Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Vanity Fair

The inimitable Marie Brenner has been writing profiles and investigative stories for Vanity Fair since the 1980s, and her interview in this issue with Elissa Slotkin is an instant classic. Marie started spending time with the junior senator from Michigan back in early December, before Slotkin made headlines pushing back at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and OMB director Russell Vought during their Senate confirmation hearings, before she gave the Democratic response to Trump’s joint address to Congress, but just in time to present this sharp portrait as a party searches for its new standard-bearers. Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, has all the ingredients for political success: a compelling personal story, a backbone, and a voice (and in her case, principles to boot). Above all, she radiates authenticity, the quality that…

ARTIST RASHID JOHNSON has recently let the light in, renovating the ceilings of his Brooklyn studio to flood the space via skylight. “A Poem for Deep Thinkers,” the largest exhibition of Johnson’s work to date, does something similar, as the Guggenheim spotlights his multidisciplinary practice over the course of his three-decade career. Filling the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, the career survey features nearly 90 works exploring themes of self-examination, liminal space, and legacy in what Johnson calls an “investigation of my own experiences and ideas and understanding of the world.” The exhibit, which includes blacksoap paintings, large-scale indoor and outdoor sculpture, film, and video, takes its name from a poem by the late writer and political activist Amiri Baraka, whose presence looms large in Johnson’s oeuvre. “That poem is…

THE SUN IS GOING DOWN FAST, AND SEBASTIAN STAN IS TRYING TO GET INSIDE A LOCKED ROMANIAN CHURCH. This windblown Monday in late February would have been his late father’s 70th birthday, and before the day is gone, he is determined to light a candle and say a prayer in the old man’s memory at a place that had meaning for them both. Stan was born and raised in Romania, where faith and superstition became rooted together for him. “Whenever I’m in a church, I have to go like this three times,” he says, making the sign of the cross with his right hand. “I have to do it. And I have to do it three times before I get on a plane.” Just before we arrived at this Southern…

Tom KLUDT “ROMAN EMPIRE” P. 62 Contributing editor Kludt tagged along with WWE superstar Roman Reigns, a.k.a. Joe Anoa’i, for a day in South Florida before heading to Indianapolis for the Royal Rumble, Kludt’s first prowrestling match since he was 12 years old. “This story is about Roman Reigns, but it’s also about the remarkable staying power of WWE and the way it continues to animate American life,” he says. Marie BRENNER “CHANGE AGENT” P. 50 In her 40th year writing for VF, Brenner profiles the new Democratic senator from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, whose authenticity and passion for public service struck the writer—and have struck a chord with voters. Brenner’s reporting has been the impetus for five feature films, including The Insider and Richard Jewell. Edward BOWLEG III “UNITED WE…

HAVING BEEN A journalist for nearly two decades, I’ve developed something of an immunity to breaking difficult news stories, but reporting on the Princess of Wales’s recent cancer diagnosis floored me. I’m not ashamed to say that when I heard the news, just moments before going on air, I shed a tear. Here was a young woman, fit and in her prime, facing every mother’s worst nightmare. My empathy for what Princess Catherine and her family were going through ran deep, because almost a year to the day before her announcement, I was diagnosed with cancer. Like the princess, I was in my 40s and a busy mom juggling home life, young children, and a demanding career. I was also super fit, ate a healthy, balanced diet, and didn’t drink…

FOR CHRISTINE BARANSKI, the most evocative space at the Juilliard School isn’t a black box theater or a rehearsal room where she cut her teeth as an actor. “I get really emotional when I set foot in the elevator,” she says with a sigh. She remembers its “new car smell” when she rode it in the early 1970s, as part of the third class to ever study in the drama school. And she remembers, just as viscerally, the people she rode in it with. “I was in the elevator once with Leonard Bernstein, with Martha Graham, George Balanchine,” she says. “I was in the elevator once with Maria Callas.” If you know anything about Juilliard, it’s probably that it is where some of our greatest artists learned to be great.…

FIRST, SMOKE CURLED OUT FROM THE CUBE OF PACKAGES STACKED ON A PALLET at a DHL logistics hub near Birmingham, England, last July. Then a lick of flame emerged from the top of the stack. Racing to prevent the fire from spreading, a forklift operator snatched up the burning pallet and dashed away with it, setting it down at a safe remove before the stack turned into a roaring bonfire. Not long after, 600 miles to the east, inside another DHL logistics hub in Leipzig, Germany, a similar scene played out. Then, according to Polish media, a third courier-related fire started near Warsaw. Polish officials say they intercepted yet another device before it went off and arrested at least four suspects. Another suspect was arrested in Lithuania, according to The…

COURTNEY CRONE HAS been on wheels since she was just a few years old. Her father had been a competitive driver, but success in motorsports is highly correlated with money. When his funds ran low, he started maintaining vintage cars for a living. Eventually, he passed the bug to his only child, a daughter, which allowed him to poke at the traditional expectations for such passions’ heirs. “He likes to joke,” Crone recalls, “and say I was this little boy and he put me on a motorcycle and it all took off from there.” Now 24, Crone belongs to a class of young women drivers at the elite tier of a steep hierarchy. Beginning this year she will compete in F1 Academy, a female-only racing series founded by Formula 1…