme Court justice Howard Wynn shifted testily in his favorite leather chair, the high-backed Chesterfield purportedly commissioned by Chief Justice William Howard Taft. The wide seat resembled a settee more than a chair, but the latter Howard appreciated the capacious width. Unlike the robust former president, Justice Wynn was built along trimmer lines, a sleek sloop to the fearsome cargo ship of a man who preceded him on the bench. But he enjoyed the chair for its unexpected utility. Extra space at his hip for the books he habitually tucked to his side, on the off chance the chosen tome for his nightly read bored him. Howard Wynn did not suffer boredom or mediocrity well. He felt equally…