TOWARDS A DREAM

louisvuitton.com
 MARCH 2021

KOBE
BRYANT’S
Tragic Flight

JARED &
IVANKA
MAGA Non Grata

New York City’s

MAYOR
MESS
The Director
and the
AIRPLANE
THIEF

B I L L I E’S
Wo r l d
Pop Icon Billie Eilish Settles In to Stardom
By K E Z I A H W E I R
Photographs by Q U I L L E M O N S
AVA I L A B L E AT D I O R . C O M
 PAGE 38

“I’ve never
been an
adult before.”

Features

3  8
Charming Billie
5  0
Down in the Valley
5  8
MAGA Non Grata
6
  4
Growing Up Ivanka
B I L L I E E I L I S H ’ S C LO T H I N G B Y B U R B E R R Y ; R I N G S B Y C H R O M E H E A R T S . O P P O S I T E : K E N H I V E LY/
LO S A N G E L E S T I M E S / G E T T Y I M A G E S . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

BY KEZIAH WEIR BY JEFF WISE BY EMILY JANE FOX BY LYSANDRA OHRSTROM

PHOTOGRAPHS BY QUIL LEMONS
Five Grammys; 72 million
fans; 19 years old. Megastar
Billie Eilish opens up about
her new album and a year of
creative evolution.
Kobe Bryant should have
been home in time for
dinner that night. But a
series of fateful errors
turned a routine helicopter
ride into his final flight.
Complicity comes with
a price. Jared Kushner and
Ivanka Trump face a
tricky transition back into
high society.
As Ivanka Trump leaves
the White House, her
former best friend charts
her transition from
Park Avenue princess to
MAGA royalty.

NOT SO BAD On the Billie Eilish wears a jacket and accessories by GUCCI. Hair
products by Number 4. Makeup by Rare Beauty. Nail enamel by
1,023,532,012...
Cover
Tammy Taylor. Hair by Benjamin Mohapi. Makeup by Robert
Rumsey. Manicure by Tammy Taylor. Set design by Daniel Horowitz.
and counting Produced on location by Portfolio One. Styled by Gabriella
Karefa-Johnson. Photographed exclusively for V.F. by Quil Lemons
Number of streams of “Bad Guy,” Billie Eilish’s first music in Los Angeles. For details, go to VF.com/credits.
video to join YouTube’s elite billion-views club. [P. 38]

10 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY Q U I L LEMONS
 Contents / Issue No. 725

Features

6
  8
Sir Peter and
PAGE 50

Zobayan loved to fly Bryant. Kobe and

the Airplane Thief
BY MARC WORTMAN
Vanessa both liked him and requested him
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
COREY BRICKLEY
by name. He was proud of that,
What Lord of the Rings and he wanted to keep them happy.
director Peter Jackson
wanted was a charming
pilot to help fulfill his
aviation dreams. What
he got was a pirate.

7  8
The Mayor Leagues
BY ABIGAIL TRACY
ILLUSTRATION BY
ANDRÉ CARRILHO

New York City has a bad

habit of electing less-
than-stellar mayors. Who
could possibly be next?

8
  2
Dear Mrs. L’Engle
BY ABIGAIL SANTAMARIA

In the late 1970s,

Madeleine L’Engle, the
beloved author of
A Wrinkle in Time, became
unlikely pen pals with
Ahmad Rahman, an
imprisoned 25-year-old
Black Panther wrongly
accused of murder.

“My dad didn’t want me to see Tony Soprano— 20 Editor’s Letter

the violence, the angry, the mean. I never knew 22
100
Contributors
Proust Questionnaire
Tony Soprano. I only knew my dad.” [P. 25]

MARCH 2021 11
Contents / Issue No. 725

Spotlight
74

7  4
Top Brass
BY BRETT MARTIN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MIRANDA BARNES

Trombone Shorty
on the future of
New Orleans sound.

Vanities

2  5
25 / Opening Act Michael
Gandolfini on playing a young
Tony Soprano.
26 / Culture A new Martin
Luther King Jr. doc; Patricia
Lockwood’s inspirations.
27 / The Gallery Prada
unveils Re-Nylon ready-to-wear.
28 / Trending A more
conscious fashion world.
31 / My Desk Bill Gates loves
burgers and bridge.
32 / Beauty Tending long hair
with sustainable products.
34 / My Stuff Norma Kamali
shares her favorite things.

Columns

3  6
T R O M B O N E S H O R T Y ’ S C LO T H I N G B Y D I O R M E N ; F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

We Love Lucy
BY LAUREN MECHLING

The Succession writer

dishes on her new pint-size
comedy, I Hate Suzie.

JET SET

“Mayor of New York City

50 airplanes might now be the hardest
Size of director Peter Jackson’s personal air force of
World War I vintage and replica aircraft. [P. 68]
job in America.” [P. 78]

12 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY M I R A N DA BARNES MARCH 2021

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 ®

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Richard Stengel, Diane von Furstenberg, Elizabeth Saltzman Walker, Benjamin Wallace, Jesmyn Ward, Ned Zeman

VA N I T Y FA I R MARCH 2021 15
 ®

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18 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Agenda / By Annabel Davidson
@vanityfairlondon
JEWELLERY
Diamonds are Forever
Back in November 2020, De Beers
announced a 10-year plan for
sustainability goals called “Building
Forever”, including pledges to be carbon
neutral by 2030, to support 10,000
young women and girls in STEM
(science, technology, engineering
and mathematics), and to cite the
provenance of all their diamonds—to
name but a few. It’s an incredible set of
targets, and one to celebrate every
positive step of the way, so watch this
space. Pictured (below) is Lebogang
Elsie Machaba, an entrepreneur
enrolled in the AWOME (Accelerating
Women Owned Micro-Enterprises)
programme. debeersgroup.com
Entrepreneur Lebogang Elsie Machaba
BEAUTY
Great British Flake Off!
Dry shampoo may sound like an
anathema to dandruff, but the masters
at Philip Kingsley have come up with a
product that both soothes and cools
stressed scalps and reduces the visible
effects. Unlike other dry shampoos, this
is suitable for all hair colours. With aloe
vera, camomile and antibacterial zinc,
this is a luxurious solution to calm and
clean hair on the go. philipkingsley.co.uk
Flaky/Itchy Scalp Dry Shampoo by Philip Kingsley
Éclosion de Chaumet brooch
JEWELLERY
Utterly Butterly
Éclosion de Chaumet and Esquisse de
Chaumet are the two latest additions to
the Parisian brand’s high jewellery
world, both celebrating a new motif in
the house’s naturalistic arsenal—the
ranunculus or buttercup. Drawing upon
Fauvist masters, the Éclosion chapter
renders petals and butterflies in vibrant
form via brightly hued garnets and pink
spinels, set off in yellow gold with
sprinklings of white diamonds. It’s
starting to feel like spring. chaumet.com
Iris Drawing Compass by Makers Cabinet
STATIONERY
Whittle While You Work
Everyday stationery items become
objets d’art in the hands of the trio
behind Makers Cabinet, a new, UK-
based label that makes humble desk
tools things of beauty. Sharpeners,
rulers and compasses made from brass,
FSC-certified wood and corrosion-
resistant stainless steel become items
that stay firmly on your desk, not in the
drawer. Take the Høvel sharpener—a
chunky brass form that will have you
offering to whittle every pencil in the
neighbourhood. makerscabinet.com
SKINCARE
Lip Service
Every new Augustinus Bader launch
triggers hysteria in existing aficionados
of the luxury skincare brand, and for
good reason—each item seems to
genuinely make a difference to the feel
and appearance of the skin. The new lip
balm is no different. Based on 30 years
of research into the science of wound
healing, Professor Bader’s TFC8® is
the secret ingredient integral to all his
products. In combination with that, the
new balm includes a plumping complex
without any gloss or colour, giving your
lips an entirely natural-looking
enhancement. augustinusbader.com
The Lip Balm by Augustinus Bader
JEWELLERY
Something Blue
This 1980s Van Cleef & Arpels ring in
blue chalcedony, diamonds and yellow
gold is the only reason you need to visit
Omnēque, the newest destination for
lovers of vintage, pre-owned and
antique jewellery. Helmed by two
absolute industry authorities in the form
of Vivienne Becker and Joanna Hardy,
Omnēque takes the guess work and
anxiety out of the fine and fashion
vintage marketplace. Basically, if these
two ladies endorse a piece, it’s good.
omneque.com
1980s Van Cleef & Arpels ring from Omneque
MARCH 2021 19
Editor’s Letter

Since the fall of

2017, Vanity Fair
has been checking
in once a year with
Billie Eilish, in a
video series that has
become a fixture
on her fans’ calendars and our own.
There’s no set of metrics that can fully
explain the rise of a pop star, but these
annual videos—in which we ask Billie the
same questions, year over year, about
her dreams, her accomplishments, her
tattoos or lack thereof—chart the path
of a preternaturally talented young artist
from homegrown musical phenom
to instantly recognizable icon. It’s like
a hyper-focused version of Michael
Apted’s Up series, accelerated for the
new millennium.
What’s striking about the latest
video, which we released in November,
is how much has changed in Billie’s
world in the course of 12 months, and
also how little. With every year, she
becomes more famous. She acquires
accolades and admirers, and her
circle of friends becomes ever more
luminary. Those markers of celebrity Radhika Jones and and self-awareness not only to field questions about her
can be measured. Even canceled tours Billie Eilish last current, pandemic-altered life, but to assess three years’ worth
year, at the Vanity
and lockdown orders haven’t stopped Fair Oscar party. of her past self with grace and generosity. You can see why
the progress. But in less quantifiable she is beloved, why her fans feel such a connection to her, just
J O N E S A N D E I L I S H : M AT T W I N K E L M E Y E R / V F 2 0 / G E T T Y I M A G E S .

ways, she is always the same charming as you can hear it in her music.
Billie. Her charisma and magnetism, Keziah Weir’s marvelous cover story finds Billie at the
present from the start, only develop close of a disrupted year, best-laid plans abandoned (relatable)
E I L I S H V I D E O : © C O N D É N A S T E N T E R TA I N M E N T.

and deepen. She speaks with the same
affection about her brother and musical
partner, Finneas; she hugs her mom
at the end each time. Our 2020 video
has been viewed more than 28 million
times so far; I can’t speak for everyone’s
reaction, but I watched it with a sense
of admiration bordering on awe, that
this person not yet 20 had the poise
but, creatively speaking, “at an all-time good” (inspiring).
A documentary about her life thus far, directed by R.J. Cutler
and filmed from 2018 to early 2020, will debut on Apple TV+
in February. As Keziah writes, Billie’s appeal transcends
generations; I’m representing Gen X, but to photograph her, we
enlisted a member of her own cohort, another preternaturally
talented young artist, Quil Lemons, who at age 23 is the
youngest photographer ever to shoot a V.F. cover. We’re so glad
to welcome him to the club.

20 VA N I T Y FA I R
I GREW UP on Madeleine L’Engle’s Eilish in 2017, 2018, as a result of a setup, paying the penalty for a murder he did
middle-grade and young-adult 2019, and 2020, in not commit. Their relationship—unexpected, imperfect, at
her time capsule
novels—the Murry family quintet, the video interview on times fraught, but also honest and authentic—is rooted in
Austin family books. A Wrinkle in Time VF.com. writing and literature (he begins the acquaintance by
introduced me to Bunsen burners, reading Wrinkle) but comes to encompass larger themes of
the fourth dimension, and the square root faith, privilege, intention, representation. The teaching
of five; for a fleeting second, through becomes a two-way street. Abby quotes lines from L’Engle’s
Mrs. Whatsit’s instruction, I understood— letter to Rahman after he critiques her gothic novel The
like, really understood—the tesseract. Other Side of the Sun, set in the post–Civil War South. “I’m
I wished that I, like empathetic Vicky grateful for your willingness to help me,” she writes. “Don’t
Austin, could commune with dolphins. ever hesitate to push me into wider and deeper thinking.”
I still consider L’Engle’s first book, The I will not spoil the ending, but Rahman’s life bears out L’Engle’s
Small Rain, one of the most poignant influence in ways they probably never could have predicted,
portraits of artistic commitment I have and the story of their friendship resonates powerfully right
ever encountered, in the guise of a now—not because it papered over the huge gaps between
simple coming-of-age novel. But in all their respective situations and experiences, but because it
my years of reading her work and acknowledged those gaps and still propelled them forward. n
inhabiting her imagined worlds, I had
never really read much about her life.
This month we publish Abigail
Santamaria’s story about L’Engle’s
correspondence with an imprisoned
former member of the Black Panther radhika jones, Editor in Chief
Party, with whom she was paired
in 1976 as part of a mentoring program
organized by the writers association
PEN. L’Engle, as Abby writes, “was
a hazel-eyed WASP…educated at
elite girls boarding schools.” Ahmad
Rahman came from the south side
of Chicago, the son of a factory worker,
and he was serving a life sentence

MARCH 2021 21
Contributors
Jeff WISE
“DOWN IN THE VALLEY,” P. 50
Wise received his pilot’s license in
Los Angeles in 2002, training in the
city’s skies 18 years before Kobe
Bryant’s fatal flight. “I had firsthand
experience dealing with the
intricacies of the airspace in the San
Fernando Valley,” says Wise.
Abigail SANTAMARIA
“DEAR MRS. L’ENGLE,” P. 82
Biographer Santamaria first read former
Black Panther Ahmad Rahman and
writer Madeleine L’Engle’s prison
correspondence in the spring of 2019.
Their wildly disparate worlds could
be disorienting, even devastating. “But
ultimately,” Santamaria says, “their
friendship filled me with hope.”
22 VA N I T Y FA I R
Quil LEMONS
“CHARMING BILLIE,” P. 38
At 23, Lemons is the youngest
photographer to shoot the cover of
Vanity Fair. His goal was to find
a sense of intimacy with Billie Eilish.
“She’s one of the world’s biggest
stars and everyone wants to know her,”
says Lemons. “I hope you can feel a
closeness to her in these photographs.”
Brett MARTIN
“TOP BRASS,” P. 74
For Martin, the best part of spending
time with Trombone Shorty was
the opportunity to watch him play. “It
turns out that being the first live
audience in nine months, for somebody
used to over 150 gigs a year, is a
pretty good place to be,” says Martin.
Clockwise from
top left: Jeff Wise;
Quil Lemons and
Gabriella Karefa-
Johnson (with
Billie Eilish); Keziah
Weir; Brett Martin;
Abigail Santamaria.
Gabriella KAREFA-JOHNSON
“CHARMING BILLIE,” P. 38
The challenge in dressing Eilish was
staying true to her style while doing
something that hasn’t been seen before.
“I really wanted to make sure that S A N TA M A R I A : E L I Z A B E T H H O L M E S . W E I R : J A C O B W E I R . W I S E : S A N D R A G A R C I A .
whatever she was wearing she was
L E M O N S A N D K A R E FA - J O H N S O N : B R I T T H E N N E M U T H . M A R T I N : K I R A H E N E H A N .
comfortable in,” says Karefa-Johnson.
“I didn’t want it to feel like we were
forcing her to be someone that she isn’t.”
Keziah WEIR
“CHARMING BILLIE,” P. 38
While studying Eilish’s discography,
Weir realized that the pop star’s
songs are much like her own favorite
books. “They’re entertaining and often
beautiful upon first listen,” says Weir,
a V.F. senior editor. “But the more you
know about them and revisit them,
the more rewarding the experience is.”
MARCH 2021
 T R A VE L
I N N E X T M O N T H ’ S H O L LY W O O D I S S U E
A SPECIAL SECTION WITH THE U.K. EDITION
EDITED BY MICHELLE JANA CHAN

Fernweh
(German)
An ACHING
LONGING for
far-off places
( A N S E S O U RC E D ’ A RG E N T B E AC H , L A D I G U E , S E YC H E L L E S )
JAG_CZ / SHUTTERSTOCK
VA N I T I E S VA N I TA S VA N I TAT U M

PAGE 30

Introducing
MICHAEL
GANDOLFINI as
a young
Tony Soprano
PAGE 31

BILL GATES LOVES

THIS BURGER

PAGE 32

GROW YOUR HAIR,

SAVE THE TREES

PAGE 34
G R O O M I N G , K E R R I E U R B A N ; TA I LO R , H A S M I K KO U R I N I A N ; P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y P R E I S S C R E AT I V E ; F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

NORMA KAMALI
PARES DOWN

Shirt by CELINE
HOMME by Hedi
Slimane; tank top by
Ami Paris; pants
by Bottega Veneta;
bracelet by David
Yurman. Throughout:
hair products by
Oribe; grooming
products by Boy
de CHANEL. Styled
by Kat Typaldos.
Photographed at the
Fairmont Miramar
Hotel & Bungalows,
Santa Monica.

VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY E R I K CARTER MARCH 2021 25

Vanities /Culture
SURVEILLANCE STATE
A new documentary uncovers
FBI attempts to undermine
the fight for civil rights
Martin Luther King Jr. probably had too much
faith in the decency of America. In director
Sam Pollard’s new documentary MLK/FBI,
close friends and family of the murdered
civil rights leader say he dismissed concerns
that government authorities, under the
direction of J. Edgar Hoover, were tracking
his every move. The truth arrived in the
form of a threatening letter and embarrassing
recordings from bugged hotel rooms, sent
to King in an effort to demoralize and silence
him. A half century later, it’s the FBI that’s
wracked with shame over its conduct—in the
documentary (distributed by IFC and
executive produced by, among others, Vanity
Fair’s David Friend), former director
James Comey says this represented the
bureau’s “darkest” period.
“I’ve done lots of documentaries about
the African American experience and the civil
rights movement,” says Pollard, a three-time
Emmy winner who shared an Oscar nomination
26 VA N I T Y FA I R
From top: Martin Luther King Jr.
as seen in MLK/FBI; director Sam Pollard;
the March on Washington.
with Spike Lee for their 1997 documentary
4 Little Girls. “This was an opportunity to look
at American history from a deeper, more
nuanced perspective in terms of the role of
the FBI in trying to discredit Dr. King and
who he was, and breaking down the mythology
of the FBI that I grew up with as a young
African American man in the ’60s.”
The recordings of King, rumored to reveal
his alleged affairs, are under seal by the
National Archives until 2027, and the film
explores whether they should be released at
all. For Pollard, the possible benefits outweigh
the potential cost. “It’ll be an opportunity
to hear King maybe talking about strategies
they had in places like Selma, in places like
Birmingham, in places like Chicago...which
can be very revealing about the mindset
of the movement during that period,” he
says. “Understanding that King was not a
monogamous man, that he had a complex
personal life, doesn’t demystify for me or
take away his importance in terms of his place
in American history. Nobody’s life is black
and white. Human beings tend to try to [think
that way], because it makes them feel good.
I’m not here to make people feel good. I’m here
to make people think.” —Anthony Breznican
Illuminations
Patricia Lockwood’s ability to capture the
obscene, hilarious, and devastating—
see her 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy, and
Twitter feed—is on full display in her new
novel, No One Is Talking About This
(Riverhead), about social media, real
life, and the overlap of that Venn
diagram. Here, Lockwood’s inspirations.
NO SHAPE
by Perfume Genius
“I listened continuously while writing
the final draft, but especially to
‘Wreath’: ‘I wanna hover with no
shape / I wanna feel the days go by /
S T I L L S : C O U R T E S Y O F I F C F I L M S . A N I F C F I L M S R E L E A S E ; P O L L A R D : E R I K TA N N E R / G E T T Y I M A G E S ; P E R F U M E G E N I U S : DA N I E L D E S LO V E R / Z U M A W I R E /A L A M Y L I V E N E W S ;
Not stack up / Running up that hill /
I’m gonna peel off every weight / Until
my body gives away / And shuts up.’ ”
K E R M I T : S H U T T E R S T O C K ; C O V E R S ( 2 ) : C O U R T E S Y O F P U B L I S H E R S . O P P O S I T E : F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
MRS. CALIBAN
by Rachel Ingalls
“The idea came to me while reading
this. The protagonist begins hearing
radio bulletins that seem aimed at her:
Everything will be all right, you will have
another baby, a lizard man has escaped
from the Oceanographic Institute.”
MY PHOTO ROLL
“I maintained it as a fluid document of
everything that was happening on the
internet—news headlines, Kermit
memes, Truth coming out of her well
to shame mankind—and then the
complete takeover of my real life, with
almost no room for anything else.”
 Spring
FORWARD
In this Prada coat, florals
for spring really are
groundbreaking. With its
enveloping silhouette
(and the brand’s trademark
sustainable Re-Nylon, years
in the making, which is
manufactured using recycled
plastic from oceans and
landfills), this brainchild of
co–creative directors
Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons
will delight eco-warriors
and fashion darlings alike.
—Daisy Shaw-Ellis

Prada coat, £2,380. (selected

Prada boutiques). Shoes,
price upon request. (prada.com)

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAC K I E NICKERSON MARCH 2021 27

Vanities /Trending

2. DOUBLE MEANING
1. GUESS blazer, £115.
(guess.com) 2. Coach bag,
£595. (uk.coach.com)
3. Gabriela Hearst dress,
£3,990. (gabrielahearst
.com) 4. Circumference
Active Restorative
1. Moisturizing Cream, £110.
(net-a-porter.com)
5. Prounis earrings,
£5,450. (prounisjewelry
.com) 6. RE=COMB
recycled-plastic comb, £16.
(re-comb.com) 7. Dolce
& Gabbana boots, £845.
(selected Dolce & Gabbana
boutiques) 8. Shunya
recycled PET woven dhurrie,
from £145. (fabindia.com)
9. The Wasted Collective
jacket, £225. (thewastedco
3.
.com) 10. Alexander
McQueen bag, £1,450.
(Alexander McQueen
boutiques)
5.

N OW H E RE , AP E R T U RE . 1, 2 : M I C HAE L K R AM E R , S T YL I N G MAG G I E M c K E N NA . AL L O T H E R S :
C O L L A G E : V I K M U N I Z ,  P I C C A D I L LY C I R C U S , LO N D O N , 2 0 1 4 ,  F R O M  P O S T C A R D S F R O M

C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B R A N D S / W E B S I T E S . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
7.
4.

6.

 Seeing GREEN
What’s old is new again. These
items—a bag riffing on archival
silhouettes and crafted from
scrap leather; a dress designed
using stock fabric; a cream
made from organic grapevines—
refashion the past for a
sustainable present and future

8.

10.

In Vik Muniz’s Piccadilly Circus, London (2014), from

Postcards From Nowhere, the artist re-created the famous
landmark using snippets of vintage postcards. 9.

28 VA N I T Y FA I R
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  All in the FAMILY
MICHAEL GANDOLFINI on loss,
confidence, and playing
his father’s famous character
Few parts have reached the same heights in
television’s pantheon as James Gandolfini’s
Tony Soprano. The Sopranos was appointment
TV at the dawn of cable, and 13 years after
the series ended, The Many Saints of Newark,
a prequel film, will land on HBO Max this
fall, with Michael Gandolfini succeeding his
father as a young Tony. As the buzz begins,
Gandolfini, who also stars opposite Tom
Holland in the Russo brothers’ adaptation of
Nico Walker’s Cherry, out this month,
opens up about stepping into Tony’s shoes.
EARLY MEMORIES OF The Sopranos are few.
“My dad didn’t want me to see Tony Soprano—
the violence, the angry, the mean. Of course
I was on set and would visit him in his trailer,
but I had never watched the show…. I never
knew Tony Soprano. I only knew my dad.”
30 VA N I T Y FA I R
Jacket and pants by
LOUIS VUITTON MEN’S;
tank top by CALVIN KLEIN
UNDERWEAR; boots by
Valentino Garavani;
bracelet by David Yurman.
PHOTOGRAPH BY E R I K CARTER
Vanities /Opening Act
GANDOLFINI SPENT SUMMERS with his dad on
the Jersey Shore. “Because he was beloved
down there, I would get jobs I was unqualified
for, like working at a body shop at eight years
old.” When Gandolfini was 14, his father died
of a heart attack while on vacation in Rome.
A FOOTBALL INJURY sent Gandolfini to try
out for a high school play. “I’d gone to
acting therapy after my dad passed. I’d resisted
it, but it sparked something.”
A MANAGER TOOK a chance and sent him to
his first-ever audition, for HBO’s The Deuce.
She called the next day: “You’re one for one!”
HE PLAYED Joey Dwyer and calls it “an
incredible time of failing and learning and
getting my sea legs.” Costar James Franco was
a formative mentor.
UPON HEARING ABOUT the Sopranos prequel,
Gandolfini thought, Absolutely not. What if
I’m not good? But when his manager insisted
he audition, he decided it was time to see
the first season. “It was really hard to watch
my dad,” he says. “I recorded four hours of his
monologues with Melfi and walked around
New York with them constantly, constantly,
constantly playing in my ear.”
WHEN HE AUDITIONED for creator David
Chase, “I had this unspoken trust that
David wasn’t going to cast me if there was
even a shred that this isn’t going to work.”
THREE MONTHS LATER, he got the offer. “It’s
an origin story through the eyes of Dickie
Moltisanti, Christopher’s father. The
Tony Soprano we know has this beautiful
vulnerability underneath and this rough
exterior, but what if we flip that on its side
and you watch a creative, hopeful, kind,
curious kid get whittled down and formed into
what he has to be?”
THEN HE WATCHED all six seasons over six
weeks. “It transcends everything: Republican,
Democrat; patriarchy and matriarchy.”
AS FOR the historically polarizing series finale?
“I’m not touching that one.”
EDIE FALCO TOLD him to “relax and have fun on
set, enjoy yourself, know you’re lucky,” he says.
IN CHERRY, Gandolfini plays the hometown
friend to Holland’s bank robber with PTSD.
“Not playing the Italian New York kid, having
them believe in me and allow me to play such
a complicated, beautiful role was such a gift.”
LOOKING BACK, he says, “my dad constantly
told me, if I’d ask a question about acting,
‘I’m not your acting coach. I’m your dad,’
which I really appreciate now.”
— brit t hennem u th
 Vanities /My Desk

5.

5. DESK CHAIR AND

WORD CLOCK
“I don’t know that
I have a design
3. aesthetic. I like this
chair (Melinda gave it
to me) and this clock
(a gift from one of
our kids), and they’re
special because of
the people who gave
them to me.”

2.

1.
6.

6. BURGERMASTER
REGULAR ORDER

1. BRIDGE MAGAZINES “A burger and fries

“You have to try is still my favorite
to communicate with hard ones, and we meal, though I’ve cut
your partner”— for can’t just deal with the back because beef is
Gates, this is often easy ones.” responsible for a lot
Warren Buffett—“using of greenhouse gases.”
3. PRESIDENTIAL
nothing but your MEDAL OF FREEDOM 7. BOOK STACK
bids. It’s fascinating.”
“For Melinda and “David MacKay
2. HIS NEW BOOK, for me, what it really does a brilliant job of
HOW TO AVOID recognized was the breaking down a
A CLIMATE DISASTER
work of all the health complex topic into its
“Dealing with climate care workers and component parts and
  Man With a PLAN change requires
solving some easy
teachers whom we’re
fortunate to be able
explaining them
in a way that anyone
problems and some to support.” can understand.”
“The world is paying attention to
the problem,” BILL GATES says
B I L L G AT E S : G E T T Y I M A G E S . O P P O S I T E :
F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .

4. HOLOLENS 2 MIXED
4.
REALITY HEADSET
of the climate crisis, “and we’re
“The uses go way
setting big goals for dealing beyond gaming and
with it.” Now the philanthropist entertainment, such
and activist has written a as training people
book that details his vision for by simulating the use
a way forward By Keziah Weir of new products.”

PHOTOGRAPHS BY I A N ALLEN 7.
Vanities /Beauty

Root Cause and conditioner in earthy aluminum

The latest crop of vessels. The metal can be “infinitely
nourishing hair care recycled,” says Feistner. “Basically
keeps the planet’s 75 percent of the aluminum that has
longevity in mind too,
with packaging made ever been mined is still in use today.”
from aluminum, Anomaly, a new range from Priyanka
bioresins, or recycled
plastic—including Chopra Jonas, pairs recycled-plastic
some culled bottles with ingredients that read like
from ocean debris.
a recipe: rosemary, quinoa, coconut
oil. R+Co has rolled out Bleu, a
sustainable hair-care capsule, with
color-blocked containers made from
post-consumer-recycled plastic as
well as sugarcane bioresin—an effort
to reduce the virgin-plastics pipeline.
The wave of shampoo bars promises
an end to packaging altogether,
but long-haired traditionalists can take
some comfort in Rahua’s math: One

  he Long GAME
T
In hair care, the push for sustainability is
personal and global By Laura Regensdorf
Over the past months, to the complete surprise of every
roommate I’ve ever had, I acquired a green thumb. It’s hard to
ignore the needs of houseplants when you are similarly
planted at home. The succulent hanging in the kitchen window
hit yardstick length at the same time my braid began tucking
into my waistband. I snipped off the occasional shriveled leaf
with the same attention that I gave my split ends. Meditative
pruning gave me the feeling of a bonsai master, which made
my hair something of a bonsai itself: steadfast and deserving
of preservation, like an old-growth forest in miniature.
As my focus shrank to the scope of my Brooklyn apartment—
sustaining life with regular waterings and conditioning hair
masks—my household input-output highlighted a far-reaching
concern. Delivery boxes piled up; recycling bins neared
overflow. Surveying shampoo bottles lining the tub, I recalled
(recycled-plastic) bottle equals one acre
of Amazon rain forest preserved.
Act+Acre “It’s not just about what product do
Restorative Hair Mask, you deliver, but what’s your purpose?”
£27. (actandacre.com) says Barbara De Laere, Aveda’s
global brand president. In January, the
company announced model-activist
Arizona Muse as its first sustainability
advocate, amplifying existing efforts:
vegan formulas, improved plastics,
even blockchain-tracked sourcing for
vanilla. Over Zoom, Muse talks
up the lightweight mask in the new
Botanical Repair line, which protects
against the elements. Still, she
gestures to her chin-length bob, “I have
actually found the hack to damaged
hair, which is just to have short hair.”
R+Co Bleu De Luxe
Reparative Shampoo, That sounds freeing, a lighter chop
£47. (bleu.randco.com) to go with a lighter carbon footprint.
But I can’t shake the defining image M O D E L : M A R G A R E T D U R O W/ T R U N K A R C H I V E . P R O D U C T S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B R A N D S .

a stark warning from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation:
By 2050, there could be more plastic in the oceans than fish.
“What is the future? What do we need to be doing?” Helen
Reavey, the hairstylist behind Act+Acre, says about the push
for sustainability. Since its debut two years ago, Act+Acre has
been rooted in earthly matters. Refill pouches of its hair cleanse
and conditioner minimize the pale brown plastic bottles in
circulation. The new castor-oil mask, which landed just in time
to cocoon my moisture-sapped hair, comes in an aluminum
tube. Recyclable in one sense, regenerative in another, it speaks
to the conservation of resources. “It’s about creating good
habits,” Reavey says, “and treating yourself at the same time.”
The drive to deliver clean formulas in mindful packaging
is visible across the industry. Sándor—a sleek newcomer from
hairstylist Sabrina Szinay and Taja Feistner, a model studying
sustainability policy—just launched a biodegradable shampoo
from Miranda July’s Kajillionaire:
the waist-length hair worn by Old Dolio
(Evan Rachel Wood). In the film,
the androgynous protagonist lives with
grifter parents in a bubble factory,
where pink froth seeps down the wall
like an unholy shampoo. However
much Old Dolio’s hair exists outside
the realm of style, “not cutting it
isn’t simply passive,” July explains by
email. “It also is kind of tree-like in
its strength, elemental. It just grows.
There’s something deeply sexy about
Sándor The Grounding that.” Like those rain forest acres
Conditioner, £29,
with reusable pump, spared by well-meaning hair care, old
£3.70 (sandor.earth) growth deserves a new lease on life. n

32 VA N I T Y FA I R MARCH 2021
 ®

Beauty Box
The Awards Edit

Don’t miss
the final few!

A curated collection of
award-winning hero products
£90 (RRP £418) BUY
INCLUDES A DIGITAL TATLER SUBSCRIPTION HERE
Vanities /My Stuff
2.
1.
3.
4.
6.  Lucky STRIPES
On the advent of her new book, Norma
Kamali: I Am Invincible, the beloved
designer shares her streamlined life
■ Style
7. DAILY UNIFORM: My
uniform tends to be pants
and jumpsuits first
and foremost, because
comfort allows me to
focus on the task at hand.
8.
GO-TO SHOE: The
interesting shapes from
Merrell and Crocs (14)
are so much fun to style
with different silhouettes.
JEWELRY: When I turned
9. 50 I did a total cleanse of
all of my possessions,
including my Hollywood
film jewelry from the
’20s–’50s. However,
10. I do have dog tags from
Walmart engraved
for each anniversary year
11. my partner and I have
been together (1).
12.
■ Health & Beauty
DAILY MAKEUP: Dark
brown mascara (9) and
a cherry lip stain by
Hurraw! (7). HAIR CARE:
Rosemary oil on my
roots and ends. BRUSH:
13. I use a few big wooden
paddle hairbrushes (3).
VITAMINS/SUPPLEMENTS:
Vit D3, Counter Attack
by Rainbow Light, B1-12,
14. calcium, magnesium
34 VA N I T Y FA I R
5.
by Peak Performance,
powdered nutrients,
greens, and collagen.
WORKOUT: Pilates, yoga
N O R M A K A M A L I . T E H R A N S T I L L : A P P L E T V + . YO G A M AT : P O P O VA P H O T O / G E T T Y I M A G E S . A L L O T H E R S C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B R A N D S . F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
H A C K I N G DA R W I N : C O U R T E S Y O F S O U R C E B O O K S . P I N S T R I P E J U M P S U I T : P H O T O G R A P H E D B Y M I C H A E L K R A M E R . I C E C R E A M : A L E X S K P /A L A M Y. D O G Z E K E : C O U R T E S Y O F
(13), weights, freestyle
dancing, a desk treadmill.
P O R T R A I T : T O M N E W T O N . D O G TA G S : C O U R T E S Y O F N O R M A K A M A L I . S M O O T H I E : M A - K / G E T T Y I M A G E S . L E M O N S : N AT TAW U T L A K J I T/ E Y E E M / G E T T Y I M A G E S .
FITNESS ATTIRE: My active
collection (8) transforms
from sportswear to
quality workout clothing.
■ Home
RECENT HOME ADDITION:
I created a soft furniture
collection of shapes in bold
graphics (2). DISHWARE:
Bamboo—biodegradable
and truly sustainable!
FOUR-LEGGED FRIEND:
Zeke is my ninth
dachshund (10); he is a
wise 17 years of age.
■ Entertainment
READING: Hacking
Darwin (12). WATCHING:
Tehran (11). LISTENING
TO: Gregg Allman and
Etta James.
■ Food & Drink
MORNING BEVERAGE: Hot
lemon water (4). POWER
SNACK: A smoothie (5).
HOME COOKING: Nut seed
bread and sweet potato
ice cream (6).
MARCH 2021
 BODYSUIT BY GCDS. EARRINGS BY BULGARI.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE DAVIS-MACLEOD. MAKE-UP BY MARIA COMPARETTO. HAIR BY DANIEL DYER. SHOT ON LOCATION AT THE LANGHAM HOTEL

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Vanities /Stream Queen
We Love LUCY
I Hate Suzie cocreator and
Succession writer whiz
Lucy Prebble talks her game
By Lauren Mechling
F
F OR A CERTAIN segment of Americans
who’ve been lucky enough to lament
changes in pandemic programming,
one of the more annoying privations
of 2020 has been the absence of a
new season of Succession. August came
and went without a peep from the
36 VA N I T Y FA I R
delightfully despicable Roys. It wasn’t
until Kieran Culkin’s appearance on
Marc Maron’s WTF podcast in late
August that we learned that the people
who brought us those tasty hour-long
morsels were, at last, getting ready to
start filming season three.
In the meantime, the television
gods have something wonderful to tide
us over: I Hate Suzie, a blisteringly
funny HBO Max series from Succession
writer and co–executive producer
Lucy Prebble. Created with and starring
Prebble’s close friend Billie Piper,
the show chronicles the undoing of
Suzie Pickles, a child star turned
Who? Weekly–level British actor whose
life is upended after her phone is
hacked and a compromising photograph
ends up everywhere.
The episodes’ deranged humor
and jittery energy will feel familiar to
fans of Prebble’s work (including the
great many who didn’t realize Prebble
is part of what made them love
Succession). With Suzie, Prebble comes
out of the shadows and approaches
the ranks of ingenious female television
creators like Phoebe Waller-Bridge
and Michaela Coel, whose names have
become as recognizable as their
Lucy Prebble created I Hate Suzie with her
friend Billie Piper (at left, masked, with Prebble),
who stars in it. Above: Piper in the show.
projects. “I got a message from my ex
and he said, ‘Well done, it’s a really
brilliant show, you’ve passed all your
anxiety on to the rest of the world,’ ”
Prebble says with a sorry-not-sorry grin.
She is Zooming from her sister’s
garage in South East England, an hour
or so south of London. She looks
like a glamorous hostage, with Nigella
Lawson barrel curls and her camera
positioned up high to capture the
room’s cold drabness (gray tiles, Foosball
table). The exciting quickness and
unapologetically black humor that are
the hallmarks of Prebble’s writing
are features of her conversation. As she
fields questions, her demeanor alternates
between intimidatingly composed
and raucous, delivering responses in
paragraphs punctuated by laughing
fits. “My first port of call is quite cerebral
and over-rational,” Prebble says. “And…
slightly controlling.”
She loosened the reins on I Hate Suzie,
which is more intimate than any of her
previous work (she is still best known as
a playwright, and Bloomsbury has just
published a collection of her four staged
P I P E R A N D P R E B B L E : G E O R G I B A N K S - DAV I E S . I H AT E S U Z I E : C O U R T E S Y O F H B O M A X .
plays). Piper’s incandescent and
frankly insane performance brings to life
a woman who, as Piper tells me a few
days after my chat with Prebble, “doesn’t
know who she is. She’s taken many
faces, guises, personalities and applied
them accordingly all her life.” In other
words, it’s a show about an actor, but it’s
really a show about playing the part
and losing the plot. The eight episodes
might move viewers, especially women
viewers, to shed tears of recognition
and, in the end, of glorious release.
I Hate Suzie trains its eye, often in
close-up, on a woman who is hemmed
in by her cuckolded husband, her
manager–cum–best friend, and the
colleague whose penis happens to
be the one in the viral picture. It starts
as a credible and contemporary
setup—a woman on the verge of losing
her reputation and livelihood (so
much for the “aging Disney princess”
role that Pickles just landed)—but a
couple of installments in, the absurdity,
surrealism, and horror pile on. Piper
says that in conceiving the tone, their
references were the works of midperiod
Woody Allen and, to a larger degree,
Louis C.K.’s auto-fictional Louie—she
stops midsentence to acknowledge the
accusations against both men. (C.K.
apologized for his actions and Allen has
continued to deny the allegations
against him.) “But what we loved [about
Louie],” says Piper, “was even though
the premise is real and the issues are
real, it took you in directions slightly left
of center and slightly heightened.”
“Shame”—each episode is named
after a stage of grief—centers on a
roughly 25-minute masturbation scene.
The sequence breaks the fourth wall,
with friends and lovers letting
themselves into Suzie’s psyche while
she’s wanking. Piper’s performance
here is a tour de force, an athletically
raw evocation of agony, ecstasy,
and abject fear. “Billie’s very warm and
emotional,” Prebble says. “There’ve
been times in my life I’ve needed her
to push me off a cliff or help me do
something I’m overcautious about.”
PREBBLE WAS 22 when her first play,
The Sugar Syndrome, an internet chat
room love triangle, was staged. She
took a detour to write for television and
worked on Secret Diary of a Call Girl,
a series based on the Belle du Jour blog,
which starred Piper. You may not have
been blown away, and neither was
Prebble, but it was worse for her, since
it was her fault.
After two seasons, she left to write
her breakout play Enron, a dramatization
of the downfall of the Texas
energy giant that enjoyed a brief stint
on Broadway. As reading material,
Enron is brilliance, with dialogue that
foreshadows Prebble’s seat in the
Succession writers room (“This is the
largest single transfer of wealth
I’ve ever seen!” “We’re like the Roman
empire! We’re going fucking down!”
are two Texas traders sounding
proto–Roman Roy). Prebble’s 2019
spy drama, A Very Expensive Poison,
about the death of former KGB
whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko,
is a global spy drama rendered as
a spare and affecting love story.
Spy stories are romances. White-
collar criminals are jesters. Turning things
inside out is Prebble’s special sauce.
Tidy concept and slick showbiz jokes
aside, I Hate Suzie works because of
the ugly honesty and animating spirit
of subversion. Suzie is a reservoir of
insecurity and self-loathing, the result
of years and years of accommodating
a culture of judgment and rejection,
of being appraised and discarded. The
show’s aggressive title is a nod to
Lucille Ball, a natural hero of Prebble’s.
“She was one of the first woman TV
With Suzie,
Prebble approaches
the ranks
of INGENIOUS
CREATORS
like Phoebe
Waller-Bridge and
Michaela Coel.
producers, ever. Now it feels like we live
in a world where they don’t want the
I Love Lucy, they want the I Hate Lucy,”
says Prebble. “It tells you how we treat
women in public positions.”
One of the show’s sillier-seeming
bits features a theater director in charge
of a play called A Party With Monica
Lewinsky (a made-up work that sounds
like a bad version of a Lucy Prebble
project). He only speaks after the most
ponderous pauses, which are almost
hilarious, but look a little closer and
his quest for creative expression is
condescending and cruel. “I’m a
quick talker, and I’ve worked with a lot
of men who speak very slowly and
seldom,” Prebble says. “That’s a strategy
for building authority: They will just
wait when you ask them a question,
and then you say, ‘Oh, sorry, sorry, I’m
being stupid….’ We associate those
qualities with certain types of men with
wisdom, whereas if a woman is silent,
she’s not really contributing.”
It was Piper who helped bring Suzie
home. After years of talking about
every disappointment and dream—
including their shared belief that
they should create something together
about women and friendship—they
started collaborating in a more formal
way, spending days in rooms batting
around ideas. They waited two years
to show their work to producers or
pitch to networks, wanting to be sure
they had done exactly what they
envisioned before anyone dared give
notes. Suzie is not the sort of thing that
could have been dreamed up by
committee, certainly not one of men.
Part of what makes Succession
superior to all other ensemble dramas
is the female energy that courses
through it. “I push hard on that,”
Prebble says. In the show’s original
pilot, for instance, Gerri was written
as a man. Prebble helped rewrite
her as a woman—“a great decision.”
And while other members of the team
excel at the “exquisite masculine
banter that’s actually pathetic,” Prebble
says that she gravitates toward Shiv.
“The interior damage and controlling
nature of someone like Shiv is
coming from a female sensibility.
That’s a character I love to write.”
Shiv is the Roy most like Logan, and
also most like Prebble. “She’s so
competitive, she doesn’t compete. She
keeps her cards close to her chest.”
“I’m going away quite soon for
work,” Prebble tells me. That could
mean anything, anywhere. “They
will not let me say more than
‘We’re all trying to get people more
Succession as quickly as possible.’ ”
She cackles after her air quotes.
“You can use your imagination.” n
MARCH 2021 37
By KEZIAH WEIR Photographs by QUIL LEMONS

C H A R M I NG

In the last year, Billie Eilish scored five Grammys,

went multiplatinum eight times, released the new Bond theme, and was
forced to cancel a 49-date tour. Then, she turned 19

38 VA N I T Y FA I R Styled by GABRIELLA KAREFA-JOHNSON

 thrilling and banal to see Eilish pop up on Zoom. She’s wend-
ing her way through her family’s home in Highland Park, Los
Angeles, where she’s filmed so many clips for Instagram and
conducted almost all of her interviews over the last four years.
“I just made a magnificent breakfast,” Eilish tells me as she
props her phone against a mirror in the little blue bathroom.
This, too, seems normal. Eilish has few if any pretenses. Her
hands smell like garlic and onions, she says. “I have to wash
them now.” She makes a show of it, finishing with a little ta-da!
move, as though she should be wearing a top hat. I half expect
her to start singing. Alas, she does not.
She’s in an oversize black T-shirt emblazoned with the rap-
per Duckwrth’s face. She’s embraced the body-obscuring street
style pioneered by female artists like Missy Elliott and TLC.
“Earlier this year my album Igor was the number one album in
the country,” Tyler, the Creator growled at the 2019 American
Music Awards, “and then this 17-year-old
girl who dresses like a quarterback decid-
BEFORE I EVER meet Billie Eilish, I feel like I know her. I have already watched her ed to change that.” (He is her longtime
ride a pinto across a New Zealand beach, get her sprained ankle wrapped, grind on idol in music and fashion.) At five feet
a bag of bagels, blow a slobbery raspberry into her brother Finneas’s face, mimic her three, she’s almost always dwarfed by
mother, expound on the seriousness of the coronavirus, shoot water out one nostril whoever she’s with, be it one of her burly
while using a neti pot, and fit much of an Oscar Schmidt Aloha ukulele headstock into bodyguards or her lanky six-foot-tall
her mouth. I know what a Billie Eilish burp sounds like, and also a sneeze. Here, in the brother, Finneas, who is also her pro-
trailer for a forthcoming documentary about her life, is blond- ducer and collaborator—but she could
haired toddler Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell perched on be any height onscreen, and throughout
a piano bench. Here she is a few years later, singing at a talent our conversations she’s either got the phone placed somewhere
show. I have listened to her perform at the Democratic National around her knees so she’s looming above me, backgrounded by
Convention, the Academy Awards, the Grammys (where her the black and red motif of her childhood bedroom, or I’m looking
2019 debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, down at her as she lolls on her bed amid Blohsh pillows. (That’s
racked up a total of 11 wins), Coachella, SNL, Howard Stern, her streetwear brand; its logo is an off-kilter stick figure.) With
NPR’s Tiny Desk, Ellen, The Tonight
Show, and in a car with James Corden.
The muchness of Eilish’s online
presence is overwhelming and kaleido-
scopic, her own posts and performances
spawning fan accounts and compilation
videos and ecstatic reaction videos and AT THE GRAMMYS, FOLLOWING
memes, so many memes, refractions of
Billie Eilish ad infinitum. There is the
EVERY OTHER MAJOR CATEGORY, THE
Baader-Meinhof effect too; once you are “PLEASE DON’T LET
aware of Eilish, she really is everywhere.
She’s trending on Twitter, her emotive
face shows up in a group text, her beauti-
ful voice Dopplers out of a passing car. In
the four short years since she signed with Interscope Records, her enviable eyebrows, button nose, and heavy-lidded eyes, she
she has risen to mind-boggling stardom: Her 49-show Where looks not unlike a fresh-faced Marilyn Monroe—albeit with a two-
Do We Go? arena tour, which had just kicked off in March and tone dye job, the raven black pushed out by neon-green roots.
would have run through September had it not been for the In photos she smolders or glowers or sulks. Her music videos
pandemic, sold out days after tickets went on sale. In October, are awash in black liquids streaming from her eyes, oil spills,
when we first speak, her music video for burn marks, tarantulas, disembodied hands clawing at her face.
the deliciously delinquent pop-trap tune Finneas has worked the sickening whiz of a dentist’s drill and the
UNTO HERSELF “Bad Guy” hits a billion views; a couple wet suck of Eilish removing her Invisalign into her songs. There
Previous spread: weeks later, she drops “Therefore I Am,” is an extreme teen-ness to her, which elicits the same sort of
Artist Billie Eilish, a single from her forthcoming album, rebukes bestowed upon other young stars (Kristen Stewart, most
photographed in
Los Angeles. and it’s watched 12 million times in the notably) who haven’t taken fondly to instant fame. A screenshot
first 24 hours. And she isn’t yet 19. of Eilish, her lip curled in what appears to be confused derision,
Clothing and socks Because of all this preconditioning—to went viral seemingly nanoseconds after she made the expres-
by Burberry;
ring by CHROME profile a celebrity is to dip a toe into the sion during Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph’s performance at
HEARTS. waters of extreme fandom—it is both the 2020 Academy Awards, drawing instant ire for her apparent

40 VA N I T Y FA I R
 dis of our comedic lords and saviors. But the Twitter takedowns
left out context: Eilish had been smiling up at the performance
until she caught sight of herself on a giant screen. At the Gram-
mys, following her sweep of every other major category, the
camera caught her mouthing “Please don’t let it be me,” like a
shy overachiever on school awards day, before they called album
of the year. (It was her.)
“B ILLIE IS A MEMBER of the unique moment in history,”
says R.J. Cutler, who directs the forthcoming Apple+
documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry,
which filmed from 2018 into early 2020, “where per-
haps every second of her life has been recorded in some form
or another.” Cutler, director of The War Room and executive
producer of ABC’s Nashville, had been immediately drawn to the
project. “Those stories of teenage life are so interesting to me.
It’s such a fascinating time of life, where you were both child
and adult; one foot in childhood, one foot in adulthood. And
especially for somebody who’s going through what Billie was
going through and who was such a remarkable talent.”
Eilish was excited about the prospect of the documentary
from the beginning. “I just have always loved cameras,” she
says, that moment at the Oscars aside, “and I loved being on
camera, and I’ve always loved watching videos of myself, since
I was a little kid. I remember being 10 and being like, ‘Mom,
can I watch home movies?’ ” (Her first steps, at 10 months, were
captured on film because, as her mother, Maggie Baird, says,
“The minute she knew that she was on that camera, she wanted
to see it. She wanted the camera, so I just backed up and she
walked to me.”) Eilish is sentimental about memory, and
she fills boxes under her bed with mementos: receipts from a
EILISH’S SWEEP OF
CAMERA CAUGHT HER MOUTHING
IT BE ME.” (IT WAS HER.)
trip to Japan, keys to old diaries, a beanie that belonged to the
first person she fell in love with. “I have perfumes in that box.
Small little vials of perfumes that smell exactly the way I smelled
in that relationship,” she says, and another one “that smells like
somebody that was abusive to me, mentally.”
For all her professional Sturm und Drang, in conversation
she’s animated and smiley, her big blue eyes often crinkling at
the corners. “In our creative life and minds,” she says of herself
and Finneas, “we’re just at an all-time good.” She was 16 when
she recorded When We All Fall Asleep, and “parts of it were great
and I love that album, but I was,” she says, “not in a great mental
place.” Since then, she’s started seeing a therapist. She’s more
settled. She laughs a lot—a midsentence hiccup when she’s mak-
ing fun of her own earnestness; a throaty chuckle when she’s
proud of and/or flabbergasted by her trajectory, like when I ask
where she keeps her Grammys and she says, “Right on the shelf,
right on the shelf, heh-heh.” But the ultimate Eilish laugh is an
open-mouth-grinning, eyebrows-raised ha-haaa! that falls some-
where between a chortle and a squawk—it is a laugh that might
belong to a very charming cartoon chicken.
The music she’s working on now, she says, “feels exactly
how I want it to. There isn’t one song, or one part of one song,
that I wish was this or that I wish it was that.” An early single,
“Therefore I Am,” thrilled fans and critics with its can’t-touch-
this vibe coupled with Descartes’s “cogito, ergo sum” reflections
on being, the lyrics a decoder ring of references. Eilish describes
it as “a pretty solid fuck-it type song.” In the music video, filmed
at the Glendale Galleria on an iPhone at 4 a.m., she acts out a
universal fantasy of any budding American consumer, running
through the mall’s empty fluorescence, collecting junk food from
various stalls. (She’s vegan, so while the chips from Chipotle and
pretzel from Wetzel’s were good to go, she special-ordered glazed
doughnuts from the Highland Park bakery Donut Friend.)
E VEN WITHOUT THE DOCUMENTARY, aspects of the
Eilish origin story have been so well-chronicled as
to achieve a kind of mythic status: that her parents
homeschooled (or “unschooled”) both her and
Finneas, in part because their father was inspired when he
learned that the Hanson brothers had been taught at home and
allowed to pursue whatever creative endeavors most struck
their fancy, paving the way for “MMMBop.” That Finneas and
Eilish recorded the mesmeric, ethereal “Ocean Eyes” for her
dance class, and when they uploaded it to SoundCloud in
November 2015, it went viral overnight. That a growth-plate
injury soon after would end her dance aspirations, and around
the same time she wouldn’t make it
into the exclusive chamber choir in the
Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, which
she’d been singing with since age eight.
(Both of which contributed to later bouts
of depression.) That in summer 2016,
then 25-year-old Justin Lubliner signed
her to Interscope Records.
Her appeal transcends generations—
she’s found admirers in Alicia Keys, who
recorded a cover of “Ocean Eyes”; Julia
Roberts, who has said she “is every-
thing”; and Dave Grohl, who called her
“unbelievable.” Woody Harrelson, who
hosted the 2019 season premiere of SNL for which she was the
musical guest, calls her “a little bit otherworldly.” But, unsur-
prisingly, it’s teen girls who make up the most vocal contingent
of her fan base. Harrelson had to keep the fact that Eilish was
performing at the show from his teen daughter, because he knew
she’d insist on coming to the show (“which, of course,” he says,
“she couldn’t come to the show because she’s in school”). “A
great deal of it has to do with how much [my daughter] loves
the music. Also, there’s something about Billie that just feels
genuine,” he says. “She’s just herself, which is very hard to be.”
“She’s direct and unaffected,” her father, Patrick O’Connell,
says. “It’s disarming and visible to anyone who sees it, but
I think it’s so appealing and magnetic to her fans.” There is a
typical Billie Eilish fan experience, he says, channeling it: “ ‘Oh
my gosh, she’s just like me. Oh my God, we could be friends if
MARCH 2021 41
 UP, UP, AWAY we only knew each other. Oh my God,
“I never want to she’s saying exactly what I would say.’ ”
push away somebody
that’s showing me The teenage years are often fueled
only love,” says Eilish by big emotions, an enormous and self-
of her enthusiastic
fans. “And even if it’s critical solipsism, and the feeling that
coming from a nobody understands, nobody sees,
place of crazy love.”
that every terrible, confusing, embarrass-
ing aspect of life is happening to you and
Sweatshirt and
necklace by you alone. Art is the thing that saves us,
Givenchy; earrings that teaches us early lessons in empathy:
by BULGARI High
Jewelry (vertical) Others can and do experience the same
and Chopard feelings of lust, of sadness, of shame. It’s
High Jewelry.
a sense of being seen, a first taste of deep
love. The looks on the faces of Eilish’s
fans—so many of them young, so many
of them girls—as they stare up at her onstage and weep is so
universal, so visceral. It’s earthshaking.
That kind of devotion, Eilish says, “makes you kind of crazy.
We all know the feeling of seeing yourself and being like, What is
going on with me, I’m acting insane. When you’re excited about
something, you forget boundaries and you forget what’s polite
and what’s kind of not polite. I’ve had a lot of weird situations—
people will kiss me and pick me up, spin me around.”
For meet-and-greets, back when those were still happening,
members of her team started briefing the kids in line about how
to behave. “It is definitely important to have the boundaries and
also have people around you that can help in a situation like
that,” Eilish says. “I never want to push away somebody that’s
showing me only love. And even if it’s coming from a place of
crazy love, I don’t ever want to push that too far away.”
“I think Patrick and I, in a way, get to benefit from it a little bit
more than Billie does, because we can see the beautiful effect
she’s having on people’s lives,” says Baird. “It’s hard for her to
take that in. You can easily feel like you’re letting people down.”
Part of her connection with her fans, Eilish says, is because
she understands them so well, and describes herself as “a fan
type person.” Her own musical obsessions are well-cataloged, in
particular her early infatuation with Justin Bieber, for which her
mother once considered putting her into therapy. In April 2019,
they met for the first time, at Coachella. Eilish stood speechless
in front of him for a full 30 seconds before falling into his arms
for an airport-terminal-grade hug. They danced to a surprise
NSYNC performance of “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” a song recorded
more than four years before Eilish was born. Three months later,
Bieber recorded a verse for a “Bad Guy”
remix; the accompanying art is a photo of
Eilish at age 12 surrounded by the Bieber
posters taped to her bedroom walls.
(“I definitely feel protective of her,” boy THESE DAYS, EILISH SAYS, AS LONG
star turned elder pop statesman Bieber
said through tears in an interview at the AS HER FRIENDS ARE STEERING
beginning of 2020. “I don’t want her to go
through anything I went through.”)
CLEAR OF HARD DRUGS AND BEING
While a generation of teenage girls SAFE WITH EVERYTHING ELSE,
may be channeling their angst and vicar-
ious rebellions through Eilish’s moody SHE’S NOT WORRIED.
lyrics, the concerned parent can take
comfort in the fact that Eilish is a teeto-
taler. At 15, one of her friends ended up in rehab following an
overdose, others close to her have died. The motif of “burying”
VA N I T Y FA I R
friends and lovers “not dying by mistake” appears throughout
her music. In a sea of anthems to the glory of getting fucked up,
Eilish’s “Xanny,” sung with a jazzy, benzo-laced ennui, is actually
about the sadness of being among people who can’t stay sober.
“When I was growing up and I was around my group of friends
back then,” says Eilish of her own sobriety, “and they would all
be drinking and smoking and doing drugs and whatever, I think
because of the way that my personality is—I’m a very strong-
willed person, and I think at the time I was very alpha—I’m
coming to realize that I may have felt a feeling of superiority.”
These days, she says, as long as her friends are steering clear
of hard drugs and being safe with everything else, she’s not
worried—besides which, the issue comes up less. “I’m not out
here going to parties and also,” she slows down, “I’m me, so
I can’t really go…anywhere.” I must have made an expression of
sympathy, because she follows with “But it’s okay!” as though
trying to reassure me.
T HE WORLD HAS no shortage of child stars hewn by
parent managers—Britney, Beyoncé, Lindsay—whose
relationships, as the children inevitably turn into
adults, follow varying rocky trajectories. From a dis-
tance, Baird and O’Connell bear the hallmarks of stage parents:
They’re both actors who had fine but less than dazzling careers;
the Hanson inspo could’ve been a red flag. But the ingredients
haven’t concocted trouble. While Baird, who taught the kids,
does serve as a sometime manager for her daughter, she’s more
of a tour mom, and O’Connell, who worked construction for Mat-
tel, started out as a handyman at his children’s shows; now he
does the lights. “[Billie] seems to have such an even keel, and
I credit it to her extraordinary, very tight family,” says Harrelson,
who went to lunch with them the day after the SNL broadcast.
(His daughter didn’t join, but Eilish did record a video for her.)
“They’re looking after each other, they love each other immense-
ly. And so there’s not the same kind of head games.”
And a sibling rivalry is meanwhile hard to imagine. Finneas
has a full-blown musical career in his own right, putting out
a solo EP in 2019 and producing songs for Selena Gomez and
Camila Cabello. “He has this special and unique ability to work
with Billie that nobody else has,” says O’Connell. “He’s her
older brother. He’s seen it all from the start. She’s seen it all.
So they have this honesty with each other and they can be very
frank. They can tell each other that they suck. They also have
great respect for each other’s individual talents.” Her pretty,
MARCH 2021 43
 full security detail that it is today, on a basic musical level it
has retained its DIY roots: Eilish and Finneas still record all
of their songs themselves, most often
in Finneas’s childhood bedroom, his
multiple keyboards jammed between
Murakami flower pillows.
EILISH AND FINNEAS STILL RECORD The homespun production has lent
them a nimbleness that proved useful
THEIR OWN SONGS, MOST OFTEN pre-pandemic, when they spent so much
time on tour. In 2019, when longtime
  IN FINNEAS’S CHILDHOOD BEDROOM, James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli
HIS KEYBOARDS JAMMED invited Eilish and Finneas to work on a
No Time to Die theme, they wrote it on
BETWEEN FLOWER PILLOWS. the road and recorded it in the quiet-
est place they could find: their tour bus.
“The bus was off, so it was completely
mournful song, “Everything I Wanted” (which, after we speak, pitch-black,” Eilish says, “and I was sitting hunched over in my
is nominated for three Grammys) is about the comfort and bunk and Finneas was sitting in his bunk across the aisle.” Hans
stability of their relationship. Zimmer himself plucked the song from the list of options—
going against the sensibilities, he’s said, of other decision
I had a dream makers—calling it “hugely personal,” “really well crafted,” and
I got everything I wanted “lean.” The morning after Eilish’s 18th birthday they traveled
But when I wake up, I see to London, and following a jet-lagged viewing, they recorded
You with me “No Time to Die” with Zimmer’s orchestra at Sir George Mar-
And you say, “As long as I’m here tin’s AIR Studios. (“I worked harder than I ever have to keep
No one can hurt you…” myself awake, because I wanted to be awake so bad, because
the movie is so incredible,” Eilish says. “I did everything I could.
As the Eilish operation (or what O’Connell calls, with a I was wiggling and rocking around and eating chips.”) It, too,
smidge of ponderous remove, “the Billie Eilish phenomenon”) garnered a nomination at this year’s Grammys.
scales exponentially up, moving from the single bus and motel If a Google search turns up scant paparazzi shots of one of the
rooms of its early tours to the arenas, first-class flights, and world’s most popular musicians, it’s because she makes herself
vigorously unavailable. She doesn’t eat out and no longer takes
spins around Trader Joe’s, where she once hoped to become a
checker. Weeks before I met her, a pap snapped a photo of her
in the few seconds it took to get from her car to her brother’s
house. She was wearing a tank top, on the way to the beach, and
the image spawned a range of opinions, from the celebratory
(embrace all body shapes!) to the vile.
“I think that the people around me were more worried about it
than I was, because the reason I used to cut myself was because
of my body. To be quite honest with you, I only started wearing
baggy clothes because of my body,” says Eilish. “I was really,
really glad though, mainly, that I’m in this place in my life,
because if that had happened three years ago, when I was in
the midst of my horrible body relationship—or dancing a ton,
five years ago, I wasn’t really eating. I was, like, starving myself.
I remember taking a pill that told me that
it would make me lose weight and it only
made me pee the bed—when I was 12. It’s A LITTLE BLURRY
just crazy. I can’t even believe, like I— In her self-made
short film, Eilish
wow. Yeah. I thought that I would be the asks viewers, “Do
only one dealing with my hatred for my you know me?
Really know me?”
body, but I guess the internet also hates
my body. So that’s great.”
Dress, sweatshirt,
I posit that the internet might hate all necklace, and gloves
women’s bodies. by Givenchy; pants by
Nike; sneakers by
“The internet hates women,” Eilish Rombaut; earrings
says. Last year, she made a short film by BULGARI High
Jewelry (vertical)
in which she very slowly disrobes from and Chopard
a black hoodie to a bra and sinks into High Jewelry.
MARCH 2021 45
CONTAINING
MULTITUDES
Though Eilish has
earned millions
as a teen, she is just
now learning adult
self-sufficiency. To
wit: She accidentally
ordered 70 boxes
of Froot Loops.

Clothing and
earrings by Area.

46 VA N I T Y FA I R
MARCH 2021 47

thick black liquid. “Do you know me?” her voiceover asks.
“Really know me? You have opinions about my opinions, about
my music, about my clothes, about my body.”
The pandemic has tightened her already tight-knit circle;
she spends most of her time with her family and a few close
friends, many of whom work for her. On our first call, two publi-
cists and one of her managers, Laura, whom she calls her “best
friend,” unexpectedly joined us—a publicist has been present
for every cover interview, they say, “since day one”—but a week
later, it’s just us, as requested.
“I am sitting here and napping with the ugly little dog,” she
says at the start of our second Zoom: “He is snoring and smells
terrible.” She moves the phone so I can take in Shark, her jowly
10-month-old blue nose pit bull rescue, adopted toward the
beginning of the pandemic, who is going through a rebellious
“TONS OF MY FRIENDS TEXTED ME
AND THEY WERE LIKE, I’M SO PROUD
OF YOU! TRUMP IS AFRAID OF YOU!
I WAS LIKE, DAMN RIGHT.”
48 VA N I T Y FA I R
phase. At the moment he is luxuriating on GREEN ENERGY
his back, his face tucked into her armpit, Eilish is outspoken on
the fight against
making a noise that could be warped into climate change and
a background track on one of her songs. has incorporated
activism into song lyrics.
(Though Finneas says that when it comes
to the Easter eggs they drop into songs, Top by JW Anderson;
he’s been “a little bit on the cautious side earrings by Dannijo.
of not wanting it to be a gimmick.”) Throughout: hair
products by Number 4;
During the pandemic, she has discov- makeup by Rare
ered the joys of ordering online. “I don’t Beauty; nail enamel
by Tammy Taylor.
know what things cost because I’ve never
been an adult before,” she says. “And,
you know, I grew up with no money.”
Then she crash-landed into the adult world as a multiplatinum
artist selling out arena tours. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do
We Go? sold 3.9 million units. (Her team says reports that she
personally took in $25 million for the Apple+ documentary are
false.) “It’s a really weird position I’m in. I feel kind of stupid
because I’m like, I don’t know how much Froot Loops are. I tried
to order one box of Froot Loops and I was like, Oh yeah, sure. It’s
$35. I didn’t know that that’s expensive.” She raises her eyebrows.
“I ordered 70 boxes.” (The little ones, but still.)
She also finished watching The Office—for the 15th time. When
I ask about her devotion to the show, which she sampled on “My
Strange Addiction,” she says, “I’ve got a lot going on in my head
and my brain really can’t shut the fuck up unless there’s some-
thing else going on. It takes me out of my thoughts. And I like
that it’s just, like, realistic shit. It’s the most average people’s
lives, and I love that.”
Eight months into the pandemic, Finneas and Eilish managed
a feat few have attempted: They gave a live concert to thousands
of fans. At 3 p.m. PT, as the lights came up on Eilish’s Los Angeles
stage, the words “the show is best on a bigger screen” appeared at
the corner of my laptop, a reminder for a generation of teenagers
raised on smartphones. The show setup looked simple enough:
Finneas at his keyboard, Eilish with a mic, and Andrew Marshall
on drums, each occupying their own third of the stage. But then
H A I R , B E N J A M I N M O H A P I ; M A K E U P , R O B E R T R U M S E Y ; M A N I C U R E , TA M M Y TAY LO R ; S E T D E S I G N , DA N I E L H O R O W I T Z ;
the VR kicked in. During the set’s opener, “Bury a Friend,” a song
from the perspective of the monster under your bed, Eilish’s shad-
ow stretched nightmarishly up the backboard into a looming Tim
Burton–esque bogeyman. A three-dimensional wall-spanning
spider, the platonic ideal of every arachnophobe’s worst anxieties,
skittered and stomped around Eilish as she sang “You Should See
Me in a Crown.” A cute forest bloomed; a shark devoured her; she P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y P O R T F O L I O O N E ; F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
and her brother soared skyward on a pillar, surrounded by stars
and backed by the moon. It was magical in
a very 21st century kind of way. And mega-
graphics aside, the clapping from the crew
between songs lent a sense of intimacy
to the proceedings. It was “to give me a
little something,” Eilish says, “because it’s
weird to not have the crowd. All of my per-
formance energy comes from the crowd.”
Still, the energy was there. Growing
up, Eilish watched concert videos of her
favorite rappers. “I envied them because
they get to just take their shirts off,
because they’re men, and jump around
the stage, and the whole crowd is jumping around and spraying
water, and moshing and they’re dirty C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 1
MARCH 2021
D OWN IN

50 VA N I T Y FA I R
THE VA L L E Y

THE HELICOPTER RIDE

SHOULD HAVE BEEN
LIKE ANY OTHER: A SHORT,
SCENIC CHOP TO THE
MAMBA SPORTS ACADEMY,
HOME IN TIME FOR DINNER.
BUT THINGS DIDN’T GO AS
PLANNED ON KOBE BRYANT’S
FINAL FLIGHT

By J e f f W i s e

MARCH 2021 51
8:45 A.M.
ON A
GLOOMY
S U N DAY
MOR NING
last winter, Ara Zobayan stood in the Atlantic Aviation terminal
at John Wayne International Airport in Orange County, Califor-
nia, and contemplated his flight-planning app. The helicopter
pilot’s software showed a blanket of clouds covering the city.
Beneath the thousand-foot-thick layer lay patchy haze. The poor
visibility meant that large swaths of the region were unflyable.
This was a problem. The charter company OC Helicopters
had hired Zobayan’s employer, Island Express Helicopters, to
fly Kobe Bryant and seven companions to Camarillo, an airport
on the coast 80 miles to the northwest.
Completing the mission was important to Zobayan. Island
Express was a small operation, with six helicopters and as
many pilots, and it ran on thin margins, according to former
Island Express pilot Kurt Deetz. Its business mostly consisted
of shuttling passengers back and forth between Long Beach
and Catalina Island, a tourist destination 20 miles off the coast.
Custom charter flights for high-net-worth individuals were less
frequent but far more lucrative.
Of all the company’s VIPs, Bryant was the I-est. According
to Deetz, not only did Bryant fly Island Express regularly—for
any crosstown trip that a normal person would just drive—
but his patronage lent the company a luster. “Kobe was their
pride and joy,” says Deetz. “It was like, ‘Look at us, we’ve made
it.’ ” Keeping Bryant happy was job one. And as with any client,
that meant getting him where he wanted to go.
The twin-engine Sikorsky S-76B that Zobayan would fly
that day is regarded as one of the safest in the world. The air-
craft was equipped for instrument flying, but according to
the National Transportation Safety Board’s accident report,
Island Express was only licensed to fly under visual flight rules,
or VFR, meaning that the pilot had to be able to see the ground
at all times. The NTSB investigation, along with interviews, are
the basis for this account of the day’s events.
Ric Webb, the owner of OC Helicopters, arrived at the
terminal to help with the Bryant party’s boarding. According
to Patti Taylor, the operations manager at OC Helicopters, the
company had a pre-existing relationship with Bryant and its
own fleet of helicopters, but they were all single-engine. Per
Los Angeles Lakers rules he could only fly on twin-engine heli-
copters, so they subcontracted his flights to Island Express.
52 VA N I T Y FA I R
Zobayan showed Webb the weather map and told him that he
had a plan. The direct route to Camarillo over the coast was
awash in red, signifying that conditions were too crummy to
fly. But if Zobayan stayed inland and east of downtown L.A.,
he could duck through a pass in the hills, cut across the San Fer-
nando Valley, scoot over a low pass, and descend into Camarillo
from the east. The conditions still wouldn’t be great, and the
route would take longer, but he could handle it.
Every flight has a safety margin, a multilayer cushion that
protects it from a crash. Among the components are backup
parts for crucial aircraft systems, multiple safeguards to pre-
vent the aircraft from hitting things, and procedures to ensure a
pilot doesn’t miss any crucial steps. Island Express had a proce-
dure in place to ensure that its pilots stayed within conservative
safety parameters. Called the flight risk analysis tool, it was an
electronic checklist of 69 items that would tally up a number of
points indicating the risk factor. If the visibility was below VFR
minimums, for instance, the system would add nine points, and
so on. If the score totaled higher than 45, then the pilot could
not fly without first consulting management.
Enough of those conditions applied on January 26 that the
form instructed pilots to write down what they would do if they
couldn’t complete the flight as planned, and to discuss the situ-
ation with the director of operations or the chief pilot. The Los
Angeles Police Department had grounded its helicopters.
But Bryant needed to get through, and Zobayan had an out.
He was Island Express’s chief pilot. So he skipped writing down
his backup plans, left critical risk factors unchecked, and hit Sub-
mit. He was good to go.
9 A.M.
Bryant’s car pulled up. The group was heading to the Mamba
Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks for a travel-league basket-
ball tournament. Since retiring in 2016 after 20 years in the
NBA, Bryant had taken a serious interest in his 13-year-old daugh-
ter Gianna’s athletic development. He’d started Team Mamba
with himself as coach and recruited a passel of eighth-grade
girls from around Orange County to play with her. Two of them
were accompanying Gianna and Bryant: Payton Chester, along
with her mother, Sarah Chester; and Alyssa Altobelli with
her parents, Keri and John Altobelli. Also on the flight was
the Mambas’ assistant coach, 38-year-old Christina Mauser,
whom the Bryants had gotten to know as a coach at Gianna’s
private school in Corona del Mar. Other teammates included
the daughter of former NBA player Zach Randolph and the
daughter of a former Costa Mesa mayor; they had driven to
Thousand Oaks for the first day of the tournament on Saturday
and stayed overnight in hotels. “The attraction to all this, if you
were a parent, was ‘My kid’s going to be coached by Kobe Bry-
ant,’ and that’s pretty cool,” says Tony Altobelli, John Altobelli’s
brother. “John would go out to as many practices and games as
he could, because it’s Kobe Bryant coaching his daughter—you
P R E V I O U S PA G E S : L A S D / G E T T Y I M A G E S .
know, that doesn’t happen every day.”
Wheels-up had originally been set for 9:45 a.m. Team Mamba
was slated to play a noon game against Lady Drive Nation, a
team from Dallas coached by 19-year NBA veteran Jason Terry.
But the night before, Bryant’s personal assistant had called OC
Helicopters to reschedule, explaining that Bryant wanted to
check out another team earlier in the morning. The new depar-
ture time was set for 9 a.m.
 Bryant was running behind schedule. That wasn’t unusual,
according to Island Express’s Whitney Bagge. He could show
up as much as two hours late; this time he was just a few min-
utes behind. As soon as he climbed out of the car, Zobayan
returned to the cockpit and Webb escorted the passengers
to the helicopter. Bryant and the three players all wore team
uniforms: black tracksuits with a Nike swoosh and the Mamba
Sports Academy logo in white.
The passengers piled into the Sikorsky and strapped in as
Webb latched the doors. The interior was spacious, outfitted
with polished mahogany veneer and gold-colored accents,
and upholstered in two-tone leather, with bench seats, four
across, one facing forward and the other back. Bryant’s favorite
spot was the window seat on the left, facing forward, accord-
ing to Deetz.
The pitch of the twin turbines whined higher as they spooled
up, and the thrumming of the rotor grew louder. At 9:06 a.m. the
fuselage tipped forward and the aircraft peeled away from
the ground. The helicopter’s landing gear folded into its belly as it danger of poor visibility: inadvertent flight into instrument meteo-
accelerated forward into a climb, the traffic on the Corona del Mar
Freeway falling away below.
For those who love them,
helicopters are the embodi-
ment of freedom. Helicopters TODAY THE TERRAIN
are noisy and expensive; the
hourly cost of an 8,000-pound
WAS SHROUDED
S-76B is about $1,800. It A GRID OF URBAN SPRAWL
can travel only one third as STRETCHING INTO A HAZE THAT
fast as a jet. But helicopters
have the magic ability to GAVE EVERYTHING
take off and land virtually MYSTICAL QUALITY.
anywhere. While a plane’s
wings generate lift by travel-
ing laterally through the air,
so must always be moving, a helicopter’s blades achieve lift
by whirling around a hub, so they can take the aircraft straight
up from a standstill. Typically flying hundreds of feet off the
ground instead of thousands, helicopters offer not only con-
venience and speed but a dreamlike sense of hovering over
the familiar world.
On a clear day the views of the coast and inland mountains
would have been stunning. But today the terrain was shrouded
in white, a grid of urban sprawl stretching into a haze that gave
everything a flat, mystical quality. As Zobayan flew north, land-
marks emerged from the moving curtain of gloom: the green
square of the public golf course in Fountain Valley; the twin run-
ways at Los Alamitos airfield; the sinuous concrete gulch of the
Coyote Creek flood control channel; the looping interchanges
of the 605; the sprawling Union Pacific rail yard in East L.A.
Zobayan knew this geography intimately. An ethnic Arme-
nian raised in Lebanon, he’d moved to the United States in his
teens and saved money for flying lessons while working as a
parking lot attendant, according to his girlfriend. He got his
helicopter pilot’s license in 2001 and accrued hours working as
a flight instructor. In 2011 he started working for Island Express.
A slight man with an infectious smile, he enjoyed flying celebri-
ties and counted Kylie Jenner and L.A. Clippers forward Kawhi
Leonard among his repeat customers.
Flying in Los Angeles is less about familiarity with the vis-
ible landmarks than understanding invisible demarcations
of the airspace, a complicated three-dimensional puzzle of
interlocking jurisdictions, each with its own rules. It’s easy to
get confused and make a mistake. Five years before, Zobayan
had made a mistake flying near LAX and got into a tangle with
the FAA. He had been flying in reduced visibility, much like
this day, and needed special permission to enter LAX’s busy
airspace. Misunderstanding what the tower controllers told
him, he crossed over the boundary before he was supposed
to. An FAA investigator faulted him for poor planning and for
failing to properly review the prevailing weather conditions
but let him off without penalty.
The skies over L.A. are some of the busiest in the world, abuzz
with commercial and private jets, news choppers, joyriders, the
occasional dirigible, and even, this fall, a person in a jet pack.
The traffic is heaviest close to airports. Farther away, controllers
let pilots flying at low altitude find their own way.
If you can’t see very far, it’s difficult to steer clear of other air-
craft that may cross your path. But there is another, more insidious
rological conditions. Or, as it’s known in accident reports where
it’s so commonly cited, IIMC.
If a pilot blunders into the
middle of a cloud or fog and
all visual clues suddenly dis-
appear, disorientation can
IN WHITE, be rapid. According to the
Federal Aviation Administra-
tion, spatial disorientation is
the cause of 5 to 10 percent
A FLAT, of general-aviation acci-
dents, and 90 percent of
such crashes are fatal. John F.
Kennedy Jr. died in an IIMC
airplane crash. The phenom-
enon is even more dangerous in helicopters, which are less stable
and, absent control, prone to turn upside down.
The best way for pilots to avoid this fate is to scrupulously
avoid flying into clouds or fog. Over the years, the FAA has
implemented stringent rules, including mandatory courses on
how to avoid it. In fact, Zobayan had received IIMC training just
seven months before.
As long as he followed the rules, everything would be fine.
9:18 A.M.
Twelve minutes after takeoff, the Sikorsky was abeam the
Staples Center. From his seat Bryant could have made out
the slant-roofed oval in the distance, beyond City Hall and the
skyscrapers of downtown. His personal story and that of the are-
na were closely intertwined. When the Staples Center opened
in 1999, Bryant was 21, in his fourth season with the Lakers, the
only NBA team he ever played for. That year Bryant helped bring
home the first of three straight championships. Two more fol-
lowed in later years. When he retired in 2016, Bryant had scored
33,643 points, a mark surpassed only by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
and Karl Malone until the night before the helicopter ride, when
LeBron James hit 33,644. Bryant had sent out a congratulatory
tweet: “Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames.
Much respect my brother ”
The Staples Center wasn’t just where Bryant transformed
from star to legend. It was how he picked up his passion for
MARCH 2021 53
helicopters. When he first moved to L.A., at age 17, he lived
in Pacific Palisades, a 14-mile commute to practice and home
games. Then he met a 17-year-old high school student named
Vanessa Laine on the set of a music video. He fell hard, married
her, and moved down to Orange County, where her family
lived. Eventually, rather than brave 42 miles of SoCal traffic,
he turned to helicopters.
Bryant had always aspired to greatness. Growing up in Italy,
the son of an expatriate former NBA player, and then later as a
standout high school player in suburban Philadelphia, he felt an
unquenchable drive to rise above. At 17, in 1996, he became the
first professional guard to skip college and be drafted straight
into the NBA. As an established superstar, he dubbed himself
“The Black Mamba” to convey a sense of superhuman speed,
precision, and danger. This autonym, Bryant would later
explain, was also a self-protective reaction to the backlash that
followed his arrest in 2003 for the sexual assault of a front-desk
clerk in a Colorado hotel. The criminal charges were later dis-
missed, but a civil settlement with the accuser included Bryant’s
apology, and the event dogged him; sponsors dropped him,
and he struggled to answer
questions about the inci-
dent. Now, coasting swiftly
and high over Los Angeles ZOBAYAN WAS PUSHING
suited his Black Mamba
alter ego and lifted him far
THE MARGINS.
above the public criticism LIGHT AHEAD. IF HE
he sometimes received. COULD GET PAST THE TOP OF
Bryant used helicopters
to get to his job, to whisk THE PASS, HE’D
Vanessa away on roman- HE’D BE GOOD.
tic jaunts, and plenty else.
One Thanksgiving he asked
Zobayan to fly him to San
Bernardino for a holiday dinner with his wife’s relatives. When
Zobayan landed at the destination, Bryant got out, climbed into
the limo, and drove off. A moment later, the car pulled back up,
and Bryant climbed back into the helicopter. He’d forgotten
the stuffing. Zobayan zipped him back to Orange County, Bry-
ant drove home, got the stuffing, drove back to the airport, got
back in Zobayan’s helicopter, and flew back to San Bernardino.
This preferred mode of transportation made it easier to be
involved with a sports training and rehab complex in Thousand
Oaks, an exurban community on the far side of the SoCal mega-
sprawl. The Sports Academy was state of the art, having opened
in 2016; its 100,000-square-foot facility included five basketball
courts, five volleyball courts, and two beach volleyball pits, plus
batting cages. Bryant was so impressed that in 2018 he officially
partnered with the academy, which adopted the Mamba name.
The center became Mamba Sports Academy—the perfect place
to host a tournament for his daughter’s youth basketball league.
9:20 A.M.
Downtown slipped away behind them. The Sikorsky buzzed past
Dodger Stadium and along the concrete bed of the Los Angeles
River as it wound to the north. Ahead lay two obstacles. The
first was physical: the Santa Monica mountains, whose ridgeline
rises above Malibu to the west and runs eastward past Beverly
Hills, a green wall demarcating the northern edge of Los Angeles
proper. Today, the peaks were lost in the low clouds. But there
54 VA N I T Y FA I R
was a way through: a four-mile gap near the L.A. Zoo. Beyond
lay Burbank and the broad basin of the San Fernando Valley.
The back door to Camarillo.
The other obstacle was regulatory. As the helicopter zoomed
past the Silver Lake Reservoir, Zobayan was flying through what’s
known as uncontrolled airspace, meaning there was no air traf-
fic controller in a tower somewhere keeping an eye on him. But
beyond the mouth of the mountain pass, the airspace was con-
trolled by Burbank Airport. Serious air traffic takes off and lands
there—domestic airline flights, private jets—and the rules are
strict. Zobayan couldn’t enter a five-mile radius of the airport
without permission from its control tower. At 9:20 he pushed
his radio’s transmit toggle and requested authorization to enter:
“Burbank, helicopter seven-two Echo Xray, Sikorsky helicopter,
approaching the zoo for a 101 westbound transition at 800.”
The response: “Class Charlie surface area is IFR, say
intentions?”
Translation: No. The tower wasn’t going to let Zobayan enter
the airspace. By FAA regulation, aircraft flying under visual
flight rules have to be able to see at least three miles. The vis-
ibility at Burbank was two
and a half, and so flights
would have to be conduct-
ed under instrument flight
rules, or IFR.
BUT THERE WAS Zobayan had a work-
around. When visibility is
low, pilots are allowed to
request “special VFR,” per-
MAKE IT. mission to fly through even
though conditions are below
the minimums. The catch is
that the tower can only grant
permission if no other air-
craft are flying in its airspace at the time. As it happened, at that
moment a Skywest flight was about to land.
Burbank tower: “N2EX you can expect a few minutes, uh,
I got another aircraft inbound on the final.”
Zobayan: “Okay, we’ll hold.”
He put the helicopter into a turn, banking right, then banking
left, then right again, in a series of circles and figure eights, just
400 feet above the tidy rows of homes in Glendale. The size
and sound of the helicopter were such that an observer on the
ground took a video.
The plane coming into Burbank landed. Then another.
Around and around Zobayan flew.
A
S THEY WAITED, the passengers in the back apparently
chatted. Keri and John Altobelli told Bryant that one of
their older daughters, Alexis, was interested in getting
an internship with sports agent Scott Boras, who had represent-
ed athletes including Alex Rodriguez and Bryce Harper. John
Altobelli was the head baseball coach at Orange Coast College
and had met Boras in a professional capacity but didn’t have his
K E N T C . H O R N E R / G E T T Y I MAG E S .
number. Could Bryant help out?
As it happened, Bryant belonged to the same Orange County
church as Boras but didn’t have his phone number either. He knew
who could help, though. He shot off a text to his old friend and
sports agent Rob Pelinka, who was now general manager of the
Lakers. If anyone could make the connection, Pelinka could.
FAMILY VALUES
Kobe Bryant with his daughter Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant on
his shoulders, at the sidelines of a friendly match in 2014.

MARCH 2021 55
GAME CHANGER
Alyssa Altobelli
and teammate
Gianna Bryant at
the Mamba Sports
Academy the day
before the crash.
HOMECOMING
Left: Los Angeles
Lakers set out a
memorial of jerseys
and flowers courtside
ahead of a home
game. Right: A
memorial tribute at
the Mamba Sports
Academy.
This was Bryant’s world. He’d been connected his whole life.
His father and uncle were both NBA pros, and as a teenager he’d
honed his skills alongside the country’s most promising young
players at the elite ABCD training camp in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Now he was providing his daughter and her classmates with
the same leg up. He wasn’t coaching Saturday rec league. He
was creating a pipeline. He expected his players and their par-
ents to commit to practicing seven days a week for six years. In
return, at college application time, they would be at the front
of the line. Several of the girls already had specific ambitions.
Gianna Bryant had her sights set on the University of Connecti-
cut, a women’s basketball powerhouse. Alyssa Altobelli was all
in on the University of Oregon. “With that Mamba name, I’m
sure she was already being talked about in Oregon,” says her
uncle, Tony Altobelli.
As the Sikorsky circled above Glendale, Bryant’s phone pinged
with Pelinka’s response. He’d seen Boras at a Lakers game a few
nights before, and he’d be happy to arrange the connection.
9:32 A.M.
After 11 minutes of circling, Zobayan was given permission to
enter Burbank airspace. But he wouldn’t be able to cut directly
west toward Camarillo due to departing traffic in that direc-
tion. Instead, he’d have to head north past Van Nuys, the next
airport beyond Burbank. In effect, he’d be making a long loop-
ing detour around the San Fernando Valley. That would add
to the delay.
Zobayan had another problem. The whole area was covered
in the same layer of overcast that he’d cruised under all the way
from Orange County, a flat, thick, slate gray ceiling a thousand
feet above the valley floor. That left him plenty of room for now,
but eventually he’d get to the far southwestern corner of the basin
and have to scoot over the low pass at Calabasas. If the clouds
stayed at the same height, he should be all right. But he had no
way to know if this would be the case, because as he looped
around the northern end of Van Nuys, the pass was invisible
behind 10 miles of intervening haze.
There was no good reason to assume that the cloud cover
would be the same height at the pass. Calabasas has its own
56 VA N I T Y FA I R
microclimate, and conditions there can be quite different
from elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley. Malibu Canyon
connects Calabasas to the Pacific Ocean seven miles south,
and it can funnel fog in from the sea like the smokestack
on a locomotive.
Still, if he got to the pass and found it socked in, Zobayan
would have a couple of options. The first would be to turn back,
retrace his route to Van Nuys, and let the company arrange for
ground transport to get the passengers the half hour to Thousand
Oaks. The second would be to land and wait for midday sun to
burn off the fog.
Either option would be prudent but would cause Bryant
delays. And that was anathema to Zobayan. Like many pilots,
he was results-oriented, motivated to carry out his missions,
K . C . A L F R E D / Z U M A P R E S S / N E W S C O M . M U R A L : D A R R I A N T R AY N O R / G E T T Y I M A G E S . C A N D L E S : C H R I S D E L M A S /A F P / G E T T Y I M A G E S .
according to some of those who flew with him. Sometimes that
high level of motivation pushes pilots to violate their own safety
J E R S E Y S : H A R R Y H O W/ G E T T Y I M A G E S . A LT O B E L L I & B R YA N T : C H R I S C O S T E L LO / M O P H O / S P L A S H N E W S . C O M . V I C T I M S :
limits; in 2010 the president of Poland and 95 other passengers
died after the pilot attempted to land at a fogged-in airport. This
dynamic is so common in aviation that crash investigators have
a term for it: get-there-itis.
And Zobayan loved to fly Bryant—it was the best job he’d
ever had. Kobe and Vanessa both knew him personally and
liked him. They requested him by name, according to Taylor.
He was proud of that, and he wanted to keep them happy. “Kobe
was very particular,” Bagge later recalled.
For Island Express, part of keeping Bryant happy was get-
ting him where he wanted to go. Their attitude, Deetz says,
was: “You have Kobe on board, you make it happen.” But Deetz
found that Bryant understood sometimes flights had to be can-
celed. “Once the weather got to a minimum I was like, ‘Hey, I’m
not going to be able to make it.’ He never once complained.”
Zobayan expected the pilots who worked for him to have
a similar can-do spirit. David Harvey, a pilot working under
Zobayan who once complained about only getting assigned to
Catalina flights and never to charters, says Zobayan rebuked
him for not having the proper mindset. He told Harvey a story
about how he’d once had to fly a passenger from Coachella, in
the Palm Desert, to Van Nuys in the middle of the night. But
Van Nuys had been socked in, so he’d dropped the passenger

off in Burbank, then headed back to the company’s base at
Long Beach, where the aircraft was based. By then it was
4 a.m., he was low on fuel, and he couldn’t find a way through
the clouds. So he went offshore, where he knew there wouldn’t
be any buildings or terrain to run into, and descended through
the cloud layer illegally. Just above the surface of the water he
found enough clear air, 300 or 400 feet, to make it back to Long
Beach on nearly empty tanks.
Zobayan’s implication, Harvey felt, was that if he didn’t take
risks like that, he wouldn’t be allowed to fly charters.
9:40 A.M.
Zobayan cleared Van Nuys airspace and headed for the south-
western corner of the valley. He was once again in uncontrolled
airspace and didn’t need to talk to air traffic control anymore.
But when conditions are marginal, sometimes pilots like to
ask for help. Zobayan called up SoCal Approach, a regional
control authority, and requested flight following, a service that
provides real-time advisories about weather and air traffic.
“SoCal, helicopter 72EX with you, transitioning in VFR condi-
tions at 1,500 to Camarillo.”
“Helicopter 72EX, SoCal Approach, roger, you just gonna stay
down low at that for all the way to Camarillo?”
“Yes, sir, low altitude.”
Zobayan’s request might be difficult for the controller to ful-
fill. Both radar coverage and radio transmissions require line of
sight, so aircraft flying down among the hilltops can be hard to
track. SoCal Approach replied: “Uh, I’m gonna lose radar and,
uh, comms with you probably pretty shortly.” Zobayan stayed
on frequency and hoped for the best.
A minute later Zobayan reached the southern end of the
San Fernando Valley and turned west to pick up the Ventura
Freeway. The road would serve as his atlas from here out. It
not only followed the lowest route through the pass but would
eventually lead all the way to the airport at Camarillo.
Ahead, Zobayan would have been just beginning to make out
the hillsides rising above the neat grid of the sloping valley. Win-
ter rains had turned their brown flanks olive green. He floated
past the Commons at Calabasas shopping mall, the rows of
MAMBA FOREVER
Left: A mural honoring Bryant in his Lakers
uniform painted by Australian street artist
Lushsux. Above: An impromptu memorial in
downtown Los Angeles.
McMansions at Calabasas Park Estates, a water tower on a stumpy
hill. Camarillo was only 24 miles away now, nine minutes by air.
As the ground below him gradually rose higher, he matched
it with his own altitude. The bottom of the gray was too indis-
tinct for him to tell exactly how far above it was—imagine
the last time you had a window seat upon landing in less-
than-sunny weather. The clouds seem to start when you’re
still quite high in the air, but then, boom, you pop out of the
bottom and the plane is practically touching down. Zobayan
might be cutting it close. But if worse came to worst and he
did find himself inside a cloud, his IIMC training had included
an escape strategy. The trick is to keep flying straight ahead
and climb briskly straight up through the cloud layer. In order
to keep from getting disoriented, the pilot should engage the
autopilot by pressing two buttons on the control panel: One
maintains the direction of flight, and the other sets the rate of
climb. Ascending through clouds is risky and illegal, but it’s
better than having no strategy at all.
Zobayan had actually flown into clouds a few times in the
past—on purpose. There had been the Coachella incident, for one.
And he’d bragged to Deetz that sometimes while flying between
Long Beach and Catalina he’d deliberately climb through overcast
to get into clear air above. Maybe those clouds had been thin-
ner than today’s thousand-foot-tall cloud layer, but he’d gotten
through each time without trouble. How bad could it be today?
The road kept rising and the hills began to close in on either
side. With the overcast just above, it would’ve felt like entering a
tunnel. He was pushing the margins. But there was light ahead.
If he could get past the top of the pass, the terrain would quickly
start to descend and he could put some distance between the
aircraft and the ground. He’d make it. He’d be good.
The Sikorsky zoomed over the crest of the pass at 150 mph.
9:44:30 A.M.
A hiker was waiting for her friend in the parking lot at the Juan
Bautista de Anza East trailhead, just west of the pass summit,
when a “long, white helicopter” flew low overhead and then
disappeared into a low-hanging patch of clouds 500 feet to
the west. CON TIN U ED ON PAGE 92
MARCH 2021 57
By Emily Jane Fox

58 VA N I T Y FA I R
Whether they head
for the backwater
luxury of New Jersey,
the towering gilt of
Park Avenue, or
a $30 million Florida plot,
Jared and Ivanka
will reenter
society as outcasts

MAGA
NON GRATA
MARCH 2021 59
 S
SOMETHING STARTED TO spread over the
summer when Donald Trump turned
the White House lawn into a venue for the
Republican National Convention finale
and potentially a living, breathing Hatch
Act violation. The COVID-19 outbreak
would come later, at another White
House celebration with scant masks and
a misguided reliance on rapid tests. What
circulated first, in text message exchanges
from the Hamptons to Hollywood, was a
split second of footage taken as cameras
panned the crowd. In it, viewers caught
sight of friends of Ivanka Trump and
Jared Kushner, including Wendi Deng
Murdoch and Tico Mugrabi. Murdoch,
a longtime intimate of the couple and
Rupert’s ex-wife, wore a red-and-white
floral dress and a red face mask that
blared “MAGA” across the mouth.
Until then, the small group that
remained friends with the president’s
daughter and son-in-law had largely done
so in private. In October 2019, for instance,
Jared and Ivanka hosted a group, includ-
ing Murdoch and Mugrabi, oil heir Mikey
Hess and fashion designer Misha Nonoo
(a Meghan Markle bestie, to boot), Lion-
Tree founder Aryeh Bourkoff, the Trump
siblings, and Josh Kushner—without his
wife, supermodel-entrepreneur Karlie
Kloss—at Camp David to celebrate their
10th wedding anniversary. Details about
the celebrations leaked out, but the guest
list remained guarded, at least from
the public. Within their social circles,
friends raised eyebrows and privately rid-
iculed those who had chosen to attend,
according to several people familiar
with the conversations. (Kloss, conspicu-
ously absent, was spared. “Karlie is the
anti-Ivanka,” a former friend of Ivanka’s
explained. “Independent, self-made,
naturally beautiful, and truly authentic.”)
When Jared and Ivanka traveled to Rome
for Hess and Nonoo’s wedding weeks

60 VA N I T Y FA I R
 earlier, paparazzi circled as they sat out-
side the hotel for brunch or strolled the
ancient streets, and guests would scurry
out of frame so as not to be caught in pho-
tos with them, these people said.
Those who have remained in frame, as
one person puts it, serve as something of a
cautionary tale. Among the set that Jared
and Ivanka would prefer to rejoin—the
one of Adriatic-anchored yachts and Met
Gala carpets—there is a sense of looking
around for who, if anyone, will welcome
them back. They were on these boats
and in front of these step-and-repeats in
the before times; Jared reigned over The
New York Observer to buy himself into the
world he wanted to occupy, and Ivanka
wielded her power as a trustee overseeing
Murdoch’s younger two daughters’ for-
tune. But things have shifted. Now, eyes
are scanning for any hint of who will dress
them, buy their real estate, seat them at
the reserved table in their restaurants,
“Ivanka is no Princess Margaret and
Jared is not the Duke of Windsor regaling
guests with amusing bon mots.”
educate their children, like their Insta-
gram photos. Case in point: An article
speculating that Ivanka would attempt
to reenter the New York art scene wound
up in my inbox a dozen times. (People
O P E N I N G PA G E S : Y U R I G R I PA S / R E U T E R S . T H I S PA G E : M A R K S T E WA R T/ C A M E R A P R E S S / R E D U X .
familiar with the first daughter’s art col-
lection refer to it as “unimpressive before
COVID,” but post-COVID, post–undeni-
able complicity, “virtually unsalable.”) Or
this: Over the last several years, a slew of
sources have sent me a steady stream
of screenshots showing mutual friends
or well-known faces tapping like on an
Ivanka Instagram post. Since the elec-
tion, those people have started to post
the screenshots on their own grams, in
full view. The hawkishness was no lon-
ger something reserved for secret sharing;
LORD AND LADY LOSER
Friends predict that Jared Kushner and
Ivanka Trump will face social
scrutiny. They really don’t care—do u?
they wanted their whole followings to
know that they were watching. And while
some of these people are crossing their
fingers that Javanka will fade to black,
most of that crowd knows that while the
Trumps may be leaving the White House,
they will very much still exist. They will
surely try to exert their influence. They
will be a freight train or a train wreck
steaming right through the hedgerow.
From the jump, it was clear that the
Trump administration’s policies and
actions would not sit well with many of
the couple’s former associates. An admin-
istration that kicked things off with a
Muslim ban and merrily attempted to erase
Obamacare and the Paris Accord, then
moved right along to defend “very fine
people on both sides” of white supremacy,
erode faith in the state, and separate chil-
dren from their families was never going
to fly with the image-conscious donor-
class company they once kept. That is to
say nothing of how the administration
handled the deadly outbreak. The cal-
lousness and cruelty that defined the
Trump era, and was so often the point,
turned almost all of their old friends
away, or at least made it mortifying to be
seen with them. But perhaps what pre-
cipitated the latest, greatest shift was that
Jared and Ivanka became definitional los-
ers. And they will soon be back on old turf.
E
LECTIONS, AND CERTAINLY last
year’s, are reflection points: Are
you better off today than you were
four years ago? In the midst of a pandemic
and national crisis, the questions carried
more weight. For me, I’ve been able to take
stock of how much has changed for the
characters I spent much of the last five
years covering. I remembered getting a
phone call from Ivanka the week after her
father won in 2016. The contents of the
conversation were off the record, but my
reporting around that time shows that, in
her mind, she was shocked at the oppor-
tunity she now held and would have been
foolish to pass it up. Six months later, I trav-
eled to Berlin to see her appear onstage
next to German chancellor Angela Merkel,
then chair of the International Monetary
Fund Christine Lagarde, and Queen Máx-
ima of the Netherlands. I watched Ivanka
survey her new cohort—the invitations
she was suddenly receiving (though
the audience booed her father’s name), the
motorcade that wailed through the city,
and the throngs that followed her like she
was a Kardashian with an ambassador-
ship—and it became clear that she would
drink up every little drop of power, public-
ity, and access while the river flowed.
In order to do that amid the cruelties,
controversies, investigations, impeach-
ment, and scandal that punctuated her
father’s tenure in office, Ivanka had to
draw her own universe, one divorced
from the realities and horrors the rest of
the world witnessed. If others in the White
House were reacting to news of one of
her father’s former employees pleading
guilty to federal crimes, for example, or
his referring to African nations as “shit-
hole” countries, Ivanka would post about
some arbitrary meeting she’d taken or
a solo trip she’d made representing the
administration, filled with professionally
lit photos of herself and captioned without
any acknowledgement of what was going
on back on planet Earth.
That tone deafness was not new for
her. I’ve written time and again about her
ability as a master compartmentalizer—a
characterization she agrees with. She has
forever been able to separate one piece of
herself from another, her father’s behav-
ior from her continued need or desire to
attach herself to him and seek his love
and approval. Jared is like that too. It’s
how, after his father, Charles, set up his
brother-in-law with a prostitute, vid-
eotaped it, and sent it to his sister in an
effort to keep them from cooperating with
a federal investigation into his fraudulent
campaign donations, Jared remained
blindly loyal to his dad and the family
business. This ability to separate parts of
themselves and draw their own worlds
was the key element that allowed them
to survive in Washington over the last four
years. It’s also the trait that most angered
MARCH 2021 61
 the people who knew Jared and Ivanka
before Trump ran for office. Most people
cannot compartmentalize—they cannot
separate Javanka from the administration,
despite what they thought of the couple,
or the individuals, before all of this. And
what will happen to Jared and Ivanka next
is the question that vexes their old crowd.
It’s the one thing I’ve been asked most
since the election, and the question I have,
in turn, posed to all of the sources in their
orbit whom I’ve accumulated since I
began reporting on them. The vast array of
responses amounts to this: The couple will
be accepted, whether in New York, North
Jersey, or South Florida, by a combination
of society-adjacent couples and real-deal
Republicans, but not by the group of peo-
ple to which they would like to belong, and
not without social consequences for those
who do choose to pal around with Javanka.
“They’ll be welcomed back by people
who know the Trumps are as close as
they’ll get to power,” one former friend
told me. “But everyone with self-respect,
a career, morals, respect for democracy,
or who doesn’t want their friends to
shame them both in private and public will
steer clear.” As another longtime former
acquaintance explained, “They will prob-
ably be welcomed by real estate types and
that group of Upper East Side and Palm
Beach families that read about themselves
in Quest magazine but who don’t matter.”
“There will always be private din-
ner parties for them to attend, but they
will be the entertainment,” this person
continued—meaning laughed at, not with.
“Ivanka is no Princess Margaret and Jared
is not the Duke of Windsor regaling guests
with amusing bon mots to a captive audi-
ence. No one wants to hear about Sarah
Huckabee’s pies or Steve Bannon’s shirts.”
The question of school for their three
children looms too. According to several
people familiar with the situation, last fall
Jared and Ivanka’s children switched out
of the Jewish day school they’d attended
since moving to D.C. There’s some debate
“People will be nice to their faces but
falling all over themselves the next day
to say how awful they’d been.”
62 VA N I T Y FA I R
over what happened. Some parents say
it’s because the Trump-Kushners weren’t
taking COVID safety seriously enough,
particularly after the president’s super-
spreader hat trick around Amy Coney
Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination last
fall. A source close to the family says that
the family believed it’s best to put their
kids into an in-person school rather than
a hybrid, virtual situation.
Regardless of whether they move
back to New York, or to New Jersey or
Florida, reactions from their fellow par-
ents will likely be mixed. “I personally
can’t imagine them going back to school
[in New York or New Jersey], but there are
people in those communities who would
freaking love it,” a father of children in
their former community told me. One
mom says, “From an Israel and a financial
perspective, some parents there support
Trump. And they want to be near power
and extreme wealth.” Or if it’s Florida, a
member of the Jewish community told
me, “those folks love Trump there. They’ll
have all their arms wide, wide open.”
Even their apartment building in Man-
hattan poses some threat. The couple has a
place in a Trump building on Park Avenue.
It just so happens to be the same build-
ing where Trump’s former fixer Michael
Cohen and his family still reside. It’s been
an uneasy situation for some time, as
Cohen’s daughter Samantha recounted to
me last fall. For years, Ivanka had ignored
her, despite their fathers’ closeness and
despite Ivanka’s own closeness with the
elder Cohen. In 2018, a few months before
Michael was sentenced, in part, because
he paid off Stormy Daniels to keep quiet
about her alleged affair with the now presi-
dent ahead of the 2016 election at Trump’s
direction, Samantha ran into Ivanka out-
side of their building.
“She saw me and I thought she was
going to ignore me, as she had the rest
of my life. But she grabbed my arm and
said, ‘We all feel so terribly about what’s
happening to your dad. Our hearts are
 breaking for him. I’m so sorry that this
happened to you guys,’ in this high-pitched,
sugary voice,” she told me. “I knew how
fake it was…. I don’t know if she was trying
to make herself feel better, or if she did it
for show because there were other peo-
ple in the lobby. It just felt like someone
threw a bucket of slime on me because it
was so phony and gross.”
When I asked Samantha about the
potential that Ivanka and Jared could settle
back in the building permanently, and that
they could run into each other all the time,
she told me that the possibility would be
“beyond unpleasant and uncomfortable”
and “completely awkward.” She added
how unfair it would be that they, who were
involved in everything that’s happened over
the last several years, could come and go
as they please while her father remains
on house arrest in the same building. (It
is worth noting that their apartment is also
just a scant block away from the home of
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Melania
Trump’s former bestie who wrote a tell-
all about the inner workings of the Trumps
and has cooperated in state and federal
investigations that could implicate Ivanka
and her family in potential wrongdoing.)
T
HERE IS REAL ESTATE reason to
believe that Javanka will not
return to New York City perma-
nently. The couple plunked down more
than $30 million for a plot of land on a
secluded Miami island known as the
Billionaire Bunker, where the home is
secure, the synagogue is a stone’s throw,
and the income taxes are just right. Add
J A R E D K U S H N E R : C H R I S L E E / V I I / R E D U X . I VA N K A T R U M P : VAT I C A N P O O L / C O N T R A S T O / R E D U X .
that to their plans to expand their “cot-
tage” in Bedminster to include larger
living quarters, two new bedrooms, a
study, and a veranda. On the news, sev-
eral sources messaged me, hopeful those
sources themselves “had done it,” suc-
cessfully scaring the pair out of a return
to New York. (A different longtime former
friend countered that negative comments
wouldn’t even make Jared and Ivanka
flinch. “Narcissists,” this person said,
“aren’t self-reflective people who hear
criticism and take it to heart. They turn
that criticism around and find a way to
blame the people who said it.”)
The other favorite prediction circu-
lating is that the couple has cottoned to
the taste of political power, even if the
ideological core of what Ivanka’s father
stands for is far from the one they’ve pur-
ported to care about. But Trump’s reign
has changed everyone, even the Trumps
themselves. When Ivanka introduced her
father on stage at the RNC over the sum-
mer, as she had four years earlier, she had
hardened. She wasn’t the so-called mod-
erating influence that so many people
had wanted her to be—but that was never
her plan. She had been publicly criticized
by the world she left behind, snubbed by
world leaders who ignored her to her face,
so there was no reason to cater to any of
them anymore. Like her father, she was
buoyed by the crowds at events she key-
noted. Those people in red hats who wait
in line to see her—and there are many—are
her people too. She is no longer the liberal
outlier privately issuing dissent; father and
daughter have become one and the same.
According to a person still close to the
couple, they haven’t firmed up what’s
next. “Should someone in the family
choose to run, they have a significant hold
on the Republican Party, potentially for
many, many, many years,” this person
says. The same goes for the rest of her
family, who see themselves as having a
key role in the direction of the party, as
something of kingmakers for what is to
come. “As a result of working in the White
House, Jared has made international
trade and peace deals, he’s on good terms
with people all across the world, and so
the opportunities are significant. You can
imagine the extent of his connections,”
the person said, pointing to what some
have suspected all along: that Jared used
his position in the White House to ensure
a cozier life after the administration. Plus,
this person added, Trump could be back
in 2024. Then all bets are off. (That they
even think their exposure to federal inves-
tigations could be curtailed by a pardon
from Daddy, as was reported, is perhaps
the ultimate rich-kid affluenza.)
Regardless of where Jared and Ivanka
settle, they’ll never again find sincere
acceptance among their old cliques. “Peo-
ple will be nice to their faces. After all, it’s
called polite society for a reason,” a former
friend says. “But people will be falling all
over themselves the next day to say how
awful they’d been and how they had no
idea. Her father’s vulgarity and his father’s
criminality will always loom too large.” n
MARCH 2021 63
 GROWING
UP
IVANKA
By Lysandra Ohrstrom

I met Ivanka Trump at an

all-girls school on the Upper East
Side, and we were inseparable
for more than a decade. Gradually,
though, our differences divided
us—“Why would you tell me to read
a book about fucking poor people?”
she once asked—and I watched
her blow up her carefully curated
image of refined privilege to
embrace her father wholesale

FLYING HIGH Teenage Ivanka Trump once dreamed of ruling

Manhattan. Then her dad became president.

64 VA N I T Y FA I R
MARCH 2021 65

Ivanka Trump
was my
best friend
growing up. I
We first met when I joined her seventh-
grade class at Chapin, an all-girls school
on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that
had a reputation for attracting a blue-
blooded, feminine but ambitious cohort
of young girls. After spending the previous
four years in social isolation in the sub-
urbs, I was eager to land on the popular
side of the classroom, ruled by Ivanka and
about five other entitled, precocious pre-
teens. It was the grunge era, so we moshed
around the classroom to the dystopian
wails of Nirvana, wearing our uniforms
of green plaid kilts (tailored shorter the
more popular you got) and stacked-heel
Steve Madden loafers. By that time most
of us were allowed to roam freely around
Manhattan above 57th Street before dark,
and we rebelled by taking the subway to
Patricia Field’s in the Village or dyeing our
hair with blue Manic Panic from Ricky’s.
Some of us even went to Sheep Meadow to
“dye our hair green,” the classroom code
for a certain forbidden activity.
Ivanka and I hung out occasionally
at first. I got a last-minute invite to her
13th birthday party, where about 15 of us
caravanned to Atlantic City in a trio of
limos and camped out in the penthouse
suite of the Taj Mahal for the weekend,
supervised by two wary members of her
dad’s security team. She called me to
pose in a photo spread for Sassy magazine
because none of her usual group was avail-
able. I remember swinging by her dad’s
office at Trump Tower so she could borrow
his credit card to go shopping. Though he
never remembered my name, Mr. Trump
seemed to have a photographic memory
for changes in my body. I’ll never forget
66 VA N I T Y FA I R
the time Ivanka and I were having lunch
with her brothers at Mar-a-Lago, and while
Mr. Trump was saying hi, Don Jr. swiped
half a grilled-cheese sandwich off my
plate. Ivanka scolded him, but Mr. Trump
chimed in, “Don’t worry. She doesn’t need
it. He’s doing her a favor.” Conversely, he’d
usually congratulate me if I’d lost weight.
Ivanka and I really bonded one summer
when a group of Chapin girls went to Paris
for a language program in what would be
the first of many trips she and I took togeth-
er. That July, we delighted in breaking
the rules in harmless ways. When we took
field trips into the city, we pretended to get
lost on the metro and went to the movies
on the Champs-Élysées or the Picasso
museum instead. Once, we all decided to
wake up at dawn, sneak to London on the
Eurostar for the day, and make it home in
time for the 11 p.m. curfew, but
everyone got scared and bailed
except for me, Ivanka, and one
other girl. After that trip, Ivanka
and I were inseparable.
We remained that way for
more than a decade, more
sisters than best friends. Sure,
she loved to talk about herself
and was shamelessly vain, but
she was also fun, loyal, and let’s
face it, pretty exciting. In our
late teens and early 20s, it felt
like Ivanka and I were always on
the same page or up for the same
adventure, whether it was leav-
ing Bungalow 8 early to watch a
Lifetime movie or horseback
riding through a town in Nicara-
gua because we had never been
there before. After college, we started
moving on increasingly divergent tracks.
I went to Beirut for my first reporting job,
and Ivanka experimented with her own
form of postcollegiate rebellion: com-
muting to Brooklyn for a job with real
estate developer Forest City Ratner. Still,
we remained close. Then in 2009, shortly
after I was one of two maids of honor in
Ivanka’s wedding, our friendship finally
broke under the weight of our differences.
T WAS EASY to ignore the dozens of
press inquiries that flooded my inbox
when Donald Trump announced
his candidacy because I didn’t think he
would win. Then, when Ivanka joined
her dad’s administration, I was sure she
would step in to moderate her father’s
most regressive tendencies—not out
of moral commitment but because
caging children and ripping up climate
agreements was a bad look in the halls of
Davos. The Ivanka I knew painstakingly
P R E V I O U S PA G E S : A LVA R O C A N O VA S / PA R I S M AT C H / G E T T Y I M A G E S .
developed a polished, intellectual off-
shoot of the Trump brand, blending the
language and look of white millennial
T H E S E PA G E S : C O U R T E S Y O F LY S A N D R A O H R S T R O M .
feminism with the mythical business
acumen she claimed to have inher-
ited. Her objective was always a more
refined brand of celebrity than her
dad’s bombastic variety—the kind that
allowed her to be graciously received
by the B&T and Maidstone set and
invite Blake Lively over for a girls’ din-
ner, but also serve as an inspirational
example of a “woman who works” to
the middle-class housewives to whom
she peddled her fashion brand.
Instead, I’ve watched as Ivanka has
laid waste to the image she worked so
hard to build. In private, I’ve had count-
less conversations with our childhood
friends about how appalled we are that
she didn’t publicly oppose Brett Kava-
naugh’s Supreme Court nomination or
most of her dad’s especially repugnant
policies. But in public, we’ve stayed silent
because that’s what we are taught to do.
I told myself my account wouldn’t make
a difference because people had grown
inured to the run-of-the-mill instances
of misogyny, elitism, and poor charac-
ter that I could recollect. In reality, I was
afraid I’d lose friends and get skewered
as a hypocritical elitist looking to capital-
ize on her Trump connection. My disgust
with the Trumps was outweighed by my
fear of being dragged through the mud.
Even now, as self-proclaimed former
friends vow that Ivanka can never show
her face in Manhattan again, few of these
detractors are quoted by name.
A few months ago, after I voted early
against her dad, I began to write about my
friendship with Ivanka with no eye toward
publication. But the more I wrote, the
surer I became that I did not owe her my
silence. I think it’s past time that one of
BOOGIE NIGHTS
Ivanka and the author dancing
in Paris to “Going Back to Cali”
by Biggie. “We danced to that a lot.”
the many critics from Ivanka’s childhood
comes forward—if only to ensure that she
really will never recover from the decision
to tie her fate to her father’s.
As she’s touted the achievements the
Trump administration has made for
the middle class while not-so-covertly
pursuing a massive wealth transfer to
corporate America, I’ve been reminded of
a phone call we had in our mid-20s. Ivan-
ka always solicited book suggestions from
me, and I had recently recommended
Empire Falls, Richard Russo’s 2001 Pulit-
zer Prize–winning novel about the life of
a diner manager in working-class Maine.
“Ly, why would you tell me to read a book
about fucking poor people?” I remember
Ivanka saying. “What part of you thinks
I would be interested in this?”
Another memory that often occurs
to me is of Mr. Trump delivering a toast to
a room full of diners at Mar-a-Lago, who
watched him as devotedly then as his
red-capped followers do today. They
laughed when he addressed them as the
richest Jews in the world, complimented
their luxury sports cars in the parking lot,
and gleefully recounted the fight he was
waging against the Waspy club across the
street, which he dismissed as a dump.
Beneath the taunting, it was obvious that
Mr. Trump was insecure; back then, Palm
Beach’s old-guard communities were
among the few not seduced by his wealth.
In contrast, it took no time for old
money to embrace Ivanka. During sum-
mers in high school she would usually
come visit me in Newport, where
I grew up in a Waspy beach com-
munity frequented by many of
the same sort of people who
patronized the club across from
Mar-a-Lago. This set used to
deride people like the Trumps,
but Ivanka won everyone over.
She was refined and fun to be
around. She subscribed to The
Atlantic and spoke about her life-
long dream of leaving her mark
on the Manhattan skyline. After
every conversation, strangers
marveled at how she had turned
out so unlike her parents.
But in private, rougher, more
Trumpian edges poked out.
Ivanka regularly relayed stories
of teachers or observers who
commented that she had the most innate
talent they’d ever seen for whatever new
pursuit she was taking up. She never wore
a Halloween costume that wasn’t flatter-
ing, which means she usually showed up
to costume parties looking beautiful and
boring. She always stopped at McDon-
ald’s for cheeseburgers. She cursed. And
of course, she had the Trump radar for
status, money, and power, and her dad’s
instinct to throw others under the bus.
One of the earliest memories I have
of Ivanka from before we were friends is
when she blamed a fart on a classmate.
Some time later, she goaded me and a
few other girls into flashing our breasts
out the window of our classroom in what
was labeled the “flashing the hot dog
man” incident. Ivanka had basically
been the ringleader, but she pleaded her
innocence to the headmistress and got off
scot-free. The rest of us were suspended.
W
HILE IVANKA LAID the foun-
dation for her conquest of
Manhattan, I was experi-
encing a new reality in Lebanon as it was
rocked by a string of political assassina-
tions and a decimating war with Israel.
The gulf between us became increasingly
apparent. During my first two-year stint
in Beirut, Ivanka emailed me messages
like, “When are you getting your ass back
to NYC? You’re going to be replaced.”
I remember her being the only person
who didn’t ask what the war was like.
By the time I did return home, she had
started dating Jared Kushner, whose fam-
ily has personal and business ties to Israel,
and my pro-Palestinian stance began to
chafe. Since 2007, I’ve worn a necklace
with my name written in Arabic, and
Ivanka grew increasingly irritated by it.
One night in the middle of dinner, she
glanced at the necklace and said, “How
does your Jewish boyfriend feel when
you are having sex and that necklace hits
him in the face? How can you wear that
thing? It just screams ‘terrorist.’ ”
But Ivanka was skilled at blunting her
more Trumpian comments with equally
typical acts of generosity. Once, she lent
me her apartment for about six hours
during a trip home from Lebanon so
I could rendezvous with my boyfriend.
She connected me with Peter Kaplan, the
late editor of C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 3
MARCH 2021 67
68 VA N I T Y FA I R

IF
PETER JACKSON made a movie of it, the story might go like this.
Sir Peter, the overlord of the Lord of the Rings movies, longed
to watch lovably oddball airplanes flying over his native New
Zealand, where he had planted the flag of Middle-earth in six
of the most successful fantasy films of all time. To build and
pilot his flying machines, he hired a clever and stylish Ameri-
can with a shadowy past. The two became fast friends, bonding
over their love of the beautiful aircraft. As the years went on,
however, the aviator proved to be a cunning pirate, out to grab
the ring of power by swiping the very contraptions he’d con-
structed for Sir Peter. In the final reel, the Dark Rider zoomed
off and almost got away. But in one last duel in the clouds,
Sir Peter rose up, hobbit-like, all cuddly and barefoot, and sent
the airplane bandit crashing to earth.
In fact, the climactic confrontation between the two men
took place in a cramped, windowless courtroom in Wellington,
New Zealand. The country’s most famous son—Jackson was
knighted Sir Peter in 2010—occasionally goes about without
shoes. But in the summer of 2019 he arrived shod at Welling-
ton High Court to testify in the aerial-piracy trial of his former
friend Eugene DeMarco. Among the six criminal charges:
stealing and selling two of Jackson’s reproduction World
War I warplanes for more than $1 million as well as pocketing
$500,000 that a friend had given him to buy another historic
plane on his behalf, then keeping both the money and the air-
craft, using the latter to secure a bank loan.
“I liked him,” Jackson told the jury, “for nearly 14 years.” In
the past, he said, “Gene was always able to talk to me about
anything.” But then, Jackson recounted, something changed.
70 VA N I T Y FA I R
As DeMarco sat in the courtroom, he heard his ex-boss refer to
him as a “con man,” a “piranha [who] manipulated…lied…and
ran rings around [people].” DeMarco, as it turned out, had a
history of swiping planes.
For years, DeMarco had been known as a daredevil, flying
vintage and replica planes in air shows. In Hollywood, he’d
gained renown as a barnstorming stunt pilot in films and com-
mercials, most recently flying a seaplane for the latest James
Bond film, No Time to Die. Within the small but global com-
munity of antique-aviation buffs, he continues to be held in
awe, considered by many to be the most accomplished flier of
dangerously obstreperous World War I airplanes.
I’ve heard DeMarco variously called a genius, a charmer,
and “a scorpion” by those who know him well. Having spent
months tracking down DeMarco’s associates in the U.S. and
New Zealand, I now see that he merits all three labels. Like the
dashing flyboys and fighter pilots depicted in the movies, he
can make airplanes dance, delight crowds, and entice beautiful
women. He has won the trust of the rich and powerful—men
like Jackson—and then robbed them, all the while flashing an
endearing, toothy smile.
How could a Hollywood powerhouse with three Academy
Awards have been taken in by an old-school barnstorming
swindler? The real story begins with DeMarco’s and Jackson’s
mutual obsession with historic military aircraft.
 J
ACKSON’S INTEREST IN the First World War (in which
his grandfather Sergeant William Jackson, a Brit,
served with the Welsh infantry) is best known through
his much-celebrated 2018 documentary, They Shall
Not Grow Old. For that movie, the special effects wizards at his
sprawling Weta Digital complex, in Wellington, painstakingly
restored 100-year-old footage of British soldiers and gave them
a voice by editing and splicing in historic audio recordings. Jack-
son, in effect, was able to reanimate a long-dead past.
That is precisely what drew him to DeMarco. Jackson first
met him at an air show in Australia in 2001, where he watched
DeMarco at the controls of the notoriously tricky Sopwith
Camel, the most famous fighter biplane of the war. (It’s the
plane Snoopy flies in his antic dogfights against the Red Baron
in the “Peanuts” comic strip.) Jackson wasn’t a pilot himself,
but DeMarco had clocked more hours in a Camel cockpit than
anyone who ever lived. Jackson was impressed. He and DeMar-
co hit it off, and the director conscripted the daredevil to do
stunt flights at a series of aerial showcases. By 2003, DeMarco
had moved to New Zealand at Jackson’s behest and began to
restore, build, and fly Jackson’s growing fleet of aircraft.
“Pete’s an aviation fanatic, and he loves early airplanes,”
DeMarco told the writer of a book about Jackson’s 2005
remake of King Kong. For that movie, DeMarco constructed
the 1930s fighters that swoop across the Manhattan skyline as
King Kong hangs on to the Empire State Building. DeMarco
even appeared as one of the onscreen aviators. In 2006, Jack-
son and his partner in life and business, Fran Walsh, decided
to launch a firm to manufacture historic airplanes, making it
a subsidiary of their movie production company, Wingnut
Films, with the expectation that some of the airplanes would
appear in Jackson’s movies. They named their new venture
The Vintage Aviator Limited (TVAL). And they hired DeMar-
co as general manager and chief pilot.
In an operation unlike any other in aviation history, the
TVAL team of about 60 craftsmen constructed reproduction
World War I biplanes and triplanes. Some were sputtering,
steampunk rigs; others fast, single-seater fighting machines,
duplicated from the originals and handcrafted as they were
during the war—down to the balky engines, brass hardware,
and woven wicker seats. Over the next decade, Jackson’s
personal air force grew into the largest collection of its kind.
Eventually, he would possess about 50 period aircraft, all of
them spectacularly detailed.
Some of the planes went to museums, others to very wealthy
private collectors. Jackson, to this day, keeps many for his per-
sonal pleasure—and to share with his countrymen. For years,
THE AVIATOR
PROVED TO BE A
DARK
RIDER, A
PIRATE.
CUNNING
HIGH FLIER Eugene DeMarco appeared as a fighter pilot in Peter
Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong, set in 1930s New York.
they flew regularly in air shows over Blenheim, on New Zea-
land’s South Island, and at the Hood Aerodrome, on the North
Island outside Wellington. Jackson and DeMarco brought early
aviation back to life in the skies above New Zealand—albeit
without the bullet-torn bodies and deadly crashes.
As the choreographer and star of these shows—and as TVAL’s
majordomo—DeMarco prospered. He occupied a light-filled,
modernist-style house overlooking the teal waters of Welling-
ton Harbor. He acquired planes and cars and a hangar with a
nice apartment at the Hood Aerodrome. Now 58, Gene, as his
friends call him, had an infectious rascality, a dark, windswept
mane, and a winsomely boyish demeanor.
According to Chad Wille, a longtime American friend of
DeMarco’s, Gene and Peter grew “very close.” Over the years,
Wille says, Gene became “involved with the movie side of
things as a friend of Peter’s, not just as an airplane guy.” Jack-
son, who is 59, trusted the airman enough to allow him to take
Jackson and his two children aloft in the fragile airplanes. He
loaned DeMarco his personal Aston Martin. On occasion, when
DeMarco needed money, Jackson advanced him the funds.
Perhaps Jackson should have known that their collaboration
was bound for a crash landing. According to close associates,
he had been warned long ago about DeMarco’s past. The pilot,
in fact, was a convicted felon in the United States, having
admitted to possession of a stolen aircraft—just one in a trail of
planes he had made off with.
 T
VAL ISN’T FAR from Wellington’s Miramar neigh-
borhood, home to Jackson and Walsh’s filmmaking
businesses. I went there in October 2019. My guide,
Lindsay Shelton, is the former marketing director
of the New Zealand Film Commission. In that capacity he
sold Jackson’s first four movies, including his breakthrough,
Heavenly Creatures. The 1994 thriller showcased the first
computerized fantasy scenes concocted by Jackson’s then
fledgling company, Weta Digital. That film’s graphic sophis-
tication, in time, would help land Jackson at the helm of the
Lord of the Rings franchise.
Jackson chose not to move his productions outside of New
Zealand and instead poured his earnings into Weta’s grow-
ing infrastructure. Shelton posits, “He created a whole new
MARCH 2021 71
 awareness that you didn’t have to leave home to be a suc-
cess.” In the process, Jackson, for three decades, has drawn
fellow directors, Rings-inclined tourists, and deep-pocketed
aviation hounds to his Pacific outpost, doing wonders for the
nation’s economy.
Filmmakers now travel to “Wellywood,” as locals call it, to
make their movies at Jackson’s facilities. On their 12-building
campus, Jackson and Walsh employ slightly more than
1,500 people from 52 countries. Among the scores of cinemat-
ic epics that have benefited from Weta’s animatronic-model
makers, green-screen witches, and digital drivers are Avatar,
Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, three of the five
top-grossing films ever made.
Keeping that fantasy-film machine humming, however,
has required an endless stream of big-budget pictures. Jack-
son’s last fantasy offering to reach screens was the 2018
mega-flop Mortal Engines, which he wrote and produced.
The film reportedly lost $175 million. His latest documen-
tary, The Beatles: Get Back, is slated for release this summer,
but without a recent blockbuster to draw upon, Jackson and
Walsh have had to pull in their spendthrift ways. In Septem-
ber 2016 they sold their $80 million Gulfstream, and last
December the New Zealand government approved the sale
of a reported one third of Weta Digital, for an undisclosed
“significant” investment, to Facebook’s first president and
tech entrepreneur Sean Parker. (Weta has recently weighed
on them further. According to news reports, in September a
government ministry ordered an outside investigation of the
firm after more than 40 former and current employees came
forward to complain about the company’s “boy’s club” cul-
ture and widespread “toxic behavior.”)
Some of the blame for Jackson’s money woes can be
ascribed to his filmmaking practices. He is a perfectionist, and
tales abound of the lengths to which his studio will go to forge
make-believe worlds that feel real. “Everything Peter and his
colleagues do,” Shelton insists, “is done at the highest level of
design and expense.” Jackson looked for that same commit-
ment to authenticity and detail in his TVAL airplanes. And
DeMarco delivered.

 I
HAVE NEVER MET Gene DeMarco. I first saw his breath-
taking flying work in the 2015 documentary The
Millionaires’ Unit, inspired by my book of the same
name, about a pioneering squadron of World War I
aviators. (Over several months, DeMarco deflected repeated
requests to comment for this story. Despite similar overtures,
Jackson and Walsh declined to participate, citing ongoing liti-
gation.) However, I have spoken with numerous people who
know both DeMarco and Jackson, some of whom witnessed
their relationship unfold and ultimately implode. Most pre-
ferred to remain anonymous because, as one source put it,
“New Zealand is a small place.” The same can be said for the
world of early-aviation enthusiasts.
TVAL, with an annual budget of about $6 million during
its peak years, amounted to a tiny corner of Jackson’s empire.
And yet that was a lot of money for turning out just a handful
of airplanes each year. Jackson paid DeMarco an annual salary

AIR RAID At the High Court’s sentencing, Jackson issued a statement that
the disloyalty of DeMarco (opposite) was the “greatest betrayal” of his life.

72 VA N I T Y FA I R
 BOTH MEN LIKE

TO INVENT
IMAGINARY

WORLDS.
of $125,000 for a job widely considered to be among the most
desirable in the vintage-and-replica aircraft field.
Each of Jackson’s airplanes was a monumental project,
requiring about 20,000 man-hours. DeMarco started with
original plans and specifications. When they didn’t exist, he
borrowed digital scanners from Weta Workshop, Jackson’s
model-making and prop shop, to reverse-engineer vintage
airplanes and parts. He used the scans, old photographs, and
blueprints to measure the exact dimensions and positions
of each fuselage nail, wing strut, gauge, tube, and piston
on the original planes. TVAL would then remanufacture
them from scratch, right down to the lettering on the logos.
For the most part, the facsimiles looked—and flew—exactly
like the originals.
Jackson took pride in his growing personal collection and
enjoyed showing his fleet to celebrity guests who shared his love
of aviation, among them King Abdullah II of Jordan and Britain’s
Prince William. TVAL admirers also included a handful of well-
heeled collectors and pilots. One of them, Jerry Yagen, owner
of a network of for-profit schools as well as Virginia’s Military
Aviation Museum, told me that he might spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars or more just to buy a vintage airplane—and
then almost as much to restore and keep it in flying condition.
“I spend millions every year just to keep these aircraft airwor-
thy,” he contends. You need money, lots of it, to fly such toys.

 A
S A CHILD growing up on Long Island, all Gene
DeMarco ever wanted to do was fly. The son of a
Pan Am flight inspector and flight attendant, he
slid behind the controls at age 14 and reportedly
soloed before he could drive a car. At 16 he bought a Piper J-5,
a stripped-down, 1940s airplane—the equivalent of a surfer
dude’s woodie wagon. At 17, so DeMarco claimed, he flew the
Piper around most of the United States, hitting 32 states. People
from DeMarco’s past talk about his raucous early years, citing
his fondness for fast cars, leading to several crashes, and his
firing from a hobby-shop job for stealing. The store’s retired
owner wouldn’t comment on the thefts, but said about DeMar-
co’s legal troubles, “I’m not shocked by hearing this.”
What DeMarco couldn’t stand, from his teenage years
onward, was being stuck on the ground. Trained as a mechani-
cal engineer, he went to work for IBM but hated being confined
to a windowless office. At trial, he told the High Court, “[I would
do] everything I could to stay in an airplane and I did every-
thing from fish spotting over the Atlantic Ocean for tuna [to]
bear spotting in the Adirondacks.… C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 8 9
BLUE NOTE
Troy Andrews, a.k.a.
Trombone Shorty,
photographed for V.F.
in December at
Longue Vue House
and Gardens
in New Orleans.

Blazer and
pants by Versace;
shirt by LOUIS
VUITTON MEN’S.

74 VA N I T Y FA I R
Spotlight
BRASS MUSICAL VIRTUOSO TROMBONE SHORTY ON HIS
NEW ALBUM, THE FUTURE OF NEW ORLEANS, AND
THE BIT TERSWEET BLISS OF BEING STANDARD-BEARER
FOR A CIT Y’S SOUND

J
UST AS YOU half-imagined there would be, there’s music
seeping from the entryway to Troy Andrews’s Buckjump
Studio, just off St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans’s Lower
Garden District. Big, lush, 10-fingered piano chords swell out under
the heavy metal door and onto the sidewalk, a sonic cloud you can
almost picture following Andrews, better known as Trombone
Shorty since he was a four-year-old prodigy lugging his oversize
namesake instrument through the streets of the Crescent City.
When the tones subside, Andrews answers the door apologeti-
cally, wearing a navy blue Nike tracksuit and a white T-shirt. He
is lean and muscular and, even at rest, maintains something of
the pugilist’s bearing he assumes when playing his horn onstage.
The snatch of piano, he explains, was something that came to him
only a minute earlier and he just needed to hear it out loud. Does
he need some more time to get it down? “No, I know the shape
already,” he says. “I might finish it tonight.”
The recording studio is filled with keyboards and horns,
and Andrews seems at home but restless. Last February he and
his band, Orleans Avenue, worked on their upcoming album
here, which they had hoped to release in time for the 2020
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. That, of course, was can-
celed, along with the rest of the band’s normally relentless touring
schedule. Three and a half weeks into lockdown, Andrews—one
of the world’s foremost ambassadors of New Orleans music—
had already been home for a longer continuous stretch than at
any time since graduating from high school and going on tour in
Lenny Kravitz’s band.
Needless to say, it’s been weird. He’s been living with his
mother (“She lives with me,” he clarifies, then adds, “Don’t tell
her I said that.”) Most mornings he gets up, does a few push-ups,
 By and heads to the studio. “It’s like I have a commute,” he says,
BRETT wonderingly. This week he’s found himself waking up at 7 a.m.,
MARTIN a time about which he had previously only heard distant rumors
unless it involved catching a flight. Early in quarantine the rapper
Juvenile would stop by the studio and the two worked together
 Photographs by on beats. These days he’s mostly alone. He’ll play a little trumpet
M I R A N DA and trombone, just to keep his mouth in shape. Sometimes he
BAR N E S puts on a pair of headphones, chooses a random new-music
playlist on Spotify, and plays along with whatever comes up—
hip-hop, country, heavy metal, pop—honing the chops that have
  S tyled by made him a prized guest for such unlikely acts as U2, Zac Brown
NICOLE Band, and the Foo Fighters. Occasionally he’ll leave the sound-
C H A P O T E AU proof inner-studio door open, as he did while playing piano
this morning, and emerge from these reveries to find puzzled
pedestrians outside. All in all, his vibe is somewhere between

MARCH 2021 75

“Whatever the It of New Orleans music is, he was
practically built in a laboratory to carry it forward.”
an athlete keeping in shape during the off-season and Martin
Sheen waiting for his mission in Apocalypse Now.
“I try to switch it in my mind to, ‘Okay. This is a well-deserved
break,” he says, sounding not quite convinced. “But it’s strange.
I have to figure out how to be…normal.”
That’s a word rarely used for Andrews, whose story has such the
quality of a fairy tale that it’s been the subject of not one but two
children’s books. He grew up in Tremé, one of the oldest African
American neighborhoods in the United States and the cradle of
New Orleans’s protean Black street-music culture. “Every block
had a musician living on it,” Andrews says. Many of them were
family, nearly all of them “family” in a neighborhood of honor-
ary uncles, aunts, and nephews. Troy’s older brother James is a
bandleader who brought the younger sibling he dubbed Trom-
bone Shorty out to perform on the streets, and on tour around the
world, long before the younger Andrews reached adolescence.
He learned by ear and “on the slab,” brass band–speak for the
grueling four-hour-plus street parades called second lines. If
James’s tuba player didn’t show up, well, Troy was a tuba player
now, expected to pick up bass lines and harmonies on the move.
Even in this music-soaked world, Andrews’s gifts were evi-
dent. Wynton Marsalis, watching him play alongside James at
the storied Little People’s Place bar when Andrews was no older
than 10, leaned over to a companion and whispered, “This little
man right here can truly play.” The trumpeter took enough of an
interest to later send Andrews some jazz history books, includ-
ing a biography of Louis Armstrong.
Andrews soon drew the attention of businesswoman and
arts patron Susan Scott, who secured him an audition at the
New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, a local arts high school,
and allowed him to stay with her part-time at her mansion on
Bayou St. John. From then on, Andrews lived in two worlds: One
of charts, scales, and theory, the other of instinct, improv, and
soul. If his musical lives were sometimes at odds—fellow jazz
students at NOCCA expressed confusion over his interests in
rap and alternative rock, while neighborhood friends razzed
him for playing “that school stuff ”—the result was a union of
remarkable technical ability and undeniable groove.
“I had friends who relied too much on natural ability, which
can only take you so far. And I’ve got friends that became too
much technicians and don’t know how to shut that off,” he says.
“My goal from a very young age was to maintain where I came
from, but enhance it and learn.” As longtime New Orleans food
writer Brett Anderson puts it, “Whatever the It of New Orleans
music is, Trombone Shorty was practically built in a laboratory
to carry it forward.”
The point is not strictly academic: In less than 10 years, New
Orleans has seen the deaths of music legends Fats Domino, Allen
Toussaint, Dr. John, Ellis Marsalis, Art and Charles Neville, and
the great R&B architects Cosimo Matassa and Dave Bartholomew.
76 VA N I T Y FA I R
This is not to mention culinary giants like Paul Prudhomme, Creole
chef Leah Chase, and restaurateur Ella Brennan, or more local
icons like “Uncle” Lionel
Batiste, bass drum player for
the Treme Brass Band, who
appeared at his own funeral,
embalmed and propped up
against a streetlamp, wear-
ing his signature shades.
In a city where local cul-
ture and outside consumption have been inextricably entwined
since the Louisiana Purchase, this amounts to the loss of an entire
generation that invented New Orleans as we know it. And it has
pushed Trombone Shorty to the front of the line.
Like any reasonable person would, Andrews demurs, pointing
out that the streets of New Orleans are still filled with legends
older than he is. And certainly there are musicians who have
gone on to represent the city while living elsewhere: the Marsalis
Family, Harry Connick Jr., Jon Batiste, who was a high school
classmate of Andrews and an early member of Orleans Avenue.
Few, however, have built Trombone Shorty’s mainstream star
power while also remaining so rooted at home.
And there are plentiful signs that he has taken his position
seriously for a long time. For a purveyor of good times, he leads
a somewhat monastic life; he neither drinks nor smokes. The
second of his two kids’ books, The 5 O’Clock Band, tells the story
of the pint-size street musicians he led, playing for tips in the
French Quarter, while still in grade school. In it, Shorty is late to
meet the band—because he’s practicing too hard—and spends the
rest of the day stressed out about whether he has what it takes to
be a bandleader, all while being gently chided by elders about
what it takes to represent his community. It’s a little intense.
Andrews admits that the 2019 death of Mac Rebennack, bet-
ter known as Dr. John, felt like a turning point. Even more so:
the passing of the torch when he began taking over the final
main-stage performance slot at Jazz Fest, a position previously
held alternately, for some 30 years, by piano legend Professor
Longhair and the Neville Brothers. “I was like, This is the top of
the city, as far as local musicians can get,” he says. “I thought,
Here we are. It’s go time. From now on, there’s no looking back.”
Andrews’s ascent comes at a complicated time for New
Orleans, a moment of pronounced anxiety among natives about
whether their culture can survive the waves of new, mostly white
residents—drawn there, paradoxically, by that very culture—
who have arrived in the decade and a half since Hurricane
Katrina. As the headline of a 2019 New York Times op-ed by the
writer and filmmaker Lolis Eric Elie put it: “Gentrification Might
Kill New Orleans Before Climate Change Does.”
I
N THE CONTROL ROOM at Buckjump Studio, there is a row of
framed album covers, running along the top of one wall, that
suggests the expanse of Andrews’s ambition: two records
from Louis Armstrong; one by Earth, Wind & Fire; Nirvana’s
Nevermind; Snoop Doggy Dogg’s Doggystyle; Prince’s Purple
Rain; Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad. None, you may note,
is what you would call a niche album. Don Was, the president
of Blue Note Records, says Andrews once told him his goal was
to reach an audience as wide as Jackson’s.
Andrews is only slightly sheepish about it now. “I told him
that’s what I see when I pick up my horn,” he says. “I solo and

everything, and that’s cool, but I never want to be ‘the jazz guy.’
Even if we never reach the level of a Michael Jackson, I want to
attempt to touch that many people through music. I just wanted
to make sure he understood how big my mind is.”
New Orleans has long had a suspicious, not to say neu-
rotic, relationship to its homegrown heroes’ achieving such
levels of stardom outside city limits. “Once a musician leaves
New Orleans to play elsewhere, his playing is no longer of inter-
est as New Orleans music,” declared the 1958 book Jazz: New
Orleans 1885–1957: An Index to the Negro Musicians of New Orleans,
thus dismissing, among much else, the lion’s share of Louis Arm-
T I E R A PAT T E R S O N ; F O R D E TA I L S , G O T O V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
strong’s output. There are those who chafe at Andrews’s forays
G RO O M I N G, BIAN CA HAR T ; O N - S E T S I T T I N GS E D I TO R ,
across the spectrum of mainstream music.
But Andrews has proven himself a Houdini when it comes
to escaping such traps. At the studio he plays some tracks from
his new record, the release of which is still in limbo. Andrews
says he specifically set out to loosen the reins while making the
record in an attempt to solve the eternal problem of capturing
the joy of live New Orleans music on a recording. “I said, ‘Let’s
go for the raw energy. Let’s play as if we’re onstage,’” he says, a
touch poignantly, since it’s unclear when, in fact, the band will be
able to play in front of people next. The result is a characteristic
Clothing by Dior
Men. Throughout:
hair products by
Mizani; grooming
products by MAC.
collection of funk, soul, rock, and R&B that is never too far from
the sounds of New Orleans, from Andrews’s tuba, which pro-
vides bass on one track, to the bounce beats that sit low in the
mix, like a distant block party, on others.
Those echoes help explain how Andrews, for all his outside
success, remains so beloved at home: He’s never left. A few
years ago, he spent one Sunday playing with Madonna and
Macklemore at the Grammys and the next joining the Rebirth
Brass Band on the slab, walking four and a half miles in the
second-line parade of the Tremé Sidewalk Steppers Social Aid
and Pleasure Club. He remains a presence on the streets of
Tremé, where he seems to know everybody. When I tell him
I swim at the neighborhood rec center there, he says, “Say hey
to my man Butt!” Butt, whom I know better as senior lifeguard
Theris Valdery and who is also flag boy of the Black Feather
Mardi Gras Indians tribe, tells me in turn: “Troy doesn’t do
that fame stuff. He stays who he is. You know why? Because of
where he’s from.”
It is, says Andrews, a simple proposition: “I always wanted
to let New Orleans know that I’m not going to have to leave to
represent this place,” he says. “I want to be the person to make
people in New York and L.A. feel like they should be here.” n
MARCH 2021 77
 The
MAYOR
Leagues
As New York reels from
COVID and its fallout,
an election bears down on
the city that never sleeps—
nor produces particularly
stellar leaders
 B y A B I G A I L T R AC Y
 I llustration by
AN D R É CAR R I L H O

78 VA N I T Y FA I R
O
ON A BITING Wednesday afternoon in mid-November, Mayor
Bill de Blasio, in a dark gray suit behind a table awkwardly small
for his gangly six-foot-five-inch frame, running five hours behind
schedule, leveled a blow to parents across New York City. After
months of keeping COVID largely collared, the city had kissed the
3 percent test-positivity rate—the school-closure threshold that
the mayor, negotiating with the unions, had set over the summer.
Days before the presser, de Blasio’s Department of Education had
insisted that a couple million parents commit to in-person classes
or stick with remote learning through June. Days after it, de Blasio
re-reversed course, sending students back to school. The episode
was a cornucopia of everything de Blasio critics love to hate about
him—spinelessness, indecision, detachment, tardiness—and it
laid bare a sliver of the landscape de Blasio’s successor will have
to traverse. Just a few months ago, 160 irritated business leaders—
including James Gorman and David Solomon—called on City Hall
to stanch economic hemorrhage; the NYPD union has all but gone
rogue, aggrieved by what it views as a lack of support; even the
mayor’s staffers have mutinied. When de Blasio vacates Gracie
Mansion in January 2022, he will hand off the keys to a city amid
crises that any public official would have a hard time solving, let
alone one who creates his own headwinds.
“Is this its greatest moment of crisis? No, it is not,” says Hank
Sheinkopf, a political consultant who worked on the Bill Clin-
ton and Michael Bloomberg campaigns. He argues that John
Lindsay’s 1970s city in chaos eclipses the current moment. And
the city faced a singular crisis after September 11, 2001. Yet the
contours of the current problems, tethered to each other and
stretched by the ferocity of the pandemic, paired with de Blasio
fatigue, have set the stage for an epochal mayoral contest. “One
thing we know for sure is that every mayor is both a reaction to
his predecessor and also inherits problems bequeathed to him,”
says Errol Louis, the host of NY1’s Inside City Hall.
Crisis is, in some sense, the stasis of New York City, with the
mayoralty a pendulum swinging in accordance. “If there is a
constant to New York city politics…it is the constancy of change,”
Sheinkopf says. “There are no great heroes”—merely men (not
yet a woman) of the moment. Ed Koch cast himself as reformer
in response to machine politics and fiscal crisis; David Dinkins
was something of a healer, elected to ease the racial tensions
fomented under Koch; Rudy Giuliani was tough on crime, ready
to clean up; Bloomberg was the businessman tapped to rebuild
after 9/11; de Blasio was the progressive who could represent
80 VA N I T Y FA I R
those left behind during Bloomberg’s “Second Gilded Age.”
Who will lead the city out of its latest quagmire, one that some
might say is compounded by the mayor himself?
P
RESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON once said, “When the
burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always
remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.” In
prosperous times, mayor of New York City is a gargantuan job,
more on the level of running a nation than a municipality, with
a purview dwarfing most U.S. states: a budget in the realm of
$90 billion, 8.3 million diverse constituents, and the largest police
force and education system in the country. Yet most days the
mayor is more akin to ombudsperson for any and all aggrieved
parties than one of the more powerful politicians in the country.
“Whoever gets the job we might ask, why would you even want
the job, which is known traditionally as the second-hardest job in
America?” Ken Frydman, who served as Giuliani’s press secre-
tary during the 1993 mayoral race (and is now a critic of his former
boss), told me. “It might now be the hardest job in America.”
There are approximately 3.75 million registered Democrats
and just 569,000 registered Republicans in New York City, so
whoever wins the Democratic mayoral primary will likely take
the election. Given the scope of the job, you’d think the mayor-
ship would be a springboard to the White House. Yet of two who
offered themselves up on the national stage this past cycle, one
paid to play and the other ended up stranded at around 1 percent
in the 2020 Democratic primary polls—both of them outshined
by a former mayor from South Bend, Indiana. A third mayor
alum continues to make a spectacle of himself, from a hotel
room with Borat to the hospital with COVID.
Even on home turf, de Blasio barely registers as a political force,
eclipsed by the young stars New York City has forged in other
offices—Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, newly elect-
ed Congressmen Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones, and New
York state senator Julia Salazar. “New York mayoralty is kind of
like a very well-dressed man with scuffed shoes,” says Sheinkopf.
What the Democratic field might lack in luster, it makes up for
in breadth. The 2021 election could include New York City comp-
troller Scott Stringer, whom one source described to me as “not
burdened with charisma” but whose bureaucratic career seems
to be in pursuit of mayordom; Brooklyn borough president Eric
Adams; Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban devel-
opment and budget director under President Barack Obama;
former New York City sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia;
media CEO Zach Iscol, an Iraq war vet born to Democratic mega-
donors and married to a fashion executive; Raymond McGuire,
vice chairman of Citigroup, who introduced himself with a slick
ad voiced by Spike Lee; former social-services nonprofit CEO
Dianne Morales; former New York City veterans’ services com-
missioner Loree Sutton; former New School professor Maya
Wiley, who became something of an MSNBC celebrity during
her two-year stint as an on-air analyst; New York City Council
member Carlos Menchaca; and Andrew Yang, the face of uni-
versal basic income who also stalled out in the 2020 presidential
primary but whose relevance has grown from his perch on CNN.
One rumored wild card is former Speaker of the New York City
Council Christine Quinn, who lost the 2013 race to de Blasio,
despite—or maybe thanks to—an endorsement from Bloomberg
and amid headlines about her temper (she once said she’s prone
to “open up the bitch tap and let the water run”).
 “Why is it that we have quantity, but it doesn’t seem like
we have this abundance of quality for a job like the mayor of
New York City?” says Christina Greer, an associate professor
of political science at Fordham University. “I think that that
also answers our turnout question in many ways.” Critics of
New York City’s closed primary system argue that the mayor
of the largest city in America is selected by a small sliver of
the constituents they represent. In the 2013 Democratic pri-
mary, de Blasio got 40.8 percent with just 282,344 votes. In the
general, fewer than 800,000 people voted for him over Joe
Lhota. In 2017, de Blasio won the general with 726,361 votes,
or 66.5 percent—not even 10 percent of NYC’s population.
A pretty limp mandate. “We’ve gone back to that one-party
state model because of the polarization in national politics,”
says John Avlon, a former Giuliani speechwriter, now a CNN
political analyst. “When you don’t have a competitive general
election, you get the low turnout, you get to a situation where
the race is effectively decided in the primary.”
The system may also explain why, for two decades, a blue city
was controlled by two Republicans: Giuliani and term-limit-defier
Bloomberg. “Why do Republicans win? The Democratic primary
process, in order to get to 40 percent, pulls you so far to the left
that you actually fundamentally aren’t electable in an 80 percent
Democratic city,” says Stu Loeser, a longtime Bloomberg aide.
“You end up taking positions that may become vulnerabilities.” As
Greer puts it, “There are a lot of shades of blue in the crayon box.”
The party in New York City has shifted. “A decade ago, you
would’ve said that Jerry Nadler is the most influential pro-
gressive force in New York City—the validator that everybody
wants,” a local politician told me. “Today the endorsement that
Of the two NYC mayors who offered themselves up on the national stage this past cycle,
ONE PAID TO PLAY AND THE OTHER ENDED UP STRANDED
at around 1 percent in the 2020 Democratic primary polls—both of them outshined
by a former mayor from South Bend, Indiana.
everybody wants the most, without a doubt, is AOC in a Demo-
cratic primary. So that shift…I think is a notable distinction.”
We’ll know soon enough how far left the field will tack, with
the Democratic primary shifted up to June from September.
And, says Louis, “People who know how to run for office and
win, who know how to put together a campaign, they have a
huge advantage this time because we have a compressed sched-
ule. You basically have to create a whole organization.” For the
first time, New York City is experimenting with ranked-choice
voting. If no one secures a majority, the lowest vote getter will
be cut. Rinse and repeat until a victor is named. “That’s the
X factor,” says Louis. One of the few givens this cycle is that
the race will be a referendum on de Blasio. In his 2013 bid,
de Blasio pitched himself as a counterweight to Bloomberg. He
cobbled together a coalition of voters not unlike that of Dinkins
and rode it to Gracie Mansion. Then he delivered early on a series
of intoxicating voter promises like universal pre-K, a minimum
wage increase for employees, paid sick leave, and a reduction to
stop and frisk. But the progressive patina faded fast.
His offenses have ranged from trivial gaucheries—indulgent
pilgrimages to the Park Slope YMCA, even during the pandemic,
and flip-flopping on the Amazon headquarters deal—to severe
miscalculations. After a grand jury declined to indict the police
officer in the July 2014 death of Eric Garner, de Blasio said he
had to teach his biracial son, Dante, to “take special care in any
encounter he has with the police.” A few weeks later two police
officers were assassinated, and NYPD union chief Pat Lynch
said there was “blood on many hands”—implying de Blasio’s. At
the funeral for one of the officers, hundreds of cops turned their
backs on the mayor. Early missteps in the pandemic cast a pall
over City Hall, and during the racial justice protests last sum-
mer, critics dug in. Now the would-be correctives are lining up.
But de Blasio isn’t without support. Despite the criticism,
limited polling data suggests that de Blasio maintained decent
approval ratings. A poll in October put it at 49 percent among New
Yorkers. “As much as he’s supposed to be quote unquote hated, he
won two races for mayor and is actually fairly popular. He’s just
popular in quarters of the city that the media is not inclined to
notice,” Louis explains. “And in particular, I’m talking about Black
and Latino and immigrant workers and communities.” The real-
ity is de Blasio is an ideologue in a bureaucrat’s suit. “Ultimately,
this is a management job,” a local Democratic politician says. “Are
we demanding big, transformative change? Or are we just kind of
focused on stabilizing the budget, recovery, back to normalcy?”
“It’s not like the fiscal crisis, and it’s not like 9/11 in the sense
that many parts of the New York City economy are doing just fine.
And the social and racial justice issues in many ways are even
deepened by the COVID crisis and by the pattern of layoffs and
joblessness in families who were hurt,” says John Mollenkopf,
a professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. “To what extent is
the current crisis setting aside or displacing the social justice
and racial justice issues that de Blasio ran on and won on?”
D
E BLASIO MAY be a tall man, but a towering figure he is not.
“I think a deeper thing that people underestimate about
mayors in New York, successful mayors, is that there is an
understanding that you need to be tough. The city tends to work
best with a tough mayor,” Avlon says. Throughout de Blasio’s
time in office, he has been perennially outflanked by the
moment, but, adds Avlon, “there are different ways to be tough.”
And New York always feels a little cataclysmic; it’s the nature
of the beast. “You can’t find a 5- or 10-year period where there
wasn’t some major crisis. There is either an AIDS epidemic or
there’s a crack epidemic, or there’s a crime epidemic, or there’s
a terrorist attack, or there’s another terrorist attack,” Louis says.
“The norm.” Candidates, step up.
“I don’t mean to diminish anyone,” Frydman says. “But are they
the best and the brightest, or are they the least and the lightest?” n
MARCH 2021 81
 Dea r
When the prolific author of A Wrinkle in Time began a correspondence
with a Black Panther imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit, neither
could have imagined what the relationship would yield By Abigail Santamaria

Mrs .
L’ Engle
82 VA N I T Y FA I R
 MAN OF LETTERS
Ahmad Rahman,
photographed in
1983, by which time
his correspondence
with Madeleine
L’Engle had bloomed
into a fruitful
mutual mentorship.

MARCH 2021 83
 M
MADELEINE L’ENGLE’S MAIL arrived in prodigious batches by the
summer of 1976, 14 years after the publication of A Wrinkle in
Time. From her study in Manhattan’s Cathedral Church of Saint
John the Divine, where she served as librarian, the 57-year-old
author attended to editorial correspondence, fan art, manila
envelopes stuffed with middle-school-reader responses, roy-
alty statements, and speaking requests from around the world.
Amid the usual haul, one correspondent stood out: Ron Irwin,
inmate #130539 at the State Prison of Southern Michigan, a
25-year-old former member of the Black Panther Party.
Irwin, who later converted to Islam and adopted the name
Ahmad Rahman, had just received an honorable mention in the
nonfiction category of the 1976 PEN America Writing Award
for Prisoners. PEN had recently launched a correspondence
program pairing writers in prison with established writers on
the outside. Rahman signed on, welcoming the opportunity for
literary growth while completing his bachelor’s degree through
Wayne State University. He articulated only one wish: that the
correspondent not be antagonistic to his interests. “I do not
subscribe to the so-called universalist school of Black literature
that tries to downplay the uniqueness of the ways and politics
of Black people in our American dilemma,” he explained. “I am
not a writer first and then a Black man.”
A young PEN administrator named John Morrone played
matchmaker. L’Engle, he knew, had asked to be a mentor. He
forwarded Rahman’s concerns and writing samples. L’Engle
saw raw talent. “I believe that literature is, in fact, a strong
common meeting ground,” she responded to Morrone, “but he
may not agree. I certainly have no objection to his writing out
of his own background. That’s all any of us has to work from.”
She typed an introductory letter to Rahman and had a copy of
Wrinkle sent to the prison because, she told Morrone, “science
fiction/fantasy transcends barriers of race.”
It was a match made of opportunity—as for alchemy, time
would tell what no one then could have predicted: that a “mys-
tical connection,” in Rahman’s words, would bind them for
life; that their surviving letters—more than 200 pages—would
lay bare the senselessness of excessively punitive “justice”
and the ravages of mass incarceration; that the integrity of
two extraordinary people would breed a leveling intimacy,
making way for a mutual mentorship that purposefully,
84 VA N I T Y FA I R
sometimes painfully, worked through the obstacles of poli-
tics, class, race, religion, gender, and generation.
“Dear Mrs. L’Engle,” Rahman began his first letter to her in
August, after a careful reading of Wrinkle. “Yes, we are on.”
BORN TO A WEALTHY Florida banking family, L’Engle was a
hazel-eyed WASP, her mother a member of the Society of
Colonial Dames. Educated at elite girls boarding schools,
L’Engle followed an undergraduate degree at Smith College
with a brief career in the theater, and married Hugh Frank-
lin, who later became a soap opera star. She wrote her first
novel, The Small Rain, in the wings between scenes. In the
subsequent decades, she raised three children and by the end
of her life would produce some 60 books across genres. She
taught widely—at universities, Cathedral programs for Harlem
youths, private workshops, a prestigious Episcopal day school
on the Upper West Side. “I’m nearly six feet tall and am built
somewhat like a giraffe,” she described herself in an early let-
ter to Rahman, “and am excessively near-sighted—physically,
but not, I hope, in other ways.”
Rahman was born to a poor factory worker on the south side
of Chicago. Growing up, his “greatest delight” was the library—
but to get there, he had to cross a gauntlet of white boys who
patrolled the tracks, flinging slurs and rocks. The 1963 Birming-
ham, Alabama, church bombing so terrified him that he slept
with a knife in his fist during a visit to a relative in Mississippi.
When Rahman was 14, police caught him and his friends with
beer and demanded to know who had bought it for them. No
one spoke. The cops forced the kids to bend over, then beat their
P R E V I O U S PA G E , L’ E N G L E : B U S W E L L L I B R A R Y S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S , W H E AT O N , I L L I N O I S . L E T T E R : M A D E L E I N E L’ E N G L E PA P E R S , S O P H I A S M I T H C O L L E C T I O N ,
behinds with billy clubs. “I can still feel the pain and humiliation
S S C - M S - 0 0 8 0 1 , S M I T H C O L L E G E S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S , N O R T H A M P T O N , M A S S A C H U S E T T S . R A H M A N : C O U R T E S Y O F D R . A H M A D A . R A H M A N ’ S FA M I LY.
a half a century later,” he recalled. Rahman and his peers found
hope in evolving forms of Black nationalism.
In high school, a guidance counselor urged him to apply
to college—he had the intellectual curiosity, the brains, the
work ethic. Instead, he joined the Chicago branch of the Black
Panther Party under Fred Hampton and eventually landed in
Detroit, an epicenter of late-1960s Black radicalism. He read
Marx, Mao, Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah,
and he dreamed of a socialist Black utopia. Slight but strong
at five feet nine and 150 pounds, Rahman joined a Panther
defense force that staged vigilante raids on drug dens. Confis-
cated money was repurposed toward free “community survival
programs,” including legal and medical clinics, sickle cell ane-
mia testing, ambulance services, clothing giveaways, and the
Panthers’ Free Breakfast for Children program.
But the FBI was watching. Under COINTELPRO, the
Department of Justice compiled a file on Rahman’s activities
that would grow to more than 300 pages. In a now declassi-
fied memo, J. Edgar Hoover ranted specifically about the
Free Breakfast for Children program as Panther propaganda
intended “to fill adolescent children with their insidious poi-
son.” Publicly, Hoover declared that the Black Panther Party
“represents the greatest threat to internal security of the coun-
try.” Hearing this, Rahman and his mostly teenage comrades
shook their heads, not knowing that Hoover had ordered
“imaginative and hard hitting counterintelligence mea-
sures aimed at crippling the BPP” by “neutralizing” devoted
operatives. When Rahman and three other Detroit Panthers
received an order to raid a heroin den in a dilapidated man-
sion, they had no reason to suspect a setup.
 In the early hours of Easter morning 1971, the foursome
smashed through the front door, guns blazing. But instead of
dealers, they found Wayne State University students smoking
pot. Confused, Rahman and two other Panthers searched the
upper floors for heroin and cash while a fourth Panther forced
the terrified students to strip naked, attempting to intimidate
them into revealing a stash. A dog barked; someone moved to
calm it. In the commotion, the Panther fired, killing a man.
Prosecutors offered Rahman a reduced sentence for a guilty
plea, but the 19-year-old wanted to fight. He chose a trial and
was convicted of first-degree murder under a law that held
accountable any person committing a felony during which a
death occurred, though Rahman had not even been in the room
when the gun went off. On September 23, 1971, Rahman was
sentenced to life in prison without parole.
L’Engle knew little of his background and nothing of his
case history until two years into their correspondence, when
he mailed her “the Ron Irwin file.” In the wake of Watergate,
the Senate Church Committee had conducted a thorough
investigation into the abuses and overreach of COINTELPRO,
among other Justice Department actions. By then, Rahman
understood he had been targeted.
THE MONTH OF Rahman’s sentencing, the uprising at Attica
drew national attention to the crisis inside American prisons,
launching a new wave of prison reform and prompting PEN
to evaluate the liberties of incarcerated writers. Their conclu-
sion: “The freedom to write does not exist in many American
prisons today.” The PEN Prison Writing Program was the orga-
nization’s solution. Run by a small band of authors, it would
promote the flow of information in and out of prison, and
“advance the restorative, rehabilitative, and transformative
possibilities of writing.”
“Madeleine wasn’t big on the ‘project.’ She was big on the
individual,” says author Sidney Offit, a member of the PEN
Prison Writing Committee in the 1970s and 1980s, who was
a close friend of L’Engle’s and co-taught a workshop with her.
The saturating joy in her own life was conjoined to an aware-
ness of vast darkness which “cannot extinguish the light,” she
wrote to Rahman during the first Easter of their correspon-
dence. “I still believe that the tiniest acts of love do matter.”
L’Engle’s approach to mentorship as well as friendship
was holistic, probative. She did not believe that writing could
be taught, and she never taught technique—plenty of books
existed for that, she said. Instead, she listened. She asked
Rahman, in his desolate
pr ison cel l, read these
opti m istic words sent
to h i m by a pr iv i leged
wh ite woma n perched i n
a n ivory tower.
questions. “It’s not me,” students remember her saying. “It’s
what people bring and what gets released.”
What Rahman wished to bring and release was different
from her typical students. Reading Wrinkle, he enjoyed escap-
ing from his bleak surroundings into the “soft fantasy world
of Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace” but was not easily con-
vinced that its author, new to him, was the right fit. “ ‘No!’ ”
He quoted Meg Murry in the first paragraph of his first letter to
L’Engle: “ ‘Like and equal are not the same thing at all.’ Were
you promoting some form of rugged individualism with this
theme?” he asked.
In the story, Meg is responding to the evil IT’s distortion of
the opening of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Yes, affirms IT. “Everybody exactly alike.” L’Engle was pleased
that Meg’s defiance of IT’s warped interpretation intrigued Rah-
man. “This is terribly important to me: If we could truly live up
to the Declaration of Independence, we could glory in our dif-
ferences, because they would be qualitative, not quantitative.”
Rahman, in his desolate prison cell, read these optimistic
words sent to him by a privileged white woman perched in an
ivory tower. In his next letter, he told her about fellow inmate
Johnny Herrera, outspoken about unfair treatment of “Chi-
canos,” who was found hanging in his cell after a visit from
guards. “Glory in our differences?”
Although L’Engle’s first letters brimmed with feedback
Rahman had requested—critiques of his work, suggestions for
improvement, a reading list that included authors from Shake-
speare to Virginia Hamilton, the first Black author to win a
Newbery—he struggled to reconcile his assumptions about her
with his ambitions for a fruitful literary exchange. Two months
into their correspondence, he came clean with his doubts:
“I feel that I’ve reached an impasse in my literary relations
with you,” Rahman admitted. “Crosswicks, Ltd.,” he mulled,
as if thinking aloud. It was the name of the company that
owned the copyright in L’Engle’s works; he had seen it printed
on the pages of Wrinkle and in Dragons in the Waters, which she
had just sent to him. “It sounds so established, affluent and
conservative.” Just as disconcerting, she appeared to be very
religious. “I can’t help but to associate this religion with deli-
cate lace scarves and ever more delicate ladies, in deep
communion with their God. It’s all so idyllic, so much the Amer-
ican Dream. But I write about that other side of the coin—the
American Nightmare. And nightmares are some of the most
beneficial human experiences because they almost always
pinpoint major problems….”
He wanted to send her a story, “Razorblade,” that he wrote
as part of his college thesis requirements. He hoped to expand
it into a novel, possibly marketed to Black youths, to help them
“become conscious of the powerful forces determining their
actions,” thereby freeing them from those forces. But the piece
was “about as abrasive as Richard Wright’s Native Son,” he cau-
tioned. “So let me know whether you think it will be proper for
you to read and criticize it, and let me know whether and how
it might be publishable.”
L’Engle received his letter three weeks later; prison mail
delays were and are common. Several letters between them
hadn’t been delivered at all, generating confusion that further
strained their tentative standing. She responded to Rahman:
“Hitler was deeply religious. Hate is usually masked by
MARCH 2021 85
“Whatever l ife has i n
store,” R a h ma n w rote,
“I move i nto th is
new yea r w ith less
bitter ness, a nd therefore
more love, more l i fe,
i n my hea rt because of
you r f riendsh ip. ”
‘religion.’ Also: I work for the church…and that’s enough to
disillusion anybody about the religious establishment. I don’t
wear lace scarves like your grandmother, and my communion
with God is stormy. What ‘religion’ I have is anything but idyllic
and is far from the American Dream. If it doesn’t embrace your
nightmare, then it isn’t even religion.”
There was nothing wrong with being abrasive, she reassured
him. “If a violin is to make music, there must be the abrasion
of the bow against the taut gut. So there’s the abrasion which is
creative, or the abrasion which is made when the bow is banged
meaninglessly against the strings—and that’s never real or
true. I want to read your story.” He sent her the draft. “Thank
you for focusing the blurred picture I had of you,” he said. He
shared his own meditation on God and love—dominant themes
throughout their long friendship to come. That early moment
was a turning point and foundation.
Several months into their correspondence, L’Engle sent
Rahman her novel The Other Side of the Sun. A Gothic tale set in
the Deep South following the Civil War, the complicated story
grapples with good and evil, race and class. She invited his
opinion, and Rahman did not hold back. “Your personality,
which is probably pure of hate, blurs the demarcation between
the hateful Klan and the righteous people. Although you say the
Klan is evil, the way you say it says ‘they’re not so bad,’ ” he
commented in a lengthy critique that also addressed “conde-
scending” passages about people of color. “But you mean so
well,” he said, wrapping up the letter. “You just didn’t know
how to express what you wanted, and what definitely needed,
to be expressed. If there is one thing I deeply want you to gain
from our friendship, it is the ability to express your ideas and
feelings about this swirl of racial conflicts in a fashion that puts
to use your considerable gifts for the good you strive to do.”
L’Engle’s letter back to him follows an impulse to defend her
choices but ends humbly: “Well,” she sighed onto the page,
“you’re teaching me a lot. I don’t think I want to ‘mean well.’
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’m grateful for
your willingness to help me.” And, later: “Don’t ever hesitate to
push me into wider and deeper thinking.”
L’Engle had a lingering concern, though, about saying the
wrong thing, which she eventually did in a letter about moth-
erhood ending with the line: “And, to me, you, too, are a son.”
86 VA N I T Y FA I R
This was triggering to Rahman. He remembered a white
police officer calling his adult father “boy.” He did not know
that L’Engle had other informally adopted “children” whose
photos dotted her apartment walls. He responded gently:
“While I am deeply touched that you would accept me too this
close to your heart and consider me a son, I wish that we could
become equally close relatives without looking upon it as a
mother-son relationship.” He asked her to remember that it
was “historically inappropriate to make reference to a Black
man in a paternalistic (or maternalistic) manner. That was
the way of the slavemaster.”
FOR YEARS, the two worked intensely on Razorblade—he
writing and revising chapters, she critiquing them: helping
him hone characters; illuminating the narrative approach of
showing versus telling (“I do not see the prison well enough”);
speaking truths (“I doubt if any children’s editor is going to
let you use ‘mothafucka’ more than once—if that.”) The two
shared hopes that a wider audience would bear witness to
his American nightmare.
She suggested he consider writing a memoir in the style
of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a book
Rahman had read and enjoyed. But still in his 20s, he wisely
deferred to his older self: “So many of my most important irons
are still in the fire, so many contradictions unresolved….” The
time wouldn’t be right for “at least a couple years,” he thought.
Another short story L’Engle helped him with, “The Action
Comes,” won first place in the fiction category of the 1978 PEN
Prison Writing Awards. He used the $100 prize money to buy
S S C - M S - 0 0 8 0 1 , S M I T H C O L L E G E S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S , N O R T H A M P T O N , M A S S A C H U S E T T S . L I B R A R Y : C AT H E D R A L A R C H I V E S , C O U R T E S Y O F T H E C AT H E D R A L
a yellow bicycle for his seven-year-old son, born two weeks
after his sentencing.
When Rahman’s ancient typewriter broke down, impeding
B O O K : M A C M I L L A N P U B L I S H E R S . L’ E N G L E : C O U R T E S Y O F C R O S S W I C K S , LT D . L E T T E R : M A D E L E I N E L’ E N G L E PA P E R S , S O P H I A S M I T H C O L L E C T I O N ,
his progress, L’Engle lobbied PEN for a grant to buy a new one.
“I find him an extraordinarily talented and interesting young
O F S T. J O H N T H E D I V I N E . M I C H I G A N S TAT E P R I S O N : S H E R Y L S AVA S /A L A M Y. R A H M A N : C O U R T E S Y O F D R . A H M A D A . R A H M A N ’ S FA M I LY.
man,” she wrote to Morrone at PEN, “and anything I can do to
make life more possible and more fruitful I want to do.” PEN
awarded Rahman $100 toward a $259 Smith Corona portable,
with cartridges; she paid the difference but didn’t tell Rahman.
L’Engle shared chapters of Razorblade with her literary
agent, but the novel would never be published. The manu-
script has disappeared—detritus of the years, perhaps, or else
destroyed in the typical tumult of prison that scattered so much
of their correspondence. Periodically, Rahman was thrown in
“the hole,” a sensory deprivation cell where he was consumed
by the fear of “coming out weeks later to find all of my work
‘lost.’ ” Profoundly disturbed, L’Engle offered to enlist the
bishop of New York, “who is known for taking on unpopular
cases.” Rahman promised to tell her when the time was right
for such help.
“Whatever life has in store,” he wrote to her on January 2,
1980, “I move into this new year with less bitterness, and
therefore more love, more life, in my heart because of your
friendship.” He refused despair, even after a knife attack that
fall left his back permanently scarred.
There were reasons to hope: A 1980 Michigan Supreme
Court decision changed the felony murder law under which
Rahman had been convicted. His undergraduate professor
and friend, Gloria House, organized the Free Ahmad Cam-
paign, and the ensuing years were full of petitions, parole
board appeals, appeals to Detroit legislators, and extensive
MARCH 2021
 A TILTED PLANET
Rahman and
his cousin in the State
Prison of Southern
Michigan yard (left),
where guard towers
loomed overhead.

IVORY TOWER
The Cathedral
Church of St. John
the Divine library
study (bottom),
where L’Engle
served as librarian,
remains largely
unchanged today.

Dear Mrs. L’Engle
CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 86 legislators, and
extensive coverage in the Detroit Free Press.
The surviving L’Engle-Rahman letters are
almost all from the four-year period of 1976
to 1980, predating these efforts.
Rahman began coursework toward an
M.A. in history with the goal of earning a
doctorate through the University of Michi-
gan in Ann Arbor. He was shuffled around
five different facilities between 1980 and
1990. The noise, smoke, and overcrowd-
ing hampered his ability to write. “These
are very harsh days for me, old friend,” he
wrote to L’Engle in 1990. Gray hairs flecked
his beard. His son was a sophomore at Ohio
State. He grieved the lost years. “When I
think about all of the pain that has occupied
his life because of my not being there…tears
well up in my eyes.” Finally, in November
1992, Michigan’s governor commuted Rah-
man’s sentence. (The man who pulled the
trigger had been paroled in 1983.) He was
41 years old and had spent more than 21 of
those years behind bars.
RAHMAN BEGAN VOLUNTEERING at the Inter-
faith Council for Peace & Justice in Ann Arbor
and was soon hired as associate director—a
crucial first paying job after prison—by the
center’s director, Tobi Hanna-Davies. “He
was brilliant and humble and had a calm spir-
it, no matter what was going on,” she says.
“A person of solid integrity. Wise.” Months
later, they were astonished to discover that
they both knew Madeleine L’Engle. Hanna-
Davies and her siblings had grown up with
L’Engle’s children in the tiny New England
farming village of Goshen, Connecticut,
where the author lived in the 1950s at her
country home, Crosswicks.
“I take your wisdom very seriously,” Rah-
man had written to L’Engle in 1987, “and,
insha-Allah, I will one day be the ‘marvelous’
teacher you feel I can be.” Twenty years after
that letter, he published his doctoral disserta-
tion as his first book, The Regime Change of
Kwame Nkrumah: Epic Heroism in Africa and
the Diaspora, and earned tenure as associ-
ate professor of history at the University of
Michigan in Dearborn.
“He was giving of himself and available
to students in a way that I’ve never seen
from any other professor,” says Joe Lunn,
88 VA N I T Y FA I R
a history professor on the committee that
interviewed Rahman. The two later became
good friends. Rahman invested especially in
the marginalized on campus, including Mus-
lim students who felt “under siege” in the
decade following 9/11, recalls Lunn.
“Dr. Rahman became like a father to a lot
of students,” says Natasha Gilbert, a student
in his History of the Civil Rights Movement
course and president of the Black Student
Union for which Rahman served as faculty
adviser. Gilbert emphasizes the power, for
Black teenagers, of the presence of a pro-
fessor of color on campus. “Black men in
particular would literally cling to Dr. Rah-
man. He was always an ear to listen, but he
was also a voice of reason and an advocate.”
L’Engle died the year before Rahman
earned tenure. Though they never met in
person, the two kept in touch sporadically
by phone and mail until her declining health
became an obstacle. She would have been
proud to see him named College Professor
of the Year in 2013 by the Michigan Council
for Social Studies. “Madeleine and I once dis-
cussed Dr. King’s conception of the Beloved
Community,” he would write, reflecting on
his teaching achievements. “Believers in God
and a better world constantly should strive to
create this community…by their actions ‘unto
the least of these.’ ”
Rahman never published fiction, but he
demonstrated his penetrating storytelling
ability in personal narratives and op-eds
printed in the Detroit Free Press, and in a
deeply researched essay on the rise and fall
of the Black Panther Party in Detroit for
Liberated Territory: Untold Local Perspectives
on the Black Panther Party. Through it all, he
remembered L’Engle’s long-ago suggestion
that he write a memoir.
By 2013, he had at last nearly completed
that work—all but one chapter: “the one
about Madeleine’s crucial presence during
those years” in prison. “She was a signifi-
cant spiritual guide for me when I was in the
dismal crypts,” he told Hanna-Davies. “A
lifeline.” If only he had their letters, and per-
mission to quote from hers. Hanna-Davies
put him in touch with L’Engle’s grand-
daughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, who now
manages Crosswicks, Ltd.
Glad to help, Voiklis searched boxes of
her grandmother’s papers and scanned all
the letters she could find (L’Engle had often
kept carbons). Voiklis and Rahman soon
began a correspondence of their own. He
sent her a photo of himself with his three
young children and chapters of his memoir.
In a skillfully paced narrative, he at long last
wrote his American nightmare.
By September 2015, Voiklis was trying to
find Rahman a literary agent. “His writing
was so good and beautiful, and his story so
compelling, that I wanted to help get it out
there,” she says. But he abruptly stopped
responding to emails. Months later, she
learned that Rahman had died on Septem-
ber 21 of a sudden heart attack at the age
of 64. The memoir has never been published.
IN 2018, the centennial year of L’Engle’s
birth, Voiklis was searching for special ways
to honor her grandmother’s legacy; she
had long before embraced Ava DuVernay’s
adaptation of Wrinkle, out that March. “I’m
really flabbergasted,” says DuVernay, when
she recently learned of the L’Engle-Rahman
friendship. It “affirms something for me
within her work that I saw and was wildly
attracted to, which was a humanity and a
respect for everyone’s dignity.” When Voiklis
attended a PEN America event that April and
mentioned her grandmother’s connection,
she saw another opportunity.
Caits Meissner, the current director of
what is now called PEN America’s Prison
and Justice Writing Program, hadn’t known
of the correspondence, either. Much of the
program’s history had been lost, forgotten,
or buried in archives at Princeton University
Library. Besides, not all correspondences
have been so rich or successful. In 1981, Nor-
man Mailer lobbied for the parole of his own
talented correspondent, Jack Henry Abbott;
weeks after his release, Abbott killed a
man. William Styron, Edward Albee, and
other PEN members attempted damage
control, but the organization was accused
of encouraging criminals. In 1989, some
members of the executive board decided
to dissolve the program. Resources were
spread thin, and what business did writers
have with inmates, anyway? But at the next
board meeting, Larry McMurtry—newly
elected president of PEN America—stood
up: “You can kill this program,” he said,
“but you can’t do it on my watch.” The vote
was canceled.
By the time Voiklis met Meissner, more
than 300 mentorships were under way. Car-
men Maria Machado, author most recently
of In the Dream House: A Memoir, refers to
her correspondence with incarcerated writer
Greg Goodman as “a real gift.” Goodman,
who was recently released after nearly
30 years in prison, has published numer-
ous pieces of work. “I gained confidence,”
Goodman says of his work with Machado.
“I gained a sense of validation.”
Voiklis shared the letters with Meissner,
and with support from Crosswicks, Ltd.,
PEN created the L’Engle/Rahman Prize for
Mentorship to honor mentorships in PEN
America’s Prison Writing Program. Meissner
said the letters will become training mate-
rials. “There’s no sense of ‘I’m here to help
you’; there’s no sense of ‘Wow, this makes
me interesting and cool because I’m doing
this work.’ It feels authentic, open, and like
two people coming to the page, curious about
what will arrive.” n

Sir Peter and the Airplane Thief
CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 73 I towed banners
and did skywriting, among other things.” He
also began building World War I–era air-
planes, for which he found a ready market.
DeMarco moved to Florida, married
young, and had a son. That marriage didn’t
last, and he embarked on a life as an airplane
vagabond, a barnstormer moving between
air shows and airports, landing where he
could find work on planes and fly them.
Starting in the mid-1980s, DeMarco spent
most summers for the next two decades
working as an airplane mechanic while pilot-
ing in the air shows at the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in New York’s Hudson Valley.
DeMarco helped put on performances that
included original and reproduction early
airplanes. To this day, the shows generally
include earthbound slapstick-comedy rou-
tines—with old cars and trucks, damsels in
distress, villains and heroes—all linked to
a plotline involving the acrobatics going on
overhead. By the late ’90s, DeMarco had
become Old Rhinebeck’s head mechanic,
chief pilot, and showstopper.
He cut a wide swath on the ground too.
His coolness in the face of danger, aerial
panache, and good looks proved irresistible
to many women. They didn’t just flock to
him, they sparred for his affection. Several
people who knew DeMarco during his time
at Old Rhinebeck told me about the time two
women, each claiming to be his serious girl-
friend, made a noisy scene at an area café.
A few years later, during a New Zealand air
show, he was in the cockpit of a parked Sop-
with Camel when a stiff wind blew the flimsy
plane on its nose. According to a newspaper
account, two women came running from the
airstrip sidelines to check on him and shortly
fell to fighting over him.
DeMarco’s friend Chad Wille main-
tained and flew planes with him at Old
Rhinebeck’s air shows, replacing DeMarco
as chief pilot in 2003 after the stunt legend
decamped to New Zealand. Wille recalls
several instances “where a woman would
look at Gene and a look would come over
her face and it would kind of like be, Oh,
it’s you. And they were gone.”
For more than a decade, accord-
ing to sources close to DeMarco, he
shuttled between New York and New
Ritchey, Florida, where he kept a house
replete with hangar, several airplanes, and
access to a runway. One of those planes, it
so happened, wasn’t his.
IN EARLY SUMMER 1997, a dozen New York
State police cars idled outside the entrance
to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. They had
come for DeMarco. A Piper Cub, stolen four
years earlier, had been found in his posses-
sion. The airplane’s fabric covering and tail
number had been changed. But repairs done
long ago to its airframe left no doubt that
this was the very same plane that, four years
earlier, had disappeared from a locked han-
gar at a small private airport outside New
Paltz, New York.
At the time it was stolen—on an August
day in 1993—the aircraft had belonged to
Robin Riley, a retired banker. “There was
always the feeling that it had been done by
somebody familiar with the airport,” says
Riley. “Whoever got in knew the planes.”
DeMarco, in fact, had previously lived at
the facility.
After the airplane was recovered, DeMar-
co, according to some of the people familiar
with what took place, said that he had taken
the Cub only because Riley had stiffed him
for major repairs he’d done. A former mem-
ber of the Old Rhinebeck board of trustees
repeated the story to me. Riley, to this day,
insists that DeMarco never worked on his
plane. “The only time Gene might ever have
touched it,” he maintains, “I did an oil change
and asked him how to remove the plug in
the oil tank when I first got the airplane. If
he billed me for his time, which would have
been 10 minutes, I’d have paid it.”
DeMarco would plead guilty to posses-
sion of stolen goods, a felony—for which
he received no prison time. And over the
objections of many at Old Rhinebeck,
the board retained him as chief pilot. “His
piloting skills and mechanical knowledge
were exceptional,” says the former Old
Rhinebeck board member, by way of expla-
nation. “[I] never had any issues with Gene.”
DeMarco stayed on and, if anything, became
even more of a commanding presence on the
Aerodrome scene.
In time, though, things would sour. At
the start of the 2003 summer season, Steve
Cunningham arrived at Old Rhinebeck as
the new chief executive. A longtime avia-
tion-industry executive, Cunningham told
me that he heard right away from trustees
that DeMarco was “a flipping crook, but he’s
a great show pilot, a great mechanic.” Within
days of arriving, though, Cunningham grew
alarmed, he recalls, when he learned that
a supporter of the Aerodrome had donated a
plane meant to be part of Old Rhinebeck’s
collection, delivering it to DeMarco. The
plane never arrived at the airfield. Instead, as
Cunningham found out, DeMarco had kept
it and, in its place, substituted some aircraft
parts that he claimed were of equal value. “It
didn’t pass the smell test,” Cunningham says.
He investigated DeMarco and discovered
that he had also failed to list his felony con-
viction on his FAA commercial pilot’s annual
medical certification application—a possible
felony in itself. Cunningham banned him
from the property.
Several of the trustees pushed back. “He
had a lot of influence on the board,” recalls
Cunningham. His supporters demanded he
be reinstated. Faced with bitter resistance
within the Aerodrome community, Cun-
ningham says he decided to quit.
With Old Rhinebeck in turmoil during
that summer, Jackson fortuitously swooped
in and steered DeMarco toward his next
chapter. One of DeMarco’s detractors who
had been active at Old Rhinebeck at the time
now says, “He left not under a cloud—it was
Hurricane Katrina.” But, he adds, “it extend-
ed the problems out thousands of miles—to
New Zealand.”
I VISITED OMAKA AERODROME, outside of
Blenheim, where many of Jackson’s planes
had long flown in air shows. Inside a spa-
cious hangar, hobbyists were busy restoring
vintage military aircraft. I spoke with two
aviation mechanics who knew DeMarco
and Jackson. “Gene wormed his way” into
Jackson’s confidence, one of them asserted.
“I think Peter was fairly impressed because
Gene could come up with the unfindable
stuff ”—such as rare plans, engines, and parts
needed to construct his airplanes.
They explained that after DeMarco
arrived, employees working on Jackson’s
airplanes at Omaka became concerned that
parts there had gone missing. They shared
their concerns with Jackson. “Peter was
not interested in any of that trivial shit, so
to speak,” one of them confided. “DeMarco
was useful to him and capable. No bones
about that.”
Jackson wanted original engines to repro-
duce for his air force, but only a few of the
most prized World War I aircraft motors still
exist. Among them, rotary engines—a distinc-
tive period motor that literally spins along with
the propeller—are particularly hard to find.
DeMarco and Wille arranged to trade two of
Old Rhinebeck’s original engines, including
a rotary motor, for an entire Nieuport fighter
that Jackson had purchased from another
builder. Wille contends that Old Rhinebeck
got the better end of the deal.
That Nieuport, however, proved ill-
starred. In 2008, in the only fatality in the
history of the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome,
Vincent Nasta, an acrobatic pilot with
23 years’ flying experience, appeared to lose
control of the plane and nosedived into the
surrounding woods. The airplane burst into
flames, killing him.
MARCH 2021 89

Sir Peter and the Airplane Thief
NO MATTER WHOM I talk to about DeMarco,
like him or loathe him, they volunteer that
he’s a virtually unrivaled flyer. Darroch Greer,
one of the filmmakers behind The Million-
aires’ Unit and other aviation documentaries,
told me, “I’ve now worked with maybe two
dozen pilots over the last 10 years.” But, he
says, “until I watched Gene fly, I don’t think
I realized how extraordinary he was at it. I’ve
watched other guys fly, and generally flying
these old aircraft, you don’t want to dive too
hard, turn too hard. We’re trying to film these
dramatic dogfighting sequences, but gener-
ally the pilots are flying along in very soft
circles. Gene was so dynamic and made the
plane so exciting. He really acted for the film
with the plane.” Greer concludes, “Nobody
flew like Gene flew.”
Despite his dazzling flying—or because
of it—DeMarco’s buccaneer life hardly
changed once he moved to southern climes.
And, according to an ex-TVAL senior staff
member with knowledge of events that took
place at the company over the past decade,
Jackson was made aware of DeMarco’s
behavior early on. In 2009, for example,
according to the staffer, Jackson learned that
DeMarco had been using TVAL employees
to maintain his personal airplanes while
making off with parts and fuel. DeMarco,
this source maintains, was also running
“side businesses off the Vintage Aviator’s
back,” allegedly charging visitors to tour
the company hangar and taking fees to fly
them in TVAL airplanes. DeMarco’s sexual
liaisons also intruded on the workplace,
the ex-staffer says. DeMarco kept what the
TVAL insider calls “a fuck pad,” an apart-
ment with a hot tub in the hangar he built at
the Hood Aerodrome. Issues with DeMar-
co, this source insists, also made things
uncomfortable between Jackson and Fran
Walsh: Despite the director’s closeness with
DeMarco, “Fran hated him. She suspected
he was a crook.” Nonetheless, DeMarco
remained on the payroll.
By 2016, TVAL was bleeding money. Hav-
ing run through upward of $80 million, says
the ex-TVAL staffer, Jackson slashed its bud-
get and laid off employees. Still, DeMarco
remained operationally in charge and contin-
ued to be what the source calls a “parasite.”
The last straw came in 2017, when Jackson and
Walsh were in Los Angeles. The director told
the High Court that while surfing the inter-
net, he came upon photos and videos of one of
his treasured airplanes that another aviation
organization, the New Zealand Warbirds, was
flying outside Auckland. He testified, “Fran
and I were in a state of sort of complete
panic, really, because we realized something
very serious had gone down.” Jackson asked
his personal accountant and attorney to
90 VA N I T Y FA I R
investigate how his plane—without his per-
mission (which he required before any were
sold or traded)—had wound up on the other
end of the North Island. In their research,
his aides came across a New Zealand War-
birds buyer who, in 2016, had shown up at
TVAL, where DeMarco, presenting himself
as a TVAL representative, soon made a deal
to sell two airplanes that he’d been building
for Jackson, pocketing the nearly $1.4 million
payment for himself. A third TVAL airplane
was slated for sale as part of the transaction.
Jackson, when apprised of the swindle, finally
fired DeMarco—and sicced federal investiga-
tors on him.
Why had DeMarco taken such chances,
risking the power, prestige, and lifestyle he’d
amassed while in Jackson’s orbit? Money was
almost certainly a factor. By now DeMarco
owned the house in Wellington that has
since sold for $800,000. The hangar with
his apartment had cost another $800,000
to build. He owed Jackson money, which,
with interest, totaled $650,000. And then
there were DeMarco’s many other planes.
He had partnered with a Hong Kong–based
businessman, James Slade, to develop a large
aircraft collection. But when Slade ran into
financial trouble, DeMarco became sole
owner of the fleet. According to an interview
DeMarco gave in 2017, he had more than
10 historic aircraft in his possession. The
upkeep for such a large collection would
require serious means, far beyond DeMarco’s
TVAL salary—even with his extra earnings
from film and air show work.
After Jackson reported the absconded
airplanes to New Zealand authorities, other
fraudulent activities surfaced. Along with
the accusations of stealing the TVAL planes,
DeMarco faced charges related to a loan he
secured for $162,000 from the Bank of New
Zealand by using a World War II–vintage
P-40 Kittyhawk as collateral. However, that
airplane wasn’t his either.
Oliver Wulff came forward to clarify
the situation. A German banker and avia-
tion enthusiast, Wulff told the High Court
that he had once counted DeMarco among
his closest friends. Then their relationship
took a turn. Wulff testified that DeMarco
alerted him that his former partner, Slade—
desperate to raise cash due to his business
woes—would agree to sell Wulff the P-40,
worth an estimated $1.5 million or more, for
just a third of the price. DeMarco then con-
vinced Wulff to wire him the money to buy
it for him. DeMarco, however, chose to keep
Wulff ’s money and presented the P-40 as his
own to the bank.
And so it was that on December 5, 2019—
after a three-week trial ending in a guilty
verdict—DeMarco appeared for sentencing.
Over the past 40 years, DeMarco was said
to have amassed some 14,000 hours of fly-
ing time. Many of those hours were in open
cockpits, where the elements certainly took
a toll on him. In the airless Wellington court-
room, his cheeks appeared jowly, his eyes
puffy, his once-flowing dark hair receding,
short-cropped, and gray.
D E MARCO, AS MENTIONED EARLIER, was
given multiple opportunities to participate
in this article. Instead, he emailed insults
(“It appears that Vanity Fair has a severely
tarnished image in the U.S. at the moment
and subscribers are leaving in droves these
days”—in fact, subscriptions are up and
VF.com is booming); chose to communi-
cate by mailing letters from New Zealand;
and ultimately insisted upon “the right
to review and edit” the piece before it went to
print—something the magazine never grants
its subjects. In a final flourish, he asked to
be reimbursed for his expertise if he were
to answer a list of questions that had origi-
nally been sent to him through his attorney.
“As a world expert in Great War Aircraft,” he
wrote, “I am considered the foremost expert
in the construction, flying and operation of
such machines.… My hourly rate is $295
per hour for attending to your needs. The
initial consulting fee is for 8 hours but will
most probably extend. Please attach your
remittance for 8 x $295 with the completed
consulting agreement [attached].” He was
careful to add: “we do not accept visa or
mastercard [sic].”
The correspondence was vintage DeMar-
co, suggesting not a hint of moderation or
contrition after his protracted legal ordeal.
“There was an inevitability about all this,”
says one of those who’d known DeMarco
during his halcyon days at Old Rhinebeck.
“Anybody who knew him knew it was going
to happen—just not the form it would take.”
One of the people at Omaka who had tried
to warn Jackson about DeMarco sums it up
this way: “It’s not the money; it’s the abuse of
trust. If you go behind Peter’s back and screw
him, you better have a bloody good cork.”
Wille, for his part, hasn’t heard from
DeMarco since the verdict. But he thinks the
financial problems with Jackson should have
been worked out without going to court.
DeMarco, he says, had no chance “as an
expatriate in a foreign country where they
hold all the cards. You got to figure that’s the
way it’s going to go, particularly when you’re
dealing with opposition from a [revered]
public figure.”
At DeMarco’s sentencing, the High Court
judge noted that Jackson called DeMarco’s
actions the “greatest betrayal” of his life. The
magistrate, however, was also cognizant of
DeMarco’s situation. Recognizing the hard-
ship that a long internment might place on
DeMarco’s young family (he had become
a father again and, with his girlfriend, was
expecting another child), the judge handed
down a reduced jail sentence of two years
and five months. Even then he served far
less, being granted parole in late September.
Now, while reportedly living with his New
Zealand family, DeMarco is facing civil suits
from Jackson, Wulff, and others seeking to
recover their funds and airplanes.
Yes, fantasy is powerful stuff. The ex-
TVAL staff member believes that DeMarco
seduced Jackson, like so many others before
him, with his aviation talents and roguish
Charming Billie
C ON T I N U ED F ROM PAGE 4 8and they don’t
care!” she says. “I have pretty much been
channeling that energy for years.” During
rehearsals and performances, Eilish’s bom-
bast has racked up a torn hip flexor, shin
splints, and sprained ankles. As damaging as
her profession has been to her body, it’s been
productive exercise for her mind. Eilish, who
has an auditory processing disorder, was
also diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome
around the time “Ocean Eyes” took off. “I
think music is a great therapy for her, but
it’s her own music and it’s her performing,”
says O’Connell. “She doesn’t suffer from
Tourette’s during performance.”
An unexpected pleasure of the livestream
is hearing nearly 19-year-old Eilish singing
songs recorded at ages 14, 15, 16, and realizing
just how much her voice has matured. “It’s
been five years since ‘Ocean Eyes’ came out,
and I thought she had an incredibly beautiful
voice then,” Finneas says. “I would liken it to
the way that an Olympic trainer might see
a 15-year-old Apolo Ohno and think, This is
a really good speed skater for a 15-year-old—
imagine how good they’ll be at 20.” He says
that the new album, which he calls “a con-
tinuation of Billie’s life story,” has grown
with her. “Even just little moments of vari-
ety, like on ‘No Time to Die,’ she has a big
belt moment that a couple of years younger
Billie might not have had the training or the
stamina to do.” On songs like “Ocean Eyes,”
spanning two octaves and arranged for a
13-year-old’s fluty vocal cords, Eilish’s voice
now often dissolves into a haunting whisper
in that highest register; everywhere else
is richer, fuller.
The timing of the livestream, just 10
days before the election, was no accident.
“That was a big part of making sure that
veneer—as if Jackson were glimpsing anoth-
er way of life through DeMarco’s wayward
existence. “Pete,” he asserts, “wanted to be
him. Gene was living the life that he would
have loved.” This, says the insider, is what
may have allowed Jackson to excuse many
of the pilot’s misdeeds. “Pete,” he says, “was
willfully blind.”
TVAL has now stopped all new aircraft
production and public air shows, blaming the
we were taking advantage of the reach,”
Eilish says. In the hour before kickoff, the
preshow included messages from Jameela
Jamil, Eilish’s “surrogate dad” Steve Carell,
and Alicia Keys encouraging fans to exercise
their right to vote. During “All the Good Girls
Go to Hell,” with its line “hills burn in Cali-
fornia,” scenes of climate disaster—Eilish’s
soapbox bugbear—spun over the sound-
stage. “Vooote, for God’s sake,” she said as
she left the stage at the end of the show, her
head tipped back in the universal expression
of adolescent irritation.
“I think it’s human to care, and I just
don’t really get why people don’t care,” she
says. “I want to have kids and I want those
kids to have kids. Like, I don’t—” she stops
and gives a sad non-laugh. “We’re going
to die.” (Her beloved matte black Dodge
Challenger, a 17th-birthday present from
her record label, is, she says, “totally a prob-
lem.” She wishes all vehicles were electric,
she wishes she didn’t love the “rumbling
smelly engine” of muscle cars. She’s get-
ting a Tesla this year.)
Young people become catalysts in times
of political and social unrest, when the
future, their future, is uncertain. In the ’60s,
the Vietnam War and the fight for civil rights
saw uprisings on college campuses. In the
last four years, a new activist generation has
come of age, from Greta Thunberg fighting
for climate action; to 13-year-old Flint, Mich-
igan, resident Mari Copeny raising hundreds
of thousands of dollars for nationwide water
filters; to teenage TikTokers pulling a prank
on a Trump rally. At the beginning of the
pandemic, Baird launched Support + Feed,
which partners with local restaurants to pro-
vide plant-based meals to those experiencing
food insecurity, a venture that she says
Eilish has supported “emotionally, finan-
cially, and social media–wise.”
Baird, who grew up “in Colorado with a
Democratic family in a very Republican state
and area” (one brother went on to become a
congressman), says that politics have always
been important in the O’Connell-Baird-
Finneas-Eilish household. In 2016, “I think
Billie and Finneas and every one of their age
group, to be honest, had a real blow, because
your parents are supposed to make you feel
safe, and your parents are supposed to say
effects of COVID-19. But the former staffer
says the halts are also part of the wider cuts
in the Jackson-Walsh fantasy empire.
Gone are the days when Jackson wanted
nothing more than to stand barefoot on a
grassy airstrip alongside his fellow Kiwis and
look up to see his World War I airplanes flying
overhead. For, just as it happens in his movies
sometimes, a Dark Rider had flown in and
sent Sir Peter’s dreams spinning to earth. n
everything’s going to be okay. And when
Trump won, we just kind of fell apart,” she
says. “I always think that maybe that had a
lot to do with them making the album that
they made.” In the lead-up to the election,
following her performance at the DNC, Eil-
ish received a callout from President Biden
on Twitter: “I’ll just say what @billieeilish
said: vote like your life depends on it.” The
week before, she’d posted a short video call
with Vice President Kamala Harris to talk
about climate change. The outgoing Trump
administration highlighted her name in a
document as an artist who should not be
used in a coronavirus ad campaign. “I was
very proud of myself,” she says. “Tons of my
friends texted me and they were like, I’m so
proud of you! Trump is afraid of you! I was
like, Damn right.”
A week after the election, I checked in.
“I was up with a bunch of horses all day,”
she says of Election Day—she’s been rid-
ing on and off since her early teens. “I was
trying to distract myself, giving my energy
to the horses, which was honestly so nice.”
When the networks called the election for
Biden and Harris, Eilish says she “immedi-
ately started howling and cheering at eight
in the morning. And so did the rest of the
neighborhood.” She grabbed some leftover
fireworks from the Fourth of July and “I lit
the bitches.” (There was an Instagram sto-
ry of her doing so.) “There’s still a million
things we need to do better,” she says, “but
just getting that orange piece of shit out of
that White House is the best thing that could
happen right now.”
It feels like I’m catching her in a relative
calm before a storm. As she barrels through
her final year of the teen age, the release
of The World’s a Little Blurry is about to put
on display aspects of her life she’d never
planned on sharing, including the intimate
details of a romantic relationship that she’d
never wanted to talk about publicly. “That
was a huge part of my life,” she says. “And
nobody knew it. It was this main thing that
was taking control of my life.”
When I ask whether she’s in a relation-
ship now, I get a direct, “Girl, no.” I point
out that she’s said this before and later took
it back. She thinks for a moment. “I am glad
every day that I’m single, but I’m also like,
MARCH 2021 91

Charming Billie
not out here pushing people away. I’d be fine
to have somebody, but I don’t.”
“The fundamental theme of Billie’s sto-
ry,” says Cutler, is “empathy, connection.”
When Eilish finally watched an early cut of
the documentary, she had a hard time getting
Down in the Valley
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 5 7 Outside the
cockpit windscreen everything went gray-
ish white, as if someone had jerked down
the blinds. Inadvertent flight into instrument
meteorological conditions. The sudden loss
of outside visual reference would have come
as a shock for Zobayan. He pulled back on the
controls and began to climb.
For better or for worse, he was commit-
ted to his escape plan. Job one was to get up
through the soup and into clear air above.
Once on top, he could get to the coast and
then find a gap in the clouds to descend
through. It would be like the Coachella trip
all over again. If he handled it right, no one
would ever know what he’d done.
Zobayan held the Sikorsky in a climb
and toggled the mic. His voice was unhur-
ried, if a tad higher in pitch than before:
“And, SoCal, for helicopter 2EX, we gonna
go ahead and start our climb to go above
the, uh, layers and, uh, we can stay with
you here.” He made it sound like he’d found
a hole and was getting ready to start a
legal climb.
SoCal Approach had undergone a shift
change and a new controller was now on the
frequency. “2EX, where are you?”
“Uh, just west of Van Nuys.”
The calmness of Zobayan’s voice belied
the peril of the situation. He hadn’t prepared
himself for getting into the clouds, and now
he was “behind the plane,” reacting to the
unfolding situation instead of anticipating
what might happen. People thrust unex-
pectedly into dangerous situations react
according to habit. If he’d been practicing
the correct technique in those months since
his IIMC training, he might have remem-
bered to engage the autopilot and let it
handle the climb. Instead, he flew the way
he usually did, by hand.
92 VA N I T Y FA I R
through it. “It’s really about my life, me, in
such a way that I was not expecting, and was
pretty brutal to relive.” But that experience
has been ultimately rewarding—and it gave
her something equally unexpected. “I was
going through hell in certain parts of my
life, and I had no idea anyone was seeing
it,” she says. “The fact that they have foot-
age of it and you can see my emotions…. It’s
The risk of hand flying is that it’s easy to
become disoriented if you don’t pay close
attention to your instruments. As Zobayan
climbed, he gradually began to bank the heli-
copter to the left. Then, catching himself, he
corrected the error and brought the aircraft
back toward level.
Over at SoCal Approach, the new con-
troller couldn’t find Zobayan on his radar
screen, so asked him to push a cockpit button
that would make his tracking marker light
up. Zobayan did so, and the controller
spotted him.
“Uh, were you requesting flight follow-
ing?”
“Yes, sir.”
The helicopter had now ascended some
500 feet and was more than halfway into its
climb through the clouds. At this rate, Zobay-
an would be in the clear in about 15 seconds.
But for whatever reason, he failed to stay
focused on his artificial horizon. The helicop-
ter began to lean to the left—first gently, then
steeply. Unable to see the ground, Zobayan
must have misinterpreted the cues his inner
ear was giving. It felt like the aircraft was
banking to the right when it was actually turn-
ing to the left. The more he tried to correct it
by shoving the stick to the left, the worse he
made it. Soon he was in a steep bank.
The controller asked where he intended
to go: “2EX, where, say intentions?”
By now Zobayan had climbed 1,000 feet.
The clouds surrounding him grew wispier.
Brightness suffused them. He was nearly at
the top of the clouds, nearly in the clear.
“Uh, we climbing to 4,000.”
9:45:19 a.m.
Even as he spoke, the steepening bank
was drawing the helicopter back into the
clouds. The overcast grew darker once more.
Though he didn’t seem to realize it, Zobayan
was not climbing but descending, and with
increasing speed.
Asked the controller: “And then what are
you going to do, when you get to altitude?”
No answer.
9:45:30 a.m.
Two mountain bikers were taking a break on
the trail above the Las Virgenes Municipal
like, I can’t help but think about the last epi-
sode of The Office when Erin was like,” she
paraphrases, “How did you do it? How did
you really get how we felt and what we were
doing? How did you do it? I used to watch that
episode and be like, That would be amazing
if somebody did that and you could rewatch
those parts of your life from a different
perspective. And I did it!” n
Water District facility when one heard
the thwomping approach of a large heli-
copter. After 20 seconds “a blue and white
helicopter emerged from the clouds passing
from left to right,” rolling “to the left such
that he caught a glimpse of its belly.” It hit
the hillside at 185 mph. The tail and rotors
broke off on impact and scattered while the
fuselage tumbled another hundred feet and
burst into flames.
The bikers hurried down the hill toward
the crash. A circle of orange flames licked
over the scattered debris.
9:48 a.m.
Patti Taylor, the operations manager at OC
Helicopters, sent out a group text: “Land?”
The limo driver waiting in Camarillo
replied: “Not yet.”
Taylor called her primary contact at
Island Express, vice president Bagge, and
asked where Zobayan was on the flight-
tracking software. Checking the screen,
Bagge saw that the helicopter had stopped
tracking at 9:45 a.m. She told Taylor that
she’d call her back and phoned Angel Perez,
the ground operations manager. She told
him to call Zobayan on the radio. Getting
no response, Perez telephoned Camarillo
Airport. No one answered.
At 10:02 Ric Webb sent out a text to a
group that included Zobayan and the limo
driver waiting in Camarillo: “Ara, you okay.”
Bagge directed Perez to pull out the Emer-
gency Response Manual and start running
the checklist. One of the company’s other
helicopters took off and headed for Zobay-
an’s last known position.
Meanwhile, in Calabasas, a flood of 911
calls had sent fire engines rolling to the edge
of the water treatment facility below the
crash site. As soon as firefighters climbed up
the hillside to the wreckage, though, they saw
that there were no lives left to save.
Within 10 minutes they realized who
had died.
1 2 : 0 5 p. m .
Amid social media speculation and false
reports, TMZ broke the news: “KOBE
BRYANT, DAUGHTER GIGI DIE IN HELI-
COPTER CRASH …”
The following month, Vanessa Bryant filed
a wrongful death lawsuit against Zobayan’s
estate, Island Express, and its parent company,
Island Express Holding Corporation. Wrong-
ful death lawsuits on behalf of John, Keri, and
Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah and Payton Chester, and
Christina Mauser have also been filed against
Island Express. For its part, the helicopter
company filed a lawsuit against two air traffic
controllers who communicated with Zobayan
that day, asserting that the crash was caused
by their “erroneous acts and/or omissions.”
For Deetz, who in addition to being a pilot
served as Island Express’s safety manager until
2017, the tragedy of the crash is compounded
by how easily it could have been avoided.
“If the weather’s bad, you don’t go. And half
the time, the client’s like, ‘OK, thanks.’ ” n

Growing Up Ivanka
CON TIN U ED F ROM PAGE 67 the New York
Observer, who hired me as a freelance
writer between 2007 and 2009. If I was
single, she and Jared often tried to set me
up with a roster of eligible bachelors in what
I always felt was an effort to elevate me to
the ranks of people they wanted to social-
ize with. When I was an intern at Al Jazeera
English, I ended up on an awkward date with
a close associate of Rupert Murdoch’s; I sat
through a group dinner while Jared, Wendi
Murdoch, and the New York Post higher-up
they had their eyes on for me discussed the
expendability of journalists in the digital age
and ignored me.
Still, Ivanka asked me to be in her wed-
ding party in 2009. The months between
her engagement and wedding were a flurry
of activity in which I was honored to partici-
pate. When I started a new job in a different
field the day after their wedding, however,
I expected my best friend to ask how it was
going. After what could have been days or
weeks, I sent her a text that said something
like, “Hey, I started a new job the day after
your wedding, and you haven’t asked a single
question about it.”
Her reply was along the lines of, “Ly, I’m
too busy for this shit.”
THAT WAS MORE or less the end. She still sent
presents on my birthday and invited me to
her Halloween birthday parties at Trump
SoHo, and there were a couple more group
dinners. When my son was born, she sent
me a gold-plated bracelet engraved with his
name. We were both polite, but we no longer
belonged to each other’s inner circles.
For the past four years I have tried to tune
out the conversation that dominated inter-
national media, but it is nearly impossible to
ignore when the person who used to pluck
ingrown hairs from your bikini line suddenly
appoints herself an unelected public official
and begins to torch democracy. When Ivanka
posted a photo of herself onstage with her
children at a Trump rally, I wondered aloud
to another friend from the Manhattan private
school world what her endgame might be.
Ivanka deigned to dress Middle American
housewives when I knew her, but she did not
pretend to want to hobnob with them. Pre-
dictably, as she began moving with the real
power brokers of the world, Ivanka became
increasingly certain that she and the rest
of the capitalist elite had better solutions
to the plight of America’s struggling work-
ing class than elected officials. But aligning
herself with her dad’s banana republic–style
administration made no sense to me until my
friend suggested that Ivanka took her kids to
the rally to show them that they are American
royalty. This seemed most plausible. What is
more royal than presiding over subjects that
you disdain?
I’ve been a good WASP and kept quiet until
now, even as I’ve grown increasingly repulsed
by Ivanka’s ability to aid and abet her father.
I’ve been comforted by the certainty that
the backlash from those whose respect she
craves most must sting. Still, I miss my old
friend. I miss going to Green Kitchen on First
Avenue at 1 a.m. for “mozzarazza,” hailing
down a boat in Amsterdam for a tour, belt-
ing out “Anna Begins” and songs from Les Mis
on road trips. But most of all, I miss the time
when the Trump family quest for power was
not dangerous to the country.
A day before Joe Biden declared victory,
Ivanka issued a tepid statement about how
“every legally cast vote should be counted,”
still clearly hoping that she could be enriched
and adored by the public she exploits even
as she’s embraced on the slopes of Aspen.
“Goodbye @IvankaTrump,” read one reply.
“You will be loved by the people you disdain
and disdained by the people you want to be
loved by. There will never be a Met Ball for
you again. You are fated to live out your years
as an aging, corrupt, villainous Barbie; paying
the price for what you did.”
Though I hope that fantasy comes true—
the damage the Trump family has done is
unforgivable—I expect Ivanka will find a soft
landing in Palm Beach instead, where casu-
al white supremacy is de rigueur and most
misdeeds are forgiven if you have enough
money. It’s the perfect spot for her to lie low,
shielded from the consequences of policies
she pursued for four years, and from having
to interact with her MAGA following. Surely
Ivanka will still market whatever branded
products she can sell them, and many whis-
per that she will harness their loyalty in a
future run for president.
Whether she’s able to rehab her image
or not, I hope she couldn’t drown out the
applause of the city she once aspired to rule,
cheering her political downfall. I was with
them, crying with relief, matched only by
the regret and shame I feel for not holding
my former friend to account sooner. n

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tribaleyesshop.com and follow @tribal.eyes on
iG. photo: semaj Thomas.
oF the saints
angelie fulton,
creator of one-piece
yoga bodysuits, has
one message for
women: “feminise
the female!” of The
saints’ suits
highlight the formula
for true beauty, the ensoi is the luxury fashion label doing things
forgotten female differently, founded by designer clare lichfield.
parts: collarbone, size-inclusive and ethically made with a fully
abdomen, small of transparent supply chain, ensoi’s 100% silk
your back, neck camisoles and slip dresses feature an incognito
and thighs. explore built-in bra – so women can quit compromising,
their stunning and finally get the support they deserve.
collections at
visit ensoilondon.com and follow
ofthesaintsapparel.com and follow
@ensoi.london on iG to be uplifted.
@ofthesaintsapparel on iG.
arChery JeweLLery tuniK
new freya designed by Marissa
hand- Ganino, Tunik offers
hammered a dreamy, curated edit
To adverTise please conTacT classvaniTyfair@condenasT.co.uk or 020 7499 9080 x3705
earrings by of dresses in
archery exclusively designed
Jewellery. unique prints. central
The freya to the brand’s
shield- philosophy is that a
maiden dress should fit,
replica hand flatter, and bring you
hammered to life. sustainability
silver is paramount to
earrings can Tunik’s ethos so each
be worn dress is made in
alone or as a set. This collection is inspired by limited quantities and
viking armour and it beautifully combines produced locally in
strength with feminine sophistication. visit Melbourne, australia. visit tunik.com.au and
archeryjewellery.com iG: @archeryjewellery follow @tunik_thelabel on iG.
Kyre Laine CoLLeCtion
kyre laine collection is a luxury
brand founded by Jennifer
Mcneil in 2014. specialising in
bridal, prom and occasion
gowns, Jennifer offers a wealth
of diverse designs. as a
high-end designer, she has a
keen eye for upcoming trends
and also offers a deluxe
bespoke service. visit
kyrelainecollection.com and
follow @kyrelainecollection
on iG.
Vanity Fair adVertising Feature

Face Value
1. Toronto-based hair company JŪs by Oreya is passionate about
1 2 3
changing hair care. The JŪS concept was inspired by DIY hair
masks, looking to create products that can be used easily on the
go. Their all-natural, premium hair care products are designed to
work together to make your hair feel nourished with moisture.
Redefine how you take care of your hair. Visit jusbyoreya.com
IG: @jusbyoreya
2. Cria Hair and Scalp Booster is carefully designed to make your
scalp feel healthier and your hair roots feel stronger, naturally.
Made with only 4 organic ingredients. CRIA aligns with and
empowers the body to do what it does best. Vegan, gluten-free,
cruelty-free, chemical-free. Visit criahair.com IG: @criahair
3. With its lemongrass scent reminiscent of the Caribbean, nakyd
Ldn’s luxurious blend of shea butter, enriched with oils, feels rich,
yet lightweight. Suitable for medium to high porosity hair types,
especially in the winter months. Grab yours now over at nakydldn.com
and follow @nakydldn on IG.
4 4. Derma Organic Science, dOs COsmetiCs, use pharmaceutical knowledge
5 to create sophisticated, organic cosmetics with Greek herbs. With a unique skin
6 diagnostic test, they recommend complete care routines, tailored to your needs.
Shown is their Mandelicum Night Solution which aims to smooth the appearance
of skin. Visit doscosmetics.com IG: @dos_dermaorganicscience
5. wasChies ® Face Wash Pads help to clean your skin and aim to absorb even
waterproof make-up with water alone. No additional lotions needed. These
hypoallergenic, reusable, super soft pads produce less waste, are washable up
to 60°C and remarkably durable. Visit waschies.uk and follow
@waschies.international on IG.
8
6. The ambre Luxe Bronzing Foam is a multi-tasking formulation combining
high-quality tanning actives with skincare ingredients. It is infused with marula
7 oil, carrot seed oil, hyaluronic acid and vitamin E. Australian made, vegan and
cruelty free. Visit ambreluxe.com and follow @ambreluxe on IG.
7. gLissybrOw: revolutionising the way you look after your brows.
GLISSYBROW’S brow care bundle includes a Lash and Brow Serum, Brow
Styling Balm and a Brow Mask. They aim to promote the appearance of healthy
hair growth. The perfect gift for brow lovers! Shop the bundle on
glissybrow.com and follow @glissybrow on IG.
8. Founded on her Mayan roots, Yasmina Harrison’s brand, tZOL’ skin, is on a
mission to help you navigate our modern world. Her Youth Igniter Eye Gel,
11 contains caffeine, natural sugars and vitamin E and K. It aims to leave your skin looking
10 brighter and feeling smooth. Visit tzolskin.com and follow @tzolskin on IG.
9 9. bOdied skinCare CLub is dedicated to providing plant-based skincare to
individuals who lead active lifestyles. It feels gentle on the skin and is formulated to
leave you with skin that feels smooth. Suitable for all skin types. Visit
bodiedskincare.club IG: @bodiedskincareclub
10. The Eye Mask by sea sun austraLia is infused with marine collagen and
packed full of natural vitamins and minerals. It aims to leave skin looking bright,
feeling hydrated and is the perfect pamper partner to prep your skin
pre-makeup. Gluten-free, PETA certified vegan and cruelty-free.
Visit seasunaustralia.com IG: @seasunaustralia
11. Handcrafted in Australia, green + bare Face Masks are anhydrous and
only use highly concentrated natural ingredients. The range includes five
different masks and each mask aims to target a specific skin type and concern.
14 Use the code VANITY20 for 20% OFF your first purchase, expires 31/12/21.
12 13 Visit greenandbare.co IG: @greenandbare
15
12. Founded on vegan principles, riLey Jade 1960 formulates whole-plant,
nutrient-rich, plant-based skincare, such as their I De-Clear Concentrated
Illuminating Brightening Serum with 20% vitamin C, ferulic acid and sugar apple
extract. This gorgeous serum aims to help reduce the appearance of dark spots,
whilst encouraging firmer feeling skin and an even looking skin tone and texture.
Visit rileyjade1960.com and follow @rileyjade1960 on IG.
13. shi/dtO skincare combines the latest in science and innovation. Their
exclusive formulations are vegan, cruelty-free and dermatest “Excellent”, and
they also concentrate on using cutting-edge active ingredients. Use code
VFUK21 for 10% off (expires 21/02/2021) at shidto.com and follow
@shidto_official on IG.
14. Bursting onto the beauty scene is natural skincare brand, POsy & Pear.
Their Soothing Hand Sanitiser is a handbag must-have. Infused with aloe vera
and 100% pure e ssential oils of lavender, sweet orange, geranium and ylang
ylang. It leaves skin feeling nourished with moisture and smelling divine. Visit
posyandpear.com and follow @posy_and_pear on IG.
16 15. Winner of 6 awards at the 2020 Australian Non Toxic Awards, premium
sustainable beauty brand, rinasCentia® , provides necessary products for
17 those prone to sensitive skin. Her products are enriched with probiotics,
sea minerals and essential nutrients. Get that glowing appearance and
“camera ready” look at rinascentia.com.au and follow @rinascentia
on IG.
16. Dream Feet Instant Pedicure Stick by naturemary – provides
a soft and silky feel on your dull, tired, and achy feet. Use it on the go
or before bed. Their ingredients are backed by science and are great
for the sole. Visit naturemary.com
or email support@naturemary.com
17. Plant-powered beauty brand, shea Lush beauty uses naturally
sourced, evidence-based ingredients. They handcraft a small range of
products for skin and hair. The Whipped Shea Butter is the ultimate
staple for dry skin, specially formulated to nourish you with moisture.
Visit shealushbeauty.com and follow @shealushbeauty on IG.
 Vanity Fair adVertising Feature

To Treasure Forever
1. earthFire is owned and operated by opal cutter and jewellery designer luke eliasz in 1 2
picturesque Hobart, Tasmania. He specialises in australian opal set in organic, gender
neutral designs taking inspiration from nature. Work with luke to create extra special
forever pieces. visit earthfire.com.au iG: @earthfire_australia
2. iLeKtri JeweLLery is a timeless and forward-looking brand. The
‘lightning’ three-tones ring is a set of three stackable rings in 18k white,
rose and yellow gold. designed for elegant modern women who adore
beauty, quality and style. Their spirit is one of passion, freedom and
above all, authenticity. visit ilektri.com and follow 3
@ilektri_jewellery on iG.
3. BLue smoKe Fine JeweLry was founded by emerging designer 4
Betty B. elrod from a need to blend passion with purpose. The 5
collection celebrates strength, femininity, and independence, where
natural materials and a minimalist aesthetic create an earthly, rugged
elegance for every day. visit bluesmokejewelry.com iG:
@bluesmokejewelry or email bluesmokejewelry@icloud.com
6
4. CLaudia mae Fine JeweLry was born out of claudia’s love
and appreciation for colour, contrast and contour. Handcrafted in
some of the finest materials sourced from around the world, claudia’s
collection includes pictured ring, 18k yellow gold and diamonds. visit
claudiamae.com iG: @claudiamaejewelry
5. aKind offers high quality jewellery made of 14 karat recycled solid gold and
lab-grown diamonds, proving that luxurious jewellery can be sustainable and
affordable. designed in sweden with timeless, delicate and minimalistic scandi
influences, akind’s jewellery is made to last. pictured is the croissant dome ring from
their latest collection. visit akindstore.com iG: @wearakind
6. in a celebration of the body, form and texture isa JeweLLery reflects on 7
adornment and style as a form of personal and political expression. isa is actively
sustainable, with ethically-sourced materials, all pieces are handcrafted in small batches
in the Melbourne studio. visit isajewellery.net iG: @isa__jewellery
7. JuLianna isaBeLLa Fine JeweLry, a Montréal based jeweller infatuated with designing
timeless jewels to be worn today and passed down through generations. Treat yourself this season with
the diamond starburst studs, available in 14k solid gold and features diamond pavé. visit
juliannaisabella.com and follow her on iG @juliannaisabellajewelry
8 9
8. veena, the designer behind CLeoBLVd, is a proud believer in supporting women of colour.
veena’s brand is about inner freedom, women’s rights, and she wants her clients to grow with
her and to become a better person. Her jewellery is handmade, eco-friendly and brass and
nickel free. visit cleoblvd.com iG: @cleoblvd
9. canadian jewellery brand, LuCine and Co., make modern heirlooms for the next
generation of brides. They focus on elevating the beauty, versatility and stackability of
engagement rings and wedding bands, whilst also using alternative gemstones and birthstones
like moissanite, opal, topaz, tourmaline, morganite and more. visit lucineandco.com and follow
@lucineandco on iG.
10. JuLs is a jewellery brand founded by Te odora rus focused on chimerical concepts 10
that often show new ways to wear jewellery. Geometric language, clean shapes and 11
futurism are the brand’s representative elements. visit julsshop.ro iG: @julsjwl
11. inspired by Balinese wooden carvings, the attention to detail of the look at Me
12
necklace, designed by dua adorned, is something to be admired. The polished

To adverTise please conTacT classvaniTyfair@condenasT.co.uk or 020 7499 9080 x3705

silver mirror is prong set just as a picture would be set within its frame. for more
information visit duaadorned.com or follow @dua.adorned on iG.
12. contemporary jewellery by Joana design studio. art, architecture, design
and geometric shapes are Joana’s biggest inspiration. she creates simple pieces of
jewellery that can be used in a different and fun way, with all work done in her workshop.
featured is a ring from the stone collection. visit joanadesignstudio.com
iG: @joana_designstudio 13 14
13. maria CLara ViLLamar sustainaBLe JeweLry is a fine, handmade brand based in
ecuador with sustainable practices. using recycled precious metals, recycled and lab-grown
gemstones, up-cycled plastics and folkloric elements, her designs are inspired by nature evoking
subtlety and elegance. visit mariaclaravillamar.com and follow @mariaclaravillamar.sj on iG.
14. Jess adams design is a handmade jewellery and accessories brand based in england. Their
statement jewellery is handcrafted by Jess using resin and then assembled with
the highest quality metal accents. see the full collection of products at 15
jessadamsdesign.com and follow on iG @jessadamsdesign
15. as seen on celebrities such as Halsey and lorde, reposeux offers
handmade, sustainable jewellery for the effortlessly smart and cool. Their 18
detailed designs are created from recycled semi-precious metals and
ethically sourced specialty gemstones. for jewellery you’ll never want to take
off visit reposeux.com and follow @reposeux on iG.
16. house oF wasee, was founded under the creative direction of
pakistani fine artist, farah Wasi Ghatala. The l.a. brand creates wearable
pieces of art inspired by different cultures and the history of the world. each piece
intends to tell a story about humanity. visit waseejewels.com and follow
17
@houseofwasee on iG.
17. Joyaux JeweLLery design is an online jewellery boutique offering
meticulously handcrafted, fine and demi-fine jewellery styles. specialising in
beautifully elegant, high quality pieces designed to last, Joyaux design caters
to proponents of conscious consumerism who want to elevate their look
without compromising on ethics and sustainability. visit joyauxdesign.com
iG: @joyauxdesign 16
18. deVaLuChi JoaiLLerie is a jewellery brand whose styles range from
classic to contemporary. it is a brand that evokes modernism and panache,
setting itself apart from the ordinary. visit their store at 2/f eastwing
estancia capitol commons philippines or browse their work online at
devaluchijoaillerie.com and follow @devaluchijoaillerie on iG.
Vanity Fair adVertising Feature

Picture Perfect
1. Painter and graphic designer, Kristine reiner, presents powerful
1 2 3
and contemporary artworks featuring roses. The real roses add texture
and dimension to the image, bringing the painting to life. She also
specialises in offering classes to help others feel inspired and to create.
Visit kristinereiner.com and follow @kristinesartwork on IG.
2. People and emotion are the foundations of Zoë els Tsomondo’s
artwork. Currently residing in France but originally from South Africa and
Zambia, her art is known for its diversity of mediums and vibrant colours.
Music, storytelling and poetry also form part of her inspiration. Visit
zoeelsartist.com and follow @zet_artist on IG.
3. Inspired by her travels across the world, from the oceans around
Australia to landscapes in Iceland, lauren eMMa Morton brings
her memories to life on canvas. She uses a mixture of different mediums
5 6 including resin, watercolour, acrylics and alcohol inks to create unique pieces.
Visit laurenemmaart.com and follow @lauren.emma.art on IG.
4 4. Artist, KiMberley CooK, creates breath-taking floral pieces using oil
paints. Inspired by the ephemeral and pure beauty of fresh flowers and
blossoms, her work aims to leave the viewer feeling grounded and peaceful.
Pictured here is ‘Freshly Picked’. Visit kimberleycook.com follow
@kimberleycookfineart on IG and contact her at kfcook@shaw.ca
5. lleWellyn sKye is a dynamic, passionate and soulful visual artist,
whose unique and expressive abstract paintings are captivating public and
private collectors around the globe. Inspired by nature, Skye’s art explores
the paradoxes of love and life alongside her own personal experiences of love,
loss and grief. Visit llewellynskye.com and follow
8 9 @llewellyn_skye_art on IG.
6. Multi-genre artist, KiMberly diCKinson, traverses the world
of art, photography, and design with an unlimited palette. An
7 intuitive expressionist, she finds inspiration in nature, philosophy,
psychology, science, mathematics, literature, folklore and
mythology, and in the cultural zeitgeist of the world at large. Enquire
at kimberlydickinson.com and follow @kimberly.dickinson.art
on IG.
7. Catarina diaZ is a manual collage and mixed media artist, with
a Portuguese soul. Her transcendent pieces and bespoke
commissions, mixing realism with spirituality and surrealism,
combine her vibrant and colourful early-life recollections with
London’s cosmopolitan life, inspiring us to reconnect to nature and
12 ourselves. Follow @catarina_diaz_ on IG or
visit catarinadiaz.com
8 . daVid edWard Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist living
and working in Austin, Texas. His work walks the line between the
intuitive and the purposeful, exploring the inherent tension there
10 11 and revealing the beauty that lies in that push and pull. For more,
visit davidedwardjohnsonart.com and follow
@davidedwardjohnsonart on IG.
9. brielle blue specialises in acrylic and oil painting using
painterly brushstrokes. She hopes to remind everyone of their
beauty and worth, no matter their surroundings. She is an
American artist inspired by the midwestern sky and the
peacefulness of nature. For more information visit
brielleblueart.com and follow on IG @brielleblueart
10. Cristine Crebas is a Danish-Dutch artist using colourful sceneries of flowers
to explore themes of fragility and the cycle of life. Japanese urban garden 80x100cm.
13
Oil and spray paint on canvas. Visit crebas.dk IG: @c.crebas
11. Fine artist, Valentina guadagnuCCi, creates beautiful and stylistic portrait
artworks as well as incredibly beautiful and detailed accessories. Pictured here is a
stunning example of her hand-painted bags, inspired by her background in figurative
narration and fine art. Shop her unique pieces online at valentinaguadagnucci.it
12. Artist Clarence James began spreading his images and brand, “PVMt84”, around
New York City and Washington, DC, using a unique semiotics with elements of
universal symbology and pop cultural references. His work blends abstract and
figurative Neo-expression, occupying a special space between status quo
14 15 and transcendent philosophy. Visit pvmt84.com and follow @pvmt84 on IG.
13. Every CreaM iMPerial art piece is inspired by the complex simplicity
in creation. Manifesting itself within the infinite dance between positive and
negative space. The artist finds there is great power to be found in striving
to recreate such balance on canvas. Visit creamimperial.com
IG: @creamimperial or contact info@creamimperial.com for sales and
bespoke enquiries.
14. isabelle alessandra is a California-based abstract artist. Her
ability to layer bold shapes and colour with fine, loose lines and gentle
backgrounds creates intrigue and appeal. Isabelle burst into the international
art scene in 2020 and is increasingly collected worldwide.
Visit isabelle-alessandra-artist.com and follow
@isabelle_alessandra_artist on IG.
16 15. Australian artist, Gabriella Pace, is passionate about creating
meaningful art that speaks to your soul. With luna sol lane, she
amalgamates the celestial, spiritual and creative worlds. Her signature
palette pieces, inspired by earthy tones and the magical cosmos, aim
to encourage mindfulness. Visit lunasollane.com.au and follow
@lunasollane on IG.
16. Drawing inspiration from Proverbs 4: ‘My Words bring life to
those who find them’, Melani rossouW’s painting ‘The Living
Word’, holds its aesthetic value in sowing love. Explore the South
African artists’ collection, inspired by both street and fine art, at
melanirossouw.com and follow @melani.rossouw_art on IG.
 Vanity Fair adVertising Feature

The Essential Edit

1. giMBer is the alternative to alcohol with a healthy kick. Turn water into gold with
this organic concentrate full of premium ginger (38%), lemon, herbs and spices. for 1 2 3
the perfect serve, mix 30ml of GiMBer, sparkling water and your garnish of choice.
discover more at uk.gimber.com and follow @gimber_drink on iG.
2. Treat yourself to Blush groVe’s signature 6-piece Beauty sleep silk set,
made from 100% mulberry silk and designed in Toronto, canada. Their products
are designed in-house by founder and ceo, fiona Mascarenhas, and made in
small batches. shop at blushgrove.com and follow @blushgrove on iG.
3. Bash + sass is a gender neutral modern apparel line created for the “little
minimalist”, ages 6 months-12 years. sustainably made with love, the collections
feature quality, year-round modern basics with a pocket pop of monster fun!
20% off with code: vaniTyfair20, expires 31/12/21. visit bashandsass.com
and follow @bashandsass on iG.
4. sipFul’s all-natural, canned cocktails bring fresh and elegant flavour, without 5 6
the furry teeth. Mixed using organic wine and 100% natural fruit, these fully
recyclable and consciously-crafted cocktails really are a much needed ray of
sunshine, in a can! Guilt free gulping, just got tasty. visit sipful-drinks.com and
follow @sipfuldrinks on iG. 4
5. family run business, the salcoMBe candle coMpany, produces hand
poured, soy wax cotton wicked candles, reed diffusers and wax melts. offering an
array of scents inspired by luxury brands, mixed with a love for salcombe, available
in a range of stylish collections. Bringing luxury to your home without the price tag.
visit salcombecandlecompany.com and follow @thesalcombecandlecompany
on iG. 7
6. founded by cumbrian brothers aidan and ru, the Victorian candle co
produces hand-poured, eco and vegan-friendly candles. Made in small batches to
ensure the highest quality, the candles can even be personalised, making for the
perfect gift. Moreover, no plastic is used in their products or packaging.
visit victoriancandle.co and follow @victoriancandleco on iG. 8
7. searching for a cute and comfy outdoor outfit for kids that will get you through
the cold season? look no further than ielM. The swedish-based brand believes
that kids should play outside in any weather. rain, mud, or snow, the technical fabric
aims to protect your little one from the elements. visit ielm.co.uk iG: @ielm.co.uk
8 . Gifting done gorgeously! The premium baby gifting brand, raph&reMy designs 9
stylish, sustainable and personalised bamboo baby essentials. Made for the modern
mama who wants to stay chic without compromising on quality for their precious baby’s comfort,
is thoughtful about environmental impact and enjoys a beautiful unboxing experience. visit
raphandremy.com and follow @raphandremy on iG.
9. Wrappr is no-waste gift wrap. inspired by Japanese furoshiki, all Wrappr artwork is designed
by real artists who get a cut of every sale of their prints. Give art and not waste this season! shop
online at wrappr.com and follow @givewrappr on iG.
10. archd, founded by two sisters, creates handmade home décor to empower women. This
Michelle obama design is available as wood wall art, bookend sets, marble coasters, 12
10 11
ornaments and art prints. shop home décor made by and for women at
getarchd.com and follow @getarchd on iG.
11. Koa the laBel. designed for comfort and play, made to be loved and lived in.
launched in 2020 by designer nhi nguyen, koa is a modern australian label
conceived from the intention to create sustainable and comfortable clothing for
children and women. shipping worldwide at koathelabel.com.au and follow
@koathelabel on iG.

To adverTise please conTacT classvaniTyfair@condenasT.co.uk or 020 7499 9080 x3705

12. opulent, warm and iconic. This scent by cree casa smells like that person you
lust over. a candle redolent with spice, the scent can carry throughout your home in
the most dramatic yet calming way. Made by hand, in Hampshire. all candles are
organic soy wax from england. visit creecasa.com iG: @creecasa
13. refresh your home decor with personally tailored subscription boxes by
taVÉ hoMe. pictured here is part of their new launch, called “everyday TavÉ”
which includes beautifully contemporary cushions, ornaments, vases and 15
14
kitchenware. explore their different subscription options online at 13
tavehome.com and find them on iG @tavehome
14. say bye-bye to messy fingers at nappy change with the luxurious
plant-based Baby Bottom spray from australian brand Malo. Made in
sydney from powerful native plants like kakadu plum and designed to keep
your fingers clean at nappy change. The no-rinse Baby Bottom spray aims
to provide daily protection against nappy rash and is designed with a
minimalist aesthetic for the modern mum. visit malobaby.com and follow
@malo.thelabel on iG.
15. c & c and co. luxury ltd is a custom gifting and concierge service
company based in lagos, nigeria that curates luxury boxes of fine gourmet
and gifts for corporates and individuals who value relationships. They
spread happiness through their thoughtful care packages and gifts to 16
evoke great unforgettable experiences. visit cncluxury.com
iG: @cncandco
16. holly & co offers the coolest threads for the coolest pooches. fun,
unique and d urable accessories to match every paw-sonality, both big and
small. all products are expertly crafted by talented artisans from across 17
the globe. explore the range online at hollyandcoau.com and follow
@_hollyandco on iG.
17. Molly’s cotton tails is not just any children’s shop. The
boutique store carries a selection of fair-trade and sustainably sourced
wooden toys, making open ended play fun and sustainable whilst 18
reducing our impact on nature. you’ll also find they stock a range of
ethically produced organic cotton clothing. visit mollyscottontails.co.uk
and follow @mollys_cotton_tails on iG.
18. perfume your world and those of your friends with
charlotte rhys deliciously scented bath, body and home products.
This is gifting with a conscience as all of their products are cruelty free
and vegan accredited. sign up and receive 10% off your first order,
expires 31/12/21. visit charlotterhys.uk.com iG: @charlotterhysuk
Proust Questionnaire

SERENA WILLIAMS
The tennis champion, fashion icon, and
entrepreneur on self-love, superheroes,
and living with zero regrets

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being surrounded by

my family and friends. Which living person do you most
admire? Venus. What is your most marked characteristic?
The mole on my face. What is your greatest extravagance?
I have not done it yet. I’m still waiting for the perfect time. What
do you consider your greatest achievement? My daughter.
Who is the greatest love of your life? Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.
Which talent would you most like to have? I wish I could code!
What is your current state of mind? Right now I feel peaceful.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Like and
amazing. These are probably words that everyone overuses.
What is your greatest regret? I don’t believe in regrets.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it
be? I wouldn’t change anything about myself. If you asked
me 20 years ago, I probably would have had a long list. But I’ve
learned to appreciate and love who I am. If you could change
one thing about your family, what would it be? I have the best
family. I wouldn’t change anything about them. What is
your favorite journey? Learning about myself—this is a never-
ending journey. Who are your heroes in real life? My mom
and my dad. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Iron Man.
Who are your favorite writers? Brandon Mull. What is
the quality you most like in a man? Love. What do you most
value in your friends? Loyalty. What do you consider
the most underrated virtue? Loyalty. What is it that you most
dislike? Being late. What is your greatest fear? I don’t think
about my greatest fear. What is your motto? Eat to live.
Don’t live to eat. What is your most treasured possession?
My Bible. What is your favorite occupation? Venture
capitalist or fashion. Hmmm… Where would you like to live?
I have this fantasy of settling down somewhere abroad.
When and where were you happiest? I’m happier every day.
What are your favorite names? Serena. n

100 VA N I T Y FA I R I L L U S T R AT I O N BY R I S K O MARCH 2021