THE HOLIDAY ISSUE!

with

Robbie
Conquers All
By R E B E C C A F O R D
Photographs by
MARIO SORRENTI

THE FALL OF
A FAKE
KNIGHT
THE GAUDY
GLORY OF
IVANA
TRUMP
Plus
A SOLDIER’S
QUEST
FOR
JUSTICE
D I O R B O U T I Q U E S 8 0 0 .9 2 9. D I O R ( 3 4 67 ) D I O R . C O M
 ˚ ˚
˚ ˚
˚
˚
 Contents The Holiday Issue / No. 744

Vanities / VF Gift Guide

68

39
Drawing on the
season’s most dazzling
cultural moments,
VF ’s annual gift guide
of 111 ideas will make
you the most inspired
giver of your set.

40 / For the Future Seeker

42 / For the Gilded Lily

44, 53 / Gallery
A pair of luxe skis merge
classic style with peak
performance; a
showstopping ring.
46 / Art

M A R G O T R O B B I E ’ S J U M P S U I T B Y E T O C H S ; V I N TA G E N E C K L A C E B Y Y V E S S A I N T L A U R E N T F R O M A N O U S C H K A A R C H I V E S PA R I 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 .
A National Portrait Gallery
exhibition, plus new status
totes for art enthusiasts.
49 / For the Scion

50 / Books
A new release for every kind
of reader, plus whimsical
literary accoutrements.
54 / Beauty
Food artist Laila Gohar’s
well-dressed world.
57 / For the One With
the Voice

58 / For the Sporty and

the Posh

60 / My Stuff
Fashion’s favorite architect
shares his favorite things.

Margot Robbie’s clothing by Alaïa; bracelet by Van Cleef & Arpels. Hair products
by Iles Formula. Makeup products by Chanel. Nail enamel by Chanel Le Vernis. 32 Editor’s Letter
On the Hair by Bryce Scarlett. Makeup by Pati Dubroff. Manicure by Beatrice Eni. Tailor,
35 Contributors
Cover Anh Duong. Set design by Jean-Michel Bertin. Produced on location by White Dot.
Styled by Anastasia Barbieri. Photographed exclusively for VF by Mario Sorrenti in 138 Proust Questionnaire
Paris. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

16 VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY M A R I O SORRENTI DEC 2022/JAN 2023

LEXINGTON COLLECTION
A New Kind
of Legacy

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 Contents
“This project was about
honoring her legacy, and I think
there has to be a real balance
of the light and dark in that.”
— NAOMI ACKIE ON PLAYING WHITNEY HOUSTON
Columns
62
The Firebrand
BY DOUGLAS BRINKLEY
The celebrated historian
on the Supreme Court’s
most activist judge—liberal
conservationist
William O. Douglas.
24 VA N I T Y FA I R
80
[P. 80]
64
Winning Friends,
Influencing People
BY EVE PEYSER
JJ Redick once seemed like
the most hated player in
basketball. Now he’s a fan
favorite—as a podcaster.
PHOTOGRAPH BY R U T H
Features
The Holiday Issue / No. 744
68
Marvelous Margot
BY REBECCA FORD
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
MARIO SORRENTI
Catching up with movie star
and producer Margot
Robbie on Barbie, Babylon,
and beyond.
80
The Voice
BY YOHANA DESTA
PHOTOGRAPHS BY RUTH OSSAI
Naomi Ackie dazzles as
Whitney Houston—and in
haute couture.
88
Incident to Service
BY MAXIMILLIAN POTTER
An arcane legal decision
prevents service members
from seeking justice for
medical malpractice. Now,
the efforts to overturn it
are gaining ground.
96
Hall of Fame
BY MICHAEL RIEDEL
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIAN KIM
Cameron Crowe on taking
his beloved film Almost
Famous to Broadway.
OSSAI
102
Sargent’s Orders
BY NATE FREEMAN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
RAFAEL PAVAROTTI
On the scene with the art
world’s hippest new curator.
108
Across the Universe
BY KEZIAH WEIR
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
JOAKIM ESKILDSEN
For Chloé creative director
Gabriela Hearst, nuclear
N A O M I A C K I E ’ S C O AT B Y M A I S O N M A R G I E L A A R T I S A N A L D E S I G N E D B Y J O H N G A L L I A N O ; E A R R I N G S B Y H A R W E L L G O D F R E Y. 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 .
fusion is the new black.
114
The Knight’s Tale
BY ADAM CIRALSKY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK SMITH
Was he an olive oil heir
or just a Wall Street washout?
Inside a wealth-conference
con man’s wild web of lies.
122
Inventing Ivana
BY MARK SEAL
She defined the greed-is-
good era of New York City,
helped create the twisted
miracle of Donald Trump,
and chased love with a
series of “freaky Italians.”
Inside the life and
times of Ivana Trump.
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
 ®

Editor in Chief Radhika Jones

Creative Director Kira Pollack Deputy Editor Daniel Kile Executive Digital Director Michael Hogan

Director of Editorial Operations Kelly Butler Executive Editor, Features & Development Claire Howorth
Executive Editor Matthew Lynch Executive Hollywood Editor Jeff Giles Editor, The Hive Michael Calderone
Director of Special Projects Sara Marks Global Head of Talent Alison Ward Frank
Awards and Audio Editor Katey Rich Editor, Creative Development David Friend
Senior West Coast Editor Britt Hennemuth Senior Editor, The Hive Tara Golshan
Senior Hollywood Editor Hillary Busis Senior Vanities Editor Maggie Coughlan Senior Editor Keziah Weir
Entertainment Director Caitlin Brody E-Commerce Editor Morgan M. Evans
Editorial Operations Manager Jaime Archer Associate Hive Editor Jon Skolnik
Senior Media Correspondent Joe Pompeo National Correspondent Emily Jane Fox Politics Correspondent Bess Levin
Senior Hollywood Correspondent Anthony Breznican Senior Vanities Correspondent Delia Cai Senior Awards Correspondent Rebecca Ford
Hollywood Correspondents Natalie Jarvey, Julie Miller National Political Reporter Abigail Tracy
Chief Critic Richard Lawson TV Correspondent Joy Press Art Columnist Nate Freeman
Staff Writers Dan Adler, Kenzie Bryant, David Canfield, Yohana Desta, Charlotte Klein, Chris Murphy, Erin Vanderhoof
Staff Reporter Caleb Ecarma Special Correspondents Nick Bilton, Bryan Burrough,
Joe Hagan, Maureen Orth, Jessica Pressler, Mark Seal, Gabriel Sherman
Writers-at-Large Marie Brenner, T.A. Frank, James Reginato Web Producer Maham Hasan Associate Web Producer Kathleen Creedon
Assistant to the Editor in Chief Daniela Tijerina Editorial Assistants Arimeta Diop, Kayla Holliday, Savannah Walsh
Special Projects Manager Ari Bergen Special Projects Associate Charlene Oliver
Business Director Geoff Collins Director of Product Mindy Yuen Product Design Lead Kristina Pedicone

Design & Photography

Design Director Justin Patrick Long Visuals Director Tara Johnson Art Director Emily Crawford
Senior Visuals Editors Natalie Gialluca, Lauren Margit Jones, Cate Sturgess Senior Designer Khoa Tran
Visuals Editor, Photo Research Eric Miles Visuals Editor Allison Schaller
Associate Visuals Editor Madison Reid Designer Pamela Wei Wang

Fashion & Beauty

Fashion Director Nicole Chapoteau
Beauty Director Laura Regensdorf Accessories Director Daisy Shaw-Ellis
Associate Menswear Director Miles Pope Market Editor Kia D. Goosby Assistant Fashion Editors Samantha Gasmer, Jessica Neises

Content Integrity
Senior Counsel Terence Keegan
Production Director J Jamerson Research Director David Gendelman
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Production Managers Beth Meyers, Susan M. Rasco, Roberto Rodríguez
Research Managers Brendan Barr, Kelvin C. Bias, Audrey Fromson, Michael Sacks
Senior Line Editor Katie Commisso Copy Managers Rachel Freeman, Michael Quiñones Line Editors Lily Leach, Leah Tannehill

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Director, Audience Development Alyssa Karas
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Senior Social Media Manager Sarah Morse Associate Director, Creative Development, Social & News Margaret Lin
Audience Development Manager Tyler Breitfeller Social Media Manager Mark Alan Burger

Communications
Director of Communications Rachel Janc Communications Associate Izzy Goldberg

Contributors
Contributing Art Director Theresa Griggs Associate Editor S.P. Nix Digital Visuals Editor Jessica Xie Architecture Consultant Basil Walter
Summit Contributing Producer Graham Veysey Special Projects Art Director Angela Panichi

Contributing Photographers
Annie Leibovitz
Jonathan Becker, Larry Fink, Nick Riley Bentham, Collier Schorr, Mark Seliger

Contributing Editors
Kurt Andersen, Lili Anolik, Jorge Arévalo, Peter Biskind, Buzz Bissinger, Derek Blasberg, Christopher Bollen, Douglas Brinkley,
Michael Callahan, Adam Ciralsky, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Leah Faye Cooper, Sloane Crosley, Katherine Eban, Lisa Eisner, Bruce Feirstein, Ariel Foxman,
Alex French, Paul Goldberger, Vanessa Grigoriadis, Michael Joseph Gross, Bruce Handy, Carol Blue Hitchens, Jordan Hoffman, A.M. Homes,
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Maximillian Potter, Robert Risko, Kelly Rissman, Lisa Robinson, Mark Rozzo, Maureen Ryan, Nancy Jo Sales, Elissa Schappell, Jeff Sharlet,
Michael Shnayerson, Chris Smith, Richard Stengel, Diane von Furstenberg, Elizabeth Saltzman Walker, Benjamin Wallace, Jesmyn Ward, Ned Zeman

26 VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023

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28 VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023

 THE

SHOP
BIGGEST TOTE

VF.COM/SHOP
Editor’s Letter

It is hard these days to see

anything but division in
our politics, but some
issues are still capable of
bringing together unlikely
allies. One example is
the subject of Max Potter’s investigation
“Incident to Service.” It is the story of the Feres
doctrine, an obscure 1950 Supreme Court
ruling that resulted in what is effectively a state
of impunity for the military when it comes
to negligence or dereliction of duty that leads to
the injury or death of its active-duty service
members outside of combat.
In the civilian world, when medical malpractice
occurs, victims and their families have legal
recourse. They have a path toward justice,
accountability, and closure. For the families Max
interviews in his piece, that recourse does not initial discovery of the ruling, the egregious situations that have resulted
exist. A trainee exhibits symptoms of strep throat, from its broad interpretation, and his intention to return to it as a subject.
reports to the infirmary, and tests positive— “Whenever I’d see something that struck me as relevant in the news,”
but no one informs him of the test result, and he wrote, “I’d find myself thinking about how Feres was quietly looming
instead of being treated with a simple course of in the background, preventing a true accounting of what happened.”
antibiotics, his condition grows worse until he Bipartisan efforts have been made to amend or overturn Feres; Max cites
contracts a flesh-eating bacterial infection that a 1987 Supreme Court case in which Justice Antonin Scalia sided with
leaves him without half of his left leg. A Green three liberal justices to dissent: “Feres was wrongly decided and heartily
Beret goes in for a routine CT scan of his lungs deserves the ‘widespread, almost universal criticism’ it has received.”
and is given a clean bill of health; five months In recent years, families for whom Feres is all too familiar have come together
later, after experiencing respiratory distress, he to advocate for legislation curbing the military’s protected status against
sees a new doctor who diagnoses him with lawsuits that in other circumstances would be obviously justifiable. While
late-stage lung cancer and who, on reviewing his some of those efforts have resulted in legislative victories, much more
earlier scan, tells him the tumor was evident then, needs to be done. Our hope in publishing this investigation is to bring
but the time elapsed means treatable has become attention to Feres through the testimony of those most affected by it and
terminal. Under Feres, these men and their help persuade Congress to act.
families can do nothing to right those wrongs,
to wrest some recompense for the tragically
unnecessary pain and suffering they endure.
Max’s journalistic interest in the Feres doctrine
goes back almost two decades, to a couple of
MARK SELIGER.

stories about the military that he reported in 2004

in which it made a cameo. When he proposed
this new story to us, he wrote passionately of his radhika jones, Editor in Chief

32 VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023


Mario SORRENTI
“MARVELOUS MARGOT,” P. 68
“I feel lucky to have had the opportunity
PAVA R O T T I : G E R M A N L A R K I N . S O R R E N T I : C H R I S T I A N B R Y L L E . O S S A I : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T.
to work with Margot Robbie again,”
says Sorrenti. For the Italian-born,
New York–based fashion photographer
B A R B I E R I : P I E R L U I G I M A C O R . P O T T E R : J E F F PA N I S . B R I N K L E Y : M O O R E H U F F M A N .
whose style has been impactful
on the contemporary fashion-scape,
“it was a dream shoot.”
Rafael PAVAROTTI
“SARGENT’S ORDERS,” P. 102
The vivid tones and bold compositions
in Pavarotti’s photography evoke
memories from his upbringing in
Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. Key to his
work is addressing the lack of Black
representation in fashion and beyond,
making him a perfect partner to capture
curator Antwaun Sargent for this issue.
VA N I T Y FA I R
Clockwise
from top left:
Mario Sorrenti
Ruth Ossai,
Maximillian Potter,
Anastasia Barbieri,
Douglas Brinkley,
Rafael Pavarotti.
Ruth OSSAI
“THE VOICE,” P. 80
A Yorkshire, England–based portrait
and studio photographer, Ossai brought
her lens to VF to capture actor Naomi
Ackie in an array of color—from a green
Chanel suit to a hot pink Valentino
headpiece—against a variety of
backdrops, a style reflective of Ossai’s
southeastern Nigerian heritage.
Douglas BRINKLEY
“THE FIREBRAND,” P. 62
When writing his new book Silent Spring
Revolution, best-selling author and
presidential historian Brinkley says he
thought about ranking US presidents
on their American Earth stewardship
records. “For us to save forests, rivers,
and lakes in the 21st century, Big Labor
must become green giants,” he says.
Contributors
Maximillian POTTER
“INCIDENT TO SERVICE,” P. 88
Potter is an investigative journalist
and an executive producer of Shadows in
the Vineyard, a series in development
based on his book about a French wine
crime that was based on a VF story. He
first encountered the Feres doctrine
18 years ago. “It is an epic and ongoing
miscarriage of justice,” he says.
Anastasia BARBIERI
“MARVELOUS MARGOT,” P. 68
“It was an honor to style Margot for this
series of portraits,” says Barbieri of her
collaboration with Sorrenti. “We
selected pieces of a timeless wardrobe—
feminine and sensual.”
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 35
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 PAGE 50

SHOP FOR
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PAGE 54

LAILA
S E T D E S I G N , H A I D E E F I N D L AY - L E V I 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 .

GOHAR
SETS
A GOOD
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PAGE 60

PETER
MARINO’S
FAVORITE
THINGS The 2022
Dior Men
saddle bag,
VF GIFT GUIDE
price upon
request. (Dior
Men boutiques
A best-of list to delight every loved one takes its
nationwide) cues from this season’s arts and culture

VA N I T Y FA I R PHOTOGRAPH BY H O R AC I O SALINAS DEC 2022/JAN 2023 39

Vanities /Gift Guide

For the
FUTURE SEEKER
Return to the high-flying, larger-
than-life world of Pandora with 1.
Avatar: The Way of Water

3. 4.

2.

F I L M S T I L L : 2 0 T H C E N T U R Y S T U D I O S . O M E G A X S WAT C H , A L B E R TA F E R R E T T I , O F F - W H I T E , LY M A : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E . 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 .
Britain Dalton as Lo’ak in
Avatar: The Way of Water.

DEEP SPACE
6.
1. Omega x Swatch
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5. 7. (selected Swatch boutiques)
2. String Ting wristlet,
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3. Alberta Ferretti gown,
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jacket, $1,980. (moncler
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Beauté La Crème, $550.
(cledepeaubeaute.com)
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.com) 8. Gucci children’s
sandal, $390. (gucci.com)
9. Lego Avatar set, $60.
(lego.com) 10. MoMA
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11. Marni bag, $120.
13. (marni.com) 12. Lanvin
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12. Lanvin boutiques)
13. Off-White “Paperwork”
10. 11. Color Matter nail polish
in Digital, $38. (off---white
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15. Loewe sunglasses,
$360. (loewe.com)

15.

14.

40 VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023

Vanities /Gift Guide

For the 3.

GILDED LILY .com)

Luxuriate à la The White Lotus,

where the locale is Sicily and even
the misadventures are five-star
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.com/us)
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.com) 8. Emporio
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5. 9. Gucci Rouge de Beauté
Brilliant Flora lipstick in
They Met in Argentina,
8. $45. (sephora.com)
10. Brunello Cucinelli
bag, $5,795. (shop
.brunellocucinelli.com)

T H E W H I T E LO T U S : FA B I O LO V I N O / H B O . L E N Y S W O R L D , B R U N E L LO C U C I N E L L I : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E . 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 .
11. Lenys World slippers,
.com)

.com)

10. .com)

11.

Haley Lu Richardson stars as Portia alongside

Jennifer Coolidge, who reprises her role as Tanya 15.
McQuoid in The White Lotus’s second season.

DEC 2022/JAN 2023

Vanities /The Gallery

Pow-Pow
POMP
Slope style has evolved these past
few decades. A recent flurry of
designer collaborations and name-
brand ski collections give warm and
dry a luxe new spin. When it comes
to gear, Hermès has a fresh (powder)
idea. These graphic skis—featuring
pops of the company’s signature orange
and bindings that nod to its equestrian
heritage—promise to slice through
snowy white with flash and flourish.
—Daisy Shaw-Ellis

Hermès Jeu d’Adresse

skis, $18,300. (Hermès
stores nationwide)

S E T D E S I G N , H A I D E E F I N D L AY - L E V I 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 .

Photograph by
HO R AC IO SALINAS

44 VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023

Vanities /Art

Extra Credit
LaToya Ruby Items intended to
Frazier’s
Self-Portrait With
infuse the everyday with
Shea and Her beauty and inquiry
Daughter, Zion,
in the Bedroom
Mirror, Newton,
Mississippi
(2017–2019);
the “Kinship”
exhibition catalog,
featuring
Jess T. Dugan’s
Self-Portrait
With Elinor
(screen), 2018. POCKET PAINTING
Kehinde Wiley’s A Portrait of a
Young Gentleman (2021) cards
make every game a classic, and
support the Black Rock Sénégal
residency, founded by Wiley.
$30 (kehindewileyshop.com)

Kith AND KIN

A Smithsonian exhibition explores complex bonds
“KINSHIP IS A sense of shared recognition and
trust,” says Leslie Ureña, curator of photo-
graphs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait
Gallery. That word is also the title of the
gallery’s winter show, comprising work by
eight artists, including LaToya Ruby Frazier,
Anna Tsouhlarakis, and Jess T. Dugan.
“Though vastly different in terms of the topics
they address, each of the artists visualizes
how people relate to one another,” says Ureña,
who curated the exhibit with her colleague
in painting and sculpture, Dorothy Moss.
Frazier’s Flint Is Family in Three Acts
photographically chronicles Michigan
C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T A N D A R T E N A B L E S . S A LT Z : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R . T O T E S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E M U S E U M 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 .
F R A Z I E R : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T A N D G L A D S T O N E G A L L E R Y. “ K I N S H I P ” C O V E R : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E . W I L E Y : C O U R T E S Y O F K E H I N D E W I L E Y S H O P. J O U R N A L :
WRITE THIS WAY
This hand-stitched journal,
featuring Three Faces of Mom
by Toni Lane, benefits a gallery
representing artists with
residents affected by the water crisis—“a disabilities. $45 (art-enables.org)
human record and testimony that indicts
systems that violate our human rights,”
as the artist says. Tsouhlarakis’s sculpture
and performance piece, Portrait of an
Indigenous Womxn [Removed], honors the
communities of missing and murdered
Indigenous women. And the connection
goes beyond the exhibit: In November,
the gallery’s annual Portrait of a Nation gala VISUAL ELEMENT
celebrated luminaries including Anthony Jerry Saltz’s Art Is Life presents
a survey of contemporary art
Fauci and the Williams sisters—a fine art
in essays—Nan Goldin, Charlie
communion in thanks for their service. Hebdo, Instagram, and more.
—a lli s on s c h a lle r $30 (penguinrandomhouse.com)

BAG TEAM, BACK AGAIN

Wear your heart on your sleeve and your visual allegiance over your shoulder.
(While secreting priceless artwork via tote is an inadvisable gifting solution, stashing 2. 5.
an annual museum membership card or donation in the recipient’s name would do.)

1. Alexander Calder, 3. Fog City tote bag, 5. Paul Cézanne, 1.

Los Angeles County
Museum of Art tote, $45.
(thelacmastore.org)
2. Museum of Modern
Art Baggu recycled nylon
tote bag, $16. (store.
moma.org)
$39. (shop.famsf.org)
4. El Met tote, proceeds
from which support the
acquisition of Latinx
art at The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, $45.
(store.metmuseum.org)
The Plate of Apples tote
designed exclusively
for the Art Institute
of Chicago, $38. (shop 4.
.artic.edu)
3.

46 VA N I T Y FA I R P H O T O G R A P H BY L A T O YA RUBY FRAZIER DEC 2022/JAN 2023

ADVOCACY HAS
ONE DIRECTION,
FORWARD.
Visit NAACP.ORG/FORWARD
 Vanities /Gift Guide

MIDAS TOUCH
1. Tiffany & Co. watch,
1.
2.
For the
$27,000. (tiffany.com)
2. Saint Laurent by
Anthony Vaccarello pants,
$1,650. (ysl.com)
SCION
3. Cartier Nécessaires
à Parfum case, $980. Leave succession woes behind
(cartier.com) 4. Louis
Vuitton coat, $18,900.
and revel in the pomp of The Met
P O R T R A I T O F Q U E E N M A R Y I : H A N S E W O R T H ; C O U R T E S Y O F T H E S O C I E T Y O F A N T I Q U A R I E S O F LO N D O N . A R M A N I /

(louisvuitton.com) Museum’s The Tudors: Art and

5. Dior Lady Art Limited
C A S A : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E . 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 .

Edition with Shara Hughes,

3.
Majesty in Renaissance England
price upon request.
(selected Dior boutiques)
6. Tory Burch dress,
$1,698. (Tory Burch
boutiques) 7. Brunello
Cucinelli globe, $2,495.
(shop.brunellocucinelli.com)
8. Cartier bracelet,
$43,000. (Cartier
boutiques) 9. Armani/
Casa board game, $2,520.
(Armani/Casa stores)
10. Gucci High Jewelry
Collection bracelet,
price upon request.
(33-1-70-79-15-24)
11. Paco Rabanne skirt,
$1,850. (bergdorf
goodman.com) 12. Clé de
Peau Beauté Anniversary
Collection lipstick,
$6,800 for six-piece set.
(cledepeaubeaute.com) 6.
13. Christian Louboutin
boot, $2,795. (christian
louboutin.com) 14. Richard
Hennessy x Berluti
chest and decanter,
$40,000. (privateclient@
moethennessy.com)
10.
Hans Eworth’s 1554 portrait of Queen Mary I, on
9. view at The Met, offers a blueprint for pageantry
of the most opulent proportions.

11.

12.

14.

VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023 49

Vanities /Books
Words WORTH
Brand-new novels, nonfiction, and all things in between
to satisfy every reading urge By Keziah Weir
DEEP DIVE nonfiction
How Far the Light Reaches by
Sabrina Imbler: In expansive essays,
a conservation journalist explores
her own identity through the lens
of deep ocean life. (Little, Brown)
TASTER PLATE excerpts
Pathetic Literature edited by Eileen
Myles: bits and bobs to make you
feel, excerpted from poems, plays,
and prose, from Franz Kafka to
Porochista Khakpour. (Grove Press)
SMART SNOOP nonfiction
A Private Spy: The Letters of John
le Carré edited by Tim Cornwell:
correspondence of the beloved
novelist and former member
of both MI5 and MI6. (Viking)
ROMANTIC ROMP fiction
Ms. Demeanor by Elinor Lipman:
After getting frisky on her roof,
lawyer Jane Morgan is put under
house arrest—but so is one of
her neighbors. (Harper)
50 VA N I T Y FA I R
DANCE DRAMA fiction
They’re Going to Love You by
Meg Howrey: For the daughter
of ballet dancers, the saga of
a familial rift and a Greenwich
home inheritance come together
in an elegant assemblée.
(Doubleday)
FAMILY TIES fiction
Scatterlings by Rešoketšwe Martha
Manenzhe: In South Africa,
tragedy strikes a young family—
the mother Black, the father
white—in this family history told
on an epic scale. (HarperVia)
LOVE & TEARS nonfiction
A Heart That Works by Rob
Delaney: The comedian’s memoir
confronts the most devastating of
all parental experiences, the grief
of losing a child. (Spiegel & Grau)
ARS POETICA poetry
Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet
Light by Joy Harjo: From the
All Lit Up
For the reader for
whom books are life, literary
paraphernalia is a boon.
HEAD TO TOE
Made-to-order slippers, cut
from velvet and leather, in
which to pace the stacks.
Bookshop x Stubbs & Wootton
B O O K S : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R S . PA P E R D O L L S : C O U R T E S Y O F C E C I L I A L A N A H A N R O S 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 .
a winged pink button-down
alongside fairy-tale heroines
and a topless Louis XIV.
The Paper Dolls of Zelda
former poet laureate of the
US, a collection brimming with
imagery of Oklahoma, horses,
hope. (W.W. Norton)
’90S NOSTALGIA fiction
Village high jinks ensue.
(Simon & Schuster)
ART BIO nonfiction
Janssen: a rich study of the
Dutch De Stijl founder’s work
and legacy. (Ridinghouse)
ALMOST HISTORY fiction
A Dangerous Business by Jane
Smiley: Edgar Allen Poe meets
California gold country, as a sex
worker turned amateur detective Aspinal 2023 Slim Pocket
tries to solve the mystery of a Leather Diary, $65.
string of dead women. (Knopf) (aspinaloflondon.com)
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
 Vanities /The Gallery

And Be MERRY
A pop of the cork. A crinkle of gift wrap. A swish of the hem. As
welcome as the return of the holiday party is that of the cocktail
ring. This Van Cleef & Arpels aperitif features a 7-carat-plus
pear-shaped diamond set in such a way as to appear floating
above a swath of mystery-set sapphires and emeralds—a
Van Cleef & Arpels patented setting that gives the illusion of
gems weightlessly suspended. A technical feat and literal sleight
of hand that needs no packaging. Cheers! —Daisy Shaw-Ellis

Photograph by
HO R ACIO SALINAS
S E T D E S I G N , H A I D E E F I N D L AY - L E V I 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 .

Van Cleef & Arpels

Tissage Mystérieux
ring in diamonds,
emeralds, sapphires,
and white gold,
price upon request.
(vancleefarpels.com)

VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023 53


Party STARTER
Known for mixing elegance with the absurd, food artist
LAILA GOHAR dips into beauty By Laura Regensdorf
WHITE LACE CURTAINS, relics from
Greece, hang in the storefront windows
of Laila Gohar’s Lower East Side studio,
as much a means of privacy as they
are an understated calling card. Such
old-world materials are a signature for
the Cairo-born New Yorker, whose
finely tuned food installations bring an
off-kilter wit to fashion and art events.
Gohar World, the line of entertaining
whimsies she and her sister, Nadia,
launched earlier this year, offers lace
“dresses” for otherwise naked eggs; the
baguette gets similar habiliment with
a black satin carrier. But on a recent
gloomy afternoon, Gohar finds herself
in need of a pick-me-up. “Today would
be the perfect day for a red lip because
I’m feeling so tired and kind of scruffy,”
54 VA N I T Y FA I R P H OTO G R A P H BY DAV I D
she says, which, for her, means a Prada
chore coat, black pants, and pearls—
shaped, in Gohar World fashion, like
chicken feet. Red is assertive, she adds.
“There’s no middle ground.”
Makeup, with its elements of armor,
mood lift, and finesse, is front of mind
given Gohar’s latest project: a Byredo
collaboration, called One Another, that’s
an invitation to decorate both table
and face. “I realized from an early age
there is no single way to celebrate holi-
day,” says Byredo founder Ben Gorham,
who shares a cross-cultural identity
(in his case India and Sweden). “Every-
one has their own take on what it
means: some traditional, others entire-
ly made-up.” As it happens, just-because
occasions are Gohar’s specialty:
BRANDON GEETING
Dress by Mara Hoffman;
glove by Gohar World.
“a tomato celebration, a coldest-night-
of-the-year celebration, a sidewalk party
for no reason,” she explains, ticking
through a personal highlight reel. In
lieu of Byredo’s usual white packaging,
Gohar’s custom print (with beans and
braided mozzarella) dresses up gift
boxes of mascara and eye shadow; it
also appears on napkins and a table-
cloth sturdy enough for picnics. A
special-edition tea recreates a berga-
mot blend that Gohar sipped as a child
in Egypt. And, of course, there are
potatoes: a favorite food, humble and
universal, here rendered in ceramic
(candle holders, salt and pepper shak-
P R O D U C T S , N A P K I N , P O TAT O A C C E S S O R I E S : B Y R E D O . F O O D - S H A P E D C A N D L E S , L A C E , TA B L E C LO T H : G O H A R W O R L D . H A I R P R O D U C T S : S Á N D O R . 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 .
ers) and covered in tattoos.
H A I R , S A B R I N A S Z I N AY ; M A K E U P , A K I KO O WA D A ; S E T D E S I G N , D A N I E L H O R O W I T Z ; F O O D S T Y L I S T , L I B E R T Y G R E E N E F E N N E L L . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y A R T P R O D U C T I O N . M A K E U P
Such juxtapositions call to mind
Surrealist work, like Elsa Schiaparelli’s
leather gloves with trompe l’oeil
painted nails—an effect carried over
to a new Gohar World dishwashing
glove. (Another has a frilly lace cuff.)
The detail evokes the Cairo women
whose nails gleamed “like a red Fer-
rari,” says Gohar, whose own workhorse
hands are admittedly “grubby.” She
hopes the gloves might inject “light-
heartedness into this mundane chore.”
A taste for subversion runs through
Gohar’s idea of beauty. “My sister and
I have this test when we design some-
thing: We always hold it up and we’re
like, ‘Is this too chic for its own good?’ ”
she says with a smile. In her studio, tiny
candles resemble fried chicken and
pink Japanese strawberries. Nearby, a
couple of marionette-like figures made
from dried sausages are slated for a
window display at the gallery Demisch
Danant; Gohar plans to show them
alongside Maria Pergay’s stainless steel
Ribbon Pouf—a nod to the metal’s
butcher shop associations. A moment
from this photo shoot floats to mind,
when Gohar mock-seriously smeared
a mortadella-colored Byredo lipstick
across her face, to collective laughter.
“When you bring my work into these
settings, people become a little uninhib-
ited. They kind of become like kids,” she
says of the icebreaker. Even at a dinner
party, that’s the mood to strike. Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
 Little
GOLD

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tracks the ups and downs of awards season,
featuring interviews with the contenders, real-time
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 Vanities /Gift Guide

HIGHER LOVE
1. Gigi Burris Millinery
bow, $270. (gigiburris.com)
2. Victoria Beckham
Beauty Satin Kajal Jewel 2.
liner in Night Flash, $28.
(victoriabeckhambeauty.com) 3.
3. Ferragamo bag, $2,400.
(Ferragamo boutiques)
4. Pat McGrath Labs
MatteTrance lipstick in
4.
Celestial Nirvana: Nude
Venus, $39. (patmcgrath.com)
5. Khaite dress, $1,980.
(khaite.com) 6. Moschino Whitney Houston
vest, $1,450. (saks.com) performs in Paris during
7. Louis Vuitton Men’s the 1988 Moment of Truth
speaker trunk, $20,800. World Tour. (For Naomi
(louisvuitton.com) 8. Sophie Ackie on her star turn as
Lou Jacobsen x Ghia the multiplatinum artist,
Totem glasses, $110 per pair. turn to page 80.)
5.
(sophieloujacobsen.com)
9. Tom Ford Beauty Noir
Extrème Parfum, $175.
(tomford.com) 10. Valentino
shirt, $5,650. (similar styles
available at Valentino 6.
boutiques) 11. Gucci jacket,
$21,000. (gucci.com)
12. Chanel Le Lift Pro
Concentré, $205. (chanel
.com) 13. Prada shoes,
$2,400. (prada.com)
14. Mateo bracelets,
$6,000 each. (net-a-
porter.com) 15. Melissa
& Doug play piano, $170.
(neimanmarcus.com)
16. Miu Miu shoes,
$950. (miumiu.com) 7.
17. Whitney Houston
T-shirt, $30. (boutique
.whitneyhouston.com)

10. 11.
8. 9.

12.
13.
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 O U S T O N : G E T T Y I M A G E S . P R A DA , C H A N E L , M O S C H I N O : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E .

15. 14.

For the
ONE WITH

16. 17.

VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023 57

Vanities /Gift Guide

1.

For the
RTY
T E
Adventure in style whether
skiing the Swiss Alps or chasing
The Surf Atlas’s perfect waves 2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

T H E S U R F AT L A S : S T U A R T G I B S O N ; C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R . C Y N T H I A R O W L E Y : J O S E P H I N E S C H I E L E . 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 .
7.

8.

9. 10.
MAKING WAVE
1. Therabody Theragun
Pro, $599. (therabody
.com) 2. Chanel
mini bag, $4,470.
(Chanel boutiques)
3. Louis Vuitton Men’s
11. 12. 2022 FIFA World Cup
backpack, $3,600.
(louisvuitton.com)
4. Tory port anorak,
$328. (toryburch.com)
5. Brunello Cucinelli x
liver eoples ski
goggles, $657.
(brunellocucinelli.com)
6. Bala The Power Ring
in Stone, $89. (shopbala
.com) 7.  plits59 pants,
$148. (splits59.com)
8.  aint Laurent Rive
Droite skateboard, $850.
(yslrivedroite.com) 9.  oka
shoes, $165. (hoka.com)
10.  eloton Row, $3,195
(onepeloton.com)
11. Cynthia Rowley wetsuit,
$345. (cynthiarowley.com)
12. Apple Watch Ultra,
from $799. (apple.com)

Hanging ten has never

looked as good as it does
through Stuart Gibson’s
lens in The Surf Atlas,
out from Gestalten.

DEC 2022/JAN 2023

Vanities /My Stuff
1.
In the CUT
PETER MARINO, consummate architect of
luxury shopping—from the Dior flagship to a
Louis Vuitton handbag—indulges in black
leather, black coffee, Beethoven, and Brahms
Q Style File
DAILY UNIFORM: Black
leather. I ride a motorcycle
to the office and got tired
of changing out of my gear.
Karl Lagerfeld told me it
was a good look, so I kept it.
FAVORITE ACCESSORY: The
Artycapucines bag that
I designed for Louis Vuitton
(7). I was inspired by a
medieval box I saw in Venice.
GO-TO SHOE: Red Wing
motorcycle boots (12).
Q On Self-Care
SKIN: Moroccanoil on my
tattoos (9). COLOGNE: Echt
Kölnisch Wasser 4711.
11. WORKOUT: Tennis if it’s
summer. Skiing if it’s winter
9.
(4). Weights all year (11).
Q At Work
10.
RECENT PROJECT: Cheval
Blanc Paris. Dior on Avenue
12.
Montaigne. BELOVED ERA
IN ARCHITECTURE: Wiener
13. Werkstätte, 1903 (10).
Q For Pleasure
READING: Greek and
Roman history. DOING:
I’m obsessed with gardening
and sudoku (5). I go to
art galleries every Saturday
and pinball is great.
60 VA N I T Y FA I R
3.
M A R I N O : G R A N T C O R N E T T. TA B L E : S O T H E B Y ’ S /A R T D I G I TA L S T U D I O . L I E C H T E N S T E I N B R O N Z E : T H E P R I N C E LY C O L L E C T I O N S , VA D U Z – V I E N N A . C H A N E L B O O K : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E P U B L I S H E R .
WATCHING: Hockey, tennis,
CNBC, HBO miniseries.
ENJOYING: I’m mad for the
C O F F E E , S U D O K U , A L M O N D S , W I E N E R W E R K S TÄT T E , K E T T L E B E L L , F LO W E R : 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 .
dahlias I grow in my
Southampton gardens (13).
LISTENING TO: Wagner,
Mozart, Franck, Ravel,
Scriabin, Liszt, Handel,
Lully, Gluck, Beethoven,
and Brahms.
Q The Menu
MORNING BEVERAGE: Black
coffee (2). POWER SNACK:
Almonds (6). TAKEOUT
ORDER: Peking duck,
Mr. Chow.
Q Gift Guide
BEST GIFT YOU’VE
EVER RECEIVED: A gold table
from Claude Lalanne (1).
FOR THE AESTHETE: Peter
Marino: The Architecture of
Chanel (3). ON YOUR
WISH LIST: The opportunity
to visit the Prince of
Liechtenstein’s bronze
collection (8). FOR THE
INTERIORS ENTHUSIAST:
Try my bronze boxes.
Three in a long row look
really good.
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
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Vanities /Letter From LA

Moving THE NEEDLE started dropping dozens of pounds in

a matter of weeks, it wasn’t that every-
one had suddenly started practicing
Originally marketed for diabetics, an insulin-regulating moderation and logging 10,000 steps.
drug whose side effect is dramatic weight loss is now the It seemed like overnight everyone knew
someone who was injecting semaglu-
It drug for the thin set By Emily Jane Fox tide, whose brand name is Ozempic.
The insulin regulator, developed by the
Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nor-
shots” and “pep pills” to phen-fen to disk in 2012, won FDA approval to treat

U
Adderall to clenbuterol—a medica-
tion used to treat breathing problems
in horses. That’s to say nothing of the
extra-medicinal aesthetic boosts by way
of CoolSculpting, injectables, and Bra-
zilian butt lifts, which suck pockets of fat
from one part of a body and insert them
into another, in order to create a genera-
tion of Instagram-age Jessica Rabbits.
It should have been no mystery, then,
that when the people of Hollywood
type 2 diabetes five years later. It works
by stimulating insulin release, which
helps lower blood sugar levels and slow
down food leaving the stomach, in turn
making Ozempic users feel satiated
for longer periods of time. When doctors
noticed that patients using Ozempic
were losing weight as a side effect of the
drug, Novo Nordisk saw opportunity,
conducting clinical trials on obese and
overweight individuals to find that its

UNDER A REHEARSAL piano in a studio

on the MGM lot in Hollywood in 1952,
Debbie Reynolds crumbled. She was in
the middle of preparing for Singing in the
Rain, which would be her first leading
role for the studio, alongside Gene Kel-
ly, and the first time she’d have to dance,
really. She was 19 years old, had three
teachers, and was spinning around eight
hours a day. It hurt everywhere, she
wrote in her autobiography 60 years
later, “most of all my brain and my feet.”
She lay there, under that piano, until
Fred Astaire materialized to coax her
back up. She wasn’t going to die, he
told her. If you’re not sweating, you’re
not doing it right. So she shot “Good
Morning” from eight in the morning till
eleven o’clock that night. When it was
over, she collapsed. For days, she didn’t
get out of bed at her doctor’s behest.
The studio had its own MD, who want-
ed to administer what they called a
“vitamin shot”—amphetamines. Pos-
sibly, the same ones, Reynolds wrote,
that “ruined Judy Garland.”
Since its inception, Hollywood has
been the land where unrealistic beauty
standards collide with financial pressure
that hinges on its stars keeping thin, ener-
getic, and always ready to make more
G E T T Y I MAG E S .

hits. And there’s always been a quick fix

or two. Since Reynolds’s era, the nature
of the fixes have evolved from “vitamin

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A H O U S E D I V I D E D

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ONLY ON

FYC.NETFLIX.COM
Vanities /Letter From LA
drug did, in fact, lead to weight loss of
about 15 percent of body mass in a few
weeks or months. Soon the manufac-
turer started marketing a higher-dose
semaglutide, called Wegovy, to treat
obesity. Injections, which, mostly, peo-
ple give themselves once per week,
usually take six to eight weeks to cause
significant weight loss.
“Ozempic is a real lifeline for people,
and for those who need it, what it’s
teaching people to do is exactly what we
should be doing: eating often and eating
smaller amounts of food in order to
balance your blood sugars, because the
longer we can have balanced blood
sugars, the longer our lives will be, and
the more balanced our blood sugar, the
less diseases we will have in life,” said
Kim Shapira, a registered dietitian and
celebrity nutrition therapist who’s been
in practice in Los Angeles for 25 years
and sees 50 private clients each week.
“The average American gained 29
pounds in COVID, and so losing that
weight will decrease your risk of high
cholesterol, cardiovascular disease,
having a stroke, diabetes, high blood
pressure, and high triglycerides. And it’s
taking away emotional eating, because
they’re now physically in tune with what
their body can and cannot eat.” The
problem, she said, is not Ozempic. It’s
people looking for a quick fix, or people
who don’t really need the drug, or
the absence of other professional help
to address the roots of their issues.
Which, anecdotally in Hollywood
anyway, seems to be the people who are
seeking out Ozempic. When a prepos-
terously famous star very publicly shed
a great deal of weight in a short window
of time, people wanted what she was
having. The onscreen talent dropping
weight led to off-screen producers and
bosses and friends trying it too. Then
came the socialite brides prepping
for their nuptials, new moms eager to
lose baby weight, Brentwood ladies
whispering at school drop, full-bellied
businessmen who’d ditched their
Pelotons, and the various Instagram
famous discussing it on their way to
work out at Dogpound. Some people
who are concerned enough about
vaccine safety to delay their children’s
VA N I T Y FA I R
immunization schedules but who have
made peace with Botox have also found
comfort with Ozempic. As one observer
explained to me, finding out that all
of these people weren’t just magically
losing significant amounts of weight
was sort of like when Dorothy’s world
all of a sudden goes Technicolor. Some
claim there is a off-label tell—a gaunt
face, the if-you-know-you-know signa-
ture. “Once you know it exists, you start
to see Ozempic everywhere.”
Those whose eyes are open to it are
getting the drug through a crosstab of
specialists—high-profile endocrinolo-
gists, ob-gyns, cardiologists—some of
whom people say are looser with their
justifications for prescribing it. The real
proliferation has happened through
telemedicine. Several people I spoke
It was like when
Dorothy’s world
went Technicolor.
“Once you know it
exists, you start to
see OZEMPIC
everywhere.”
with told me that they’ve heard of peo-
ple lying about their weight on video
chats with doctors in order to get the
prescription (the party line is that your
body mass index has to indicate that
you are obese). The drug’s side effects,
which mainly occur as someone starts
Ozempic, make it easier to lose weight
initially. “I haven’t seen anybody not
experience nausea, which can be very
upsetting and crippling for like two or
three days,” Shapira told me, adding
that most of her clients have had to take
the anti-nausea pill Zofran to counter-
act it. Along with the nausea further
suppressing their appetite, the Ozempic
takers I spoke to have told me that it’s
given them headaches, making alcohol
less pleasurable. And because blood
sugar levels change, some are so
bone-crushingly tired that they aren’t
going out to dinner as often.
With qualifying insurance, people
can pay as little as $25. But some in
Hollywood are paying out of pocket, up
to $1,500 per month. The demand
has overwhelmed pharmacies and made
it difficult for people who actually need
Ozempic to get their prescription on
time. This fall, the Therapeutic Goods
Administration in Australia issued
a statement asserting that there is a
shortage of semaglutide injections
“due to an unexpected increase in
consumer demand…[which is] signifi-
cantly affecting people using Ozempic
for its approved use for type 2 diabe-
tes.” The TGA expects the shortage to
continue for months and urged pre-
scribers to consider alternatives. It’s
extended in Los Angeles, where phar-
macists are urging people who have
a prescription to refill it as early as pos-
sible to avoid a potential shortage
when they need the medication.
There has been no long-term study of
the drug for people without blood sugar
diseases taking the medication. And
less of a guide for those tired of feeling
tired or nauseous or injecting them-
selves or paying thousands of dollars a
year to poke themselves with a drug
people don’t know much about other
than it seems to work. Because the drug
is relatively new, it is unclear what the
long-term effects could be, particularly
if someone is not diabetic. How long
can someone using it off-label stay on it?
As Bravo’s Andy Cohen tweeted earlier
this fall, “Everyone is suddenly showing
up 25 pounds lighter. What happens
when they stop taking #Ozempic ????”
Shapira said that those who haven’t
been working with a registered dieti-
tian or made real lifestyle changes
alongside taking the injections are
likely to gain back the weight that they
lost. Which would be a throwback, in a
sense. “We saw with phen-fen and
any of the other weight loss drugs that
people didn’t learn anything and that
they didn’t change any of their habits.”
She added: “I’m worried about the
long-term effects of people who only
look at things short term.” n
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
 ®
From Academy Award Nominated Writer and Director
Noah Baumbach

IN SELECT THEATERS NOVEMBER

DECEMBER 30 FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM
Vanities /Letter From LA

The Director WHISPERER clients, including Taika Waititi, Alejan-

dro González Iñárritu, Ava DuVernay,
Boots Riley, and Alma Har’el. Waititi
Judith Weston advises filmmakers on how to coax great says he considers Weston a creative,
performances out of every actor By Joy Press maternal figure in his life: “She’s
basically Yoda, except she’s not small
and she’s not green.” When he was
making Thor: Ragnarok, he asked her
what she thought of the screenwriters’
script, and she blurted, “Well, it
I keep control?’ ” says Weston, sitting reads like it was written by a seven-

A
ACTORS CAN BE NEEDY, fragile crea-
tures—they crave the spotlight, but often
it just amplifies their insecurities, like
a magnifying glass burning ants. When
Judith Weston began working with
directors, she was startled to discover
how many were scared of their stars.
“Directors come to me and say, ‘How do
in the idyllic back garden of her home
near Venice Beach in LA. “If I tell them
they don’t have to have control, it’s a
relief to them.”
Weston has been coaching directors
for close to 35 years, instructing them,
among other things, in the care and
feeding of the actorly temperament.
“I find it almost like seeing a directors’
therapist,” says Lucy Tcherniak, a direc-
tor on the streaming series Station Eleven
and forthcoming Apple TV+ series
Sunny. “You’re surrounded by people,
but directing can be a really lonely job.”
Many devotees discovered Weston
through her book Directing Actors:
Creating Memorable Performances for
Film and Television, updated last
year for its 25th anniversary. Over the
years, she has amassed a long list of
year-old boy.” Even this, he told
Weston, inspired him: He could defi-
nitely get excited about directing a
movie that a kid wrote.
Weston is usually gentler. She greets
me in a bright turquoise tunic, talk-
ing quietly and radiating empathy.
A former actor, Weston offers con-
crete ways to make performers feel like
collaborators rather than dollhouse fig-
ures moved around on a set. “I want
directors to know how wildly fright-
ening acting can be, how vulnerable
you are when you’re out there on stage
or in front of the camera,” she writes
in Directing Actors. That sometimes
means doing a Freaky Friday–style swap
where directors try acting. David Chase
has never forgotten the experience he
had in a Weston workshop decades ago,

VA N I T Y FA I R I L L U S T R AT I O N BY J O R G E A R É VA LO DEC 2022/JAN 2023

 F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N

“A breathtaking experience.” SIGHT AND SOUND

“A directorial tour de force

from Alejandro González Iñárritu. Epic filmmaking at its most sincerely personal.
Mirrors the roller-coaster ride that is life itself.”
AWARDS DAILY
Vanities /Letter From LA
just before creating The Sopranos. He
and another student were playing jan-
itors: “We both really got into it, and
when it was over, I felt like I had left my
body. It was almost like an LSD trip.
And I thought, Wow, no wonder actors
want to do this.” It also struck him how
hard it must be to maintain that out-of-
body feeling if your director is asking
you to do 20 takes. “The whole film-
making process is kind of unwelcoming
to the actor,” Chase says. You have to
be sensitive—even to the guys down at
the Bada Bing.
Iñárritu, who’s consulted with
Weston several times since he first took
her workshop in the 1990s, also found
that his mindset changed when it came
to directing actors: “The surprise was
that something potentially so scary
could turn into something so enjoyable.”
NOW IN HER 70s, Weston concentrates
on one-on-one Zoom sessions with
directors—often deep-diving into spe-
cific scenes or characters. It’s a long
way from the working-class Connect-
icut town where she grew up. When
she was four, her mother developed
polio, and young Judith was sent away
from home for a while. It was a trau-
matic experience, and she found an
escape in fairy tales. “In the real world,
you can feel something and the plot
doesn’t change,” she says, where-
as in the world of fiction, “feelings
have consequences.”
By her early 20s, Weston was in
Manhattan toiling at clerical jobs
designated for women at insurance
companies and banks—the kind of
places where, as she later wrote in a
1970s essay titled “The Secretarial
Proletariat,” female employees were
called “girls” and “had no rights, only
duties.” In 1968, she found her way
into an early women’s liberation
meeting and became part of a group
that merged consciousness-raising,
activism, and guerrilla theater. Weston
helped create a giant Miss America
puppet wrapped in chains for the
legendary 1968 protest of the pageant
in Atlantic City. Later, as a founding
member of the group WITCH, she took
part in theatrical protests like the
VA N I T Y FA I R
hexing of Wall Street and the Bridal
Un-Fair, an invasion of a wedding
industry convention.
After moving to the Bay Area in
1970, Weston planned to continue her
activist work but instead became an
actor. “In the early 1970s, people were
looking for gurus,” she says. “You’d
find a teacher and feel, This person is
opening up the world for me.” So when
someone recommended acting coach
Jean Shelton, Weston embraced this
new calling. Later, in Los Angeles, she
landed parts in TV movies and shows
like Little House on the Prairie and
Newhart. But as the parts grew more
generic, Weston’s enthusiasm crum-
bled. Shelton had always told her she
would be a great teacher, so in 1984
she hung out her shingle.
“She is basically
YODA, except she’s
not SMALL and
she’s not GREEN.”
—TAIKA WAITITI
LISTENING TO WESTON, I think about
the cranky veteran showrunner played
by Paul Reiser in the Hulu series
Reboot. “Pissed off actors—they’re
like children!” he says. “You jingle
some shiny keys and you promise ’em
a cookie and they’ll stop crying.” But
wrangling talent isn’t actually that
easy. Weston thinks we have a toxic
attitude toward performers, simulta-
neously worshipping and disdaining
them. When I mention the public
mockery of Jeremy Strong’s devo-
tion to Method acting, she says firmly,
“There’s so many ways to put down
actors. And I just don’t want anybody
to ever do any of them.”
Weston’s suggestions to her clients
are nuanced. She tells filmmakers not
to issue demands, but rather to give
open-ended invitations. Instead of
telling an actor that their character had
a bad relationship with their father, she
might suggest saying, “Well, you
probably had a better relationship with
your father than this character,” which
is more likely to provoke useful emo-
tions. “You’ve created a little world and
planted a seed,” as she puts it. Rather
than issuing an abstract command like
“Make it more aggressive,” she suggests
using verbs that give the actor some-
thing visceral to play. Punish him, for
instance. While shooting Station Eleven,
Tcherniak needed an actor to look
more frightened, so she borrowed an
instruction from her teacher: “Act as if
someone’s holding a gun to your head.”
AT THE HEART of everything Weston
teaches is an exhortation to listen to
actors and let them play. Her approach
had a huge effect on Boots Riley’s deci-
sion to direct Sorry to Bother You, the
absurdist dark comedy film he wrote.
“A lot of it can just seem like this crazy
puzzle, but Judith seems so nonchalant
about it all working and being whatever
it will be—and that was very reassuring
to me,” he says. Riley went back to her
when the original star of Sorry (Jordan
Peele) dropped out and was replaced by
LaKeith Lee Stanfield. “We talked about
how to relate what’s in my head to the
actor—and find out what’s in their head.”
Many of Weston’s alumni are
women and/or people of color, and she
knows how bruising double standards
can be for directors who are not white
men. “Women that I worked with
one-on-one, there’d always eventually
be crying, because they tried to do
something and they would get shot
down by a producer,” Weston says. “So
a lot of my work with them would
be trying to give them some confidence
to fight back.”
Weston is not immune to Hollywood
gossip but won’t weigh in on specific
projects except to give general advice.
For example: “I would always tell any-
body directing—male or female—not
to have an affair with their leading
actor.” Weston did once have a married
director confess to falling in love with
their producer. “I just said, ‘Can’t you
wait until after the shoot is over?’ ” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
 F O R Y O U R C O N S I D E R A T I O N

“G O R G E O U S A N D S U L T R Y.
E M M A C O R R I N h a s t h e b e s t r o l e o f t h e i r c a r e e r.
Corrin’s incredible performance resides in their sense of their own body.”
INDIEWIRE

Screenplay by DAVID MAGEE Directed by LAURE de CLERMONT-TONNERRE

IN SELECT THEATERS NOVEMBER

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Vanities /The Court
The
FIREBRAND
SCOTUS is in a right-wing
choke hold, but a liberal
conservationist judge
blazed the activism trail
By Douglas Brinkley
T
THE CONSERVATIVES ON the US
Supreme Court are considered by
many to be ardent activists. And yet,
truth be told, there has never been a
more activist justice than William O.
Douglas. Appointed by Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Douglas was a committed
conservationist, vocal opponent of
the Vietnam War, best-selling author,
would-be candidate for president, and,
at 36-plus years, the longest-serving
high court justice in American history.
With all the current hand-wringing
about the politicization of the judiciary,
Douglas was Exhibit A in pushing
his own political agenda—as a
liberal, libertarian, and crusading
environmentalist.
By 1954, Douglas had been on the
Court for 15 years. A native of Minne-
sota and Washington State, he pursued
his passion for nature—and for protect-
ing the American outdoors. Between
cases, he plotted campaigns to preserve
Washington’s North Cascades, Alaska’s
Arctic, Wyoming’s Wind River region,
and Maine’s Allagash River water-
shed. His criticism of the government’s
nuclear testing in the Nevada desert
62 VA N I T Y FA I R
was unrelenting. From his chambers,
he investigated the howling range of
coyotes and the mysteries of the ruffed
grouse. He liked to quip that he would
have gladly traded the honor of being
on the Court for that of having collected
ferns for Lewis and Clark.
The justice sometimes wore his lug-
soled hiking boots on the bench. On
weekends, armed with a backpack,
binoculars, and floppy hat, Douglas,
compact and trim with fierce blue eyes,
would explore the backcountry of Vir-
ginia or Maryland, sometimes with his
longtime protégé Robert F. Kennedy
as his trail mate.
In the ’50s, as the postwar car boom
surged, an environmental crisis loomed:
the vexing threat to air quality posed by
leaded gas. Douglas was alarmed by
the smog-shrouded dome that hung over
cities like Los Angeles and New York.
Decrying consumer consumption run
amok, he blasted the Army for selling
surplus jeeps in the arid West, which,
when driven off-road on public lands,
damaged soil, streams, plants, and
habitats. He encouraged fellow proto-
environmentalists to use lawsuits as
a weapon against the Army Corps of
Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, and
Robert F. Kennedy and William O. Douglas
hiking in Washington State, 1962.
brutish extraction companies. Furious at
the reckless wounding of the earth by
philistines, he would help the Sierra Club
and the Wilderness Society—he was a
member of both—acquire pro bono attor-
neys for their preservationist pursuits.
En route to the Court, Douglas would
sometimes ask his chauffeur to drive
along the Potomac so he could check for
traces of manganese, a heavy metal
used in industrial processes that can
cause neurological damage to humans
and wildlife. Richard Schwartz, a Yale
law professor, recalled that his friend
Douglas was distraught over the way
the Department of Agriculture and the
Corps of Engineers operated without
accountability. Douglas carped that the
Forest Service was a faceless organiza-
tion full of “modern Ahabs” hungry for
money and power as the agency opened
PA U L V. T H O M A S / T H E S E AT T L E T I M E S .
wild areas to roads, mineral extraction,
and timber cutting. “I’m ready to bend
the law,” he said, “in favor of the envi-
ronment and against the corporations.”
Spending long stretches in the
North Cascades and fly-fishing in Ore-
gon brought equilibrium to Douglas’s
pressured life. And when his close
friend in the Senate John F. Kennedy
had a question about nesting plovers
or pollution abatement, he looked
to Douglas, who often teased, “The
trouble is, Jack, that you’ve never slept
on the ground.” Unafraid of conflict-
of-interest charges, Douglas turned his
Supreme Court office into a way station
for elite conservation groups.
Douglas had grown incensed about
a proposed Virginia-Maryland motorway
along the bed of the abandoned Chesa-
peake and Ohio Canal. He charged that
a paved road would create abominable
traffic and ruin the towpath. The noise,
he fumed, would destroy the tranquility
of a hike along the old canal, a project
first championed by George Washing-
ton. The National Park Service was
in favor of the parkway but wanted to
ban commercial activity along the route.
Douglas envisioned a meandering
national parkland at the back door of
the nation’s capital.
The opening salvo of the battle over
the C&O Canal began in January 1954
with a Washington Post editorial by asso-
ciate editor Merlo Pusey supporting the
motorway. Douglas wrote the Post that
a multiple-lane road would destroy the
scenic Potomac Valley; the keynotes of
the wood thrush would be drowned out
by a cacophony of roaring wheels and
blaring horns. Soon, an anti-construc-
tion sign was posted by preservationists
at Shepherdstown, West Virginia: “Jus-
tice Douglas, keep to the right. Booby
traps to the left are for the Post editors.”
Douglas decided to throw down a
gauntlet. He challenged the Post edito-
rial board to hike the towpath with him,
to experience firsthand the beauty of
Great Falls and Mather Gorge, which
the parkway would ostensibly destroy.
“One who walked the canal its full
length,” Douglas wrote, “would get to
know muskrats, badgers, and fox…. The
whistling wings of ducks would make
silence have new values for him…. He
could never acquire that understanding
going 60, or even 25, miles an hour.”
To their credit, Robert Estabrook,
the Post’s editorial page editor, and
his associate editor Pusey accepted
the challenge to make the eight-day,
184-mile hike. On March 20, a party of
37 joined the justice. Among their
number was Sigurd Olson, the director
of the National Parks Association and a
legendary advocate of the outdoors
who had a degree in a new field: ecol-
ogy. Also on hand was Olaus Murie of
the Wilderness Society. A renowned
conservationist, Murie would regularly
correspond with Douglas about an
initiative he had undertaken to stop
hydroelectric dams.
Reporters from Time, Life, and CBS
Radio followed the delegation along
the Potomac. The Washington Post cov-
ered the outing daily. The nightly news
ran favorable segments. The Potomac
Appalachian Trail Club of Washington
supplied the team with food. Enjoying
the blush of buds blooming in late
winter, the group followed Douglas’s
pace of 112 steps per minute, marching
“I’m ready to
BEND THE LAW
against the
corporations.”
22 miles the first day. The New York Times
dubbed them the “blister brigade.”
Driving downpours and frigid wind
didn’t hamper the nature lovers, who
encouraged gaggles of Boy Scouts, fish-
ermen, and nearby equestrians to join
their cause. Douglas’s merry band
encountered raccoons, woodchucks,
and hawks circling for prey. Otter prints
were discovered along the riverbank.
One evening, some of the hikers decid-
ed to play a joke on Murie, considered
the country’s expert on animal tracks.
Clandestinely, a Mexican burro was
brought to the trail to leave telltale hoof-
prints. Early the following morning,
Murie, upon seeing the tracks, was tak-
en aback. Then, to the stunned group,
he nailed it, saying, “If it weren’t for the
fact that there aren’t any for hundreds
of miles, I’d say it was a Mexican burro.”
Near journey’s end, Estabrook
and Pusey quit the march, exhausted.
But Douglas, despite a rending cough,
forged onward with eight others in
scudding rain. Once back in George-
town, his “blister brigade” told a
welcome-home party of 50,000 about
eating buffalo steak and sleeping in
frost-caked tents.
EDITORS ESTABROOK AND Pusey had
a change of heart. The Post retracted its
editorial, suggesting that parts of the
canal should be saved as a federal park.
Soon, the Park Service withdrew its
support as well. Douglas’s odyssey had
helped derail the motorway, and in
the months to follow, his widely publi-
cized style of direct action was adopted
in local battles around the country.
Protest hikes were organized. Anti-dam
rallies were held. Citizens and politi-
cians were on the march.
Just days before leaving office
in January 1961, President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who quietly admired
Douglas’s feistiness, surprised conser-
vationists by designating the C&O
Canal a national monument, a stepping
stone to its becoming a National Histori-
cal Park. And in 1975, Douglas retired
from the bench at age 77, having written
30 books on travel and the environment,
all published while he generated more
opinions and dissents than any other
justice in the history of the Court.
With hardly a murmur of criticism in
the national press, Douglas’s sustained
policy activism outside his chambers
is without precedent. By “hiking and
hollering,” as he put it, his “Gandhian
protest”—and other demonstrations
that followed—had helped establish
greenbelts, nature preserves, and open
spaces across the land. This latter-day
Gandhi, of course, wore not a white
dhoti and shawl; he preferred black
robes—and hiking boots. Q
Excerpted from SILENT SPRING
REVOLUTION: John F. Kennedy, Rachel
Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,
and the Great Environmental Awakening
by Douglas Brinkley, to be published on
November 15, 2022, by HarperCollins.
Copyright © 2022 by Douglas Brinkley.
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 63
Vanities /Interview
Winning Friends,
INFLUENCING PEOPLE
How JJ Redick has gone from being one of basketball’s
most hated players to one of its most beloved commentators
By Eve Peyser
podcast hosted by JJ Redick, the
I
retired NBA player, and Tommy Alter,
a TV producer.
Perkins used to be a center for the
Boston Celtics, and, at six feet ten and
upwards of 300 pounds, he makes the
six-feet-four Redick look petite. Perkins,
Redick, and Alter (who, at five feet elev-
en, would look regular size, if not tall, in
virtually any other context) are seated
in Alter’s living room in Dumbo, sipping
on glasses of a 2008 Chambertin grand
cru that runs around $4,000 a bottle.
IT WAS CLOSE to midnight on a warm After they finish recording the podcast,
night in June, and Kendrick “Perk” Redick, a wine aficionado, tells
Perkins had a confession to make. He me it was just okay, nothing special.
was recording an episode of The Old Right before the podcast recording,
Man and the Three, the wildly popular Perkins had been at the Barclays Center
64 VA N I T Y FA I R
rehearsing for the live 2022 NBA draft,
which would air the following evening
on ESPN, where he and Redick are both
analysts. In a full suit and tie, he looked
ready for prime time. Redick was
dressed down in a backward Old Man
and the Three cap, gray skinny jeans,
and a white tee, revealing his bevy of
Christian tattoos. His left arm features
a sleeve of the four authors of the
Gospels: Matthew, winged and haloed,
and below that, Mark, Luke, and John,
in the forms of various flying animals.
Perkins gets on with his confession:
Way back in 2008, when his Celtics
were playing LeBron James’s Cleveland
Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference
semifinals, “I was like, Let us get break-
ing news that LeBron has tore his ACL
or something,” Perkins says, panto-
miming shame. “I did, bro. Like, I’m not
even lying. I’m not even exaggerating.”
Redick looks at Kylee Kilgore, the
COO of his production company with
Alter, ThreeFourTwo, who is sitting off
to the side. “We have to edit this out,”
C L É M E N T PA S C A L .
Redick says. Kilgore happens to be the
twin sister of Redick’s wife, Chelsea, as
well as Redick’s own best friend.
 “No! You can’t edit this out,” Perkins
protests. “This is real! That’s how
terrified I was of LeBron.”
When the podcast drops days later,
the anecdote stays in and gets picked
up around the sports world. This sort
of moment, after all, is why listeners
like The Old Man and the Three. It’s not
every day that you hear a professional
athlete talk about how he was so thirsty
for a championship ring, and under
so much insane pressure, that he asked
God to cripple his opponent. But
Redick, who started podcasting in 2016
and retired from the NBA after the
2020–2021 season, is a gifted interview-
er, able to coax his podcast guests,
mostly former and current NBA play-
ers, into opening up. Sometimes too
much—Redick was concerned about
the backlash Perkins might receive
for his audacious confession, which is
why his initial impulse was to cut it.
“Because I’m a peer, because we
share a lot of the same experiences,
there’s an inherent respect level,”
Redick tells me a few days later over
lunch at Nene’s Deli Taqueria in Bush-
wick. “I’m able to ask questions that,
if a reporter were to ask that, or if tra-
ditional media were to ask that, I don’t
think you’d get the same response.
That’s the advantage of our show.”
Being a professional athlete is deeply
unrelatable: You’re inconceivably rich,
inconceivably recognizable, and you
possess an inconceivable physical agility.
But when Redick talks to other athletes,
he humanizes them. His podcast paints
a compelling portrait of the emotional
cost of spending half your year traveling,
away from your family, the pressures
of the spotlight, the relentless drive you
need to truly master your craft.
Redick arrives at Nene’s fresh off
of an ESPN hit, wearing a tailored navy
suit, aviator sunglasses hanging from
his shirt, his hair slightly gray and duly
styled. He never talks with his mouth
full or dribbles juices and salsa down his
immaculate getup. He takes a picture
with one fan, says hi to the family of
another on FaceTime. And he shares
a warm familiarity with the restaurant
staff. It’s hard not to think, Wow,
everyone freakin’ loves this guy.
IT WASN’T ALWAYS like this. Before the
Orlando Magic drafted Redick in 2006,
back when he was a shooting guard
at Duke, the basketball world despised
him, or so it seemed. He is widely
considered to be one of the most hated
college players of all time.
“We used to make fun of him all
the time at Deadspin. We all thought
he was just another snotty Duke
white dude,” Will Leitch, the website’s
founding editor, says. (One post on
the website declared him “Ameri-
ca’s Dumbest Student-Athlete,” while
another wondered if the fact that
he cried during his final Duke game
meant that he was a “wimp” with a
“weak disposition.”) “He turned out to
be a little more interesting than that.”
“I do acknowledge
that there is some
WEIRD ARC that
has happened with
the PERCEPTION
of my personality.”
Leitch no longer has any animosity
toward Redick, but he doesn’t neces-
sarily regret those snarky blogs. “I think
everybody is different than they were
15 years ago, including Redick,” he says.
“He’s matured, the internet has (sorta?)
matured. We’ve all matured.”
“For some reason, there’s always a
white Duke player who everyone hates,”
Josh Hart theorizes over the phone.
Hart grew up a University of Maryland
fan and thus, he says, “I hated him.”
But Hart, a shooting guard and small
forward for the Portland Trail Blazers,
ultimately developed a close friendship
with Redick when they played together
on the New Orleans Pelicans.
A confluence of factors turned
Redick into a national villain during his
time at Duke. Chief among them,
Duke itself, perhaps the most hated
college basketball program in the
country. “They reeked of entitlement
and embodied everything so many
people despised in a way that went
beyond sports. They had an air about
them like I’m better than you,” retired
NBA player Etan Thomas explained
in a Guardian op-ed in 2019. “Not just
on the basketball court, but as human
beings. Just overall elitists.”
ESPN writer Bomani Jones put it
more succinctly: “If Duke played the
Ku Klux Klan, I’d root for a 0-0 tie.”
That line, though, is from an article
Jones wrote in the early 2000s implor-
ing college basketball fans to stop
hating on Redick. “He looks like what
so many people associate with Duke—
unathletic white players who are
pumped up illegitimately by a fawning
media—and it’s safe to say that’s what
so many people hate,” Jones wrote.
“But if my fellow Duke haters aren’t
careful, they’ll miss their chance to
appreciate one of the best shooters
in recent memory.”
“He was the best college basketball
player in America while being a white
player who played for Duke. That, by
definition, was going to make him
a polarizing figure,” says Jones now; he
is friendly with Redick and appeared
on his podcast in 2020. That defense of
the Duke shooting guard made such
a splash at the time, Jones tells me, that
it effectively launched his own sports
journalism career.
Other Duke players riled the nation
before and after Redick. Perhaps the
most infamous was Christian Laettner—
handsome, white, perennially smug-
looking—who played for the private
North Carolina college in the late ’80s
and early ’90s. Before Laettner, in the
’80s, Blue Devil Danny Ferry drew wide-
spread ire. More recently, Grayson
Allen, who had a nasty habit of appear-
ing to trip his opponents, took the cake.
During Redick’s time at Duke, from
2002 to 2006, he was relentlessly
bullied by fans from opposing teams
and the sports media. Whenever he’d
shoot a free throw, the crowd would
chant, “Fuck you, JJ!” Redick wrote in
a 2017 op-ed that some fans had
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 65
Vanities /Interview
speckled their shoulders with red dots
to mock his acne, and he’s said that
someone once held up a sign saying
they had sex with his then 12-year-old
sister. Shortly before the 2006 draft,
when Redick was charged with a DWI,
Leitch categorized the public response
to one of Redick’s lowest points as
“unbridled glee.”
In a blog mocking Redick’s collegiate
poetry, A.J. Daulerio, writing for Dead-
spin, said, “JJ’s entries make Insane
Clown Posse’s ‘Miracles’ read like ‘Ode
on a Grecian Urn.’ ” A few of Redick’s
verses: “No bandage can cover my scars
/ It’s hard living a life behind invisible
bars / Searching for the face of God /
I’m only inspired by the poems of Nas”
and “I can’t see what my future has
in store / but I move forth with the
strength of a condor / The courage of
a warrior / The commitment of an
American soldier.” Redick now clarifies
that he wrote these verses less as poems
and more as rap lyrics. “It was terrible
poetry, and it was very much subpar rap
lyrics,” he says, laughing.
But Redick’s college era put him in a
unique position when he went pro—
he had nowhere to go but up. “All he
had to do was leave Duke,” Jones
says, comparing Redick’s trajectory to
that of legendary Knicks player Patrick
Ewing. “When Patrick Ewing was at
Georgetown, Georgetown was seen as
being the Blackest college basketball
program, which scared the hell out of
a lot of people. Patrick Ewing was
despised by a significant portion of
America,” he says. “Nobody hated
Patrick Ewing as an NBA player
because it was never actually about
Patrick Ewing. It was about where he
fit into something larger.”
When the Magic drafted Redick, his
relationship with the media and the
general public initially remained com-
bative. “I certainly felt like, in my first
two years, there was a large contingent
of basketball fans that were excited
about my struggles and rooting for my
demise,” Redick says. It was after his
third or fourth year in the league, he
reckons, that the public began to warm
to him. “I proved I could be a rotation
player, at the very least, in the NBA.”
66 VA N I T Y FA I R
THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, Redick built
a reputation as a reliable three-point
shooter. (He has the 18th-highest three-
point percentage of all time.) “I knew
that people didn’t like him at Duke. But
I just always thought of him as a shoot-
er. He was just the guy who was a
sniper,” Alter tells me. “Once we got to
know each other, I got to see, like—
I’ve never met anyone like him in terms
of his ability to communicate.”
While someone like Laettner was
never quite able to shake his reputa-
tion because his career was mostly
disappointing, the antipathy toward
Redick faded away as he exceeded
people’s expectations. In the 2008–
2009 season, he helped the Magic
make it to the NBA Finals, the team’s
first and only appearance there since
the Shaq era. Several years later,
he was a pivotal piece on one of the
best Clippers teams ever, averaging
15.8 points per game and making
44 percent of his three-point shots
during his four seasons in Los Angeles.
(To contextualize just how impressive
that is: Steph Curry, the best three-
point shooter of all time, has landed
42.8 percent of his attempts from
deep throughout his career.)
And now, in the past six or so years,
thanks to his podcasting and televi-
sion persona, Redick has been wholly
embraced by casual and hard-core
NBA fans alike. “On television, he took
on a role that the general public has
an affection for, which is, he is the guy
calling us—us being media profes-
sionals—on our shit,” Jones says. “And
people really enjoy watching players
turn it back around on media pundits.”
On The Old Man and the Three, as
well as on earlier iterations on Yahoo!
Sports and The Ringer, Redick exudes
authenticity. He is nice. He is funny. He
is emotionally available. The podcast
has that “it” factor: The listener feels in
on a conversation among friends.
“I don’t think of myself as beloved,
but I do acknowledge that there is some
weird arc that has happened with the
perception of my personality,” Redick
tells me. “I don’t ever feel like I’ve
been victimized by the media. Most
anything that has ever been written
about me I’ve probably brought on
myself,” he says. “You know, I’ve fucked
up a lot in my life…. Dude, there were
some dark times. I remember being like,
Fuck, man, I don’t feel like I’m a bad
person. And then the other part of that
was that I acted like a dickhead
and probably accelerated the hatred
and animosity towards me.”
Said dickhead behavior, according to
Redick, included “bobbing my head,
smiling. Yes, I occasionally talked trash
to student sections, people on the front
row in visiting arenas, but I was doing
that in response. I was trying to create
a persona.” Redick says he behaved that
way at Duke because he was “young
and immature and not really under-
standing what was happening and not
being comfortable with myself.”
So he began going to therapy every
week after his sophomore year of col-
lege. “I read a ton on consciousness and
flow state and insecurities, and I just
got to a place where I was comfortable
with who I was,” he says. “It became
this really diligent obsession with what
I can control. That’s why my routine is so
important. My sleep became so impor-
tant. The exact amount of shots I take
every Sunday became so important to
me,” he tells me. “All this other stuff
has no effect on my day-to-day life.”
By the time Redick became a veteran
in the league, he was a leader in the
locker room, someone younger players
looked up to. Hart recalls Redick holding
a team meeting in New Orleans during
a moment when they were struggling.
“He held us accountable and demanded
more from us on the court, but also
not being on our phones, being more
connected, and those sorts of things,”
Hart tells me. “I vividly remember this
because it showed the leadership he
had, the accountability he had. Everyone
came out of that meeting in a positive
way because it wasn’t just a veteran guy
who was talking to us. It was JJ, someone
who puts the work in.”
Redick announced his retirement last
September, after 15 years in the NBA.
He now splits his time between podcast-
ing and being an ESPN analyst, which
is an interesting role for a person
who was antagonized by the media the
moment he stepped onto the court.
His experience at Duke, he tells me,
profoundly impacted the way he
understood what it meant to be famous.
When he was in college, Twitter didn’t
exist and he didn’t have “a microphone
to talk into for an hour.” His media
career has allowed him to take control
of his own narrative—and also the nar-
rative about other players.
In an appearance on ESPN’s First
Take earlier this year, Redick went viral
when he called out fellow commentator
Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo. Russo
had been particularly offended by
Draymond Green’s behavior while the
Golden State Warriors power forward
was playing the Memphis Grizzlies in
the Western Conference semifinals.
After Green got elbowed in the face and
started bleeding, the Memphis crowd
erupted in cheers; in response, he flipped
them off, and defended his behavior in
his postgame press conference.
On the show, Russo said that
“America’s tired of Draymond Green,”
and he should just “shut up and play.”
“That has the same sort of connota-
tion that the ‘shut up and dribble’ crowd
has towards athletes, and I have a
real problem with that…. The people on
Fox News talk about them that way,”
Redick said. “People want to hear what
Draymond has to say because…he is
real, authentic, and unfiltered.”
I tell Redick that, because of this
moment, my friend’s brother referred
to him as “the woke guy from ESPN.”
“I am not woke, I don’t consider
myself to be woke,” Redick maintains.
“What happened with Mad Dog—
I don’t think what he said was right.
I wanted to point out why it was wrong.
It’s that simple.”
He might not identify as woke, but
Redick is by no means apolitical. After
the 2016 election, he began publicly
commenting on presidential politics,
speaking out against Donald Trump
not infrequently: “I’m about as anti-
Trump as you can get,” he said during
a postgame press conference in 2017.
That same year, he told the Los Angeles
Times that he was “horrified” by
Trump, and by the prospect of Amer-
icans “losing their health care” and
women “losing their right to decide
what to do with their body.”
“I’m a registered Democrat. I believe
in science. I believe in trying to treat
people with respect, and I believe in not
grifting people,” he tells me. While
he wasn’t particularly involved in poli-
tics pre-2016, he’s had a long-standing
interest in the intersection between
sports and social justice.
“Sports and politics have always
been intertwined,” Redick says. His
heroes are Tommie Smith and John
Carlos, the two Black athletes who
raised their fists during the medal cer-
emony at the 1968 Olympics and
were expelled from the team and the
“I acted like
a DICKHEAD
and probably
ACCELERATED
the HATRED
and animosity
towards me.”
Olympic Village in response. “They
risked everything, and they were just
fucking ostracized from the US track-
and-field community, and they paid the
price for that for years and years and
years,” he tells me. “Politics and sports?
C’mon. That’s not a new fucking thing.”
When it comes to contemporary
sports politics issues, Redick leans left-
ward. “I support trans athletes,” he
tells me. “It goes back to just a basic lev-
el of empathy. They want to be able to
compete. They should be able to com-
pete.” Colin Kaepernick? “For a number
of years, he deserved a spot on a roster
and didn’t have that opportunity.”
Green, who solicited Redick’s advice
on podcasting while interviewing
Redick on his own show, often talks
about this idea of the “new media,”
which is made up of athletes like
himself and Redick, a new generation
of sports-media talking heads who
approach analysis from the perspective
of the player. During a live recording of
The Old Man and the Three in June,
Green anointed Redick as “the leader
of the new media.”
While retired athletes have built sec-
ond careers in sports analysis for many
years, the sports media radically
changed during Redick’s tenure as a
professional athlete.
Debating something like whether
LeBron James or Michael Jordan is a
better basketball player, which happens
on ESPN and social media frequently,
is about “lifting one person up and
pushing another person down,” Redick
says. “It’s total bullshit.”
DURING THE 2020–2021 NBA season,
Redick was traded from New Orleans
to the Dallas Mavericks—he knew he
was going to get traded, but he had
asked to be sent somewhere closer to
his family in Brooklyn and was dis-
mayed to find himself so far away from
his wife and children. “You’re giving up
some autonomy by being an NBA play-
er. By and large, the good far outweighs
the bad,” he tells me. “Anytime any
athlete complains about anything, the
immediate response—it drives me cra-
zy—is like, Shut up. You’re getting paid a
lot of money. It’s just dehumanizing.”
When the season ended, Redick
decided to retire. Although he had
hoped to win a championship before
leaving the league, he tells me that
treatment on his Achilles tendon failed,
so he wouldn’t have been able to play
anyway. And he wanted to be around to
take his kids to school.
Last September, he publicly
announced his retirement in an emo-
tional video he released on The Old
Man and the Three YouTube channel.
“Recording that podcast where I retired,
we obviously had to cut out me sobbing
hysterically, like, 20 times,” he tells me.
In his new life, he has retained his
competitive spirit. “I want to be really
great at something. I want to win,”
he says. “I don’t know how you win in
media. But I’ll figure it out.” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 67
MA RVE L THIS SEASON, MARGOT ROBBIE IS SET TO DAZZLE
AS A SILENT MOVIE STAR IN DAMIEN CHAZELLE’S BABYLON,
AND NEXT YEAR AS A BARBIE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY IN GRETA GERWIG’S
HIGHLY ANTICIPATED MOVIE, WHICH SHE’S ALSO PRODUCING.
SHE OPENS UP ABOUT HER STORY—AND HOLLYWOOD’S

P H O T O G R A P H S BY MARIO SORRENTI
S T Y L E D B Y A N A S TA S I A B A R B I E R I

68 VA N I T Y FA I R
OUS BY REBECCA FORD

MA RGOT

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 69

M
Margot Robbie wants to take me to New York. We’re on the Para-
mount lot in Los Angeles, and she’s giving me a walking tour of
some places they shot Babylon, her upcoming movie about the
vertiginous swirl that was Hollywood in the late 1920s. We’re
about to enter the New York back lot—faux neighborhoods used
as stand-ins for various cities—when a security guard stops us
with an “Excuse me, where are you heading?”
We try saying “that way” and walk like we own the place. The
guard isn’t buying it. He asks what production we’re with. This
is where I expect my tour guide to say, “I’m Margot Robbie.”
Instead, she mumbles something about being with Babylon
and “doing some post.” Then her voice trails off. The security
guard clearly doesn’t recognize that standing in front of him is
the Australian actor who brought Harley Quinn to life and was
nominated for an Oscar for playing Tonya Harding. He tells us
we have to get off the set because somebody’s shooting. Robbie
politely agrees. She laughs as we round the corner. “I should have
a better cover story,” she says. “You’d think I’d be better at that.”
I actually have a hard time believing that Robbie runs up
against hard nos very often. Not because of her looks—she’s
stunning, yes, that song’s been sung ad nauseam—but because
of the stories I’ve heard about her tenacity. Her first big job, on
the Australian soap opera Neighbours, was supposed to be a guest
stint, but she made such an impression that they kept her for three
years. Robbie got her breakout role in The Wolf of Wall Street in
part because she had the chutzpah to slap Leonardo DiCaprio dur-
ing the audition. And she wrote an unsolicited letter to Quentin
Tarantino saying she hoped to work with him one day, eventu-
ally finding herself on the set of Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.
Everyone I speak to about Robbie emphasizes her work ethic.
“Her superpower and the thing that makes her a once-in-a-
generation talent is that she can do everything,” says Christina
70 VA N I T Y FA I R
Hodson, a good friend and the writer of
the 2020 Suicide Squad spin-off Birds of
Prey. “If you watch Margot learn a new
skill, it’s pretty terrifying. When we did
stunts for Birds of Prey, the stunt teams
would show something to her once. She
tries it once, and by the second time,
she’s better than them.” Robbie’s I,
Tonya costar Allison Janney has said she
reminds her of Katharine Hepburn, who
put together The Philadelphia Story her-
self when she felt she wasn’t getting the
roles she deserved. Martin Scorsese says
she reminds him of two legends, Carole
Lombard and Joan Crawford: “Like Lom-
bard, she’s vivacious, strikingly beautiful,
and she has a great sense of humor, about
herself most of all. Like Crawford, she’s
completely grounded and instantly
commanding—she enters the frame and
you pay attention to her.”
It’s fitting, then, that Robbie plays
a fictional Hollywood icon on the rise
in Babylon, Paramount’s epic comedy-
drama led by Robbie, Brad Pitt, and
newcomer Diego Calva. The movie,
which hits theaters on December 23, is set
during the industry’s wildest time, when
the money was flowing, the rules were
few, and the possibilities of fame and
success felt endless. From the hour or so
I’ve seen, it aspires to be a kaleidoscopic
look at the movie business just as talkies
were about to upend the industry forever.
Babylon aims to capture the decadence
and depravity of the era, along with the
madness and—not to sound like Nicole
Kidman in that AMC ad—the magic of
H A I R , B R Y C E S C A R L E T T ; M A K E U P , PAT I D U B R O F F ; M A N I C U R E , B E AT R I C E E N I ; TA I LO R , A N H D U O N G ; S E T D E S I G N ,
filmmaking. “What you see onscreen is
J E A N - M I C H E L B E R T I N . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y W H I T E D O T. 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 .
the chaos of making a movie and how
fucked it is, but also how it’s just the great-
est thing ever,” Robbie says of Babylon.
“And, literally, filming it was the exact
same thing. Shit was so unhinged and so
fun and amazing and just absurd. It was
definitely the best experience of my life.”
Robbie may be sitting with me because
she has a movie to promote, but for the
record I believe her. Babylon’s Nellie
LaRoy is arguably the closest character
she’s ever played to herself. Nellie is
an outsider in Hollywood, full of spice
and vigor and an untamable energy.
She stumbles into her first role with
CLASS ACT
some luck but delivers a performance
Margot Robbie,
photographed by so singular that it sets her on a path to
Vanity Fair in Paris stardom. “Margot’s able to tap into this
on September 23.
wildness and this bravado where you
Previous spread: don’t know what’s going to come, and
dress by Elie Saab. it keeps surprising you,” says Damien
Chazelle, who directed Babylon. “Usu-
ally when you think of actors with that
kind of raw energy, it’s an unschooled
energy. With Margot, that’s not the case
at all.” She’s a tornado, in other words,
with actual technique.
Like Nellie, Robbie, who’s 32, got
Hollywood’s attention with a breakout
performance, in The Wolf of Wall Street,
and has built a career that suggests what
a modern movie star can be. She’s a no-
bullshit actor and producer who bounces
between blockbusters and dark indies,
even if she’s still a little uncomfortable
with the spotlight. “The way I try to
explain this job—and this world—to peo-
ple is that the highs are really high,” she
says, her hand hovering over her head,
“and the lows are really, really low. And
I guess if you’re lucky, it all balances out
in the middle.”
OBBIE IS WEARING an over-
R size black jacket on top
of a black tank and wide-
legged brown plaid pants,
schlepping an armful of
notebooks and books. That’s likely why,
when three golf carts full of tourists drive
by, nobody notices her. As we wander
around the lot, we talk about how wild
it is that a 100 years’ worth of stars have
trod these same walkways, among them
Clara Bow, the silent-era movie icon.
Bow was the first It girl—a sex symbol
and Paramount’s top box office draw for
several years, starring in 46 silent mov-
ies, including 1927’s Wings, the first film
to win best picture.
Bow is also the primary inspiration for
Nellie LaRoy in Babylon. Robbie studied
her movies and, in particular, her early
years. “Whenever I’m trying to make a
character, I have to figure out their child-
hood. I can justify anything they do later
in life if I just figure that out,” she says.
Once Robbie learned how traumatic
Bow’s youth was—full of violence and
poverty, as well as abuse by her mentally
ill mother—she understood what drove
Nellie to escape into the movies. “She had
probably the most horrific childhood I can
imagine for anyone,” she says. “You can
justify anything Nellie does and says in
this movie if you imagine that she experi-
enced something like that as a kid.”
Robbie works with a movement
coach to find animals that inspire her
characters’ physicality—hey, whatever works—and tells me that
Nellie’s animals were an octopus and a honey badger, because
she’s fluid and tactile but ruthless when necessary. Robbie
opens a black notebook and reads some lines about octopuses:
“They’re liquid, they’re playful. Highly intelligent, great sur-
vivors, transformative. Can morph into anything.” I can attest
that the octopus makes its presence felt in a party scene early
on, in which Nellie—clad in a skintight red dress and having just
availed herself of some cocaine—moves through the crowd in
a writhing, libidinous dance. The honey badger emerges later
during fights. Robbie closes her notebook. “I wish I had my char-
acter map too,” she says, “because that would make you feel
sure that I was a crazy person if you saw that.”
Nellie is sexy in an unforced way. At one point, Robbie is
wearing overalls without a top, an outfit inspired by a look Bow
once wore, and she’s got at least a couple scantily-clad moments
in the film, though that doesn’t phase her: She showed just about
all the skin she has in The Wolf of Wall Street. “I don’t really have
a whole lot of modesty left,” Robbie says, laughing, then adds
that she can separate herself from her characters. “I don’t feel
embarrassed when it’s Nellie doing something. I’d feel embar-
rassed if it was me, but it’s all her.” That party scene required
Robbie to dance eight hours straight on two successive days.
Calva says when the scene wrapped, all the crew, dancers, and
musicians applauded her: “She just gave everything she had.
Everything’s raw. She’s a fearless actress.”
Adam McKay, who directed Robbie in a highly memorable
scene in The Big Short in which she explains mortgage-backed
bonds while enjoying a bubble bath, agrees that Robbie’s
commitment is one of her greatest strengths, along with the
ever-present life in her eyes. “With Margot, anything she’s going
to do will be 24/7, head to toe,” he says. “But what’s so cool about
it is that there’s a sense of humor behind it. There’s a playfulness
that’s kind of irresistible.”
EFORE TOURING THE LOT, Robbie and I sit in the front
B row of the Paramount Theatre, the gorgeous 500-
seat movie house just past the lot’s iconic fountain
and ornate entrance gate. Her hair is now a few
shades darker than the bright blond we’ve seen
onscreen. Her books and notebooks sit piled on her lap. Robbie
tells me about her childhood in Queensland, Australia, where
“THE WAY I EXPLAIN THIS JOB—AND
THIS WORLD—TO PEOPLE IS THAT THE
HIGHS ARE REALLY HIGH, AND
THE LOWS ARE REALLY, REALLY LOW.”
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 71
 “MARGOT IS COMPLETELY GROUNDED AND INSTANTLY
COMMANDING,” SAYS MARTIN SCORSESE. “SHE ENTERS THE
FRAME AND YOU PAY ATTENTION TO HER.”
her single mom raised her and her three siblings. “I grew up in a
very loud, busy house, and so I feel safe and comfortable when
there is just chaos around me,” she says. “I think it’s why I love
movie sets.” She hates being alone, she adds, and often invites
friends to hang out in her trailer between takes.
After Neighbours, Robbie moved to the States and played a
flight attendant on the ABC series Pan Am. The show only lasted
a season, but then she nabbed the role of blond bombshell Nao-
mi Lapaglia in Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Robbie wasn’t
prepared to be an It girl herself. Fame was instantaneous and
intense. Robbie wasn’t emotionally ready for the loss of privacy,
and financial security was still a ways off. She tells me it was one
of her lowest moments: “Something was happening in those
early stages and it was all pretty awful, and I remember saying to
my mom, ‘I don’t think I want to do this.’ And she just looked at
me, completely straight-faced, and was like, ‘Darling, I think it’s
too late not to.’ That’s when I realized the only way was forward.”
Robbie has a better handle on navigating fame. “I know how
to go through airports, and now I know who’s trying to fuck me
over in what ways,” she says. But there are still bumps. Before
our interview, Robbie was on vacation in Argentina when a
paparazzo reportedly attempted to take pictures of her and her
friend Cara Delevingne as they tried to get into a taxi. Initial
reports stated that Robbie had been injured. When I ask about
the episode, she says she can’t say anything because of ongoing
legal issues between other parties involved. I ask her if she was
hurt and she says, “No, but I could have been.”
Internationally, she tells me, there aren’t rules protecting pub-
lic figures like there are in LA. Robbie’s family in Australia has
been swept up in dangerous situations while being pursued by
photographers. “If my mom dies in a car accident because you
wanted a photo of me going in the grocery shop, or you knock
my nephew off a bike—for what? For a photo?” she says. “It’s
dangerous but still weirdly nothing feels like it changes.”
This fall, Robbie’s mom called her after paparazzi purport-
edly captured Robbie crying outside of Delevingne’s LA home.
Tabloids theorized that Robbie was worried about her friend and
Suicide Squad costar, who’d recently been photographed looking
upset. So her mom called. Was Margot all right? Was Cara? “I’m
like, ‘First of all, yes and yes,’ ” says Robbie, exasperated. “ ‘And
second of all, I’m not at Cara’s house—I’m outside an Airbnb that
I was renting for five days! And I’m not crying!’ I had something
in my eye. I’m trying to grab my face mask, trying to hold a coffee
cup, and I couldn’t get a hair outta my eye.”
Before she was in this business, Robbie assumed that the
press only printed the truth. Then tabloids started routinely
72 VA N I T Y FA I R
announcing that she was pregnant when
she wasn’t, and people called to congrat-
ulate her. Eventually, Robbie made peace
with the fact that she can’t refute every
false story, a Sisyphean task if there ever
was one. “You want to correct it, but you
just can’t. You have to, I don’t know, look
the other way.” As for interviews, she
admits that junkets stress her out. “They
only want sound bites and I don’t resent
them for it, I get it—they’ve got three
minutes,” she says. “But it’s like tap danc-
ing through a minefield because you’re
so tired and you’ve done it for hours and
hours, and to keep on guard all the time….
You can say it right a thousand times, but
you say it wrong once, you’re fucked.”
When I meet with her, Robbie has
just completed the press tour for David
O. Russell’s Amsterdam, a quirky movie
set in the ’30s in which she stars opposite
Christian Bale and John David Washing-
ton. Russell is known for his, shall we say,
intense nature on set. For starters, he made
Amy Adams cry while making American
Hustle and screamed profanely at Lily
Tomlin on the set of I Heart Huckabees in
a video so horrific that it’s now the stuff
of legend. I ask if Robbie had any trepida-
tion about working with him, especially
in this “new” Hollywood where, ideally,
toxic behavior isn’t tolerated. “The pro-
cess with David started years ago,” she
says, adding that they created her char-
acter together. “One conversation led to
another conversation led to another con-
versation that went on for years and years.
So it wasn’t like a moment of like, ‘Would
you sign up for a David O. Russell film?’ ”
She appreciated the brainstorming, she
says: “I’ve never been that involved just
as an actor. I’ve never had a director want
to hear my point of view that much in the
development process.”
I ask if the set was ever uncomfortable.
Top by Alaïa. She shakes her head no. “I had a pretty
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
Coat by Alexandre
Vauthier Haute
Couture; shoes by
Maison Margiela.

74 VA N I T Y FA I R
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 75
amazing experience,” she says. “The
other thing I wish people could grasp is
that when you make a movie, you’re not
making it just with one director and the
actors. You’re making a movie with so
many people.” She singles out the Oscar-
winning cinematographer Emmanuel
“Chivo” Lubezki and says that working
with him was one of the “absolute high-
lights” of her career.
As we talk, Robbie is open and gen-
erous, often digressing into passionate
stories about her on-set experiences or
favorite movies or podcasts (she loves
Team Deakins, a moviemaking podcast
featuring cinematographer Roger Dea-
kins and his wife, James Ellis Deakins).
She’s more careful when we veer into
her personal life. “It’s such an ironic
thing,” she says. “When you’re an actor,
the whole point is that you are showing
people other people, so it’s such a counter-
intuitive thing to talk about yourself when
you spend all this time hiding yourself.”
Still, she seems to be hiding nothing
more than human decency (she paid off
her mom’s mortgage with her first big
paycheck) and a fondness for having a
good time with friends (she takes girls’
surfing trips to Nicaragua and group
vacations to Spain). A few more details
that suggest we’re dealing with an actual
3D person here: Robbie can open a beer
bottle with another beer bottle. She wants
to learn to play the banjo. She threw a Love
Island–themed birthday party. “She really
loves Love Island, which is surprising just
because she’s very classy,” says Hodson.
“But yes, that is definitely a guilty plea-
sure that we waste many, many hours on.”
T ONE POINT, Robbie says she
A wishes she could have been
an actor in the ’20s or even
the ’70s. But she’s been able
to play a variety of roles—
putting boils on her face to play Queen
Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots, wear-
ing ice skates and a padded bodysuit for
Tonya Harding, and employing garish
face paint and a baseball bat for Harley
Quinn—while also producing the sort of
projects she longed for. Clara Bow could
only play one type of character and had
little control over her career—which,
I can say with certainty, would not sit
well with Robbie. She pulls out another
notebook and reads Walt Whitman: “Do
VA N I T Y FA I R
“I GREW UP IN A VERY LOUD, BUSY HOUSE,
AND SO I FEEL SAFE AND COMFORTABLE
WHEN THERE IS CHAOS AROUND ME.
I THINK IT’S WHY I LOVE MOVIE SETS.”
I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am
large. I contain multitudes.” She looks up and smiles. “ ‘I contain
multitudes’ is a cool thing to remind yourself.”
Hollywood didn’t expect her to contain multitudes. When
she rose to prominence after Wolf of Wall Street at 22, Robbie was
offered the predictable hot-blond roles, all of which she turned
down. I tell her that Hollywood loves to put ingenues in a box, and
she goes further: “I think people love to put people in boxes.” Even
now, Robbie doesn’t get enough credit for her work as a producer.
In 2014, she founded LuckyChap Entertainment with three of her
closest friends—one of them, Tom Ackerley, became her husband
in 2016. The company’s first release was 2017’s I, Tonya, a critical
hit that earned three Oscar nominations and a win for Janney.
In 2021, Promising Young Woman brought in five more Oscar
nominations and a screenwriting win for Emerald Fennell. The
company, which champions female stories and storytellers, pro-
duced five movies this year, including the next film from Fennell.
And then there’s Barbie. The movie was essentially dead
after shuffling through lead actors (Amy Schumer and Anne
Hathaway) and writers until Robbie signed on to star and
produce. She brought in Greta Gerwig to cowrite (with her
partner, Noah Baumbach) and direct, aiming for a subversive
take on the world’s most iconic doll. “Making an obvious Bar-
bie movie would’ve been extremely easy to do,” says Robbie,
“and anything easy to do is probably not worth doing.” Gerwig
was impressed by Robbie to the point of being dumbfounded:
“Once, I wanted to capture Margot in slow motion but have
everything else move fast, so I went up to her and said, ‘Could
you move at 48 frames per second, even though we’re shooting
in 24 frames per second and everyone else will be moving at
regular speed?’ She did some calculation behind her eyes and
then fucking did it. She literally moved at a higher frame rate.
I don’t know what category that goes into other than magic.”
Robbie’s aware that there are lots of eyes on this movie,
which she experienced firsthand while shooting in Venice
Beach with her costar Ryan Gosling in neon spandex and
Rollerblades: “People have got strong feelings. I’d much rather
that than indifference. Now, let me subvert your expectations.
It’s much scarier, but it’s also a great place to begin.”
Robbie, to be clear, is a true working producer. She’s in those
preproduction meetings, she’s on set, she’s putting out fires and
Bodysuit by getting “yelled at by agents.” When I point out that many actors
Jacquemus; belt by
Carolina Herrera; who get producer credits don’t actually, um, do any producing,
bracelet by Hermès. she says, “Yeah, that pissed me off. It’s so annoying because
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 77
 “SHE LITERALLY MOVED AT A HIGHER
FRAME RATE,” SAYS GRETA GERWIG OF A
TRICKY SHOT SHE ASKED ROBBIE TO
EXECUTE. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT CATEGORY
THAT GOES INTO OTHER THAN MAGIC. ”

I have to fight every time.” By fight, she means fight to be tak-

en seriously as a producer. Early in every project, she’s kept
off email chains or not invited to calls because some people
assume it’s just a vanity title for her. “Then everyone realizes
after a few months, ‘Oh, she actually is a producer,’ ” she says.
“But even still, people direct all the money questions at my
producing partners, never at me. And so many times Tom and
Josey have to say, ‘She’s the one to ask, actually.’ ”

E’VE WANDERED DOWN nearly every street

W on the Paramount lot. Robbie has shown me

where she did months of dance rehearsal (plus
clown school) for Babylon, and where she
filmed one of her favorite scenes, a vicious,
full-tilt fight between her character and Calva’s. (She acciden-
tally broke a window and bruised Calva’s ribs—and then the
scene was cut from the movie.) Robbie has shared some of the 31
accents she tried on for Nellie by playing recordings on her phone.
In one, she sounds exactly like Fran Drescher. In another, it’s
Jersey Shore’s Snooki meets Joe Pesci. They eventually settled on
a Jersey accent with a bit of a hard-partyer’s rasp. When Babylon
wrapped, Robbie was at loose ends: “It was the most physically
and emotionally draining character I’ve ever played, by a country
mile. She demands so much of you that she left me in pieces.”
Robbie and her husband are now moving into a new home in
LA—they also have a place in London—and, on top of the five
films she’s producing, she’s readying Barbie for next summer.
Robbie’s also in preproduction on an Ocean’s Eleven prequel that
she’ll star in and produce. Another franchise spin-off she’d been
attached to, a Pirates of the Caribbean film, is dead, she tells me.
“We had an idea and we were developing it for a while, ages ago,
to have more of a female-led—not totally female-led, but just a
different kind of story—which we thought would’ve been really
cool, but I guess they don’t want to do it,” she says of Disney.
There are directors she still hopes to work with, of course:
Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon Ho, and Céline Sciamma.
But more than anything, Robbie’s focus is on legacy. She talks Dress by Loewe.
Throughout: hair
about the films she watches and rewatches on her movie nights products by Iles
with her husband and friends—the ones from the ’20s or ’70s Formula; makeup
products by Chanel;
that “decades and decades on, can still hit you all over again.” nail enamel by
Robbie will make her share of them too. Just you watch. Q Chanel Le Vernis.

78 VA N I T Y FA I R
THE
V OICE Naomi Ackie,
the dazzling British
actor playing
Whitney Houston
in a new Hollywood
biopic, opens
up about her
surprising road from
drama school to
Star Wars to the
greatest love of all

By

YOHANA
D ESTA
Ph otog ra ph s
by

R UTH
OSSAI
S t yl ed
by

NICOLE
CHAPOTEAU

80 VA N I T Y FA I R
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 81

H
HALLOWEEN, 2021. Naomi Ackie had fully nailed Whitney Houston’s look
from the music video for “I Will Always Love You.” “The black suit, the
coiffed hair, and the red lips—iconic,” she says. Ackie wasn’t going to a
costume party. She was doing her millionth callback for the lead role in
the Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. The British actor, who
broke out in films like Lady Macbeth and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,
had initially resisted pursuing the role. “I was like, ‘Absolutely not. That
is too big.’ ” But her team talked her into it. So, there she was auditioning,
wearing sleek Houstonian drag and belting The Voice’s signature ballad.
Two months later, when Ackie was shooting the third season
of Master of None, her agents showed up at her London home
unannounced, blasting “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” from
a speaker. That’s how she learned that she’d snagged the role.
They celebrated with a socially distanced Champagne toast,
sprawled out on cushions in the hallway. Then Ackie had a real-
ization: She had landed the part. Now she had to play it. “That
took a long time to get my head around,” she says.
Ackie had never played someone as legendary as Houston
before, or even led a film. She first started acting at 11, later
training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Back
then, she had a wildly different career ambition: to run a theater
company. Her thinking, she says, was as follows: “I’m going to
concentrate on making really cool, small pieces of work, and
maybe one day I can do Broadway.” But then her screen career
kept ascending. Ackie won a BAFTA for her murderously good
turn in the Netflix series The End of the F***ing World, then played
the Resistance fighter Jannah in the most recent Star Wars film.
At the time she was cast by Lucasfilm, Ackie was 26 and still liv-
ing at home with her father, who’s her biggest supporter, slowly
reckoning with the ways her life was transforming.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody is her latest trans- STAR TURN
formation. Directed by Kasi Lemmons and written Naomi Ackie,
photographed
by Anthony McCarten (Bohemian Rhapsody), the in London
biopic traces Houston’s life from her upbringing in September.
in New Jersey, where her mother, Cissy Houston,
Dress and headpiece
an established soul singer, gave her vocal lessons. by Valentino
Though the film wasn’t finished when Ackie spoke Haute Couture;
to Vanity Fair, even select scenes make clear that bracelet by Dior
Fine Jewelry.
it covers the turning points in Houston’s life and
career, including her first meeting with industry Previous spread:
legend Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci), her tempestu- dress, shoes,
and gloves
ous marriage to Bobby Brown, and the birth of their by Balenciaga
daughter, Bobbi Kristina. The film also, Ackie says, Couture.
82 VA N I T Y FA I R
tackles Houston’s drug addiction, which contributed to her
accidental death by drowning in 2012 at just 48 years old. “This
project was about honoring her legacy, and I think there has
to be a real balance of the light and dark in that,” Ackie says.
She’s seen a rough cut of the film and “left feeling grateful for
what [Houston] gave us without feeling too weighed down by
the intricacies of her struggle with addiction. But it’s a part of
her life and that has to be acknowledged.”
To prepare for the role, Ackie gave herself a six-month berth
and read everything she could, including A Song for You, a memoir
by Robyn Crawford, one of Houston’s closest friends and col-
laborators. In the book, Crawford writes tenderly about their
relationship, claiming she and Houston were lovers: “We never
talked about labels, like lesbian or gay. We just lived our lives,
and I hoped it could go on that way forever.” Houston, a devout
Christian, ended their romance before her career took off, gifting
Crawford a Bible and telling her to keep it a secret.
Still, they stayed close: Crawford became Houston’s
assistant and, later, her creative director. Ackie speaks
delicately about the relationship, not wanting to reveal
how the biopic handles that narrative. (Nafessa Wil-
liams portrays Crawford in the film.) “I don’t feel like
it’s my place to put a label on it,” Ackie says. “But this
film definitely touches on what could have been.”
Ackie spoke to numerous people who knew Hous-
ton, including Davis and Whitney’s brother Gary. She
worked with a dialect coach to nail Houston’s accent,
creating video playlists of Houston’s speaking voice in her youth,
middle age, and final years to better mimic her vocal depth. She
kept the accent on set between scenes, leaning on the film’s hair
and makeup team to keep her honest. She finally perfected it after
coming into their trailer one day, fuming about something that
had pissed her off. “I’m still in character, and I’m talking shit!
And suddenly they all went, ‘Yo!’ ” Ackie bursts out laughing.
“That’s when it all clicked.” Perfecting the voice was essential.
With her high, cherubic cheekbones and gap-toothed grin, she
doesn’t pass for Houston, even with movie magic. “I don’t look
S E T D E S I G N , L U K E K E N E . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y R O S I E C A R T W R I G H T. 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 .
like Whitney! I know I don’t,” Ackie says. She worked past that,
H A I R , I S A A C P O L E O N ; M A K E U P , M ATA M A R I E L L E ; M A N I C U R E , S A S H A G O D DA R D ; TA I LO R , M I C H E L L E WA R N E R ;
focusing on their commonalities: “We run on the same rhythm.”
When filming wrapped, it took Ackie time to shake the role
off. “I felt, by the end, this love-hate situation with taking on this
responsibility,” she says. “I want to stay and hold on tightly to it,
but I also need to go.” She took a restorative break, then leapt
into her next project: Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, Pussy Island,
about a cocktail server invited to a mogul’s private isle of moneyed
hedonism. “Zoë is a force,” Ackie says. “We spent three months
in Mexico making this thriller-horror about power. It’s
probably one of the wildest films I’ve ever done.” After
that, she dove straight into Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey7.
The secretive sci-fi project is the Oscar-winning
director’s return to film after the staggering success
of Parasite. “He’s just so warm and smart,” Ackie says.
“I felt myself surrendering to his plan.”
She can’t say much else about the film—a defining
facet of this chapter of her life, where all her projects
are the rarefied, hush-hush sort. “You pinch yourself
a little bit,” she says. “It’s this weird feeling. You’re
plodding along, and then suddenly you look back at
where you’ve come from and you’re like, Oh my gosh.
It’s been a really long journey.” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023
84 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Clothing by
Chanel Haute
Couture; sandals by
Roger Vivier;
necklace by Chanel
High Jewelry.

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 85

Clothing, boots,
and accessories by
Marc Jacobs;
bracelet by Dior
Fine Jewelry.
 Jacket by
Schiaparelli
Haute Couture;
necklace by Bulgari
High Jewelry.
Throughout: hair
products by Ruka;
makeup products
by Clarins;
nail enamel by
Dior Vernis.

VA N I T Y FA I R DEC 2022/JAN 2023 87

Army Specialist
Dez Del Barba,
January 2019.

INCIDENT
88 VA N I T Y FA I R
For more than
70 years, an
obscure legal
doctrine
has prevented
active-duty
service members
from suing
the federal
government for
wrongful injury
or death occurring
outside of
combat. Jurists
left and right
have long
lamented the
decision and Army Master Sergeant
Richard Stayskal on
begged for deployment in Iraq, 2009.

Congress to act.
So why is justice
that’s available
to every American
civilian still
being denied
those who serve
our nation?
 B y MAX I M I LLIAN
POT TE R

TO SERVICE DEC 2022/JAN 2023 89

IN
In 2018, 21-year-old Dez Del Barba had put
his plan for the rest of his life in motion.
A senior at Sonoma State University, Dez
had set his sights on becoming an officer
in the United States Army. Already, he
had been accepted into Officer Candidate
School and was on his way to completing
the necessary prerequisite of basic train-
ing. To get a jump on basic, Dez enlisted in
the Army National Guard and obtained a
leave from Sonoma State for a semester of
his senior year. After basic, he would finish
his degree in business management while
serving in the National Guard; then, upon
graduation, he would immediately transi-
tion to Army active duty and the path to
becoming an officer.
This planning and hustle was classic
Dez. He had graduated from Lincoln
High School in his hometown of Stock-
ton, California, in 2015, with honors and
as a lacrosse star. His senior year with the
Lincoln Trojans, he earned the team’s
offensive MVP honors. At Sonoma State,
he continued his academic excellence and
stayed fit as a gym rat. When I met with
Dez’s parents, Mark and Kamni, at their
home in Stockton in the winter of 2022,
Mark had recently retired after 21 years
as a corrections officer; I asked if he’d
ever taken Dez to work to scare his son
straight. “There wasn’t ever any need,”
Mark replied without hesitation. “Dez just
always did the right thing.”
Mark and Kamni had ample reason to
believe their only son would thrive in the
Army. They were a military family. Kam-
ni had served in the active-duty Army
National Guard for 23 years, including a
90 VA N I T Y FA I R
deployment to Iraq in 2010. Her sister is
an Army lieutenant colonel. Mark’s father
was a Marine. Seated on the couch next to
her husband in their living room, Kamni
talked about how her parents immigrated
from India when she was a child and how
grateful she is to this country. “That was a
big part of what inspired me to enlist,” she
said. Mark and Kamni accepted that one
day Dez might be deployed to combat-
risk zones. “But,” Kamni told me, “we
never thought the Army would do to our
son what they did to our son.”
Dez began basic at Fort Benning,
Georgia, in January 2019. According to
the Army’s own investigation of what
later happened, he did well during his
first five weeks. “[Private First Class]
Del Barba was motivated and always
willing to train. We never had any issues
from him,” one drill sergeant wrote in
his sworn statement. (Most names in the
report are redacted.) “Was a hard work-
er,” another drill sergeant wrote. “Always
pushing members of his team….”
On February 2, only a few weeks after
he left for basic, Mark and Kamni received
a letter from Dez. He wrote that one of
his fellow trainees died of a heart attack,
leaving behind a baby and a pregnant
wife. Kamni chalked it up to unavoidable
tragedy. The Del Barbas next heard from
Dez on February 3, a phone call on Super
Bowl Sunday. Mark thought his son’s voice
sounded hoarse and asked him if every-
thing was okay. Yeah, Dez said, just there’s
a lot of screaming and yelling. “Made
sense,” Mark told me. “You’re in basic
training, there’s yelling.” Kamni added,
“We did tell him to go to the doctor.”
Eight days later, on the morning of
February 11, Mark and Kamni got anoth-
er call from Fort Benning; Dez was in
the hospital. Within hours, a friend was
driving them to the San Francisco air-
port, and they were on the phone with a
doctor at Piedmont Columbus Regional-
Midtown hospital.
The doctor informed them Dez was
going into emergency surgery. He said
that Dez had necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-
eating bacterial infection that spreads
rapidly. The surgery would be for debride-
ment, to remove infected skin and tissue,
hopefully to stop the spread. The mortal-
ity rate for such an infection is around 25
percent. Without rapid diagnosis, surgery,
and treatment, death is a virtual certainty.
After the call, Mark and Kamni began
asking each other questions: “How does
he get a flesh-eating disease?” Mark told
me, recalling that conversation. He
emphasized certain words to convey their
concern and confusion. “Was it in the
mud? How does he get a flesh-eating dis-
ease?” As Mark and Kamni talked about
their son, they took turns without prompt-
ing; when one spoke, the other listened.
I asked if there was a backstory behind
the name Dez. Mark, a stocky guy with a
youthful face who wore an unbuttoned
flannel over a T-shirt and blue Vans, said
that, growing up, his favorite band was the
punk group Black Flag. One of the lead
singers was Dez Cadena; Kamni agreed
THE HISTORY OF
THE FERES DOCTRINE
READS BOTH AS A
QUIRK OF AMERICAN
JURISPRUDENCE AND
ONE CONTINUALLY
UNFOLDING INJUSTICE
THAT TRACES
ITS WAY BACK TO
THE WANING DAYS OF
WORLD WAR II.
to let Mark go with the name. On the
couch, the parents looked at each other,
then Mark said, “We gave the Army a
healthy, athletic, beautiful young man….”
His voice wilted. He tried hard not to cry.
In the year following Dez’s diagnosis,
he endured more than 40 skin-grafting
procedures and two amputations on his
left leg. More than 50 percent of his skin
was replaced. His left leg from just above
the knee was removed. The kid who had
been so full of purpose and so optimis-
tic about his future attempted suicide.
Throughout all of it, the Del Barbas cared
for their son, trying hard to maintain their
hope and sanity. Eventually, they began
 to piece together answers to their ques-
tions about how their son became sick.
In early February 2019, Dez con-
tracted a common case of strep throat,
easily treatable with antibiotics, and
one that, Mark and Kamni later learned,
base command and medical staff should
have been especially vigilant against. The
trainee who had died suddenly, that Dez
had written home about, was 22-year-
old Christopher Huss. The Del Barbas
later obtained his autopsy report; his fatal
heart attack was due to cardiac arrhyth-
mia. Contributing factors included strep
and influenza. Huss died on January 22,
2019, a couple of weeks before Dez began
making almost daily trips to base medical
services, presenting symptoms consistent
with a quickly intensifying case of strep.
Mark and Kamni learned that rather
than appropriately examining Dez, medi-
cal staff blew him off and sent him back
to training: once examining him for less
than three minutes, once refusing to see
him at all. According to a sworn state-
ment in the Army’s report on Dez, one
of the medical staffers told him, “Go the
fuck away.” When Dez tested positive for
strep, no one bothered to notify him. As
Dez was losing the ability to walk, a drill
sergeant called him a “weak pussy” in
front of his fellow trainees. The Del Bar-
bas say it was only after Dez was rushed to
the ER that Fort Benning command took
the steps to realize that indeed it had an
epidemic of strep on base—hundreds of
trainees were infected.
“They knew—they knew—Dez tested
positive for strep,” Kamni told me. “All
they had to do was call him to come in and
administer the shot. All they had to do
P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : C O U R T E S Y O F T H E D E L B A R B A FA M I LY. C O U R T E S Y O F T H E S TAY S K A L FA M I LY.
was give him the basic standard of care.”
In March 2019, an Army spokesman
told local news outlets the base had
worked to combat the strep outbreak,
including spending $1.7 million on anti-
biotics. “We take these unfortunate
incidents very seriously, and actively
review our training regulations and
procedures to prevent other serious inci-
dents from occurring in the future,” the
spokesperson said.
Infuriated, the Del Barbas reached out
to attorneys to file a lawsuit. “We wanted
people held accountable,” Kamni told me.
Every lawyer they spoke with informed the
Del Barbas that they had no legal stand-
ing to file a case against the military or
against any of those in its employ because
of something called the Feres doctrine.
VERY FEW PEOPLE outside, or
for that matter inside, the United States
military have ever heard of the Feres
doctrine or have any idea that current
law denies active-duty service mem-
bers the ability to sue their employer
in civil court. Most of those who are
familiar with Feres have encountered it
either because they are a service mem-
ber who was a victim of an injury caused
by military negligence or because they
are family of a service member wrong-
fully killed in noncombat-related
circumstances. The doctrine, which
takes its name from a 1950 Supreme
Court ruling, prevents service members
from suing the federal government for
any alleged wrongful injury or death that
occurs “incident to service.” There is a
lot packed into Feres, especially that last
phrase: incident to service.
Every year, according to a 2016 study
coauthored by a doctor at Johns Hop-
kins University, medical errors cause
approximately 251,000 patient deaths,
which represent about 9.5 percent of all
deaths in the United States. That study
is seminal and hotly debated because
there has been almost no other scholarly
research on the subject. A 9.5 percent rate
of fatality means medical malpractice is
a leading cause of death in the US, killing
more Americans than strokes, accidents,
or Alzheimer’s. Consequently, every
year, some 20,000 medical malpractice
lawsuits are filed in the United States.
Meanwhile, in the US military, which
counts 1.4 million members, the annual
average number of medical malpractice
lawsuits that active-duty military per-
sonnel file against military health care
providers is practically zero.
Just like in the civilian world, medical
staff in the military make mistakes and
there is negligence that sometimes causes
harm or death, categorized as “sentinel
events.” According to the most recent
data available, from 2014 through 2018
there were a total of 657 sentinel events,
an average of 131 per year. The publicly
available data doesn’t make a distinction
between injuries and deaths. According
to those figures, that would mean less
than a tenth of 1 percent of active-duty
military members are harmed or killed by
medical treatment in military care. Those
statistics almost certainly underreport
the actual number of sentinel events.
In 2018 the Government Accountability
Office concluded the military’s tracking
process for sentinel events was “frag-
mented and inconsistent” and as a result
“impeded…complete information about
sentinel events.”
THE HISTORY OF the Feres doc-
trine reads both as a quirk of American
jurisprudence and one continually
unfolding injustice that traces its way
back to the waning days of World War II.
On Saturday morning, July 28, 1945,
Lieutenant Colonel William F. Smith
Jr., a decorated combat pilot, took off
in a stripped-down B-25 bomber from
Massachusetts bound for Newark, New
Jersey. Smith was to pick up his boss, a
colonel, in Newark and return to South
Dakota, where they both were stationed.
The weather that day was bad. Air traf-
fic control directed Smith to delay his
take-off time. Smith, a West Point grad
who had a reputation for being cocky,
ignored the air boss directives. In New
York airspace, Smith found himself in
dense fog with close to zero visibility.
When he emerged, he was flying hun-
dreds of feet above, or rather through,
midtown Manhattan. A guest reported
seeing the bomber pass the 22nd floor
of the Biltmore Hotel. In Smith’s attempt
to pull up, he crashed into the 79th floor
of the 103-story Empire State Building.
Smith and two military passengers, one
who had hopped a last-minute ride, died
instantly. The crash also killed 11 civilians
who were among the few people working
that Saturday morning. The tragedy was
big news, and as the media reported more
information about Smith’s recklessness,
the public demanded justice. Govern-
ment officials working through Congress
attempted to provide compensation to
the civilian families to settle the matter,
but some families wanted to file lawsuits
in federal court. They ran up against the
doctrine of sovereign immunity.
Sovereign immunity had been in place
since the nation’s founding. That principle
held that the federal government is a sov-
ereign power and therefore could not be
sued. Claims against the US federal gov-
ernment were then handled, as much as
they were, on a case-by-case basis, fielded
and more or less adjudicated by Congress.
There are a couple of remarkable things
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 91

about that arrangement. One: The leg-
islative branch assumed responsibilities
of the judiciary. And two: The founders
allowed the notion that the king could do
no wrong to take root in America.
A year after the crash, public pressure
compelled Congress to pass the Federal
Tort Claims Act, in which the federal gov-
ernment waived its immunity to lawsuits
with 13 specific exceptions. Among them,
the act barred “any claim arising out of
the combatant activities of the military or
naval forces, or the Coast Guard, during
time of war.” In layman’s speak, if you’re
in the military and you get hurt or die in
activities related to battle, that’s a risk that
comes with the job. What the FTCA did
not bar from a possible tort claim against
the government were injuries due to neg-
ligence or wrongful death sustained in a
military context unrelated to combat. Or so
it seemed until four years later, when Feres
v. United States reached the Supreme Court.
LAST WINTER, AROUND the
same time I visited the Del Barbas, I
joined Army Green Beret Richard Stayskal
for what was outwardly a joyous moment.
Stayskal, who served with distinction as a
92 VA N I T Y FA I R
Marine before enlisting in the Army, was
then nearing 20 years of decorated mili-
tary service; he and his wife, Megan, and
their two teen girls were about to move
into a newly constructed home. During
one of the days I was with Stayskal, the
builders were pouring the cement for the
driveways and path to the front door, and
the contractor invited the family over to
imprint their hands.
It was just a few days before Thanks-
giving and unseasonably warm in the
rural, wooded area near Pinehurst, North
Carolina. Sunlight flickered through tree
leaves that fluttered in a breeze. I asked
Megan if she wanted me to take photos of
the moment. “Please,” she said. Stayskal
went first, placing a hand in the cement
at the edge of the driveway; then Megan;
then each of their girls, Carly and Addi-
syn. As the ritual unfolded, a sadness
suddenly arrived like an uninvited guest.
No one spoke a word of it, but it was there,
quiet and heavy in the air.
Stayskal’s new house had been funded
by the nonprofit Operation Finally Home,
which provides homes and home modifi-
cations for gravely ill and injured military
veterans or their families. Although the
Stayskals would be together in their new
home that holiday season, barring a mir-
acle, the day was imminent when Megan
A LONG ROAD
Del Barba in
the hospital in
March 2019,
the month after
contracting
a flesh-eating
bacterial infection
that resulted
in the loss of half
of his left leg.
“We gave the
Army a healthy,
athletic, beautiful
young man,”
his father said.
and the girls would pass by those hand-
prints and 40-year-old Sergeant First
Class Stayskal would be forever gone
from their lives.
That day at the new house, Stayskal
was dressed in a hooded sweatshirt with
the logo of his Army Special Warfare
Training Group, shorts, and a weathered
ball cap. He was all smiles and appeared
every bit the fit warrior. Like many Spe-
cial Forces operators, he had an unruly
beard and exuded gung-ho energy and
optimism. Stayskal is not one of those
people who cannot sit still; he can and he
did so during the many hours we talked
about what was done to him, and as we
talked about what he has done about it.
There’s no question, however, that he
prefers to be in motion, ideally on some
kind of mission. Within three minutes of
meeting him, he told me this himself and
asked if I minded jumping in his pickup
with him while he ran errands. “What else
am I going to do, just stay home and die?”
he said. “That’s not fun. I’ve got plenty of
C O U R T E S Y O F T H E D E L B A R B A FA M I LY.
time to do that.” Stayskal’s resilience is
no façade. It’s part of what enabled him
to survive the combat he faced in Iraq as
a Marine and then return for more as an
Army Green Beret.
Unlike Del Barba, Stayskal told me that
when he was 19 years old, he was “kind
of lost.” A freshman in college, he didn’t
enjoy school and he was doing poorly.
He wasn’t from a military family. He was
born and raised in San Jose, California,
and got the idea of enlisting while watch-
ing the movie U-571. The film is set during
World War II; a crew of Americans takes
over a German sub. The scene that got
Stayskal was one in which an American
sailor sacrifices his life to save his crew.
“It wasn’t like I wanted to see people die,
especially people I know and am friends
with,” he said. “It was just so admirable
that somebody was willing to give their
life for others. I wanted to be amongst
those people that have that thought pro-
cess, that they would if they had to. Before
I knew it, I was in the Marines.”
A year later, it was 2004 and Stayskal
was in Iraq, one of four Marine snip-
ers on patrol, outnumbered and taking
heavy fire. The ongoing battle of Fallu-
jah had flushed enemy insurgents out of
the town. Stayskal’s sniper team was on
the outskirts, near the Euphrates River.
Tipped by a local, the insurgents came
at them with RPGs, machine-gun fire,
and their own sniper. Stayskal’s team
radioed for backup but everyone was
engaged; they’d have to hold out for now.
The insurgent sniper got Stayskal with a
shot that entered his left side where the
body armor wasn’t.
A corpsman rushed to him and lay by
his side as the enemy ran their way. Stays-
kal could see them coming; couldn’t have
been more than 40 yards away, shooting.
With his good arm, Stayskal propped his
rifle on the magazine and emptied it.
The way he figured, there was no way
the corpsman could drag him out of
there without getting killed too. It was
just a matter of minutes before the enemy
would reach them. Stayskal grabbed his
only grenade, held it on his chest, and told
the corpsman to leave. “I wasn’t going out
alone,” he told me. The corpsman said
he wasn’t going anywhere. Recalling
this, Stayskal choked up. He took a min-
ute and continued: He heard somebody
yell, “Everybody stay down.” And then he
said, “You just could hear it getting louder
and louder.” The whoop-whooping of the
blades of Marine choppers that laid down
the fire that ended the firefight.
Stayskal had been shot through the
lung. While he was transported from Iraq
to the US military hospital in Germany,
he flatlined at least twice. But before
the end of his four years in the Marines
was over, Stayskal made a full recovery.
Despite wanting to stay in the Marines,
he honored his mother’s pleas and left at
the end of his enlistment.
Back home, in 2005, Stayskal was earn-
ing good money working with his father’s
contracting company. He returned to
school and put up with the civilian world
for as long as he could. “I don’t know
if I gave it a chance or I didn’t give it a
chance,” he told me. “But it wasn’t work-
ing for me. I’d be sitting there listening
to people complain about things, and
I’m thinking, God, wouldn’t some of my
STAYSKAL RECALLS
THE DOC LOOKING HIM
IN THE EYE AND
SAYING, “SO YOU’RE
TELLING ME NOBODY
TOLD YOU? I AM
A DOCTOR AND I DON’T
LIKE THE WORD
SUING, BUT YOU
SHOULD BE SUING THE
CRAP OUT OF
SOMEBODY FOR THIS.”
buddies give anything to be able to com-
plain instead of being dead. I wanted to
go back to what I knew and what I loved
and where I felt like I fit in.”
By then he had met Megan. Within six
months they were married and Megan was
pregnant. Stayskal also had been trying to
get back into the military. He was still only
25 and a highly decorated combat vet with
a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He says
the Marines didn’t take him back because
he left the Corps, and the Navy rejected
him because of his preexisting injury. In
July 2006, he went off to Fort Campbell in
Kentucky and began his career as an Army
infantryman with the 101st Airborne Divi-
sion. In no time, he was selected for Special
Forces and earned his Green Beret. He was
deployed on special ops many times over,
and twice more to Iraq. Ribbons, badges,
medals—Stayskal will shrug it off, but he
earned a bunch.
By 2015, Stayskal was assigned to the
1st Special Warfare Training Group at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, and later select-
ed to attend Special Forces Underwater
Operations School, which required him
to complete a dive course. Because of the
injury to his lung, he first had to get a CT
scan. On January 27, 2017, Stayskal says,
a physician at the Womack Army Medical
Center reviewed his scan and cleared him.
At dive school, in March 2017, Stays-
kal could barely finish. He had trouble
breathing. “Everything was hell,” he told
me. “Simplest of tasks were difficult.” For
the first time in his military career, Stay-
skal failed to qualify. He began coughing
up specks of blood. He didn’t think it
could be anything serious. After all, he’d
been given a clean bill of health from
Womack two months earlier.
Stayskal’s breathing challenges inten-
sified. He had to sleep with his torso
elevated. If he attempted to sleep flat,
breathing was a chore and he would
have nightmares of drowning. By May
he felt so bad at work that he went to a
base clinic. A nurse recommended he be
transported by ambulance to Womack,
where he had been scanned and cleared
in January, for a more thorough exam.
After X-rays, a doctor came to him.
“We reread your scans from January,”
is how Stayksal recalls the conversa-
tion. “We think we see something,
but I’m not a specialist.” The doctor
informed Stayskal he would refer him
to a pulmonologist.
Within days, the specks of blood that
Stayskal had been occasionally coughing
up were now more than that. He tried
to get his appointment moved up, to no
avail. On May 22 he was at work at Fort
Bragg and felt so bad, his commanding
officer cut some red tape and got Stays-
kal to a civilian hospital. Still, it wasn’t
until June 20 that Stayskal got a CT scan
there. It showed a mass on the upper part
of his right lung.
A week later, Stayskal returned for a
biopsy. The prep and procedure gave him
flashbacks to the hospitalization after he
was shot. “I remember the nurses saying,
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 93
‘You’ll be all right.’ And then I woke up
and I remember Megan was crying.” He
had stage IIIA lung cancer. “I was like, and
so what?” The “so what” was at 36 years
old, Stayskal learned he was terminally ill.
While he and Megan were in one of the
first meetings with the civilian pulmon-
ologist, the doctor asked: “Why didn’t
you come in sooner?” Stayskal was puz-
zled and responded that he came as soon
as he could. The civilian pulmonologist
had obtained Stayskal’s CT scans of the
previous January (five months earlier)
from Womack; he informed Stayskal
and Megan it clearly showed Stayskal
had a tumor in his lung. Stayskal recalls
the doc looking him in the eye and say-
ing, “So you’re telling me nobody told
you? I am a doctor and I don’t like the
word suing, but you should be suing the
crap out of somebody for this.” The pul-
monologist explained to Stayskal that if
he had begun treatment for his tumor
in January, his chance of survival would
have been 90 percent. Now his prognosis
was a few months to a couple of years, if
he was lucky.
In May 2019, a spokesperson for
Womack Army Medical Center told The
Fayetteville Observer they were “com-
mitted to providing the highest quality
care in the military health system. We
continue to support SFC Stayskal in his
ongoing medical treatment.”
When I spoke privately with Megan,
I mentioned that despite everything,
her husband appeared to be genuinely
upbeat. “Yeah, he’s a pretty upbeat guy,”
she said. She paused, holding back tears.
“But he has his moments, like the other
night in bed, our heads are on the pillow
and it’s just us, looking at one another,
and he takes my hand and he’ll say, ‘I’m
not ready to die. I don’t want to leave you
and the girls.’ ”
Stayskal soon learned that the cancer
had spread—to the left side of his neck,
in his lymph nodes, spleen, liver, pelvis,
right hip, and spine. He was now stage
IV. Just as the pulmonologist advised,
Stayskal and Megan began contacting
lawyers. Just like the Del Barbas, Stays-
kal says he was told that he had no legal
standing to sue. When Stayskal learned
what Feres was, the Marine sniper who
propped his gun, emptied his magazine,
and grabbed the grenade, that Stayskal
made up his mind that if he was going
to die, he was going to take out the Feres
doctrine with him.
94 VA N I T Y FA I R
FERES V. UNITED STATES was
one of three similar cases that had worked
its way to the Supreme Court, which con-
solidated them for consideration in 1950.
The plaintiffs in each were either active-
duty military members or the family of a
decedent killed while on active duty. The
primary defendant in all three was the
government. The first suit was filed by
the family of Army Lieutenant Rudolph
Feres, who died in a barracks fire caused by
faulty heater wiring. Feres’s widow alleged
officers who put him in the barracks knew
or should have known the heating plant
was defective and, further, that the bar-
racks fire guard on duty the evening of the
fire was also negligent. In Jefferson v. United
States, a soldier underwent an abdominal
operation and suffered post-op complica-
tions; in a follow-up procedure, surgeons
removed from the soldier’s stomach a
towel 30 inches long by 18 inches wide;
it was marked “Medical Department
U.S. Army.” The final suit, Griggs v.
IN 1987, JUSTICE
ANTONIN SCALIA
WROTE, “FERES
WAS WRONGLY
DECIDED AND
HEARTILY DESERVES
THE ‘WIDESPREAD,
ALMOST UNIVERSAL
CRITICISM’ IT
HAS RECEIVED.”
United States, was brought by the widow
of Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Griggs, who
alleged her husband’s death during sur-
gery had been caused by negligent Army
physicians. After hearing arguments, the
Court ruled against all plaintiffs and dis-
missed the cases.
The majority opinion, authored by Jus-
tice Robert Jackson, harnessed the phrase.
Jackson wrote: “The Government is not
liable under the Federal Tort Claims
Act for injuries to servicemen where the
injuries arise out of or are in the course of
activity incident to service.” Essentially,
even noncombat injuries or malpractice
suffered by military members could not
form the basis for a lawsuit. If Congress
had wanted to allow such claims, the
Court determined, it would have made
that more clear in the language of the act.
The Feres doctrine was born.
In the seven decades and rulings since
that foundational Court opinion, Feres
has united a broad, bipartisan swath of
judges and legal minds who cite it as
an example of staggering judicial over-
reach. From their perspective, the ruling
is a quintessential example of activist
judges legislating from the bench, divin-
ing Congress’s intent rather than abiding
the statutory text as written.
In a dissenting opinion regarding a
Feres doctrine case before the Supreme
Court in 1987, Justice Antonin Scalia
wrote, “Feres was wrongly decided and
heartily deserves the ‘widespread, almost
universal criticism’ it has received.” In
that dissenting opinion, Scalia joined
with the three liberal judges on the Court:
Justices William Brennan, Thurgood
Marshall, and John Paul Stevens. Scalia
closed their dissent with an impassioned
expression of anger over “congressional
failure to act.”
Since 1950, the Supreme Court has
considered seven Feres doctrine cases.
Though each case had its unique nuance,
all of them essentially rehashed the
same core issues. And yet, in nearly
every case, the Court added to or other-
wise tweaked the previous precedents
as the basis for dismissing the new claim
before the Court.
If there is any consistency, it is that
nearly every opinion on a Feres-related
case has petitioned Congress to amend
the torts claim law. “These consider-
ations, it is said, should persuade us to
cast upon Congress, as author of the
confusion, the task of qualifying and
clarifying its language,” the Court wrote
in its 1950 decision.
The Feres doctrine doesn’t only bar
service members from filing medical
malpractice claims against the Depart-
ment of Defense. Existing precedents
make it virtually futile to file other
 THE GOOD
FIGHT
Stayskal in the
hospital in 2018,
the year after a
civilian doctor
told him the
military had
misdiagnosed his
by then terminal
lung cancer.
When he decided
to pursue a
lawsuit, Stayskal
was told he
had no standing
to sue.
actions too—such as those that might
arise from harm and death resulting
from alleged negligence. On April 22,
2020, Private First Class Vanessa Guillén
was bludgeoned to death by Specialist
Aaron Robinson on base at Fort Hood,
Texas; he then dismembered her corpse
and buried the pieces along the banks of
a nearby river. Robinson died by suicide
before he could be arrested. Before her
murder, Guillén told her family that
she had been harassed by a supervisor
(not Robinson). In December 2020, the
Army’s own investigation found that
officers at Fort Hood had created a “per-
missive environment for sexual assault
and sexual harassment at Fort Hood,”
and disciplined 14 officers. The Guillén
family has filed a suit. But despite the
culture of dereliction of duty and will-
ful negligence, Feres makes achieving
justice nearly impossible. In May 2021,
the Supreme Court declined to hear
another suit brought by a former West
Point cadet who claims she was raped
C O U R T E S Y O F T H E S TAY S K A L FA M I LY.
on campus and that the Army failed to
deal with the “pervasive and well-known
culture of sexual violence” at the acad-
emy. In a statement issued by the cadet’s
legal team, one of her attorneys said, “No
service member should ever be told that
their rape is ‘incident to service.’ ”
THE MOST RECENT medical
malpractice Feres-related case to reach
the Supreme Court came in 2019. Lieu-
tenant Rebekah Daniel, a 33-year-old
Navy nurse, died in 2014 following a
massive postpartum hemorrhage at
the naval hospital in Bremerton, Wash-
ington, within hours of the birth of
her daughter, Victoria. A district court
barred her family’s malpractice claim,
citing Feres, and the Ninth Circuit Court
“regretfully” affirmed.
The plaintiff, Daniel’s widowed hus-
band, petitioned the Supreme Court
directly, asking it to overturn Feres. In
May 2019, the Court officially declined
to review the case. Justice Clarence
Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion that
quoted Scalia’s language from 1987 and
bluntly chastised Congress for failing
to clarify the FTCA language. Thom-
as went further: “Such unfortunate
repercussions—denial of relief to military
personnel and distortions of other areas
of law to compensate—will continue to
ripple through our jurisprudence as long
as the Court refuses to reconsider Feres.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not join
in Thomas’s dissent; however, she wrote
that she, too, would have granted review.
The same month of the Daniel deci-
sion, Dez Del Barba was in a hospital
undergoing one of his 40-plus skin
grafting procedures, and Richard Stay-
skal was assessing the battlefield to take
aim at the Feres doctrine his way. Stayskal
had begun working with a Florida-based
attorney, Natalie Khawam. Stayskal’s
mom, Kitty, had googled her way to
Khawam’s practice, “the Whistleblower
Law Firm.” As Kitty told me, “I figured,
well, Richard is a whistleblower.” Kha-
wam doesn’t have a personality; she is a
personality. Get her talking and she just
goes. Fuck is one of her favorite words.
“When Richard’s mom sent that email,
I didn’t know what the fuck Feres was,
never heard of it,” she told me. “I was
disgusted by what she told me. I looked
Feres up and thought, This doesn’t make
sense; this case should be a slam dunk.”
By the time Khawam met Stays-
kal, she had experience with cases
against the likes of the Department
of Homeland Security and the Drug
Enforcement Agency.
“I thought maybe Richard hasn’t been
talking to the right people,” Khawam
said. Then she contacted a colleague who
had a wealth of experience in malpractice
cases. “He says, ‘Poor guy is screwed,’ ”
she recalled. C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 3 6
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 95
FAME

96 VA N I T Y FA I R
Hollywood director and Rolling Stone veteran Cameron Crowe is taking
his rock-movie classic ALMOST FAMOUS to Broadway
BY MICHAEL RIEDEL P H O T O G R A P H S B Y S E B A ST I A N K I M

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 97

“GO CAMERON
FISHING,”
CROWE’S
MOTHER, ALICE,
SAID ON A SUNNY
SEPTEMBER DAY
IN 2019.
Crowe, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director, was
reluctant to go fishing. A few days earlier, Alice, age 97, had
fallen out of bed, and he wanted to be on hand in case she need-
ed anything. But he had a day off from grueling rehearsals for
a new musical he was about to open at the Old Globe Theatre
in his hometown of San Diego, and he’d planned to take some
colleagues out on a boat.
“I’m going to be fine,” his mother insisted. “Have fun with
your people. And this year—it’s going to be great. I’m so happy.”
So he went fishing. There was no cell service out on the Pacif-
ic, but when the boat came in to dock, Crowe’s phone lit up. His
mother had gone into cardiac arrest and was in the hospital.
The prognosis wasn’t good, but attendants told Crowe, “This
woman is a fighter.”
That he knew. “There’s a play about to open at the Old Globe
about just how much of a fighter she is,” he told them.
“Then we’ve got to keep her alive,” an attendant said.
The play was Almost Famous, a musical adaptation of Crowe’s
2000 autobiographical movie about a 15-year-old aspiring rock
journalist (Crowe, in 1973, freelancing for Rolling Stone); Still-
water, the band he’s profiling; and the teenager’s loving but
fiercely protective mother, a widow who fears rock and roll will
trap her son in a hell of drugs and degeneracy.
Derailed by COVID-19 for two years, Almost Famous opened
on Broadway at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater in November. It
features a young, multiethnic cast of newcomers, a group of
actors so sexy that they remind some old Broadway hands of
the original cast of Rent. Look for Solea Pfeiffer, Casey Likes,
Chris Wood, Jana Djenne Jackson, Emily Schultheis, and Julia
Cassandra to light up the Great White Way.
When it comes to casting, Crowe, 65, knows what he’s doing.
Almost Famous made stars of Billy Crudup as Russell Hammond,
the handsome lead guitarist of the midlevel rock band Stillwater,
and Kate Hudson as Penny Lane, the band’s chief groupie or,
as she prefers to think of herself, its muse. But it was Frances
McDormand as the mother—Elaine Miller—who stole the movie
with such lines as “Rock stars have kidnapped my son” and her
11th commandment: “Don’t take drugs!”
Crowe’s mother, a college professor and social activist, loved
the movie. But she was even more excited about the musical.
She’d been a devoted theatergoer ever since she saw Marlon
Brando in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar
98 VA N I T Y FA I R
Named Desire. When Crowe was growing up in San Diego—
practically across the street from the Old Globe—she took, or
rather dragged, him to the theater. “She would say, ‘Let’s go
see these Shakespeare plays. You’ll brag about it later,’ ” Crowe
recalled. “And I was like, ‘No, I won’t. I want to stay here and
try and sneak rock music into the house while you’re gone.’ ”
While Crowe was falling in love with Joni Mitchell in the
early 1970s, his mother was championing Stephen Sondheim,
especially his musical Company and her favorite song from the
show, “Barcelona.”
“You have it all in this song,” she told her son. “You have
sadness and romance and humor and character.”
It took Crowe nearly 40 years to get to the theater—detouring
through Hollywood with movies such as Fast Times at Ridgemont
High, Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, and Vanilla Sky—but when he
finally got there, Alice was thrilled. Though dependent on a walker
and requiring friends to help her get around, she reserved three
seats on the aisle for the entire Old Globe run of Almost Famous.
C R O W E : G R O O M I N G , VA U G H N A C O R D . C A S T : H A I R , C R A I G M I L L E R A N D S U S A N C O R R A D O ; M A K E U P , B R A N D A LY N F U LT O N W I L L I A M S ; C O S T U M E S , J O S H G A R O N A N D
of Almost Famous—the
C
ROWE’S ORIGINAL DRAFT
movie—had nothing to do with his mother or his teen-
age years covering bands such as the Allman Brothers,
D E B B I E LO U A L L E N ; P R O P S , M AT T H E W F R E W A N D A D D I S O N H E E R E N . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y A R E A 1 2 0 2 . 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 .
Led Zeppelin, and the Eagles (Russell is modeled on
Glenn Frey). The story was about a British publicist (Crowe wrote
the part with David Bowie in mind) who represented a British
rock band. There was a young reporter, but he was a minor char-
acter. Then, in draft after draft, “the publicist got smaller and the
personal story of the reporter got bigger,” Crowe said. “It was
like the personal was driving the story every step of the way.”
As Crowe was writing his movie, Austin Powers: International
Man of Mystery was released. “It was kind of burlesquing the
British stuff,” Crowe recalled. So he ditched the British band
and invented the Midwestern band Stillwater.
Brad Pitt was originally going to play Russell. Meryl Streep
was approached to play Elaine. And Kate Hudson signed on to
play Anita, Elaine’s rebellious daughter. At the time, Hudson
was a rising star. “Harvey Weinstein was already trying to get
Kate into romantic comedies,” Crowe said. “And I think people
were whispering to her, ‘You’re playing a small side part in this
movie? You’re not the star?’ And Kate said, ‘I promised Cameron
I was going to be in this movie. I love this movie. I’m going to
play this tiny sister part.’ ”
When Pitt and Streep decided others would be better suited
for their roles, Crowe met with Steven Spielberg, whose com-
pany DreamWorks, along with Vinyl Films, was producing the
movie. “The script is the star,” Spielberg told him. “Who’s the
best actor for these parts?” Crowe immediately thought of
Crudup, just then getting some attention in Hollywood. Crowe
also sent his script to McDormand, who had just won an Oscar
for Fargo. She wrote back: “I would love to be in your love letter
to rock.” When Sarah Polley, cast as Penny Lane, withdrew,
Spielberg advised, “Cast Kate Hudson.”
 “They say sometimes you get the
cast you deserve, and that’s the one case
where it actually came true,” said Crowe.
To create the character of Elaine,
Crowe dug into a cache of letters and
aphorisms his mother had sent him over
the years. Her pithy sayings—commands,
really—inspired many of McDormand’s
famous lines. Over dinner at Orso in
Manhattan not long ago, Crowe handed
me a folder containing some of Alice
Crowe’s “Meditations,” mostly written
in capital letters and all signed “M.”
“These could be embarrassing. For
me,” Crowe said.

CAMERON—YOU’RE IN A RUT!
REINVENT YOURSELF! TAKE A
RISK! FACE YOUR FEARS AND
THEY DISSOLVE.

‘C,’ NOBLE SON WHO ELEVATES

HUMANITY IN A DARK ‘HURLY
BURLY’ WORLD: PLEASE SPEED
UP CASTING! START DIRECTING
AND THE JOY WILL COME! CASTING CALL
The musical’s
TO MY NOBLE SON, RE: DIET. DID creator,
Cameron Crowe.
YOU EXERCISE TODAY? I LOVE Previous spread:
YOU! P.S. FACE YOUR FEARS AND Crowe with
the ensemble:
THEY WILL BACK DOWN! Rob Colletti,
Anika Larsen,
Drew Gehling,
Alice frequently visited the set during Chris Wood,
the making of Almost Famous. Crowe Solea Pfeiffer,
begged her not to bother McDormand. and Casey Likes.
“I turn around 30 seconds later and
Clothing by
she’s got Frances buttonholed,” he said. Emporio
McDormand handled the situation deftly. Armani; shoes
by Church’s;
“Alice,” she told Crowe’s mom, “[Elaine] socks by
is not going to be you, and it’s not going Pantherella;
to be me. It’s going to be somebody else.” hair products by
V76 by Vaughn;
In the end, Alice adored McDor- grooming
mand’s performance, though she had products by
Sisley-Paris.
one objection. “I didn’t go barefoot in the
house,” she told her son. “I never went
barefoot in the house.”
Critics praised Almost Famous and Crowe won the Oscar the makings of a hit jukebox musical, the kind of show in
for best original screenplay, but it flopped at the box office. It which old hits are shoehorned into a plot, the audience has
got “slaughtered,” Crowe remembered, by a rerelease of The plenty to drink, they sing and dance, go home happy, and the
Exorcist—from 1973. Crowe chuckled and added: “So 1973 cash register rings.
comes back to pound us and our little movie about 1973. It really Crowe turned down all the offers. Almost Famous was too per-
didn’t take off until people discovered the video.” sonal. He couldn’t see it as a musical, especially a jukebox musical.
Lia Vollack, then the head of Sony’s music and theater
several Broadway producers had departments, and British director Jeremy Herrin, who had

O
VER THE YEARS
approached Crowe about turning Almost Famous
into a musical. It is, after all, a movie about falling
in love with music. And its soundtrack—including
Simon & Garfunkel’s “America,” Joni Mitchell’s “River,” Lynyrd
Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” the Beach Boys’ “Feel Flows,” Clar-
ence Carter’s “Slip Away,” Todd Rundgren’s “It Wouldn’t Have
Made Any Difference,” and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”—has
staged the theatrical adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall,
convinced him otherwise. Vollack, who began her career at
16—as a roadie for Johnny Thunders and the Ramones—was
mining Sony’s catalog of famous movies, looking for something
that might have stage potential. She gave Herrin a list of 700
titles. Herrin’s first choice was Almost Famous. When he told
Vollack, “she had a kind of quirky response,” Herrin said. “She

ST Y L E D BY SAMANTHA GASMER DEC 2022/JAN 2023 99

twitched and said, ‘That’s funny because I’m trying to persuade
Cameron to turn it into a show. This is a very good sign.’ ”
Crowe still resisted until Herrin forced the issue. He flew from
New York to Los Angeles and asked for a meeting with Crowe.
“I’m a big rock fan,” said Herrin, adding that Almost Famous
“was good territory for me as a director. I could really plug into
my obsession with rock and roll. I wasn’t pitching ideas. I just
turned up with a genuine passion. I think anything else would
have stank of bullshit.”
Herrin and Vollack emphasized that what they liked most
about the movie was its intensely personal nature. The one thing
they did not want, they said, was a carbon copy of the movie.
And they rejected the idea of a jukebox musical. It seemed too
cheap and easy. Yes, they’d use some of the famous songs from
the soundtrack—“Tiny Dancer” had to be there, of course—but
to deepen the emotional impact of the story, they wanted an
original score.
“The thing they’d tell me all the time is that [in the theater]
there are no close-ups. ‘You know there are no close-ups, right?’
“YOU LEFT HOME AT 15 TO WRITE ABOUT
ONCE SAID TO HIM. “YOUR SISTER WENT
And I was like, ‘I know there are no close-ups,’ ” Crowe recalled.
In the theater, Herrin told him, the close-ups “are called songs.”
It was a tall order to blend new theater songs with Led Zep-
pelin “and have it all feel like it’s of the same world,” Vollack
said. “We wanted to have our cake and eat it too.” They briefly
considered Elton John to write new songs, but scheduling issues
made that impossible. Vollack then turned to Tom Kitt, who had
won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for the musical Next to Normal.
In addition to composing, Kitt, 48, is one of Broadway’s most
sought-after arrangers and orchestrators. And he knows his way
around rock music. He orchestrated Green Day’s American Idiot
and Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill for Broadway. Kitt leapt
at the chance to work with Crowe. Almost Famous was one of his
favorite movies—“every Cameron Crowe movie for me was an
event,” he said.
Growing up in Bedford, New York, Kitt had aspired to be
a singer-songwriter in the mode of Billy Joel, Elton John, and
James Taylor. He discovered the power of a well-crafted, inti-
mate rock ballad when he entered a high school battle of the
bands competition. He didn’t belong to a band, so he performed
Joel’s signature “Piano Man,” accompanying himself on the pia-
no and harmonica. The band before him was so loud, “the whole
place clears,” he recounted. “So I’m playing to an empty gym
and I’m not looking up. About midway through, I look up and
it is standing-room packed. And the rest of my set was just me
and my guitarist friend. And we tied for the win. They weren’t
sure if I qualified as a real band.”
Kitt and Crowe wrote much of the score to Almost Famous
on weekends in a room on the 28th floor of the Sony building in
100 VA N I T Y FA I R
New York City. The room is red, with a wraparound photograph
of the classical pianist Glenn Gould. Crowe would write memos
outlining scenes, relationships, and key moments in the story,
and then Kitt, sitting at a grand piano, would fashion the memos
into songs. Crowe is credited as co-lyricist, but any suggestion
that he’s in league with Oscar Hammerstein II, Larry Hart, or
Stephen Sondheim makes him blanch. “I’m just happy to shovel
coal into the furnace and let Kitt cook,” he says.
Prodded by Vollack, Herrin, and Kitt, Crowe dug deeper into
the family dynamic. As a teenager, he was pulled between his
strict mother and his rebellious older sister, Cindy, who left
home to become a flight attendant.
“You left home at 15 to write about Led Zeppelin,” his mother
once said to him. “Your sister went off to be a stewardess. Was
I not fun?”
“She wasn’t aware that her dogma was not fun, generally,”
Crowe said. “It could be. I thought it was a little more fun
than maybe my sister did.” The tension between mother and
daughter is funny in the movie, but in reality “it wasn’t a cute
rebellion,” Crowe said. “To survive, she had to leave the family.
It was kind of a life-or-death move. And the fact that it’s not cute
[in the musical] makes the whole story deeper.”
“My mother and I had a very complicated relationship,”
Cindy wrote in an email. “Music and travel became a refuge
for me. The unbreakable bond I had with my brother was our
lifelong passion for music. The play and its music have done
much healing for our family.”
ITT AND CROWE’S challenge was to fit their new songs
K snuggly next to the classics. They did not want the
narrative to grind to a halt every time an old favorite
jumped out of the score. Judging from the reviews
in San Diego, they’ve succeeded. “While plenty of pop culture’s
greatest hits have been turned into jukebox musicals, Almost
Famous is not one of them,” Variety wrote. “The majority of the
music consists of 20 original numbers. The end result? A backstage
pass to peek into a world that feels fantastical and real.” In the Los
Angeles Times, Charles McNulty noted: “Seamlessly incorporated
into the score are carefully chosen hits from the period…including
a mesmerizing rendition of ‘Tiny Dancer’ and a haunting rendi-
tion of Joni Mitchell’s ‘River.’ Kitt’s arrangements artfully weave
these vintage treasures into an enchanting tapestry of sound.”
“We’re lucky enough that Joni Mitchell gave us ‘River’ and
that’s tucked into a Tom Kitt song called ‘Lost in New York City,’ ”
Crowe said. “The two do a little dance together. That’s my favor-
ite music moment in the show.” Another favorite is “Morocco,”
sung by Penny Lane. It’s a plaintive, tender early-’70s-style
ballad inspired by his mother’s favorite song, “Barcelona.”
 To play Alice’s role—Elaine—the creative team cast Anika
Larsen, a veteran of five Broadway musicals, including Beautiful:
the Carole King Musical, in which she delivered a delightfully fun-
ny turn as King’s close friend, songwriter Cynthia Weil. Larsen
had never seen Almost Famous when she got the call, but as soon
as her agent told her she was up for the “Frances McDormand
part,” she said, “Oh, done. She’s my favorite actor of all time.
I will do a musicalized version of any role Frances McDormand
has ever played.” She watched the movie a few days before the
first pre-pandemic reading of Almost Famous, back in 2018.
She loved the script and was thrilled to discover she had three
“great songs.” But she was off her game during the run-throughs.
“I [didn’t] feel comfortable reading the lines. And then I realized
I’m trapped in Frances McDormand’s performance.” Larsen
battled it out and, with the help of director Herrin, eventually
created her own Elaine. She won’t watch the movie again “until
the day I leave the show.”
Solea Pfeiffer, making her Broadway debut at 28 (she toured
in Hamilton), is also steering clear of the movie while she’s in the
LED ZEPPELIN,” HIS MOTHER
OFF TO BE A STEWARDESS. WAS I NOT FUN?”
musical. She’s up against Kate Hudson’s portrayal of Penny Lane.
“I have adopted this attitude of when you are tackling some-
thing iconic,” she said, “just by virtue of being yourself within
it, you are already taking ownership.” It helps, she added, that
“I am 10 feet taller than Kate Hudson. And I’m not white.”
Penny Lane, the leader of the “Band-Aids,” a group of young
women who hung around rock bands at the time, is something of
an enigma in the movie, shielding herself from the world with a
pair of blue sunglasses and her suit of armor—a shearling coat.
We learn more about her in the musical through songs such as
“Morocco,” “The Real World,” and “Lost in New York City.”
“I love the idea of giving Penny Lane a little bit more back-
story, more agency,” Crowe said. “To me, Penny Lane is
generally the smartest person in the room. So it’s good to bring
more of that to the story.”
“One thing that I have really had to keep in mind is rec-
ognizing what it meant to have sexual autonomy [in 1973],”
said Pfeiffer. “Penny Lane was living in a world where a few
months before our story takes place, Roe v. Wade was passed in
the Supreme Court. What is really blowing my mind is that I’m
playing a character that actually has more rights than half of the
women in America right now.”
for Almost Famous in
D
URING EARLY WORKSHOPS
New York in 2018, Crowe sometimes ducked into
a room “to hide for a while because it stirred up
so much stuff.” The stage depictions of fights
between his mother and his sister, and his desperate attempt
to keep the peace, were raw and painful. “But the more we
did it, the more I would come back in the room and people
would still be talking about it. I knew we were in the right
direction when it started to [have] that beautiful-happy-sad
pain, as well as the giddy love of the music and where the
music takes you. But it wasn’t always easy to kind of smile
through sometimes.”
His mother kept tabs on the musical. She’d pop up on Zoom
chats and say, “Don’t do drugs!” She gave her stamp of approval
to “Morocco” and to Anika Larsen. Crowe has a photograph of
Alice watching a video of Larsen in rehearsal “and she’s just
sparkling. It’s all in her eyes.”
When the actor originally playing William Miller—the adoles-
cent Crowe—left to do a TV show, the creative team cast Casey
Likes, who, as a high school junior from Arizona in 2019, was
a finalist in the National High School Musical Theatre Awards.
Alice saw his performance tape and said, “Don’t let Casey Likes
get away. He’s great.”
“She was into the guerrilla warfare to the very end,” Crowe said
of the fight to keep a show going despite Broadway’s long odds.
During rehearsals in San Diego, Larsen repeatedly asked
Crowe if she could meet Alice. “You will, you will,” he told her.
And then she heard Alice was in a coma as a result of cardiac
arrest. Larsen emailed Crowe: “I don’t know if I’m overstepping
saying this, but could I just go visit her in the hospital? I know
she’s not awake, but they say people in comas can hear. We don’t
know.” The next day Crowe drove Larsen to the hospital. She
introduced herself to Alice, held her hand, and sang one of her
songs from the show.
saw Almost Famous at the Old
A
LICE CROWE NEVER
Globe. She died on September 11, 2019, two days
before the first preview.
“A dramatic exit,” said Crowe.
She’d never been shy about promoting her son. As her
health began to fail in her later years, she’d made frequent
visits to the Kaiser Permanente clinic. She’d ask the staff if
they’d ever seen Almost Famous or Jerry Maguire. If they said
yes, she’d tell them who her son was, call him up, and put them
on the phone with him: “Cameron, say hi to Warren. He’s look-
ing after me.”
“She made so many friends that way,” Crowe recalled.
Many people who knew Alice in San Diego came to see
Almost Famous and would talk to Crowe about her after the
show. Everybody had a story. Sitting there, night after night, in
the courtyard of the Old Globe, where his mother had dragged
him to see As You Like It and Richard III, Crowe had to laugh.
“So this is what the show has become,” he said. “The Alice
Crowe jamboree.” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 101
ANTWAUN SARGENT has
crashed the art world’s most
guarded gates, elevating dozens
of Black artists along the way.
In the process he’s become the
most buzzed-about curator-
gallerist on the scene, whether
the establishment likes it or not

BY Nate Freeman

102 VA N I T Y FA I R
SARGENT’S

PHOTOGRAPHS BY
Rafael
Pavarotti
STYLED BY
Gary David
Moore

ORDERS
 O
ON THE THURSDAY after Labor Day, the Gagosian gallery held a
dinner at Altro Paradiso, a haute pasta spot in New York’s SoHo.
Each year that September evening is a rite of passage in the art
world. The Chelsea galleries throw open their doors to the big
fall shows, the public floods the blocks between 10th and 11th
Avenues, and a select few get invited to dinners to celebrate it
all, with cocktails flowing late into the evening.
Of those galleries hosting dinners, Larry Gagosian’s is the
biggest, with 19 locations around the globe. That evening the
Houston-based artist Rick Lowe had debuted a suite of paintings
at Gagosian in his first New York solo show, which had come
on the heels of his inclusion in the Whitney Biennial earlier in
the year. A line snaked down West 24th Street, and staff had
to ensure passage for certain VIPs: Met director Max Hollein,
Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak, former cultural
commissioner Tom Finkelpearl, the Ghanaian British architect
Sir David Adjaye. The opening was set to close at 8 p.m., but by
8:30 the gallery was still thronged. Lowe, 61, finally arrived at
Altro around 9, flanked by a dozen family members from Ala-
bama, many of whom had never been to New York City. The
restaurant was crowded with well-wishers. David Breslin, who
would be announced as the new modern and contemporary
curator at The Met in a few weeks, was chatting with the artist
Cy Gavin. Gagosian COO Andrew Fabricant ate at a table stuffed
with collectors. The artist Awol Erizku held court at another
without ever removing his Marni sunglasses.
At the center of it all sat the show’s curator, Antwaun Sargent,
who joined the gallery as a director at the start of 2021. Dressed
in an outfit typical of his style—Gucci loafers with a Comme
des Garçons jacket and Esenshel wool cap—Sargent occupied a
seat reserved for Tyler Mitchell, the young photographer whose
own Sargent-organized show at Gagosian would open the fol-
lowing week in London. Mitchell was occupied for the evening
at a dinner hosted by Matthieu Blazy, creative director of the
Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta, at The Strand bookstore.
“Believe me, if I didn’t have to be here, I would be there—can
you believe it, a Bottega dinner at The Strand?” Sargent said,
his eyes wide.
Sargent is 34 years old and speaks with the authority of some-
one much older while still exhibiting the excitability of a Gen Z
TikTok star. His proclamations, which he can pose as outrageous
provocations without indicating that his tongue is fully in his
cheek, often end with a dramatic upswing in pitch. He’s lithe, a
former cross-country runner who still bikes hundreds of miles
a week, and often coils his body as he begins a story, affecting
a pounce when he hits his crescendo.
104 VA N I T Y FA I R
At Altro, it was difficult for tablemates to shift the subject as
Sargent opined, sipping a negroni and then a second negroni. We
discussed the sheer improbability of a dinner for a Lowe show at
Gagosian, the world’s most sales-obsessed gallery. The artist’s
practice has long been concerned with community organizing
in Houston’s Third Ward, about as far from the transactional
temple of Gagosian’s white cube as you could get. Yet Sargent
had landed him.
“In the middle of the pandemic, I called Rick and I said, ‘I
heard you’re making paintings,’ ” he told the audience at the
dinner in an all-eyes-on-me toast that had been preceded by
screams of “Antwaaaun.”
It was, in many ways, Sargent’s night as much as the artist’s—
a characterization the curator would strenuously disagree with,
telling me in the hours leading up to the event that “Tonight
is all about Rick, it’s about Rick.” Even so, as those pre-toast
chants indicated, it was also undeniably Sargent’s stage. In his
two brief years at Gagosian, Sargent, who not so long ago was
scraping together rent writing online, has become one of the
more fawned over, buzzed about, and mystifying forces in the
commercial gallery world.
Sargent’s trajectory from outsider to consummate insider
has come amid a movement to bring Black artists more into the
programming at blue-chip galleries and top-flight institutions,
where for centuries they’ve been marginalized or not shown
at all. No one has done this more vis-
CURATOR’S ibly than Sargent, becoming an art world
STATEMENT micro-celebrity along the way, with nearly
Antwaun Sargent, 100,000 Instagram followers. Openings for
photographed for
VF in London on shows he has curated have looked more like
October 10, 2022. concerts, with young kids spilling out into
G R O O M I N G , H I R O M I U E DA ; S E T D E S I G N , I B B Y N J OYA . P R O D U C E D O N LO C AT I O N B Y A R T + C O M M E R C 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 .
the streets, generating waves of press and
Previous spread, celebrity attention. When Jay-Z stopped
left: clothing by
Bottega Veneta; by the gallery’s London outpost during the
hat by Monrowe; Sargent-staged show “Social Works II,” he
sunglasses by was given a private tour by Sargent.
Gucci; earrings
by Kenneth As dessert arrived around midnight, Sar-
Jay Lane. gent showed little inclination that he would
Previous spread, soon be heading back to the apartment
right: coat by in Downtown Brooklyn he shares with a
Bottega Veneta;
jacket and pants by roommate. In a few days’ time, he was set
Bianca Saunders; to fly to London to start installing the first
shirt by Bode;
hat by Esenshel;
Gagosian show for Mitchell, a major step in
sunglasses by the photographer’s continued ascendance.
Gentle Monster. In one of our several interviews, in early
Grooming products September, I asked Sargent about the place
by Suqqu. he now occupies among the tippy top of
the art market’s highest elevation, and
how exactly he reached it despite the odds stacked against
him—and some forces still at play.
“I do understand that there is a space that I carved out, and I
am sensitive to that,” he said. “If you would’ve asked Antwaun
what he would be doing when you’re 33, I would’ve never said
this. Never in my life would I have said this.”
FOR THE LAST few years, many major institutions and blue-chip
galleries have gone out of their way to correct the long-standing
inequity of Black artists in programming and collections—
between 2008 and 2018, just 2.37 percent of acquisitions at 30
prominent American museums were of work by Black artists.
Since then, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Brooklyn
Museum both deaccessioned works by white artists in order
to have an endowment to acquire works by women and art-
ists of color. Black artists, especially those who work in the
field of figurative painting, have seen their prices skyrocket
on the secondary market and have waiting lists for work on
the primary market so long that even some of the world’s top
collectors can’t access the work.
Sargent is arguably the most recognizable face of this move-
ment, a red-carpet-walking social-first curator-slash-dealer
cloaked in custom Bode jackets and Issey Miyake pleats. “Young
Gifted and Black,” a show of work from the collection of former
media executive Bernard Lumpkin and his husband, Carmine
D. Boccuzzi, that Sargent cocurated with Matt Wycoff, has been
touring for three years and is currently on view at the Manetti
Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. Sargent organized “Figures of
Speech”, the massive exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of work
by the late Louis Vuitton designer Virgil Abloh that saw enterpris-
ing streetwear dealers buy out gift shop merch to flip at resale. This
year Sargent was asked, with Aimee Ng, to put together a show
of paintings by Barkley L. Hendricks at the Frick, the first time
a Black artist has had a show at the museum. In the fall, Sargent
taught a photography course at Yale, a fact he casually dropped
“You get attention, people hate.
But no one has done it to my face.”
as he tracked down our Uber outside the Brooklyn Museum one
afternoon this past summer after a walk-through of the Abloh
show where he was gawked at by the designer’s young devotees.
As he’s gone about his work, Sargent has overhauled the typ-
ical notion of an art curator as an egghead entombed within the
institution. He is out on the town constantly. When he released
the 2019 book The New Black Vanguard, it came with a signing in
Milan hosted by Gucci, attended by Tyler, the Creator; Arthur
Jafa; and Maurizio Cattelan. In March, following the Academy
Awards, he attended Vanity Fair’s after-party, then moved on
to Madonna and Guy Oseary’s bash, then went to Jay-Z and
Beyoncé’s at the Chateau Marmont, then straight to his Sunset
Tower suite to retrieve his bag. He had to be back in New York
for a dinner honoring Lowe’s inclusion in the Whitney Bien-
nial. Then he was off for a talk at Savannah College of Art and
Design alongside Mitchell, and then Venice for the Biennale,
posting an Instagram pic in a pink silk three-piece Gucci suit.
“Antwaun has always been stylish, he’s always been in fash-
ion, he’s always been in music, he’s always been in multiple
circles.… Me and Antwaun, we used to say we’re like the Future
and DJ Esco of the art world,” Erizku told me, name-checking
the trendsetting Atlanta rapper and his producer-manager.
The comparison of Sargent, who has worked to carve out
his own lane in his own style and been handsomely rewarded
as the industry caught up, was apt. For years, Sargent was a
freelance critic, writing for The New York Times and The New
Yorker. He has reached his lofty curatorial perch at the world’s
most powerful commercial gallery without the usual MFAs
and PhDs—and without climbing the ladder from front desk
to assistant to dealer to director.
To many in art’s old guard, this deems him unworthy. That
this concerns the most air-kissed echelons of the art world, few
inhabitants would even voice their criticisms for attribution, but
suffice it to say Sargent has his haters, and they typically have
two or three lines of complaint. From speaking to a number of
arts professionals, many think it’s a bit much to proclaim him
a genius for finding market-friendly Black artists and selling
their work to loyal Gagosian clients under the aegis of “Black
social practice”—especially if he’s making money doing so.
Some scholars of photo-based work, meanwhile, have knocked
his choice of artists, saying he tended to elevate his friends,
who work mostly as—the horror!—fashion photographers. As
for the crowds he tends to attract to his openings, well, some
find it distracting at best, PR at the worst—as if pursuing popu-
lism was the equivalent of the blue-chip galleries turning into
the Museum of Ice Cream. Or some say that Sargent is too
quick to appear on a red carpet or front row at a fashion show
to be treated like a serious curator. As one source put it to me,
“Antwaun Sargent was on Gossip Girl. Can you ever imagine
Harald Szeemann on M*A*S*H?”
Then there are the literal critics. In a splashy but quietly dev-
astating review, The Times’s venerable Holland Cotter wrote,
“Gagosian is, of course, deeply inside that world and deeply
conventional in every way. In fact, the single most surprising
thing about ‘Social Works’ is finding it there at all.” The small but
influential Manhattan Art Review panned the same show—hard.
“At root, the problem is that there’s a persistent assumption that
the work has meaning by virtue of cultural associations that
stand outside of the artwork’s own qualities,” the site’s much-
feared author, Sean Tatol, wrote.
Sargent said he’s aware of the critiques, if indifferent.
“Artforum has never reviewed or written about anything
I’ve ever done. Ever,” he told me. “I’ve been doing this for 10
years. And…I’ve been doing this at a scale that no one has been
doing.… So, I think there might be some hateration over there.
You get attention, people hate. But no one has done it to my
face. ” (In a statement, Artforum editor in chief David Velasco
said: “Antwaun Sargent’s writings and exhibitions have been
noted in various parts of the magazine. The reviews section is
small, and there are hundreds of shows each month competing
for attention. We miss many worthy exhibitions all the time.”
Nor has it slowed his ascent. After his multishow takeover of
Gagosian’s gallery at Park Avenue and 75th Street, he’ll stage an
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 105
edition of “Social Works” at the gallery’s Beverly Hills space,
followed by two solo shows in Los Angeles, another complete
takeover. “Antwaun is a Renaissance man, what the consultants
call an ‘ambidextrous leader,’ and what I mean by that is he is
truly interdisciplinary,” says Darren Walker, president of the
Ford Foundation, the $16 billion art and social justice fund.
“And I think he’s a great curator. He’s a beautiful writer. He is
a capitalist. All of those things are part of his identity, and he
wears it with pride.”
UNTIL SOMEWHAT RECENTLY, the term “curator” referred pretty
exclusively to a person who selected artworks for an exhibition,
wrote a text justifying the choices with intellectual rigor, and
picked where they would go in the space. Curators worked for
museums rather than galleries, as curators tended not to want
to involve themselves in the messiness of selling art. That mem-
brane has grown more porous in recent years, however.
Sargent, who comfortably straddles the institutional and
commercial realms, was already an outlier, but there’s more to
it. I spoke with Hans Ulrich Obrist, the perpetually-in-motion
artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, who’s
the first hit when you google “world’s most famous curator.”
He considers Sargent a peer.
“He’s able to bridge Park Avenue and
Bushwick, right?… He’s able to connect the
East Side with East New York.”
“Both sides learn from each other, you know?” Obrist said.
“Being between disciplines, making contributions to different
disciplines, community and practice, is something we can see
very strongly in a younger generation of artists, but I think Ant-
waun’s work as a curator also reflects that.…”
To Obrist’s point, as the audience for contemporary art has
grown in recent years thanks to the broader exposure brought
by social media, Sargent’s role as a curator of color with the
demeanor of an outsider but the savvy of an insider has become
incredibly valuable. “Antwaun is tapped into a community, a
very broad community—I came out of the ’80s and that wasn’t
the case. It was a very white, very white art world back then,”
says Pasternak, the Brooklyn Museum director who, after years
of conversation, gave Abloh a show of his conceptual artwork.
She recalled the Lowe opening in September.
“I’ve been friends with Rick for almost 30 years, and I was
amazed by the diversity on the streets in Chelsea,” she went
on. “Five years ago, that’s not something you would’ve seen.”
When I spoke to Walker, he called Sargent the “ultimate bril-
liant code switcher.”
“He’s able to bridge Park Avenue and Bushwick, right?”
Walker says. “He’s able to connect the East Side with East New
York, right?… What Antwaun is doing is disrupting the canon
of art history, particularly modern and contemporary art his-
tory, because he’s redefining what is excellent and challenging
106 VA N I T Y FA I R
us to think more broadly about what constitutes excellence in
great art—and who produces it.”
SARGENT WAS BORN in Chicago and raised with his three sib-
lings by his mother, Reshuna Chew, in public housing in the
S A R G E N T A N D T H O M A S : M I C H A E L O S T U N I . S E A N K E L LY G A L L E R Y : C L I N T S PA U L D I N G . B O T H : PAT R I C K M C M U L L A N . R E N C O N T R E S D ’ A R L E S : N I C O L A S T U C AT. G U C C I : V I T T O R I O Z U N I N O C E LO T T O . B O T H : G E T T Y I M A G E S . “ YO U N G G I F T E D A N D B L A C K ” E X H I B I T I O N : S A N S H O S C O T T.
since-demolished Cabrini-Green Homes. Chew, who worked as
a manager at a Walgreens, made sure that her son had whatever
he needed, whatever piqued his interest.
T H E N E W B L A C K VA N G U A R D R E C E P T I O N : Z A C H H I LT Y. T H E M E T R O P O L I TA N M U S E U M O F A R T : M A D I S O N V O E L K E L . B O O K R E L E A S E : M I K E V I T E L L I . S A R G E N T , M I T C H E L L , H A R R I S , A N D O T T E N B E R G : Y V O N N E T N T. B R O O K LY N M U S E U M : S A N S H O S C O T T. A L L : B FA . C O M .
“My mother worked every day to give us the world, and in that
way it was just so good, because we were never really aware of
money,” Sargent said.
We were lunching downtown at Dimes. It was the end of July,
when most collectors are out of pocket on yachts in Capri or
shacked up in Aspen mountain homes. Sargent worked as he
chatted: selling a Mitchell work via text and talking to Gagosian
Asia director Nick Simunovic about a private collection in China,
trying to vet them before offering them a Lowe.
Growing up, Sargent had an early interest in politics, which
led him to Mather, a public school 30 minutes from home,
where he was part of a special law program. He interned for
judges, volunteered for Barack Obama’s US Senate campaign,
competed on the mock trial team, and ran track and cross-
country. Eventually, he started dabbling in the city’s cultural
and nightlife offerings, mostly in Boystown, Chicago’s district
of gay clubs. At one restaurant, Sargent would spend hours
talking with artists and poets. He also hung out with friends
such as painter Jeanette Hayes and Chancelor Bennett, the
teenage son of an Obama staffer who would later become
Chance the Rapper.
Sargent went to Georgetown to study at the School of Foreign
Service and interned for Hillary Clinton. Politics began to wear
on him, and he found a postcollege gig with Teach for America
at a school in East New York, Brooklyn. A college buddy found
him a room in an apartment with JiaJia Fei, a young Guggenheim
staffer. Sargent arrived at Fei’s apartment with all his earthly
belongings one day, much to her surprise. Her outgoing room-
mate announced Sargent would be taking over his lease on his
way out the door.
“He was a kindergarten teacher, so I was like, ‘Okay. Maybe
this is okay. He’s not going to be crazy,’ ” Fei said. They still
live together.
At the time, Fei was building the Guggenheim’s then nonex-
istent social media presence. It was 2012, Fei had just started to
realize Instagram’s potential, how it could make the treasures in
private collections ping around the world on phone screens. Fei,
who recalled Sargent studying for the LSAT nonstop at the time,
offered her new roommate entry to the art world via plus-ones
to gallery dinners and fashion parties. C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 3 0
 1.

3.

4.

2.

5.
SOCIAL CAPITAL
1. Sargent with
Mickalene Thomas
in 2018. 2. At the
“Young Gifted and
Black” exhibition with
Bernard Lumpkin
and Matt Wycoff.
3. At a 2019 reception
for The New Black
Vanguard at Aperture.
4. At “The New Black
Vanguard” exhibition
at Les Rencontres 6.
d’Arles in 2021.
5. At The Metropolitan
Museum of Art’s
Acquisitions Gala
in 2021 with Lorna
Simpson and
Jeremy O. Harris.

7.

7.
6. At a Sean Kelly
10. Gallery party with
Awol Erizku, JiaJia
Fei, Lauren Kelly,
Susannah Herbert,
and Ollie Borgna
in 2014. 7. At the
release of The New
Black Vanguard in
2019. 8. With Tyler
Mitchell, Harris,
and Interview editor
9. Mel Ottenberg
in 2021. 9. At the
Obama portraits
opening reception
at the Brooklyn
Museum with
Kehinde Wiley in
2021. 10. With Miles
Greenberg at a
2020 Gucci
8. runway show.

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 107

 A C R O S S

IN THE GLOW
Gabriela Hearst
visits the tokamak
building at the
ITER campus in the
South of France;
the tokamak-esque
runway at the
Chloé spring-
summer 2023 show.

108 VA N I T Y FA I R
T5H8PZ0

T H E
UNIVERSE

Chloé creative director GABRIELA HEARST

is drawing fashion inspiration from clean energy—
and the results are electrifying
By K E Z I A H W E I R
Photographs by J O A K I M E S K I L D S E N

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 109

“IBY NOW,
THINK,
YOU KNOW
THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN MAGNETIC
FUSION AND
INERTIAL FUSION,”
Gabriela Hearst says to me as she toggles
through images of industrial blueprints
on her phone. It’s a question one might
expect to hear in a course on plasma
physics—or at least the physics pop quiz
of this word person’s nightmares. But no,
we’re in Hearst’s sunny New York design
studio, settling in to discuss the spring-
summer collection from Chloé, where she
has held the role of creative director since
2020. Outside the glass door of her office,
her team darts between mood boards
and clothing racks and models draped in
slinky black garments. Inside, wearing a
navy silk shirt and a tweed baseball cap
under which she has tucked her blond
hair, Hearst is still and focused. She is
making fusion fashion, a concept that has
occupied her design mind for the last year.
“Fusion is the main source of energy
in the universe,” Hearst says, referring to
the process of stellar nucleosynthesis, by
which protons fuse at the core of all stars,
emitting heat and light. “We wouldn’t be
here if it wasn’t for fusion, because we are
made out of dead stars.” One could say the
same of her spring-summer collection,
which was inspired by site visits to labs
in the Pacific Northwest, New England,
and the South of France, where hundreds
of scientists and engineers are working
to develop technology that will produce
a net energy gain through fusion—an as
yet unattained goal. Hearst and others
refer to them as star-builders. Nuclear
fusion, unlike fission, doesn’t produce
long-term waste, lacks the potential for
meltdown, and has the capacity to pro-
duce a lifetime’s worth of energy from
the hydrogen atoms in a single glass of
water—something of a climate crisis sil-
ver bullet. The Chloé models were clad in
appropriately physics-inflected designs:
Hearst sent a board of eight fuchsia fabric
110 VA N I T Y FA I R
swatches to one company so that their
team could color-match the pinky-purple
shade of a fusion reaction; hydrogen iso-
topes, deuterium and tritium, appear as
abstract patterns across the clothes. They
walked a runway designed to resemble
a tokamak, the doughnut-shaped device
that produces energy through the magnet-
ic fusion of atoms. The Mexico-based light
artist Paolo Montiel-Coppa created enor-
mous incandescent rings, representing
magnets, which floated above the stage.
Other designers have attempted to
render poetic the ravages of climate
change. This spring, Demna Gvasalia
sent his models into a human-made
blizzard. Following the designation of
the monarch butterfly as an endangered
species this summer, Collina Strada’s
September show took place in a preserve
amid fields of milkweed. And fashion has
publicly struggled with the problems the
industry itself creates. A 2020 report
by the nonprofit environmental agency
Stand.earth found that the global fash-
ion industry is responsible for more
H E A R S T : H A I R , H U G O R A I A H ; M A K E U P , A N G I E M O U L L I N . P R E V I O U S S P R E A D , B A C KG R O U N D ;
greenhouse-gas emissions than both
aviation and the shipping sector. Despite R U N WAY LO O K S : C O U R T E S Y O F C H LO É . 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 .
customer-facing public commitments
by brands and CEOs—LVMH, Kering,
Hermès—“the largest pieces of the fash-
ion supply chain remain dependent on
coal for both electricity generation and
heat used in apparel manufacturing.”
Bleaching, dyeing, weaving. Finishing
garments. Transportation. And so the
biggest question of all, Hearst believes,
is one that faces not just fashion but all
industries in a global system that derives
80 percent of its power from fossil fuels:
“Where are we getting our energy?”
It is the twofold way in which Hearst
attempts to grapple with this question
that sets her apart: in aesthetics and
 NET ENERGY
A view inside ITER. Inset: Chloé models wear looks
inspired by the colors and silhouettes of fusion laboratories;
on the right, the brand’s lower-impact Nama sneaker
comprises 40 percent of its weight from recycled materials.

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 111

through action. Her collections broadcast
the themes, while Hearst simultaneously
enforces transparency and innovation on
production levels—her mission is woven
into the very fibers of her clothes.
In her early 20s, Hearst developed a
trick to alleviate her anxiety: “I created
this thing called my wish list. Whenever I
feel anxiety, I write the opposite of what
I feel.” The opposite of Hearst’s largest
anxiety, climate disaster, she realized
last year, is climate success. “I started
repeating it to myself like a mantra,” she
says. “Climate success. Climate success.
Climate success. Climate success.”
E AR S T , who was
H born in Uruguay
in 1976 and raised
on her father’s
17,000-acre Pay-
sandú cattle ranch, Santa Isabel, grew
up with an entrenched understanding of
conservation and ethical consumption.
After her father’s death in 2011, Hearst,
the eldest of four, inherited her childhood
home and its surrounding ranchland. It
wasn’t until her husband, John Augustine
Chilton Hearst, called Austin, pointed out
her unique background that she realized
what she took for granted about her
upbringing might play into her fashion
career. “He was the first person to say to
me, ‘You need to talk about how you grew
up,’ ” Hearst says. “ ‘You need to use the
wool of your farm in your clothing.’ ” For
this year’s Gabriela Hearst spring runway
show, she produced a broadsheet with
images of a recent family visit: Hearst and
one of her daughters riding in the back of
a truck, a herd of cattle in the sunlight. In
her office, the designer taps her finger on
a photograph of her mother, a Buddhist
and fourth-generation rancher, amid a
tangle of trees. “This is where I was con-
ceived,” she says. “In her forest.”
In a family of ranchers, Hearst
describes herself as the odd one out. As
a child she loved to draw. Once, after
watching the transformation scene in
Disney’s Cinderella, she took a pair of
scissors to her grandmother’s silk dress.
While attending the British Schools, a
high school in Montevideo, Hearst won
a scholarship to spend a year in Austra-
lia, which kicked off a decade of travel.
She returned home to study communica-
tions at the Universidad ORT Uruguay,
left again to model in Paris and Milan,
112 VA N I T Y FA I R
and joined the Neighborhood Playhouse
acting conservatory in Manhattan. Acting
didn’t stick, but New York did.
In 2003, following a stint as a sales
director in a showroom, Hearst launched
a Brooklyn-based contemporary line
called Candela—in Spanish, the word
means “cheeky”; in physics it’s a mea-
sure of luminous intensity—with two
partners and an investment of $700 each.
The brand’s earliest offering was a T-shirt
printed with a silkscreened image of a
winged woman on horseback. (The pho-
tograph of Hearst’s mother that inspired
it is still propped in her office.) A decade
later, the brand was profitable and Hearst
was a member of the Council of Fashion
Designers of America. That year she mar-
ried Austin, a grandson of publishing
scion William Randolph Hearst, whom
she met at a party in Buenos Aires in
2004. Initially, “I didn’t like him,” Hearst
once told Vogue, but he became one of
Candela’s early investors, and now she
describes him as “one of my muses.” He’s
“one of these people that sees 10 years
ahead of the game,” she says. “He has this
kind of vision.” The pair founded Hearst’s
eponymous brand in 2015 and now split
their time between their West Village
town house (marble, leather, inherited
bibelots from Hearst Castle) and a place
outside Garrison, New York, in the Hud-
son Valley (reclaimed wood, Nakashima
chairs). They have a seven-year-old son,
plus Hearst’s 14-year-old twin daughters
from her previous marriage and Austin’s
two children from his.
The Gabriela Hearst debut collection,
which Barneys stocked right next to
Chloé, featured a calf-length leather skirt,
a sheer navy dress with immaculate knife
pleats, and delicate V-neck sweaters. In
2017, after Donald Trump took office,
Hearst designed a merino wool sweater
with a graphic of a stylized ram’s head
that could also be read as ovaries and a
uterus; she sold each of the 100 pieces
for $699, $500 of which went to Planned
Parenthood. (When the Supreme Court
handed down the Dobbs decision this
year, she reissued the sweater under the
same terms.) A trip with the humanitar-
ian aid organization Save the Children to
Turkana, Kenya, later that year prompt-
ed her laser focus on sustainability. The
country was in the middle of a drought
that has only intensified, she says, and
she met “mothers who had to make the
hard choice of what child to save, to take
to a clinic where they have to walk for
kilometers. There was no water. All the
livestock is dead.”
Developing nations, she says, “are
paying the price for how we live in the
developed world.” Some say that there’s
no such thing as ethical consumption
under capitalism. Hearst is a pragma-
tist. “I’m a luxury designer,” she says. “A
luxury designer means that you need to
know where everything comes from and
how everything is made, from soup to
nuts.” In 2019, she’s widely credited with
the fashion industry’s first carbon-neutral
runway show, working with the produc-
tion company Bureau Betak to assess and
reduce the show’s carbon footprint, and
then with the climate consultancy EcoAct
to provide a carbon offset by donating to
the Hifadhi-Livelihoods Project, which
provides efficient cookstoves to commu-
nities in Kenya’s Embu and Tharaka Nithi
counties. (When I ask Hearst, who spends
significant time on airplanes between
New York, Paris, and Uruguay—and also
on inspiration-gathering trips with her
team, including for the fusion collection—
whether all that jet fuel causes her grief,
she tells me that she has moved up from
offsetting and now works with Climate-
Works to sequester her carbon load.)
All of these endeavors cost money.
“But what’s the real cost?” Hearst asks.
“We are pushing forward this bill that no
one’s paying. Somebody has to say we
are responsible. We have to find a way
because of our children, the next gen-
eration. The world is theirs. It’s not ours
anymore. And if you don’t take the role
of our guardianship seriously, meaning
at all costs…” She trails off.
For all her engagement with hard
science, Hearst identifies as a spiritual
person. Her family didn’t want to baptize
her, “but I asked to be baptized. I believe
in Jesus in the way I believe in Buddha, in
the way I believe in all deities. I think spir-
ituality is part of the human condition,”
she says. “I know a lot of things exist that
I don’t see.” It’s possible Hearst’s role at
Chloé—a label launched in Paris in 1952
by Gabrielle Aghion, a Jewish Communist
sympathizer who hired Karl Lagerfeld to
succeed her—was a self-fulfilling prophe-
cy. Hearst’s first luxury purchase, she says,
was a Chloé Edith bag; later, she had a
dream that she was helming the brand. In
2020, she submitted a 92-page brief on her
proposed direction for the brand. “The
main driver,” she says, “besides my love
“I STARTED REPEATING IT TO MYSELF LIKE A
MANTRA. CLIMATE SUCCESS. CLIMATE SUCCESS.
CLIMATE SUCCESS. CLIMATE SUCCESS.”
for Chloé, was to see if the seven years
that we have had at Gabriela Hearst—as
research and development on environ-
mental practices—could be upscaled to
a brand that was 70 years old. And how
fast can that deployment be?” Faster
than expected, it turned out. Last fall,
under the direction of Hearst and CEO
Riccardo Bellini, Chloé became the first
luxury fashion house B Corp, a desig-
nation given to corporations that meet
criteria pertaining to transparency and
“high standards of social and environ-
mental performance.” Chloé currently
scores an 85.2—80 is the bar for certifi-
cation, and the median score for typical
businesses is 50.9.
was pre-
O
CTO BE R 2021
cisely when fusion seized
Hearst, as she read an arti-
cle in the Financial Times
on its feasibility—once a
far-distant hope that, in recent years, has
begun to seem tantalizingly close. “And
then I started to research,” she says. She
read about the most expansive nuclear
fusion project on earth—a 35-nation
and thus far nearly three-decades-long
collaboration called the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor,
or ITER (Latin for “the way”), which is
under construction some 650 kilometers
south of Paris, in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance.
Upon completion, it will be the world’s
largest tokamak. The project began with
a handshake between Mikhail Gorbachev
and Ronald Reagan and will, per its mis-
sion statement, “prove the feasibility of
fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free
source of energy.” She learned about the
private companies throughout the world
on their own races toward fusion. (She
became so entrenched that on occasion,
when speaking about the star-builders,
she refers to them as “we.”) “She’s got
great neuroplasticity,” says ITER com-
munications director Laban Coblentz
of Hearst. “I would swear that in seven
years of bringing every kind of visitor
here—technically smart people, people
with engineering degrees, senators and
parliamentarians and even heads of
state—I would say when Gabi showed
up on the tenth of May of this year, she
was the most well-educated layperson on
fusion science I had ever seen.”
Hearst visited Commonwealth Fusion
Systems, a private Massachusetts-based
company founded in collaboration with
MIT that aims to produce net energy
plasma by 2025, and Washington-based
Helion, which has a target for commer-
cial systems on the grid by the end of
this decade. For most of its history, in
discussions of fusion people often used
“the analogy of building a cathedral,”
says Alex Creely, the CFS plasma physi-
cist who weighed in on the creation of
Chloé’s tokamak-esque runway. “Build-
ing a cathedral took a hundred years. You
might never achieve it in your lifetime, but
you’re contributing to something grand.”
For those working in the field today, that’s
no longer the case. While the boom in
fusion will feel sudden to some—just days
before the Chloé show this fall, the Depart-
ment of Energy announced a $50 million
earmark to be disbursed among for-profit
fusion companies teaming up with univer-
sities and national labs—it’s the result of
decades of research and innovation. “I
like taking the pandemic case as a com-
parison,” says Hearst. “We had a vaccine
within a year, when people were predicting
four years. And billions of dollars went into
this vaccine because the alternative four
years of lockdown on the economy would
have not been acceptable. We are in the
case, here, that I would argue is worse.”
“The more I talked to people,” Hearst
says, “the more I realized there’s a com-
munication bridge. People just don’t know
about this.” Per Coblentz: “Gabi has a
unique sense of how the artistic tempera-
ment and the scientific temperament can
help to advance each other’s narratives.”
Hearst is executing her climate narra-
tive over four collections. For fall 2022,
she focused on the concept of rewild-
ing and, with input from the British
conservationist Isabella Tree, filled her
runway with a physical manifestation
of her anxiety-reduction list: recycled
cashmere sweaters and painted leather
bags (a waste product of the meat indus-
try, she says) that portrayed images of
disaster on one side—a scorched moun-
tain landscape, melting icebergs—and
success on the other—a field of poppies
below a green peak, a pair of polar bears.
“All humans, we’re all connected. All spe-
cies, we’re all connected. We all live in
this environment. The idea of a division
is a false concept,” Hearst says. Next, her
primarily monochromatic resort collec-
tion served as the introductory course in
her stealth mission to deliver fusion liter-
acy to the masses—laser-cut star motifs,
spangled black leather jackets, and brode-
rie anglaise frocks—and spring-summer,
bursting with color and symbolism, as
her master class. “What I can do is to use
whatever platform I have to communicate
about this energy.”
The final chapter in Hearst’s ongoing
creative endeavor, she tells me, is “really
understanding our brain.” How do we
make better-informed decisions? “We
need to change a bit of our conscious-
ness in order to evolve, because there’s
something about our programming that’s
just not working right, right now.”
“I understand that I can close my eyes
and go to watch Netflix and drink a mat-
cha latte. But that is a sort of apathy,”
Hearst says. “If you are not in a position
of survival, you need to help others, and
you need to be of service.” With her vast
network of resources, “I chose to have a
family and my husband, I chose to have
these two jobs. I had a very dangerous
pregnancy with my daughters. My son
was seven rounds of IVF.” She delivers
this in the same neutral, propulsive tone
she employed when describing how she
persuaded a 70-year-old Parisian fashion
house to translate a theoretical scientific
endeavor into a tangible collection of
luxury womens wear. “Everything I’ve
done in my life that is worth it has taken
a lot of work.” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 113
 BY ADAM CIRALSKY

THE
KNIGHT’S
TALE
AT LAVISH GATHERINGS FROM MONACO
TO THE MIDDLE EAST, ANTHONY RITOSSA
BUILT A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS CONVENING
THE TITANS WHO CONTROL THE
“FAMILY OFFICES” OF THE ÜBERWEALTHY.
BUT THE SELF-STYLED KNIGHT OF
THE REALM AND PURPORTED NOBEL PRIZE
NOMINEE TURNED OUT TO BE A WALL
STREET WASHOUT, A DEADBEAT DAD, AND
A DANGEROUS CON MAN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK SMITH

114 VA N I T Y FA I R
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 115

IT WAS A WARM JUNE EVENING
IN MONACO.
Outside, yachts were plying the azure sea.
Inside, flashbulbs were popping. Anthony
Ritossa was in his element.
Charming and cherubic, Ritossa was
glad-handing in front of a step-and-
repeat backdrop at the Fairmont Monte
Carlo. His perma-tan, sun-kissed hair,
and tailored suit suggested a man of
refined wealth and taste. An outsider
might easily have mistaken the scene for
a movie premiere in nearby Cannes. But
that would have undersold the pomp and
pomposity of the moment.
Sir Anthony, as he likes to be called,
was holding court, welcoming guests to
his 19th Ritossa Family Office Investment
Summit—a confab of royals, sheiks, and
ultra-high-net-worth individuals that he
bills as “the most highly acclaimed gath-
ering of global wealth of all time.” By his
count, people “representing over $4.5
trillion in investor wealth” have shown
up at his conferences in Dubai, Miami,
Monaco, and Riyadh, events where start-
ups and entrepreneurs come to pitch the
rich, and have walked away, in Ritossa’s
estimate, with more than “$2.8 billion in
new funding.”
The gathering this past summer was
held “Under the High Patronage of His
Serene Highness Prince Albert II of
Monaco.” Though the prince was not on
hand, his endorsement loomed large. His
name topped the invitations. His founda-
tion’s logo was splashed across a banner
along the red carpet.
Ritossa’s regal affiliations, however,
extend beyond this microstate on the
Côte d’Azur. Members of some of the
most powerful families in the Gulf—al
Khalifa (Bahrain), al Maktoum (UAE),
al Nahyan (UAE), al Saud (Saudi Ara-
bia), and al Thani (Qatar)—have had
their names and pictures emblazoned
on promotional materials for Ritossa’s
soirees. Other dynasties have graced
the publicity announcements—von
Bismarck, Bonaparte, Kennedy, Rock-
efeller—along with people purportedly
affiliated with such heavyweight brands
as Amazon (Audible), Facebook (Meta),
116 VA N I T Y FA I R
and Rothschild & Co. One of the Monaco
affair’s platinum sponsors was the crypto
newcomer Unicoin, represented on the
agenda by Rosie Rios (43rd US treasurer
and Joe Biden’s choice to lead America’s
250th anniversary commission), who
had given a keynote at the previous
Ritossa meeting, in Riyadh.
In short, Sir Anthony’s summits
are so chockablock with luminaries
that many associated with the event
may have failed to ask one fundamen-
tal question: Who the hell is Anthony
Ritossa? After a yearlong investigation,
including interviews with sources from
a dozen countries, Vanity Fair uncovered
the truth. It turns out he is a Wall Street
washout, a world-class con man and
an inveterate fabulist with a bogus CV
and persona—a 53-year-old Australian
who fancifully purports to be an heir to
a 600-year-old European olive oil for-
tune. What’s more, he entices people to
attend his summits under often-dubious
pretenses, not infrequently requesting
a cut of the action from presenters.
And finally, this self-proclaimed mae-
stro of “family wealth” is actually a
thrice-married deadbeat dad who has
been repeatedly jailed in Europe and
is wanted in the US after threatening
to harm his own wife and family; a man
about whom Lieutenant Greg Sancho
of the Pelham Manor, New York, Police
Department told Vanity Fair: “We have
an active warrant for Anthony Ritossa’s
arrest for criminal contempt in the first
degree. That’s a felony.”
I HAD HEARD complaints about Ritossa’s
summits from a circle of entrepreneurs
who felt hoodwinked. So, to get a bet-
ter handle on the guy, I first stopped in
London in June to attend the Family
Office Forum, held a week before Sir
Anthony’s. Put on by Prestel & Partner,
it is one of the best-regarded gatherings
of its kind and took place at the posh
Corinthia hotel, a stone’s throw from
10 Downing Street.
In the often-alien patois of finance,
family offices are easy to understand.
They are privately held companies the
superrich use to manage their fortunes.
Genuine family offices, in the eyes of
finance professionals, are those with at
least $100 million in investable assets.
Such entities, often overseen by profes-
sionals working with a cadre of relatives,
tend to have fewer institutional controls
and a high risk tolerance, allowing them
to funnel a portion of their wealth into
ventures with less predictable returns.
As a result, family offices can be prime
targets for financial predators.
The London conference—organized
by Tobias Prestel, a German entrepre-
neur, and the banking veteran Katja
Mülheim—was attended by an array of
industrialists, aristocrats, ultra-high-net-
worth individuals, and family offices from
around the world. Prestel sat down with
me and took me back to 2014. At that
year’s event, held in Zurich, Ritossa sent
a representative. “What played in Antho-
ny’s favor…when we looked to see if he
qualified as a ‘family office,’ ” said Prestel,
“was that there was almost no negative
information about him online.”
Around that time, in bios submitted
to similar conferences in Miami, Ritossa
presented himself as having “an MBA
with Distinction in Finance from Harvard
University.” His personal narrative would
later appear on his website, on LinkedIn,
and in publications targeting the mega-
rich. He boasted of a “distinguished Wall
Street career” and more than “30 years
of international financial markets and
investment experience.”
Ritossa also claimed to be an heir to
an olive oil fortune dating back to the
15th century. The story is colorful: “The
gnarled roots of the Ritossa olive groves
have persevered through war and natu-
ral disaster…and under the rule of warrior
princes, wealthy merchant kings and
modern despots.” The company’s fields,
he noted, have long been in Istria—a pen-
insula that was once part of Italy but now
largely straddles Croatia and Slovenia.
“He talked about his olive oil fortune
all the time,” explained Jason Cavanagh,
an Australian who runs his own Monaco-
based family office. “He presents very
well.… I ran across Anthony at confer-
ences in Monaco, London, and Geneva
around 2014 to 2015. He introduced him-
self as a fellow Australian running a
family office, looking to get involved in
the family office community.… He abso-
lutely was not a ‘sir’ then.”
MATTHIAS KNAB WAS strolling the beach
in Miami in early 2016 when he ran into
his old acquaintance Anthony Ritossa.
He had not seen him in years. Cerebral
and solemn, Knab runs the alternative
investment media firm Opalesque and
serves as a senior adviser to Castle Hall,
an international due diligence company.
“We chatted,” Knab recalled over tea at a
mosaicked garden in London’s Westmin-
ster, “and he said he’d been doing stuff
with his family office, which was weird
because he was a typical salesman—sell-
ing structured notes to hedge funds—when
I knew him…. I didn’t think of Anthony as
a high-net-worth individual.”
At first, Ritossa attended family-office-
focused conferences. But in 2016, he
cohosted his own: a joint venture between
a Kuwaiti conglomerate and his newly
minted Ritossa Family Office—represent-
ing his “family business dating back 600
years to the Venetian Empire.” Together,
they put on two summits in Dubai. But
according to Knab, who helped advertise
the latter, Ritossa was eager to go solo.
“Anthony rang me in March 2017
and said he wanted to do a family-office
conference in Monaco in June,” recalled
Cavanagh. “I thought he meant 2018, but
he wanted it three months later.… I told
him it couldn’t be done [but] Anthony
went ahead and put my name on the
program as chairman of the conference.”
Cavanagh, peeved but not dissuaded, was
sufficiently well-placed in Monaco to
attract the principality’s high and mighty.
“Even though I never agreed to it, it was
too late to pull out or I would have looked
like a clown.” Knab moderated panels
and Opalesque served as a media partner,
helping telegraph the event’s importance
to the financial world.
“That first summit in Monaco was very
low-profile,” Giuseppe Ambrosio remem-
bered as we had coffee at the Hôtel
Hermitage Monte-Carlo, an architectural
THE SCALE OF WHAT HE’S DONE IS
STAGGERING. RITOSSA HAS
BULLSHITTED THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE.
IN MY CASE, I LOST A LOT OF MONEY.
gem with a glass cupola designed by Gus-
tave Eiffel. Back then, Ambrosio was an
audit partner for Deloitte and president
of the Monaco Single and Multi-Family
Office International Association. As his
relationship with Ritossa blossomed,
he began opening some very important
doors. “I vouched for him with the prince
and the palace,” Ambrosio said regret-
fully. And in 2018, following the usual
vetting, Ambrosio recalled, Ritossa’s
patronage request was granted.
Yet as Ritossa’s ambitions and audacity
grew, his conferences changed their ten-
or, and his origin story, as revealed here
for the first time, began to disintegrate.
Sir Anthony’s only US summit took
place in Miami in late 2017 at the St. Regis
Bal Harbour Resort. “It was a two-day
thing,” said Cavanagh, who chaired the
affair. “Some good families, some good
topics, but a little crypto started creep-
ing in.” Knab was there as well, and
recalled, “Initially, these conferences
were really sweet.”
Planning, however, was hampered
when Ritossa went off the grid two
months before the kickoff, a time when
Knab was scheduled to visit him in Slo-
venia, where Ritossa sometimes stays
when he is not at his penthouse in Dubai’s
luxurious Bulgari Residences. As the trip
grew near, Knab recounted, the Austra-
lian was simply unreachable: “This was
actually the first red flag.” Upon reemerg-
ing, Ritossa explained his absence via
WhatsApp: “I just got back from Sydney
this evening. It’s been a rough 2 weeks
with my mum. She had a st[r]oke and is
now stable thankfully. I’m back…and can
now focus 100% on Miami.”
The summit proceeded. But by the
following March, at the next conclave
in Dubai, the atmosphere had changed.
“It was nothing like what Ritossa was
advertising,” Knab maintained. “It
became a massive circus with lots of
[sellers hawking] offerings and crypto.
It became a huge machine for Ritossa.”
Knab had seen enough. In June, he
announced that he and Cavanagh were
terminating their relationship with Ritos-
sa’s summits, citing “differences over the
direction of these conferences and other
reasons.” Cavanagh also pulled out of
the fast-approaching 2018 gathering in
Monaco, which he says he was slated to
chair, prompting a key Monaco minister
to bail. The one-two punch riled Ritossa,
who pleaded with his fellow Aussie over
WhatsApp, “Can you please stop arrang-
ing for other people to resign[?] That’s
not appropriate, mate.” Meanwhile,
Ritossa’s Slovenian lawyer sent a letter
to Knab ordering him to remove his post
and threatening litigation. Knab did not
budge; Ritossa backed off.
Still, the summit—with Prince Albert
as patron—went on anyway. “Little by lit-
tle, I learned,” Ambrosio confided. “The
biggest mistake I made was to take him to
the palace and [help] get him the patron-
age so that the conference looks like it’s
blessed by Prince Albert.” Ambrosio, like
Cavanagh, Knab, and others, asserted he
has cut all ties with Ritossa. “Then when
he started calling himself ‘sir,’ I couldn’t
stand it.”
Indeed, Ritossa’s image—and his enter-
prise—were about to get even stranger.
IT WAS AT the 2019 Monaco summit that
Ritossa received his own lofty title when
the Knights Society of Elviña inducted
him into their ranks, thereby catapulting
a man born Anthony Ronny Ritossa to
Sir Anthony. The new knight would later
receive the Grand Cross from the Royal
Order of Banu Assaf. Behind these acco-
lades stood two enigmatic men—both
of whom have served as key figures in
Ritossa’s orbit.
The first was His Excellency Pro-
fessor Sir Manuel Freire-Garabal y
Núñez, who describes himself as “a
Spanish lawyer, diplomat and jounal-
ist [sic]” and founder and chairman
of Al-Khalifa Business School (AKBS).
Though grammar and spelling are not
his strong suits, the young Spaniard, in
his online profile, claims to hold an MBA
and to have completed “more than 300
courses and specialisations in different
areas from IVY league and Elite Business
Schools.” He states that he has served
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 117

I WONDERED HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE
FOR HIS WEB OF LIES AND FRAUD TO UNRAVEL.
HE’S MADE UP SO MUCH: KNIGHT, PROFESSOR.
WHAT’S NEXT, ASTRONAUT?
as a “contributor of Higher Education”
to UC Berkeley, USC, and Yale, and as
a “professor, collaborator and advisor
to many universities across the globe,
including the Harvard Medical School.”
All at age 27.
But there’s more. Freire-Garabal says
he founded the Knights Society of Elviña
in 2016 as a “hobby” and now serves as
its grand chancellor. Over the years, he
purports to have racked up high civil
honors from “the States of Arkansas and
Kentucky and the local governments of
Machu Picchu, Medley and North Miami
Beach.” What’s more, Sir Manuel’s web-
site (a must-read) notes that the Russian
Federation presented him with the
Grand Cross of Ruby Ars Longa, an hon-
or, he claims, that has previously gone to
Cuba’s Fidel Castro as well as “second
and third-class personalities of art and
culture such as Alek [sic] Baldwin.”
Also central to Sir Anthony’s knight’s
tale is His Highness Mahmoud Salah-Al-
Din Assaf, a “hereditary Royal Prince of
the 7th century Assaf Dynasty…of the
Mamluk Sultanate of the Persian Kes-
erwan of Mount Lebanon.” Judging from
the glamour shot that accompanies his
online résumés, the man is a passion-
ate falconer. At 36, he claims to have
received some extraordinary honors,
including the “Presidential Lifetime
Achievement Award” and “the highest
title of honor bestowed by the governor
of Kentucky.” Still, these seem like small
ball compared with what he cites as his
2015 appointment as “Ambassador at
Large of the UN-registered Brotherhood
of Dragons.”
More on His Excellency and His High-
ness shortly. (Neither would talk for this
story. Moreover, Ritossa, after replying
to an initial email, did not respond to
numerous requests to participate. Nor did
he agree to answer questions submitted
by Vanity Fair.)
118 VA N I T Y FA I R
RITOSSA’S 13TH SUMMIT was in full swing
at Dubai’s Waldorf Astoria Palm Jumei-
rah on December 8, 2020, when, 3,500
miles away in Germany, Matthias Knab
received an unexpected message. It
included a link to a website called Fake
FamilyOffice.com that began: “I need
to warn you about a nefarious operator,
Anthony Ritossa, who is a pretender in
the world of Family Offices and should
not be trusted with your time and, essen-
tially, your money.” What followed was a
takedown that questioned and mocked
Sir Anthony’s title, educational creden-
tials, career milestones, and claims about
an olive oil fortune and a family office.
Denny Chared, a one-time financial
journalist who now runs his own private
wealth meetings, also passed info from the
link around. Word filtered back to Ritossa.
And Chared, like Knab, soon received a
cease-and-desist letter from Ritossa’s
Slovenian attorney. Chared was amused
by the suggestion that he had defamed
Ritossa merely by sharing the contents of a
public domain URL. “This is so ridiculous
I will not even bring it to my lawyers’ atten-
tion,” he wrote back, adding, “I believe
most of [the website’s] claims.”
In time, Ritossa’s lawyers would send
a similarly toothless warning to Graham
David Bell, a Dubai-based corporate
finance adviser whose clients include
some very real and very wealthy sheiks.
As a Brit and the son of a man knighted
by Queen Elizabeth II for his service in
World War II, Bell took special umbrage
with Ritossa’s regal shtick. Upon receiv-
ing an unsolicited invitation from “Sir
Anthony” to come as a VIP guest to his
18th conference in Riyadh—to be held
“Under the High Patronage of His Royal
Highness Prince Abdullah bin Musad
bin Abdulaziz Al Saud”—Bell balked.
He doubted the royal stamp of approval
and reached out to the supposed patron’s
close associates, only to be told, he said,
that the prince had neither agreed to
be a sponsor nor allowed his name and
likeness to be used. (The prince’s rep-
resentatives declined to comment.)
At that point, Bell advised several Saudis
not to attend. Ritossa caught wind and,
to hear Bell tell it, went full aggro, issuing
cease-and-desist orders through counsel
along with heavy-handed warnings that
the Brit could be imprisoned—and forced
to pay millions—under the UAE’s defama-
tion laws. “We told them, ‘Sue me, I dare
you,’ ” Bell explained. “Silence ever since.
That’s what Ritossa does—threats, bluster,
and then beating a sheepish retreat.”
I spoke with some 20 past attendees of
summits in Dubai, Miami, Monaco, and
Riyadh—many of whom shared stories
of how they or their colleagues were per-
suaded to attend and pay significant fees,
based on Ritossa’s pledge to offer access
to a raft of high-net-worth investors.
Instead, what they tended to find was a
smattering of people with money—but
little evident interest in deploying it—and
a contingent of conference “regulars,”
some of whom came to resemble role
players: listening to pitches from hope-
ful entrepreneurs but not coughing
up the capital Ritossa claims is there
for the taking. In the opinion of these
conferencegoers, it is a far cry from what
Sir Anthony aggressively promises: that
those seeking investment can expect to
find many deeply pocketed people ready,
willing, and able to stroke a check.
An American participant broke it
down this way, “For a basic pass, it’s
[around] $5,000. If you want meetings,
it’s [a minimum of] $18,000. I paid that
twice, and they put me in front of bullshit
people who didn’t have money.” Said a
European businessman who shelled out
a pretty penny, “There’s nothing wrong
with charging $200,000 if you’re deliver-
ing. But we were sitting inside a summit
[with hardly] anybody with money. Only
people looking for money.”
“It’s souk behavior,” said Dana al
Salem, who has been a panelist and
moderator at several summits. She has
founded tech, media, and entertainment
companies and runs in important social
circles in Dubai. “If the prices weren’t so
unreasonable and conference organizers
weren’t taking a cut, then it’s a networking
event,” she said. “I speak at a lot of confer-
ences. Never once have I heard of a host
saying, ‘Any money you make from any
investor you meet, you need to give me a
cut.’ ” Some, like al Salem, were willing to
speak on the record. Others were embar-
rassed that, as fiduciaries, they had paid
five to six figures and, in return, received
the Potemkin village version of the festivi-
ties that appear in slick videos posted on
the Ritossa Family Office website.
Still, there are others, like Kerry Adler,
who remain bullish about the gatherings.
“I’ve met so many quality people from so
many walks of life,” he explained. “It’s
almost like it’s become a family, a get-
together for people where they talk about
what they’re investing in.” Adler is the
Canadian CEO of a solar energy concern,
SkyPower Global, who has spoken at nine
symposia. “There’s a lot of potential inves-
tors there. Now, are they writing checks?
I honestly don’t know. No one’s opened a
checkbook and given me a check.… I’m not
personally aware of any groups that raise
large amounts of capital at these events.”
THE MORE I PROBED, the more apparent it
became: Anthony Ronny Ritossa’s shiny
story is not only a fable but a very dark
one. And as I got to know some of his old
friends, others with close knowledge of
the Ritossa family, and a whistleblower
who came out of the woodwork, I discov-
ered that Ritossa’s slippery demise—and
reincarnation—really began 10 years ago,
as his personal and professional lives
started to spiral and he began to reinvent
himself in an effort to erase his past.
First, some background. Ritossa was
born in Sydney in 1969 to working-class
parents. The family would occasionally
visit the Istrian Peninsula, in present-day
Croatia, where the Ritossas had Ital-
ian roots. After attending a tony private
school in Sydney, The Scots College, he
graduated from the University of Newcas-
tle, a fact he has edited out of his narrative.
There are other discrepancies as well.
“We don’t have any record of this per-
son as an MBA graduate,” a senior official
at Harvard Business School insisted after
I inquired about Ritossa’s claim to have
“an MBA with Distinction in Finance from
Harvard University.” The source contin-
ued, “[He] did complete an HBS Online
course in negotiation mastery, but that
certainly is not an MBA. And we only offer
a general management MBA, we don’t
have specialized ones, like in finance.”
Finally, I would be remiss not to add
what Harvard Medical School said when
asked about Sir Manuel’s contention that
he has been a “professor, collaborator
[and/or] advisor” there: “We are unable
to find any records of this individual
being or having ever been on our faculty,
working as a researcher, instructor or a
student at HMS.”
Résumé padding is the least of it.
There is no olive oil fortune. Or as one
former Ritossa associate put it, “Maybe
there were olives in his family’s garden.”
Another close colleague explained, “He
wants to be seen to have that profile of
a high-net-worth family office chair-
man.… I have not seen proof that qualifies
him as being a family office.”
Sources close to the Ritossa family are
withering about the man and the myth.
“[Anthony’s] the kind of guy that always
takes a shortcut,” said one. “If there’s a
convenient shortcut, which may or may
not be legitimate or ethical or the right
thing to do, but it’s a shortcut, he will
take it.” Another commented, “He is a
highly intelligent and manipulative man
with great persuasive powers and [the]
ability to gain confidence—a classic trait
all con men have.”
In the September 15, 2002, New York
Times announcement of Ritossa’s first
marriage—to the former Jocelyn Ring—
there is no mention of olive oil, a family
office, or a fortune. Instead, Ritossa, then
33, was described as “a broker at Morgan
Stanley in New York who develops trad-
ing strategies for hedge funds,” and whose
father had “retired as a residential prop-
erty developer in Sydney.” As for Ritossa’s
studies, the Times noted that he “gradu-
ated from the University of Newcastle in
Australia and received an M.B.A. from the
University of Technology in Sydney.”
The origins of Ritossa Olive Oil are
far more recent and pedestrian. The firm
was registered in New York in 2010, with
Ritossa’s second wife, Sandra, listed as a
cofounder. Trying to find the company
or buy its products online, however, is a
THE GREAT PRETENDER
Anthony Ritossa, host of wealth summits in
Dubai, Miami, Monaco, and Riyadh, has been
repeatedly arrested by European authorities.
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 119
maddening and ultimately futile exercise.
Search results redirect to the Ritossa Fam-
ily Office or to websites touting tasting
competitions the company has suppos-
edly won, but which all end up at the same
phone number. The shell game, I learned,
is all about putting on airs for a man who
most certainly is not an heir.
And as for the oil itself? On February 9,
2013, Croatian police arrested a 44-year-
old Australian for allegedly stealing 24
bottles of olive oil from a warehouse
in the town of Poreč. Coverage in local
papers at the time did not name the
suspect. But Darko Kadum did. “It was
Anthony Ritossa,” the former director of
MIH, the enterprise that controlled the
warehouse, told me when I visited him
and his wife, Luana, at their villa in the
hills above Poreč. At the mention of Sir
Anthony’s six-century-old fortune, the
couple laughed. “There are maybe a few
olive trees in front of his family home,”
Kadum posited, “but the olive oil is not
produced from those olives.” A close
family source concurred, “There is no
600-year-old family fortune. There are
no ties to the Venetian empire.”
As it turns out, Ritossa, according to
the Kadums, had a deal to import MIH’s
olive oil to the US with Ritossa’s own
label affixed to the kegs—not an uncom-
mon practice. “When we met, he was a
very sweet-talking man, and I’m sure
many people would wish to have him as
a friend,” Kadum explained. “We had an
intense friendship.” Darko visited Ritossa
in New York and, along with Luana, got
to know Sir Anthony’s family when they
came to Istria. But, he said, “Over time,
Anthony changed who he was.” By 2012,
by Kadum’s accounting, Ritossa had
accrued $40,000 in unpaid invoices and
MIH stopped the shipments. His friend’s
increasingly bizarre actions, including
the caper at the warehouse, were the final
straw, Kadum recalled: “The police actu-
ally caught him somewhere in the city.
They took the oil and brought it back to
us and that was it.”
Thus, the man whose family office
narrative is literally rooted in the roots
of Istrian olive trees appears to have
been more of an olive oil robber than
robber baron.
IT ALL TRACES back to the summer of
2012. Ritossa was on holiday in Istria
120 VA N I T Y FA I R
with Sandra and their two young daugh-
ters when, intimates tell me, he seemed
to become unglued. (Sandra did not
respond to requests for comment.) “We
saw a lot of oscillation in his behavior,”
recalled Kadum, citing incidents of physi-
cal and verbal violence. Sandra reported
her husband to Croatian authorities and
took her kids to a town where her father
and stepmother had a house. But physi-
cal separation did not moderate Ritossa’s
behavior. “He was a violent personality—
and he’s a big guy, six-two, six-three, a
strong build,” said another person who
knew him well back then.
Multiple sources close to the family
allege that Ritossa was abusing drugs
and alcohol. He was also involved with
a Slovenian woman named Stasa Bibic,
whom these sources say worked at a local
nightclub called Saint & Sinner. (The club
refused to comment.) The pair began
traveling and Anthony racked up mas-
sive bills on his and Sandra’s credit cards.
Bibic, according to the sources, became
pregnant and would give birth to a child
who now features prominently in promos
for Ritossa’s summits as a sort of living
embodiment that Anthony is the con-
summate family man. As for Anthony’s
other family—Sandra (whom he married
in 2005) and their two girls—they have
been conspicuously left out of his online
fairy tale. There is a reason for that.
Documents reviewed by Vanity Fair as
well as sources familiar with the matter
confirm that even after his family returned
to New York, Ritossa continued bombard-
ing Sandra and others with disturbing and
sometimes vicious calls, emails, mes-
sages, and voicemails. As she had done
in Poreč, Sandra sought protection from
law enforcement and on September 12,
2012, Westchester County Family Court
Judge Nilda Morales Horowitz directed
Ritossa to: “[R]efrain from assault, stalk-
ing, harassment,…menacing, reckless
endangerment, strangulation,…disor-
derly conduct, criminal mischief, sexual
abuse, sexual misconduct, forcible touch-
ing, intimidation, threats or any criminal
offense against Sandra Ritossa.”
In the wake of the order, however,
Ritossa continued leaving what court
records and sources described as disturb-
ing messages for his wife, her employer,
family, and friends, insisting “he [was]
coming to take the girls and harm [San-
dra].” Ritossa was summoned to appear
two weeks later. But he was a no-show
and kept up the threats, including this
voicemail on his mother-in-law’s phone
(edited here for clarity and to remove
identifiable information):
“It’s your favorite son-in-law.…I love
your daughter sooo much that I can calm-
ly tell you that she stole money from the
Croatian government and as a result of
that, I have no other option but to take
your granddaughters away from you….
Please come and visit your granddaugh-
ters (grunt) while your daughter, I don’t
want her to go to jail, but she deserves
to go to jail (grunting). These words are
like a bullet in your head, too, not just
your daughter’s head—yep, yep (roar
noise/grunt)—these words, calm words
of love—they’re like bullets that kill your
brain and your daughter’s brain (roar).
Calm down…calm down.”
On Saturday night, October 13, Sandra
Ritossa entered the Pelham Manor
police station to report aggravated
harassment and “fearing for her per-
sonal and children’s safety,” according
to official records. She gave a statement
and told officers about Judge Horowitz’s
order, which had yet to be served because
her husband remained abroad. By Mon-
day, Ritossa had sent Sandra a photo of
himself and Bibic on a plane with their
tongues sticking out, railing about com-
ing for the kids, and dispatched a racist,
expletive-laden screed saying he wanted
to have “his angels” back.
That same day, from his perch in Poreč,
Ritossa placed a call to Zdenka Raguž
Zupičić, a judge whom Sandra’s father,
Bruno, had married. Vanity Fair, after
petitioning courts in Croatia, obtained
records of what transpired next: Ritossa,
said to be seeking revenge for Bruno and
Zdenka’s role in helping Sandra and the
girls to safety, declared he was coming
to kidnap the couple’s young son. Zden-
ka “thought it was a credible threat,”
recalled a knowledgeable source. “As did
the police.” (Judge Zupičić declined Van-
ity Fair’s request for comment.)
Back in New York, Judge Horowitz gave
temporary custody of the girls to San-
dra and ordered Ritossa to appear at an
October 30 hearing. Once again he failed
to show, possibly because he had been
jailed a week earlier by Croatian authori-
ties. Once released—while prosecutors
were preparing their indictment—he
split town. But if he was on the run, he

YOU WANT TO HEAR THE CRAZIEST STORY?
HE STOLE HIS DEAD FATHER’S BODY ON ITS WAY
FROM AUSTRALIA TO CROATIA.
was running toward the flames. Within
days, he turned up in the UK, where he
menaced other members of his extended
family. According to four sources and offi-
cial files obtained by Vanity Fair, he was
arrested in London and held for 13 days in
a “domestic violence case” necessitating
an “urgent result.” On November 15, he
pleaded guilty to harassment.
Sandra filed for divorce. But that did
not end the rancor. The impresario of
family office wealth, according to a vari-
ety of sources as well as government
and corporate records, stopped mak-
ing payments on his family’s mortgage,
resulting in a foreclosure. He ran up
nearly $500,000 in unpaid child support.
And he apparently failed to pay tens of
thousands of dollars in credit card bills.
As for the American warrant for Ritos-
sa’s arrest, the Pelham Manor Police
Department confirmed to Vanity Fair that
it “was first issued 10 years ago for violat-
ing the order of protection and remains in
place today.”
HIS DAUGHTERS WERE losing their home.
Their mother was drowning in debt. But
Ritossa was busy building a new life with
a manufactured persona.
He began calling himself the chairman
of the Ritossa Family Office and boasting
about his “30 years” of investment expe-
rience. Never mind that he was born in
1969, which would have meant he start-
ed work in his early teens. In truth, his
professional life had cratered. He had
not held “senior executive positions at
Nomura, Barclays Capital, Morgan Stan-
ley, BNP Paribas, and Bankers Trust,”
as he claims online. Instead, sources
familiar with his work at each institution
confirmed that he held junior to midlevel
jobs. And at Barclays, he was allegedly
terminated for “compliance issues” that
involved improperly disseminating pro-
prietary bank information, sources told
me. (Barclays declined to elaborate.)
Records held by the Financial Industry
Regulatory Authority, which oversees US
broker-dealers, show Ritossa’s Wall Street
tenure to have been more peripatetic than
“distinguished.” For 12 years he worked
at eight firms, making it difficult to build
a book of business, much less amass
a fortune from it. His middling run in
Manhattan finance—along with his last
gig, at AlphaSource Capital Securities—
went out with a whimper after he refused
to attend FINRA-mandated compliance
training and left the company. “While at
AlphaSource, he was clearly not living
in the lap of luxury,” a former coworker
recalled when I asked if Ritossa came
from money. “He was trying to eke out
a living. I think he couldn’t cover his
expenses, and at some point he accepted
defeat and changed strategies.”
Part of that new strategy was to com-
pletely recast his presence on the internet.
AT A TIME when digital fingerprints are
harder than ever to erase, Ritossa has
done the impossible: His online profile
contains nary a blemish. He is instead a
“family office influencer, impact inves-
tor…mentor, philanthropist, author and
highly sought-after speaker.” Not to men-
tion “a 2021 nominee for the Nobel Peace
Prize.” His internet persona, in fact, is a
constellation of pristine bios, astroturfed
articles, and laudatory websites that link
back to and reinforce one another.
This is no accident. Cyber experts I con-
sulted scanned the dark web, deep web,
proprietary databases, and myriad open-
source intelligence platforms and found
evidence of “data hydrology,” a systematic
effort to water down or expunge unfavor-
able information and replace it with a
shimmering new narrative. This was not
some run-of-the-mill search engine opti-
mization that people and companies use
to boost their profile and bury their foibles.
In the view of these experts, this was next-
level shit—because as far as the internet
is concerned, Anthony Ritossa arrived on
planet Earth a decade ago and has been
doing extraordinary things ever since.
This image overhaul may or may not
have been possible, however, without
His Highness Mahmoud Salah-Al-Din
Assaf, a man whom Middle Eastern roy-
al watchers refer to as a “milk sheikh,”
someone who may have exaggerated
or even created his honorific. In 2015,
Assaf, by his own admission, certified
his status with the Heraldrys Institute
of Rome, which sells documents online
depicting a family history, blazon, crest,
coat of arms, and references to nobility—
for $200 to $300, depending on whether
the customer wants a PDF or a version on
handmade paper.
Prince Assaf, in fact, used to be a US
defense contractor. But before long, he
started some remarkable businesses that
are ultimately associated with a Califor-
nia strip mall. One of them disinfects car
interiors. Another washes, waxes, rehabs,
and rebuilds the public image of “high
profile clients.” Zeus & Nova Interna-
tional, registered in Assaf ’s name, offers
to arrange “royal titles bestowed by the
world’s premier noble families” as well as
honorary doctorates and professorships,
religious recognitions, and memberships
at chivalry clubs. The company also
provides clients “access to the world’s
renowned events, from the Oscar Award
[sic] ceremonies to the Royal Imperial
Balls across Europe.”
Zeus & Nova is registered to the same
Orange County complex as a Mexican res-
taurant and a head lice removal service
called Lizzie’s Lice Pickers. When I went
to eyeball the place, however, I discovered
that Assaf had moved out last year, though
the business is still active online. I ran
into “Lizzie” and showed her pictures of
Assaf; she confirmed his identity, saying
she remembered him working late hours
“dealing with stuff overseas,” adding, “I
never heard he was a prince.”
On a Venn diagram of Ritossa World,
Assaf has served as “royal patron”
for the Knights Society of Elviña and
AKBS, which is apropos given that Zeus
& Nova is selling people honorary titles
and degrees. Meanwhile, Assaf ’s cohort
Freire-Garabal, the knighthood’s grand
chancellor, acts as chairman of AKBS
and sits on Sir Anthony’s advisory
board for the summits. As for Ritossa,
he became a C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 3 2
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 121
 ing
Ivana
Ivana Marie
Zelníčková Trump
escaped from behind
the Iron Curtain to
storm New York City—
and help define its “greed
is good” era. From her
heyday presiding over
her husband’s properties
to her decadent post-
Donald denouement
selling costume jewelry
and cavorting with a
series of “freaky” Italian
lovers, it was Ivana,
all along, who gilded
the Trump name
By Mark Seal

ALL THAT GLITTERS

Ivana Trump in 1986 at Mar-a-
Lago, which she restored.

122 VA N I T Y FA I R
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 123
 BETTER HALF
ACT I: From top: an
early modeling
THE STAIRCASE shot, 1971; Ivana’s
hometown,
She is alone in her seven-story East 64th Street town house, atop Gottwaldov, 1949;
her first wedding,
the steep, spiraling stairs that friends and family have warned to “an Austrian
could kill her. Tomorrow, July 15, 2022, she is scheduled to fly to guy” named Alfred
Winklmayr, 1971;
St.-Tropez, her first flight since the isolation of COVID. No one a Trump family
knows when she takes her final step, but some will find comfort portrait, complete
with junior power
when her body is reportedly found in pajamas, with a coffee cup, ties, 1986.
instead of a Champagne flute, nearby. They hope she fell in the
early morning hours instead of the darkness of night.
It’s been nine months since she buried her fourth husband,
the handsome Italian playboy Rossano Rubicondi. Rossano
might have been financially needy, and more than two decades
her junior, but he made her feel young again.
Now 73, or so they say, Ivana has more memories behind her
than ahead. But her Louis Vuitton suitcases are filled with her
famous shoes, and she is ready to dance on the French Riviera
once again. Those shoes, Christian Louboutins and Manolos
and Jimmy Choos, became part of her legend when she was the
first wife of Donald J. Trump, whom she, in her Czech-inflected
English, famously called “The Donald.”
By the time he became president, they had both remarried a
couple of times. But in 2017, Ivana told ABC News, “I’m basically
first Trump wife. I’m first lady, okay?” her stoic, smiling façade
reflecting her pride but hiding her terror.
Her true feelings would come pouring out in the New York
atelier of her longtime fashion designer Marc Bouwer, to whom
she had come for a fitting on January 11, 2017, nine days before
Trump’s inauguration.
“Always with Ivana it was fun—fun fittings and Champagne
and parties,” says Bouwer. But this time, he noticed something
as soon as she stepped off the elevator: “The Manolo Blahniks
looked slightly scuffed, the toes dented a bit and not nearly as
immaculate as they always had been.”
Ivana ordered a half dozen tight-fitting, body-hugging, jewel-
toned dresses. Then they retired to a couch, the designer and his
business partner, Paul Margolin, sitting on either side of Ivana.
“So how’s everything going?” they asked. “Do you need a
dress for the inauguration?”
“She said, ‘I don’t know if I am going to go,’ ” remembers
Bouwer. “Then she started sobbing. Uncontrollably, tears
pouring down her face. We both cradled her in our arms, say-
ing, ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’ ”
Her words came out in a torrent. “They hate me! They all hate
me!” Bouwer remembers Ivana wailing. “Everywhere I go they
say things and they shout things at me! Outside my house, in
St.-Tropez, Palm Beach, everywhere! They hate me!”
Through her sobs she added, “It’s not my fault. I am not him!
I divorced him a long time ago. I do not deserve this!”
The designer was taken aback. “I had to fight back tears
myself,” he says, “because here was this woman I greatly
respected and loved, totally broken down.”

BUT WAIT. IVANA wouldn’t want you to see her like this, gone
from a size 8 to a 14, according to Bouwer, and, as her long-
time nanny turned assistant would say at her funeral, adrift
in a “sinking swamp” of “parasites” with “illicit dreams and
schemes.” Especially not in the pages of Vanity Fair, which so

124 VA N I T Y FA I R
 lavishly chronicled her heyday that a blowup of her May 1992
cover would stand near the casket at her funeral.
No, Ivana would want to turn back the clock and let the
spotlight shine on her in her 1980s prime: heels high, shoul-
ders padded, blond hair big, her smile flashing at 100 watts.
A superstar straight out of the era’s defining prime time soaps,
Dallas and Dynasty.
To get there, she had made an unfathomable journey across
geographic and social divides, escaping Communist Czecho -
slovakia before flying into Canada on the wings of a marriage
of convenience and her credentials as a competitive skier. She
was 27 when, in 1976, she finally made it to New York as a run-
way model. It was there, rocking a blood-red minidress in the
company of seven other models, that she met her prince.
W I T H R O F F R E D O G A E TA N I : J O H N B A R R E T T/ G LO B E P H O T O S . W I T H A D U LT C H I L D R E N : A R N A L D O M A G N A N I . W I T H R O S S A N O
“THEY HATE ME! THEY ALL
HATE ME! ” IVANA WAILED DAYS
BEFORE TRUMP’S INAUGURATION.
“IT’S NOT MY FAULT! I AM
NOT HIM! I DIVORCED HIM A
LONG TIME AGO!”
“I love a good-looking man,” she said on The Oprah Winfrey
Show, then added: “But you know it’s really with the look and
the brain and the energy and the really potentials, and, you
know, Donald always had a great head on his shoulders, and I
saw the potential there.”
“She speaks a little lousy, but she’s gorgeous and I’m going to
marry her,” Trump would later be quoted as saying.
Their wedding, technically her second, took place on
April 7, 1977, at Marble Collegiate in Manhattan. So began the
fertile period when Ivana helped her husband design, construct,
decorate, and run his landmarks. “I will pay her one dollar a
year and all the dresses she can buy,” Trump famously said,
a comment that supposedly devastated his wife, who was rising
fast in the ranks of the Trump Organization. She took the dress-
es and the shoes, and buildings rose in her wake: the Grand
Hyatt (1979), Trump Tower (1983), Trump Plaza in Atlantic
City (1984), and the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City (1990).
Ivana restored the couple’s new home, Marjorie Merriweather
Post’s gargantuan 118-room Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach,
as well as Trump Princess, the 282-foot yacht Trump purchased
from the Sultan of Brunei for $30 million in 1987.
Under her influence, The Donald traded his burgundy
Queens suits for Brioni, and he and Ivana ascended from devel-
opers to stars. “In a decade of glitz, they were the glitziest; in
a decade of greed, they were the greediest,” reported People.
Thirteen years and three children later, the fairy tale frac-

tured, spawning the decade’s biggest tabloid divorce scandal.

R U B I C O N D I : E R I C R YA N . B O T H : G E T T Y I M A G E S . VA N I T Y FA I R C O V E R : E R I C B O M A N / C O U R T E S Y P E T E R S C H L E S I N G E R .

Then Ivana staged an explosive comeback, fueled by the realiza-

tion that her first name was as powerful as her last.
“She was indomitable,” a friend says. “Her mother is still
alive at 96! She would never have thought she would fall down
those stairs.”
Ivana’s story is in many ways even bigger, grander, and more
extraordinary than her ex-husband’s. It’s a saga worthy of a
Broadway musical, or an opera. But before the fall on those
cursed stairs—where she would be found by her housekeeper
at 12:40 p.m.—her story begins with a climb.

GOLD METTLE
From top:
attending Roy
ACT II:
Cohn’s birthday
party with Donald THE CLIMB
Trump, 1980; How does a barbed-wire girl from a shoe-factory town behind
flaunting serious
fur at the Plaza the Iron Curtain escape to America, define the “greed is good”
Hotel, 1989; 1980s, and help create the twisted miracle of Donald J. Trump?
reuniting with her
friend, fellow An only child born eight weeks premature on February 20,
competitive skier, 1949, she is bestowed with a Russian first name—“Maybe they
and sometime
savior George thought it would help me with the Soviets”—by her parents, an
Syrovatka, 2000. electrical engineer and a telephone operator. The family lives

DEC 2022/JAN 2023 125

in a concrete house on the grounds of the Bata shoe-factory
complex in the town of Gottwaldov, where everyone toes the
party line but Ivana Marie Zelníčková.
She meets the competitive skier George Syrovatka at 14 and
starts dating him at 17. When the Communists relax restrictions
during the Prague Spring of the 1960s, they begin traveling
together. “She has acquired the taste of the Western world:
freedom, fashion, money,” Syrovatka will remember. She mod-
els, she acts, she wins roles in Czech movies and comparisons
to Brigitte Bardot. “And she changed her brown hair to blond to
look more like her,” says Syrovatka.
Then, in 1968, the Prague Spring ends, and Ivana is ground-
ed once more. To defect would mean never seeing her parents
models. Having just arrived in New York from Montreal, Ivana
Zelníčková Winklmayr, age 27, is in town for a fashion show to
promote the 1976 Olympics.
“Gee, I like that girl,” says Trump, and he is immediately upon
her, his uninvited hand on her arm. She spins around ready to
give whoever has the gall to touch her “the commie death stare.”
Now she sees him for the first time, the man The New York Times
will describe two months from now as “tall, lean and blonde,
with dazzling white teeth…like Robert Redford,” with a self-
proclaimed net worth of “more than $200 million.”
All of which means absolutely nothing to Ivana. “I wasn’t a
blushing virgin,” she’ll later explain, adding that she’d been “hit
on by countless men since the age of 14. I knew every seduction

W I T H G E O R G E S Y R O VAT K A : A P P H O T O / J O N - P I E R R E L A S S E I G N E . YO U N G FA M I LY , F U R C O AT , A N D P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : N O R M A N PA R K I N S O N / I C O N I C I M A G E S .
again and possibly putting them in danger. Syrovatka finds a trick in the book.”
solution when he meets “a young Austrian guy” named Alfred She had to cross a world to get to Manhattan. Trump only
Winklmayr and in 1971 persuades him to “marry Ivana on had to cross a bridge.

E A R LY M O D E L I N G A N D F I R S T H U S B A N D : S I PA . H O M E T O W N : I M A G O / C T K P H O T O . W I T H D O N A L D T R U M P : S O N I A M O S KO W I T Z / G E T T Y I M A G E S .
paper” so she can come and go between Czechoslovakia and To her, he is just “a nice guy,” gallantly offering to get her
other countries. “Surprisingly he agreed,” says Syrovatka. and her fellow models a table, where he joins them for dinner
Syrovatka moves to London for work but arranges for Ivana and pays their $400 tab. With that, Trump begins his relentless
to live in his family’s “large and beautiful apartment” in Prague courtship—“a Trump number,” he calls it, “all-enveloping.”
while she earns her master’s degree in physical education at Trump, whose whole life has been all about him, is suddenly
Charles University. Here, she finds true love for the first time, all about Ivana, gushing to friends and family: “Have you ever
not with Syrovatka but with Czechoslovakia’s premier young seen anybody more beautiful? You know she speaks French,
poet and songwriter, Jiri Staidl, 30. He writes her love songs; Russian, and Czech. Do you know that she is the greatest skier
she becomes his muse. A heavy boozer and reckless bon vivant in the world?”
who a friend will say “drove like he was grabbing death by “Donald says I am his twin as a woman,” Ivana will later say.
the ass,” Staidl is speeding in his sports car on the night of In an ABC documentary, the columnist Linda Stasi will add,
October 9, 1973, “with several shots in him and an unknown “He’s such a narcissist, it was like being married to himself.”
beauty in the passenger seat,” reports a Czech newspaper. After months of dating, she gives in to his onslaught of mar-
When a truck slams into the car, Staidl is propelled out of the riage proposals. But before they can wed, on April 7, 1977, she
vehicle and hits the guardrail, dying on the spot. The unknown
beauty is thrown into the back seat, but by some miracle she
walks away without a scratch. The newspaper identifies her
only by her initials: I.Z.
Ivana Zelníčková? “It probably was Ivana in the car, but
she has denied it, and I have never pressed her further,” says
Syrovatka, who invites her to share his home and new life in
Montreal. At 24, she drives her Fiat to the Prague airport and,
with her pet poodle, Chappy, flies off into the New World.
She stays for a time with an aunt and uncle in Toronto. They
take her on a Caribbean cruise, where, for a shipside costume
party, she dresses as a Playboy Bunny. “And I won first prize!”
Seeking friends, she accepts an onboard date with a sailor, who
shows her that Western men can be worse than the Communists
back home: “He invited me to his cabin and tried to rape me,”
she will write in her 2017 memoir, Raising Trump.
In Montreal, Ivana begins her rise as a model, walking run-
ways and posing in fashion magazines. “I wish 10 more like her
would walk through the door right now,” the modeling agency
director marvels, noting her “perfect height and size” and her
“good head for fashion”—attributes that will soon entice a rising
Queens-born real estate developer.

IT IS SUMMER 1976. Donald Trump has just turned 30, but in

his mind he’s already a mogul. After a long day of looking at
properties, he and Gerald Goldsmith, the chairman of a pri-
vate club in Manhattan, are unwinding at Maxwell’s Plum, a
vast restaurant and bar at 64th Street and First Avenue known
for its selection of “sex and food.” Trump’s eagle eyes focus on
a blond woman in a red minidress surrounded by seven other

126 VA N I T Y FA I R
must survive a negotiation with Trump’s notorious attorney Roy
Cohn over the prenuptial agreement. “I did not speak very well
English…and it did not exist in Communist Czechoslovakia,”
she will later say. It includes a “giveback clause,” requiring Ivana
to return any and all gifts, including jewelry, that she receives
over the course of her marriage. No the fucking way, she will
say, demanding a “rainy day fund” to compensate her for the
$50,000 a year she is making as a model.
Trump reportedly deposits $100,000 into Ivana’s indepen-
dent bank account and promises $20,000 for the first year of
wedlock and an escalating amount for each year up to $90,000
after 30 years. Then, before a congregation of 200, Mr. and Mrs.
Donald Trump begin their epic ascent.
SHE BECOMES PREGNANT on their honeymoon with Don Jr.;
Ivanka and Eric follow in rapid succession. “I would give the
birth and I would be at my office two days later,” she tells Live
With Regis and Kathie Lee. She becomes a devoted mom, whose
family is her “number one priority.”
Quick to spot an unutilized asset, Trump dispatches his twin
into the trenches of New York City real estate development.
“I’m going to work for The Donald,” Ivana tells her pal Nikki
DIVORCE MAJEURE
Clockwise from
top: debuting her
post-Donald hairstyle
on the cover of
Vogue, 1990; with
third husband
Riccardo Mazzucchelli,
1997; at the wheel
of MY Ivana, 1996;
repping her namesake
brand, 1994; flying
by luxury helicopter
from Atlantic City to
NYC, 1987.
Haskell over lunch early in the marriage. “I’m going to work on
the construction site.”
“What?” Haskell exclaims, knowing Ivana is referring to the
old Commodore Hotel, the dump Trump is redeveloping as
the Hyatt Grand in a dangerous, run-down neighborhood near
Grand Central Station.
Ivana laughs. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with.”
She moves a mountain of marble into the soaring, soon-to-be-
pink lobby of Trump Tower; renovates the ancient, crumbling
Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach; and becomes CEO of the
Trump Castle hotel and casino in Atlantic City. Finally, in March
1988, after Trump buys the iconic Plaza Hotel in the heart of
Manhattan, he installs Ivana as its president. “If Ivana hadn’t
been involved in his business, there would have been no busi-
ness,” Haskell said on the ABC News Studios documentary The
Ivana Trump Story: The First Wife.
As the buildings grow, along with the dresses (a wardrobe the
Times estimates costs Trump $1.5 million a year), Ivana becomes
a pivotal force in building the phenomenon of Donald J. Trump.
“He didn’t know a king and a queen and a princess if he fell
over them,” the gossip columnist Cindy Adams said on The Ivana
Trump Story. “She opened up all of that to him.”
“He would have never been on The Apprentice without the
image that she created, and he would never have been president
without The Apprentice,” said the author Paula Froelich. Ivana not
only loved Trump, she was tethered to Trump, so tightly that he
would tell Oprah Winfrey in a joint interview, “We get along very
well…because ultimately Ivana does exactly as I tell her to do.”
Until she didn’t. Some said she began to aspire to things he
despised: society, charity boards, fashion shows, grand balls,
and grand people. “The phonies,” Trump called them. “He
didn’t want a copilot,” one longtime Trump observer will later
say. “He wanted a cheerleader.”
Soon, the cameras shone more on her and less on him, “and
he was not going to have it,” said Adams.
THE DIVORCE SWEEPS the world. A tawdry romance novel sprung
to life, it opens with Trump and his mistress Marla Maples creas-
ing the sheets in Trump-owned hotels. Everyone seems to know
except Ivana.
“I always stand by the man,” she says.
Now she is standing in the three-bedroom suite in the Little
Nell Hotel in Aspen. It is the Christmas holiday of 1989, and
Ivana, at 40, has been reborn via a makeover by the renowned
cosmetic surgeon Steve Hoefflin. She’s had “a face-lift, a bosom
inflation, and heaven only knows what else,” wrote Liz Smith,
who didn’t recognize the new Ivana—until she spoke.
Inside the suite, she picks up a landline and hears her hus-
band on the extension speaking to a local real estate agent about
someone whose name she hasn’t heard before.
“Who is Moolah?” she demands.
“Well, that’s a girl who has been going after me for the last
two years,” Trump replies.
Somehow, Trump has juggled Ivana and the 26-year-old
Maples at holiday parties, keeping them separate and seemingly
satisfied. But his luck runs out at Bonnie’s, the rustic lunch spot
at the top of Aspen Mountain. He’s sitting with Marla and some
friends when Ivana walks in, trailed by Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric.
Marla, in a black ski suit, approaches Ivana, in red and pink,
and delivers a line that, as an aspiring actor, she has surely
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 127
rehearsed: “I’m Marla and I love your husband. Do you?”
In an instant, Ivana replies: “Get lost. I love my husband.”
Then, as she has done all her life, Ivana charges. Not at
Moolah—at The Donald. “We were halfway through lunch, and
she’s coming toward us, screaming, ‘You no good son of a bitch!’ ”
says someone who was at Trump’s table. Trump intercepts her
halfway across the crowded room. “And she’s just flailing on
him.” (Asked for comment, Marla Maples did not respond.)
They exit and the lunch crowd rises as one to watch from the
deck. “He clicks into his skis and you could tell that she’s looking
at him, like, ‘Really? You’re going to try to ski away from me?’ ”
He tries, but she is fast on his tail. Back at the Little Nell, Ivana
hurls her husband’s clothes and Rolex watch out of the windows
of their suite and into the snow.
Next comes the unthinkable, at least for Trump. Everyone
seems to side with her.

IF THE NEW tabloid media is born with the Trump divorce, it

grows through the all-access rise of the new Ivana. “She’s exactly
like Donald in that way,” someone tells writer Bob Colacello
for his 1992 VF story. “They live for publicity. It’s like a drug for
them. A lady getting a divorce—a lady—doesn’t get photographed
for getting a divorce…. Ivana did the cover of Vogue!”
Trailed by paparazzi and Trump’s “killer lawyers” in the midst
of her bloody divorce, she rushes breathlessly into the studio of
the photographer Patrick Demarchelier, who is waiting along-
side famed hairstylist Maury Hopson, makeup artist Vincent
Longo, and creative director André Leon Talley—all gathered
to style and shoot Ivana for the May 1990 cover of Vogue.
Hopson knows Ivana’s hair. Everyone does. It’s been embla-
zoned on the cover of every tabloid for weeks: blond and worn
down in the “teased flip” favored by the East Side ladies of the
day. As Ivana sits before the mirror, Hopson grabs a handful of
her lustrous blond hair and holds it aloft, letting some of her
blond tendrils fall down around her face. “We all looked in the
mirror and agreed, Well, that’s it.” In that moment, Ivana Trump’s
famous new hairstyle is born. Soon it will be imitated worldwide.
“You don’t have to put down the second name,” she com-
mands a writer for The New York Times. “Ivana is what the people
call me.... They say, ‘Hi, Ivana! ”
The name becomes emblematic for women around the world
who love her because she won. She and her legal team go to
war over the $25 million stipulated in Cohn’s prenup, fighting
Trump’s fire with fire. In a deposition, she states that Trump,
infuriated over a scalp reduction, raped her in 1989. (Trump
repeatedly denies the allegations. Later, when the deposition is
referenced in the book Lost Tycoon by Harry Hurt III, the pub-
lisher will insert a statement by Ivana at the beginning saying
that it wasn’t rape in “a literal or criminal sense.”)
When she walks away with both her millions and sole cus-
tody of her three kids, the crowds cheer. Best of all, her rise is
concurrent with Trump’s early-’90s financial decline and the
bust-up of his marriage to Maples after six years. Ivana launches
two companies: Ivana Inc. sells “my books, advice columns,
commercials, appearances, and lectures,” and House of Ivana
handles her fragrances, clothes, and jewelry.
The TV studio lights beat down upon her now famous hair-
style as she butchers the King’s English and sells a king’s ransom
in downmarket clothes and costume jewelry to Home Shopping
Network viewers in the US, UK, and Canada. “Ahb-so-LUTE-ly
COUNT ROFFREDO WOULD
BOUND UP IVANA’S SPIRAL
STAIRCASE. “SHE SAID, ‘WE
WOULD MAKE LOVE ON TOP OF
THE PIANO.’ SHE WOULD
TELL EVERYBODY THAT HE
WAS THE BEST LOVER.”
fahn-TAS-tic!” she seems to say of each and every item, from
the $49.95 hoop earrings to the $280 Ivana women’s tuxedo
that smashes HSN records.
“If you went down the street with her, I guarantee you that
women of all sizes will stop and say, ‘Look how good I look! I’m
wearing your jacket!’ ” says her friend Vivian Serota.
Ivana is now a mogul in her own right, spending money as fast
as she makes it. She buys her seven-story town house on East
64th Street in 1992. There’s also a 12,000-square-foot hacienda
in Palm Beach, which she names Concha Marina (Spanish for
seashell), and a 98-foot, four-stateroom yacht, which she chris-
tens the MY Ivana (probably with a bottle of Cristal, the bubbly
she promotes as its US spokesperson).
One summer day in the late 1990s, Ivana is sunbathing on
the bow of the MY Ivana off St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat when a helicop-
ter crashes into the bay. “Let’s go rescue whoever is in there!”
Ivana’s captain, Alberto Batani, remembers her telling him.
They jump into the tender and race to the scene, where they pull
two bobbing pilots into their little rescue boat. Upon regaining
their senses, the men look at their swimsuit-clad rescuer and
shriek, “Ivana Trump!”
IN OCTOBER 1990, Ivana’s beloved father, Milos, dies of a heart
attack. The Donald flies with her to Czechoslovakia for the
funeral and tries to win her back, according to Vivian Serota.
“On the grave of Milos he said to her, ‘I still love you. I don’t
want a divorce. Let’s get back together again.’ ” As for Maples,
whom Ivana refers to only as “the showgirl,” he says, “We’ll
take care of it.”

128 VA N I T Y FA I R

HER WAY
Clockwise from
above: on the
May 1992 cover
of VF; with fourth
husband Rossano
Rubicondi, 2003;
in the arms of
Count Roffredo
Gaetani, 1998;
with her children,
Don Jr., Eric, and
Ivanka, 2006.
“And if she wasn’t so brokenhearted, maybe they would have
stayed married,” Serota says.
Instead, she rents a house in London’s Eaton Square and
escapes there for weekends from the stress of her divorce.
V O G U E C O V E R : PAT R I C K D E M A R C H E L I E R . H E L I C O P T E R : J O E M C N A L LY. YA C H T : E VA N A G O S T I N I / L I A I S O N . B O T H : G E T T Y I M A G E S .
Ivana is ubiquitous: from Buckingham Palace to St. Moritz,
where, four months after her father’s death, she falls into the
arms of Kenneth Lieberman. He’s almost perfect: rich, hand-
some, successful, and, in his late 60s, wise and consoling.
W I T H R I C C A R D O M A Z Z U C C H E L L I : WA LT E R W E I S S M A N / G LO B E P H O T O S . I VA N A M E R C H A N D I S E : A L P H A P R E S S .
But married. Their very public relationship makes interna-
tional headlines.
Then Lieberman returns to his wife, and Ivana moves on to
the first of her “freaky Italians,” as she will call them.
At the horse races at Ascot, she meets Riccardo Mazzucchelli,
a London-based international businessman. “He was not a para-
site,” says Serota. “He had his own life, his own business. He
knew a lot of the people she knew.”
Before their wedding, at Le Cirque in New York, Ivana’s attor-
ney asks Mazzucchelli to estimate his net worth for the prenup:
“He said, ‘Five million, more or less,’ ” remembers the attorney.
“And I thought, I’m betting on the less.”
“A zero,” is how Trump rated Mazzucchelli.
He becomes involved in Ivana’s businesses. “Ivana was on
Home Shopping, she took cabs, stayed in motel rooms, never
said boo,” says Serota. “She marries Riccardo, and he starts
making demands. He became a prima donna.”
He “felt he was sort of morphing into Mr. Riccardo Trump,”
says Haskell. “He was very upset that nobody referred to Ivana
as Mrs. Mazzucchelli. So we went to Las Vegas and she had
all the rooms reserved under Mr. and Mrs. Mazzucchelli, and
everybody was supposed to make sure that they called her
Mrs. Mazzucchelli.”
“We went to see Wayne Newton, and he came out onstage
and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friend Ivana Trump
is here!’ Riccardo got up and left and we never saw him again.
That was the end of the marriage,” says Haskell.
With Mazzucchelli gone, Ivana turns to Massimo Gargia, an
Italian publisher known as “the king of the jet set.” “Start look-
ing,” she tells Gargia, who “began to search for a man worthy
of this beautiful and talented woman.”
He finds him in Rome: Count Roffredo Gaetani dell’ Aquila d’
Aragona di Laurenzana Lovatelli. The eldest of four sons and two
daughters of one of the oldest and most regal families in Italy, Rof-
fredo grew up in a vast Roman palace, and his family tree includes
two popes. Moreover, he is “startlingly handsome,” a former pro-
fessional boxer who shares Ivana’s love of adventure and speed.
Still in his 40s, with the drive of the Ferraris on display at his
two New York–area dealerships, Roffredo would bound up Iva-
na’s spiral staircase and into the second-floor living room, where
she would be waiting beside the grand piano. “She said, ‘He
would grab me, and we would make love on top of the piano,’ ”
says Serota. “The best sex she ever had in her life! She would tell
everybody that he was the best lover. And he was a gentleman.
And he was very protective.”
Even Trump gives his blessing, despite being unable to
remember Roffredo’s name. “Wilfredo is a terrific guy,” he
tells The New York Times during their courtship. “I hope they
both have a good time spending the money that I gave to Ivana.”
Then, on December 23, 2005, Roffredo goes to visit his moth-
er in the family home, a castle in Tuscany. Driving through the
frost in a rental car, he falls asleep at the wheel and runs off the
road. The car rolls over several times and Roffredo, who suffers
multiple head injuries, is dead at 52.
By then, though, their romance is over. Mostly due to a third
person in the relationship: Roffredo’s boss and mentor Gianni
Agnelli, the principal shareholder of Fiat, which owns Ferrari.
“Gianni Agnelli was very jealous,” says Serota, and his constant
demands on Roffredo’s time became too much for Ivana. “They
had a very big fight. I’m sure if Roffredo was alive, that other
creep would have never come into her life.”
ACT III:
THE FALL
IN AUGUST 1999, Francine Eternod, 71, who claims to be a Swiss
countess, tells police in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, that she has been
held prisoner in the bedroom of her villa by her 27-year-old boy-
friend. A bodybuilder and aspiring actor from Rome, he wants to
attend a party with “important people,” according to an Italian
newspaper. She prefers another “intimate evening.” She claims
he locked her in her room, returning at 4 a.m., drunk, from the
disco: “He kicked in the door…beat me up…taking with him three
checkbooks and the two phones.”
Both parties go to the police. He insists he took only
the lodging she offered. “Sex? Are we crazy? She could be
my grandmother.”
Eternod eventually withdraws her complaint. “Ah, Rossano,
he’s a wonderful person,” she tells a C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 3 4
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 129

Sargent’s Orders
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 0 6 They would
bike around to shows as Fei gathered a
steady stream of content for her feeds.
Sargent often featured in the shots and
eventually started his own account.
“It would be me at school during the
day, seven to four, then bolting out to
a fashion shoot or bolting out to catch a
plane,” Sargent said. “Thank God that this
school was so close to JFK.”
Sargent met his obligation at Teach
for America in May 2013 and started
focusing on writing, catching bylines
where he could. Later that year, for the
Huffington Post, he wrote a scathing (and
unpaid) take on a controversial segment
in which CNN anchor Don Lemon had
given condescending advice to young
Black men. The post went viral. (Lemon
now collects work by Black contemporary
artists and is acquaintances with Sargent;
over the summer they saw each other at
Darren Walker’s apartment at a party
honoring Adjaye.)
Then came a gig at Buzzfeed, where
Sargent’s byline was attached to pop
culture listicles and other content that’s
been largely shunted to the dustbin of
internet history. (Sample Sargent head-
line: “27 Times Olivia Pope Looked So
Ridiculously Perfect and Beautiful and
Perfect.”) But Sargent really wanted to
write about art, primarily about young
artists of color. He published a few items
on Vice at $150 a pop. He was covering
his $750-per-month rent, but it was bare-
ly enough.
“I also am grateful that I was even given
the work, because you talk to a lot of Black
writers and it was like, they’re not even
just being commissioned,” he said. And
among the legacy publications, the writer-
ly contingent itself was almost exclusively
white, something that surprised Sargent as
he entered the field. “I remember the day I
had to disclose to him that Holland Cotter
from The New York Times wasn’t Black,” Fei
said. “He looked shocked.”
130 VA N I T Y FA I R
IN 2014, the arts nonprofit Creative Time
unveiled a new work by Kara Walker at
the former Domino Sugar Factory on the
Williamsburg waterfront. The 35-foot
sphinxlike sculpture became one of the
most talked-about works of the decade.
Walker had been a touchstone for Sar-
gent since he was an undergraduate, and
he pitched an interview to The New Yorker,
which the magazine ultimately declined;
Staff writer Hilton Als reviewed the show.
The rejection of a potential assignment is
a fairly commonplace occurrence in the
ever-capricious digital media economy,
but the episode loomed large to a 20-some-
thing Sargent. “First time I met Hilton at a
dinner, I was like, ‘I just want you to know,
I was 23 and I was trying to do my first story
at The New Yorker.... And it didn’t break my
spirit, but it kind of did,’ ” Sargent recalled.
Asked about the exchange, Als said, “I’m
so sorry that Antwaun believes that any of
this is true.” He eventually got it accepted
at Complex, and the act of interviewing
a personal hero at her moment of great-
est cultural crossover sparked Sargent’s
ambitions. He thought that his writing
could both better inform the public about
new Black artists and clarify the prac-
tice of those already in the mainstream.
He’d occasionally noticed collectors who
installed works by Black artists in insen-
sitive ways. He recalled once visiting the
house of a white collector.
“I turned a corner and I’m seeing all
these Kara Walker fucking silhouettes,”
Sargent said. “Fine. Fair, whatever. But I
also am just like, ‘What?’ ”
A waitress brought over our food.
“Why do you have 20 of these? Can you
tell me why you have TWEN-ty of these?”
Around the time of the Walker show,
Sargent pivoted his writing almost exclu-
sively to art. He contributed catalog essays
for gallery shows, which gave way to some
early curatorial work. For the photogra-
phy nonprofit Aperture, he put together
the book The New Black Vanguard, which
spawned several reprintings and a world-
touring show. After that, Lumpkin, whose
Tribeca apartment has long been a site of
cultural salons, approached him about a
monograph for his collection.
Lumpkin and his husband, Boccuzzi,
had been building a collection of Black
artists, including Henry Taylor, Rashid
Johnson, and Jordan Casteel. When
Concordia College asked Lumpkin and
Boccuzzi to stage a show of works from
the collection, they asked Sargent to
organize the exhibit with their collection
manager, Matt Wycoff. Around the same
time, Sargent helped put together a book
documenting the collection.
The market for Black contemporary
artists had been building, and the show
was impeccably timed. In May 2018, Sean
Combs bought Kerry James Marshall’s
Past Times for $21.1 million, smashing the
record price for a living Black artist. The
excitement trickled down to the primary
market. New works by Mark Bradford, the
Black abstract painter who represented
the US at the Venice Biennale in 2017,
were selling for as much as $5 million.
By the time the Lumpkin show began
traveling the country under Sargent’s
direction in February 2020, the critical
establishment was starting to more regu-
larly cover Black artists, but often in a way
that unsettled Sargent. The praise, as he
saw it, now seemed too effusive. Or, as Sar-
gent said, “It’s all these white critics lying
because they don’t want to be racist about
how great Black art is.
“All the shows are great?” holding the
all for what seemed like a minute. “All of
them. All of them? I’m sorry... you called
this shit awful seven years ago, because I
read your review. Now you’re praising it?”
SOMEWHAT INEVITABLY, the galleries saw
the value in having on staff someone like
Sargent to not just write about Black artists
but bring them into the fold of the gallery.
A few had already approached him when
he landed on the radar of Andrew Fab-
ricant, who joined Gagosian in 2018 as
COO, seen by many as the successor to
the 77-year-old dealer king.
“The first time I met Antwaun, I could
just see the star power,” Fabricant says. “I
mean, the guy is indefatigable. He’s got
enormous charm, he’s got incredible chops.
He’s got his relationships with artists, he’s
got relationships with the fashion world.…
Not only with the creative side—there’s art
handlers, there’s the whole logistical side
of what we do. That is unique in my expe-
rience at Gagosian, which in the past was
not the warmest or fuzziest place to work.”
Eventually, he was introduced to the
gallery’s founder, who got his start by
selling posters on the street in Westwood
Village in the mid-1970s and now does
$1 billion a year in sales. They agreed to
a partnership where Sargent would put
together a group show, and the names
on the list were mostly artists the gallery
kingpin had never heard of.
 “The art world kind of realized that
the situation’s been really lopsided for a
long time, and African American, Black
artists, what have you, have been sort of
kept out of the game,” Gagosian told me
in October. “And so my gallery, like a lot
of galleries, has been thinking about diver-
sity. But what I’ve come to realize is these
are some incredibly innovative and fresh
artists. Antwaun hasn’t brought me any
artist to look at that I said, ‘Oh geez. Why
do you think this is interesting? This is ugh.
I can’t.’ It’s usually just the opposite.”
For his Gagosian debut, Sargent pro-
posed something much more ambitious
than his programming to that point: “Social
Works,” a group show of Black artists
involved in performance and installation-
based practices that involve some aspect
of community organizing. Adjaye made a
60-ton freestanding sculpture (his first).
Linda Goode Bryant installed a fully opera-
tional urban farm, with the produce bagged
and pinned on the walls. Theaster Gates’s A
Song for Frankie (2017–2021) featured 5,000
records from the archives of legendary
Chicago house pioneer Frankie Knuckles,
which blasted for the run of the show.
And someone had to sell everything.
Curators have historically stayed on the
institutional side, occasionally doing
one-off work for galleries, and the idea of
a curator-dealer is a relatively new phe-
nomenon. It came pretty easy to Sargent.
“Most of these artists he’s bringing in,
there is a built-in clientele and a list of peo-
ple who want these things—it’s not rocket
science,” Fabricant says. “But he took to
it quite rapidly. And he enjoys it not only
for the interaction, but for the money.”
Gagosian sees it as a natural extension for
Sargent: “I wouldn’t call him a salesman
or an art dealer.”
Sargent won’t reveal his salary or com-
mission, even if the money is great, much
better than $150 a pop for a Vice story. Cer-
tainly, there are those who roll their eyes at
Sargent curating and earning commission.
But, Sargent said, the impact of having
shows that feature and sell Black artists
within a commercial gallery is a crucial ele-
ment of his ambition as a person of color in
a power position supporting artists of color.
Not every arts institution shares this goal.
“Doing these shows and letting
esteemed curators or Black curators
come and do shows at your galleries and
there are no works for sale—bro, that’s
expensive PR,” he said. “It’s actually dis-
respectful to everybody involved. We’re
not asking for anything special. We’re just
asking for the fucking opportunity to com-
pete, and I think that was the thing that
informed my decision to join the gallery,
because they gave me a real opportunity
to compete and you can see what I’ve done
with it. And that’s the only thing. It doesn’t
need to be like, ‘We’re correcting our da
da da….’ Fuck all that. We’ve lived in this
country, we know what it is. Give us the
opportunity to compete.”
ON THE FIRST Thursday of October, a few
days before the start of the Frieze art fair
in London, Gagosian opened its first show
with Tyler Mitchell at its Mayfair space on
Davies Street. Mitchell, 27, first came to
widespread acclaim for his editorial work
for Vogue (and Vanity Fair), and the open-
ing was scheduled for September, in the
heart of London Fashion Week, but Queen
Elizabeth’s death had caused the gallery
to delay. The show was already a risk—an
artist’s first show at the gallery, a photogra-
phy show in an art market that is crazy for
painting, etc. Now it had to compete with
the madness of an international art fair.
I ran into Mitchell walking through
Mayfair on the way to the show, and as
we approached, I saw a series of diptych
photos visible through the window. Unlike
most of Gagosian’s other galleries, this one
has floor-to-ceiling windows to display the
bulk of the show to the public, with the
lights kept on until midnight. The works
marked a major breakthrough for Mitchell;
they draw on his history of celebrity pho-
tography but turn his lens to young men
and women to present a kind of utopian
vision of American Blackness.
There’s an office through an unmarked
false wall at the back of the gallery, and I
opened it to see Sargent sitting at the desk.
He wore a brown Burberry suit—“It’s Brit-
ish, honey”—and a shirt by Grace Wales
Bonner, the London-based designer and
artist who showed in “Social Works II” in
London. Despite having been at his friend
Madonna’s Marylebone mansion until five
in the morning—“Oh, my God, she has
Frida Kahlo and Picasso and, what’s that
guy we represent, who does the women
with the big boobs, oh John Currin…”—he
did not seem the least bit tired.
“The people are rooolling through,” he
said, fixing his hat on his head two minutes
after the opening began. In came Amy
Sherald, the artist who painted Michelle
Obama’s portrait and now has new work
selling for as much as $3.6 million. There
was Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, whose
paintings have sold for more than $1.95
million at auction, chatting with fellow
British artist Anthea Hamilton. From Los
Angeles came rising star Lauren Halsey,
and also present was Alvaro Barrington,
the painter who shows with London’s
Sadie Coles HQ, and the Viennese-born
London dealer Thaddaeus Ropac. Bonner
came by, as did fellow fashion designer
Ireland’s Simone Rochas, as did Edward
Enninful, the editor of British Vogue. Anna
Wintour had a private tour from Mitchell
the day before.
Christiane Amanpour was there, but so
were hundreds of young people of color,
along with bankers in Savile Row fits, there
to get a peek at the commotion on their
way home from the pubs. At 7:40, a sales
assistant burst out of the gallery and into
the street, and went up to Sargent’s assis-
tant with word the show had sold out.
Moments later, Sargent emerged from
the back office, where he had been, clos-
ing deals he had spent months setting up.
“It’s been all sold, even the editions,
and you know how fucking hard it is to sell
photo?” he said. “And I sold two thirds of it
myself. So if there was any question about
whether I can sell….”
With the gallery still crowded, Sar-
gent, Mitchell, and more VIPs made their
way to a private room at Maison Estelle,
a Mayfair private club chosen, perhaps,
because it has a no-pictures policy that
requires guests to put stickers over their
phone’s lenses. Obrist came by, as did
Nathan Clements-Gillespie, the direc-
tor of Frieze Masters who commissioned
several works from Mitchell for the fair.
Mitchell’s Hollywood agent from UTA was
there, as was his gallery rep at Jack Shain-
man, the Chelsea space that gave him his
first gallery show the year before.
After hours of Champagne and negro-
nis sent around on trays, the waiters
wheeled out a gigantic cake for Mitchell
with the name of his show written in cur-
sive on top. Sargent ripped the sticker off
his phone to take photos.
“We got here, with the queen and every-
thing, we got here,” he said to me, cocktail
in hand, as slices of the cake were passed
around. “They did everything they could
do to stop me, and we got here.” Just then
a sales assistant came to grab him, flash-
ing phone to be answered in hand. Sargent
excused himself.
“Hold on,” he said. “I gotta take care of
some business.” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 131

The Knight’s Tale
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 2 1 “sir” courte-
sy of the knights and is a senior adviser
to Prince Assaf—who awarded Ritossa
the Grand Cross from the Royal Order of
Banu Assaf at Monaco’s 2021 gathering.
(Sir Anthony has also received an honor-
ary doctorate from AKBS, where he is
supposedly a professor and a member of
the advisory board.)
The school, which ostensibly offers
executive MBAs and professional certi-
fications, is registered to an address on
Old Gloucester Street in London. I made
a point of visiting while in town for the
Prestel conference. Upon arriving at the
unassuming four-story building, it took a
beat to get my bearings. Apple Maps listed
25 businesses—including a tantric massage
service—at the location. A foreman, how-
ever, was kind enough to point me toward
the shuttered door of a company that pro-
vides virtual office and postal-forwarding
services. Sure enough, the central address
for AKBS appears to be a mail stop.
THE RITOSSA SUMMITS—ACCORDING to a
well-wired American intelligence veteran
who took a hard look—have the hallmarks
of what is known as a “stargaze” con. As
my source explained, apropos of the Ritos-
sa model: Potential marks are wooed by
the swank settings and glittering names
on the invite list. They suspend disbelief
and shell out hefty sums to mingle with,
and pitch, an audience of several hundred
“from 55+ countries representing more
than $4.5 trillion in wealth.”
As with Ritossa himself, truth in adver-
tising strains credulity. Despite what his
websites say, his “ultra elite” investors
include a hodgepodge of conference
junkies, crypto bros, minor Euro and Gulf
royals, and, yes, some family offices and
high-net-worth individuals. And, no, the
hordes did not materialize in Monaco.
If the two days I spent at the Fairmont
were any indication, there appeared to be
around 100 individuals going in and out of
132 VA N I T Y FA I R
the designated summit areas. (Canadian
CEO Kerry Adler heard it was 300.)
So what do participants pony up—beyond
the cost of travel and accommodations?
Documents obtained by VF show that Sir
Anthony charges people between $18,000
and $200,000 to pitch an audience that his
marketing materials tout as regal and rich.
Those that splurge on a Platinum Presence,
for example, make their sales pitch onstage
and in various other forums. They enjoy a
“private exclusive dinner” with 25-plus
high-net-worth “top investors.” Also
included: fireside chats, discussion panels,
and interviews with a handful of business
press outlets. Smaller packages dangle the
prospect of 8 to 15 one-on-ones with “like-
minded investors and family offices.”
The payments do not end there. Par-
ticipants are informed in writing that
these “packages are tied with a success
fee agreement.” Insiders maintain that a
number of individuals have been asked to
sign away 2.5 percent to 8 percent “[of] any
successful business partnership/agree-
ment derived from Sir Anthony Ritossa’s
Family Office Investment Conference.”
Some complied, some did not; still others
worked out a hybrid agreement, giving
Ritossa’s operation cash as well as an
equity stake in their business.
Such arrangements, according to
attorneys and wealth managers, are the
sort that might raise eyebrows among
regulators since they may constitute
broker-dealer activity—which requires
a license in some, if not all, of the coun-
tries where Ritossa has held his summits.
There are other rules and regulations too.
“In Monaco…you cannot sell or promote
a company or give financial advice with-
out a license from Monaco’s version of
the SEC,” explained Giuseppe Ambrosio.
“Ritossa sells pitches. People are paying
him thousands of euros to sell securities
in front of an audience.” One local coun-
selor suggested Sir Anthony may have
pushed another boundary. Monaco, at
least on paper, takes a dim view of those
who publicly profess to have titles and
educational degrees that have not been
legitimately conferred.
A more prevalent complaint is that the
conference has evolved into a fraud: one
in which Ritossa lures and then profits off
of attendees, some of whom say they were
misled about the size and constitution of
the audience. “We had basically zero inves-
tors at these events,” one longtime Ritossa
team member admitted to me before
clarifying, “Let me rephrase. The differ-
ence between the numbers of investors we
would announce—and reality—was signifi-
cant.… Look at his pattern. It’s all about the
numbers. Saying that you’ve got 500 peo-
ple at a conference when you really have
just 200. Saying that you have 500 inves-
tors when you really have just five. [He] is
constantly creating what is not there. Like
his titles and his education.”
“These guys are predators.… They’re
bilking people out of money who are try-
ing to build real businesses,” alleged a
prominent money manager in the Gulf
who has advised clients to steer clear.
“Ritossa puts on fake family office events
where a lot of people turn up who don’t
have capital to invest—but very much
want people to think they do—while genu-
ine entrepreneurs and fund managers are
being hustled into giving Ritossa and his
company fees, and so on.”
“The scale of what he’s done is stagger-
ing,” explained Ari Mello, an American
entrepreneur who attended three summits
in Dubai. “Ritossa has bullshitted thou-
sands of people.… In my case, I lost a lot of
money.” (His estimate: well over $50,000.)
By April, he began comparing notes with
other conferencegoers, complaining to an
acquaintance in a private LinkedIn mes-
sage that “Many of the people attending
are veterans of the Ritossa circuit, which
has proven to be a giant fraud.…” When
Ritossa heard about the exchange, his
Dubai lawyer—the one who had tried to
intimidate Graham David Bell—threat-
ened Mello with civil and criminal action.
Like Bell, Mello was uncowed. “Almost
every investor I met at Ritossa’s events was
looking for money,” he said, “and [many
of] the people I met there were trying to
access my network.… I’ve also never spo-
ken to someone who raised a dollar or met
an investor who had a dollar to give.”
Not all participants are naysayers—
far from it. A spokesperson for Unicoin
praised the conclaves as “professionally
organized and well-attended, including
by VIPs,” remarking on the Ritossa team’s
“excellent reputation” and “his position as
a member of the Forbes Business Council.”
Adler lauded the summits too, telling me
they attract “a lot of high-quality people.”
In virtually the same breath, however, he
said he understands the criticism: “If I paid
$100,000 or $200,000 and thought I was
going to sit in a room and meet a bunch
of willing investors, you know what? I’d
be upset if I didn’t meet anyone.” I asked
about his company’s return on investment,
given all the Ritossa events he and his
team have attended. His answer: “Have
we ever received investment from any of
them? No.” As for his take on the summits’
organizer, “He’s either just a simple guy
that has found a way to pull together a lot
of people or is one of the greatest scam art-
ists in the world.”
The splashiest deal to ever come out of
the Ritossa event? That would involve a
blockchain company called Chainstarter.
Its CEO is a crypto gadfly named Nick
Ayton who told an interviewer, “Chain-
starter is proud to be a sponsor for our
good friend and host Anthony Ritossa.
His summits are the best of the best in a
perfect setting. During his recent summit
we achieved $360 million of investments.”
But when I reached out to confirm the
quote and the funding—which would
account for nearly 13 percent of the $2.8
billion Ritossa says has been raised at his
events—Ayton ghosted (and repeated
approaches went unanswered). A former
Chainstarter insider told me, jokingly: “I
would be very surprised if he raised $360.”
In fact, the source insisted, Ayton’s com-
pany shelled out hundreds of thousands
of dollars to showcase the firm at Ritossa’s
events in Dubai and Monaco. After I raised
Ayton’s claim with Adler, he told me he
confronted Ritossa about it. “Anthony told
me he took the guy at his word,” he said.
I RETURNED FROM Europe in late June and
began writing this story in earnest when
a call came in from an unknown number.
The woman on the other end described
herself as a whistleblower and asked if she
could email me about Anthony Ritossa.
By that point, I had already sifted through
thousands of pages of material about the
man and his enablers. I figured one more
email was not a heavy lift. The next day,
the first salvo arrived. “In terms of Antho-
ny,” she wrote, “I wondered how long it
would take for his web of lies and fraud
to unravel.” Later, she added, “He’s made
up so much: knight, professor, Nobel
nominee. What’s next, astronaut?” We
spoke several times before she felt com-
fortable enough to share a record of his
misdeeds that included court filings and
police reports—a paper trail Sir Anthony
could not erase.
Anthony Ritossa, I would soon find
out, is a scofflaw who has been convicted
in two countries and is wanted in a third.
The whistleblower’s tips prompted me, in
early September, to go back to Europe, this
time retracing the would-be heir’s foot-
prints across the Istrian Peninsula.
I stopped outside the Ritossa family’s
homestead in Poreč and indeed saw a few
olive trees. But the boughs of those four
or five specimens, on a rocky outcropping
by the Adriatic, were scarcely the stuff on
which fortunes are made.
I traveled to Rijeka to visit with an
attorney to review Ritossa’s brushes with
the law. I discovered that in 2017—only
weeks before his Miami summit—Cro-
atian police arrested Ritossa near the
Slovenian border. After spending 11 days
in jail, he was found guilty of threaten-
ing to kidnap the son of his ex-wife’s
father and stepmother. He faced a year
in prison, but the court, perhaps unaware
of his brushes with the law in the US and
the UK, gave him probation. As for his
explanation to his one-time compatriot
Knab for why he had gone dark back then?
According to a source with knowledge of
the family dynamics, Ritossa’s mother,
Maria, never had a stroke and Ritossa had
not visited Australia around that time.
I went to see Ritossa’s former friend and
olive oil supplier, Darko Kadum. “You want
to hear the craziest story?” he asked as we
sat under a pergola, sipping a Malvazija
from his family’s winery. The September
sun was setting and he looked at his wife,
as if seeking permission, before letting
loose. “He stole his dead father’s body on
its way from Australia to Croatia.” Giovanni
Ritossa, the family patriarch, passed away
in May 2015 and, per his wishes, was sup-
posed to be interred in a plot in Istria.
But according to the Kadums, as well as
others with knowledge of what the fam-
ily endured, Ritossa diverted Giovanni’s
remains to Slovenia where, I am told, he
stored them in a morgue while his fam-
ily frantically tried to determine what
was happening. After a time, his relatives
would later learn, Ritossa quietly laid his
father to rest in a cemetery in the town of
Piran. “Keeping a body from being buried
for months is just off-the-charts macabre,”
said a person with close ties to the Ritos-
sas. “And then not inviting any family
to a funeral in another country is soul-
crushing.” According to several sources,
Ritossa had been trying to hide his erratic
behavior for some time. “It was all about
control,” they said. “It was a message to
the broader family, a giant ‘Fuck you all.’ ”
As I looked out over Kadum’s 19th-
century estate, thinking about the mystery
of Anthony Ritossa, something the whis-
tleblower said came back to me. “The
most extraordinary thing,” she explained,
“is that so many people close to him have
already been alerted to the fraud and
chose to ignore it.… To my mind, they’re
willing accomplices.” In the run-up to the
2019 Monaco summit—one of six he has
held there—she had even sent emails,
putting some of the monarch’s closest
advisers on notice: “His Serene High-
ness Prince Albert II of Monaco is being
courted by a conman…[with] a falsified CV
and a history of morphing into a different
person when he is caught.” The communi-
cations—which I have reviewed—outlined
Ritossa’s legal entanglements, threats of
violence, financial problems, and serial
deception, and included detailed attach-
ments. “When this becomes public, as
everything does in time,” she warned,
“it will be a massive blot on Monaco.”
My earlier efforts to engage with the pal-
ace had been rebuffed. But I reached out
again in September and, this time, court-
iers acknowledged that back in 2019 they
had indeed received the whistleblower’s
emails. But a top Monaco official confided,
“There were no red flags other than this
particular email…and it was hard to tell if
it was real or [an act of] vengeance.” That
was then. On September 20, prompted
by Vanity Fair’s request that responsible
palace authorities have another look at the
allegations first presented three years ago,
I was sent a surprisingly frank statement
from HSH Prince Albert II:
“I have recently been alerted to the fact
that the organizer of the events named
‘Sir Anthony Ritossa’s Global Family
Office Investment Summit’, which take
place in Monaco, may not meet the Prin-
cipality’s necessary requirements in
terms of transparency, ethics and profes-
sional conduct.
“Under these circumstances and as
a precautionary measure, it has been
decided that my patronage will no longer
be granted for all the organizer’s future
events to be held in Monaco, thus disal-
lowing any direct or indirect support from
the Principality of Monaco.
“It is to be noted that I never personally
attended any of these events.”
The statement was a fitting coda to
Ritossa’s regal posturing: a real prince
kicking a wannabe knight out of his realm.
Nevertheless, the show must go on.
Sir Anthony hosted his 20th summit, in
Dubai, in October. Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 133

Inventing Ivana
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 1 2 9 newspaper.
“And don’t call him a gigolo.”
His name is Rossano Rubicondi.
A few years later, Massimo Gargia and
a group of friends walk into an after-hours
bar in Rome known for its famous clientele.
There among the night owls sits Rubicondi.
“Rubicondi was a nobody,” Gargia will
recall. “Very good-looking. Amusing. He
tried to go all the places in fashion. To
know people. But without one penny.”
The supremely well-connected Gargia
helps Rubicondi get a job as a salesman
at the Versace boutique in London. And
when Rubicondi learns that Gargia is close
friends with Ivana Trump, he becomes fix-
ated on meeting her. “He was very pushy,”
Gargia says.
At the ready-to-wear collection in
Milan, Gargia is sitting with Ivana when
Rubicondi appears. But Ivana isn’t
impressed. “He’s a little bit too vulgar,”
she tells Gargia. Rubicondi engineers a
second meeting—“He sold his car in Lon-
don to go and see her in Palm Beach,” says
Gargia—with similar results.
Fast-forward to the French Riviera.
Gargia has joined Ivana for a two-week
cruise on her yacht. And Ivana, usually so
effervescent, is uncharacteristically down.
“She was alone for more than one year,”
he says. “And Ivana was not a woman who
can be without a man.”
Friends who hear about the scandal
with Francine Eternod try to warn her. But
Ivana is blinded by Rubicondi’s charms.
“In the beginning, he was very charm-
ing,” says Serota. “He bowed and kissed
her hand…all the BS.”
“He was very good company, you know,
beside the sex,” says Gargia. “He was very
good at sex, like all Italians.”
Rubicondi learns to speak English, his
deep, booming baritone filling the draw-
ing rooms and dance floors of the Upper
East Side, St.-Tropez, Aspen, and Gstaad,
always with the lady paying. “Signora was a
mega-financial support for him,” says Paolo
Alavian, owner of Ivana’s regular neighbor-
hood restaurant Ristorante Altesi.
“He always wanted something,” says
Baroness Marianne von Brandstetter.
“He was like a lion in a cage,” says his
friend Roberto Manfe. “He couldn’t be
who he wanted to be: a businessman.”
“He would have 15 or 20 coffees in the
morning before tennis,” says Brandstetter.
“Ten to 12 Aperol spritzes, no problem,”
says Alavian.
More dangerous than the espresso or
the alcohol were the dreams. “The scheme
of the week,” Haskell says of Rubicondi’s
endless quest to launch himself into the
world of business. “One day he’s going
to open a pizza restaurant in Palm Beach.
The next he has a restaurant in St.-Tropez
[the short-lived Da Rossano]. People
would come at 11 o’clock to watch him
and Ivana fight.”
Through it all, he is in the Ivana busi-
ness, which might have been the toughest
enterprise of all. “It’s very difficult to take
advantage of Ivana,” says Haskell. “She
sees through everything and everybody.”
“He threatened her: If you don’t marry
me, I leave you,” says Gargia. “Everybody
was against. Me too.”
Ivana still believes in the impossible:
waiving the $20,000 event fee.
On March 17, two weeks before the
vows, the police race to Ivana’s Palm
Beach home on Jungle Road, responding
to a report of a “disturbance.”
“They were screaming,” says Gar-
gia. “Rossano wants money before
the marriage.”
“He wanted a piece of money she was
getting for the wedding,” says Haskell,
who served as Ivana’s maid of honor and
says Ivana earned about $2.5 million from
wedding-related sponsorships. “He was
part of the show, and he wasn’t going to
sign the wedding certificate unless she
gave him money. So she reluctantly gave
him $75,000.”
VANITY FAIR
Statement Required by 39 U.S.C. 3685 showing the Ownership,
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except for a combined issue in July/August & Dec/Jan (10 issues)
for October 1, 2022. Publication No. 697-930. Annual subscription
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That’s when Rubicondi turns up again. “She honestly believed that if she married (1) Free or Nominal Rate 402,517 398,354
Outside-County Copies
“Finally, one night she was drunk and Rossano, he might start behaving himself, included on PS Form 3541
(2) Free or Nominal Rate 0 0
she brought him on the boat,” says Gar- and he would feel more secure,” says her In-County Copies included
on PS Form 3541
gia. “The day after, she told me, ‘I’m so longtime London friend, adviser, and (3) Free or Nominal Rate 0 0
Copies Mailed at Other
happy. He’s so nice.’ ” agent, Liz Brewer. “But that was unfortu- Classes Through the USPS
(4) Free or Nominal Rate 3,527 2,937
For two weeks they cruise the Med, nately not the case.” Distribution Outside the Mail
e. Total Free or Nominal Rate 406,044 401,292
the 57-year-old soon-to-be grandmother The wedding date is set: April 12, 2008. Distribution
f. Total Distribution 1,067,955 1,059,200
(“The kids call me Glam-ma or Ivana-ma”) It will be a multimillion-dollar blowout: g. Copies not Distributed 83,512 86,855
h. Total 1,151,470 1,146,055
and the 30-something playboy, each able more than 400 guests, a 24-piece orches- i. Percent Paid 61.98% 62.11%
to party until 3 or 4 a.m., then hit the gym tra, 25 bridesmaids, 17 groomsmen, a j. Paid Electronic Copies
k. Total Paid Print Copies (Line 15c)
161,788
823,699
155,240
813,148
at 8 and start all over again. 12-foot-tall imported wedding cake—all + Paid Electronic Copies
l. Total Print Distribution (Line 15f) 1,229,743 1,214,440
From Dancing With the Stars to the paid for by Ivana. “Decorations, flowers, + Paid Electronic Copies
m. Percent Paid (Both Print & 66.98% 66.96%
beach in St.-Tropez, she is in love again, and arrangements like I’ve never seen,” Electronic Copies)

Ivana again. “I’d rather be a babysitter says Brandstetter. All under the eaves 7. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true
and complete. (Signed) Emilie Harkin, Executive Director, Global
than a nursemaid,” she will write. of Mar-a-Lago, with Trump reportedly Consumer Revenue

134 VA N I T Y FA I R
 Then, before the sovereigns of Trump
World, Rubicondi becomes a member of
the family. Everyone wears white except
Donald, who arrives in a black tuxedo.
“We are a construction company and we
have job sites, we lose people,” Don Jr.
says in his toast. “You better treat her right
because I have a .45 and a shovel.”
At the wedding, Rubicondi enters to
the theme song from the movie Rocky.
He sings—“Terrible,” says Haskell—and
dances until the party ends at 4 a.m.
Then, he disappears.
Ivana’s groom, who fed his bride day-
old sandwiches at a 7-Eleven in the wee
hours after their wedding, has gone first to
Miami and then to Rome for a stint on the
reality show L’Isola dei Famosi. “She was
hurt and didn’t want it to get out that she
wasn’t honeymooning with Rossano,” says
Liz Brewer. “So for three weeks everyone
assumed she was, even though she was
home alone in Palm Beach.”
When he returns, and he always returns,
the gallantry and even the sex evaporate
and the fighting escalates. “Rossano did
not understand that Ivana was the chance
of his life,” says Gargia. “He thought he
could get rid of her and have a career. He
starts to treat her very bad.”
They are staying on a boat near St.-
Tropez. Rubicondi has left for the evening,
returning “like always at 4 a.m.,” says
Brandstetter. The ship soon sets sail.
“Ivana checked Rossano’s bag and she
found a condom. She said, ‘Why do you
have a condom? With me you are not doing
anything!’ She called the captain and said,
‘Stop the cruise!’ She wanted to leave Ros-
sano in the middle of the ocean.”
The marriage lasts one year. But for
the next 13 years, Rubicondi boomerangs
back and forth, despite marrying another
woman in 2011.
begins
W I T H O U T RU BI CO N D I , I VANA
to unravel.
In 2009, she is escorted from a plane
set to fly from West Palm Beach to New
York after unleashing an F-bomb-heavy
tirade over children playing in the first-
class aisle. At some point, she reportedly
enters rehab in Malibu, where she hosts a
dinner for her fellow “inmates” and drinks
forbidden Champagne, according to the
writer Ivana Lowell in Air Mail.
Then, the pandemic. She rarely ven-
tures out of her East 64th Street town
house. Instead, Rubicondi comes thun-
dering back in.
“He wasn’t a gigolo,” says the model
Kamini Chin Loy, who accepted Rubi-
condi’s marriage proposal on Italian TV
in 2014. “He and Ivana had this intense
on-and-off relationship, but they still loved
each other. If she called in the middle of
the night, he was there for her.”
Needing money, he calls Ivana from
Italy in 2020 to tell her that he is sick. She
flies him back to New York, and the final
scenes of her saga begin.
“Paolo, tell this freaky Italian what
I want,” she tells Alavian at Ristorante
Altesi, which becomes the couple’s second
living room. “And I knew it was for Rossano
to stop smoking,” he says. “She would say,
‘Stop smoking and you can have anything
you want.’ ”
He will never stop. Not the daily pack of
Marlboro Reds. Not the multiple Aperol
spritzes by day and the endless Chianti
and Fernet-Branca, which “he drank like
water,” by night. When he says he has
been diagnosed with stage IV melanoma
and has only four months to live, Alavian
thinks it’s a lie, “another scheme to get the
money from La Signora.”
Ivana pays for his medical treatment
at Memorial Sloan Kettering. His Upper
East Side apartment, which she rents
and furnishes, “cost her $200,000,” says
Brandstetter. And she spends her time
and energy trying to get him into remis-
sion. “She had wanted to be a babysitter
but ended up a nurse,” New York magazine
will report.
On October 29, 2021, Rubicondi dies,
taking part of her with him. “I think the
day after that, Signora started to go down,”
says Alavian.
She would sit in the back of his restau-
rant over a single glass of Pinot Grigio.
“She would say, ‘Do you mind to play it?’
And I know she means Andrea Bocelli,
‘Ave Maria.’ ” But Bocelli’s rendition of
Franz Schubert’s 1825 funeral favorite only
invokes the frenzied spirit of Rubicondi.
“Don’t go to that place,” Alavian warns
her. “Don’t be depressing yourself to die
for him! I put on Celine Dion.”
He last sees her early on the evening
before her death, walking toward his res-
taurant, her feeble steps, impaired by a hip
injury, supported by her housekeeper, Fabi-
ana. “Send me the carrot soup,” she says.
The next morning, he gets a call from his
staff. “Something happened at La Signora’s
house. A lot of people. A police van.”
Her housekeeper isn’t able to open
the fortresslike steel front door, which is
locked from the inside. Finally, a workman
opens it by force. “I was told that Eric, who
was very close to his mother, rushed over
and held her in his arms until the police got
there,” says Haskell. (Eric Trump declined
to comment.)
BUT IVANA WOULDN’T want to reflect on
all this death, darkness, and despair. Not
in the last moment of her life. Because
on July 14, she isn’t thinking about death.
She is surely thinking about her impend-
ing flight to St.-Tropez.
The mayor has made a special excep-
tion for Ivana to land in a helicopter on
the beach near her home, according to a
friend, saving her the drive from the Nice
airport and enabling her to have dinner
with Gargia immediately. “She said, ‘I
don’t want to be alone,’ ” says Gargia.
Will she wear the red dress or the gold
one? Both are packed in her luggage. “She
wanted to start to live again,” says Gargia.
She might have even been ready to take
another lover, once again commanding
him to “Start looking.”
But between dusk and dawn, she takes
that final step, tumbling down the stairs,
dying of what the coroner will call “blunt
impact injuries.”
In the days after Ivana’s death, I stood
outside her town house and watched a
young man pull out his iPhone and begin
taking photographs, as if this house were
one of the new tourist attractions of New
York City.
“This is home of Ivana Trump,” he told
me in a distinctively Eastern European
accent. Like Ivana, he mangled his Eng-
lish, but his admiration was clear.
“The casket was gold, and she was
wearing the gold dress,” says Haskell. Her
hair was frozen forever in her famous hair-
style, and “she looked like she was going
to jump right up and out at any minute.”
Trump, who declined to comment to
Vanity Fair, reportedly stood beside his
ex-wife’s open coffin during the viewing
in the Frank E. Campbell Chapel on Madi-
son Avenue, pacing back and forth “as if he
were talking to her,” says Vivian Serota. Lat-
er that day, at the grave site, Serota waited
until Trump was alone, then approached
him and said, “You broke her heart. She
loved you, she still loved you, and I know
you loved her. You could have been the
couple of the century. You made a mistake.”
“He didn’t say anything,” she says. “But
when he turned around, there were tears
running down his face.” Q
DEC 2022/JAN 2023 135

Incident to Service
C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 9 5 “ ‘You only
got one of two chances: an act of God or
an act of Congress.’ ”
Khawam decided she’d take Stayskal’s
case. “I felt so much sadness for his situ-
ation,” she told me. “I let my heart lead
in this case.” Stayskal and Khawam had
followed the Daniel case, but neither was
optimistic given the 70 years of precedent
to go on. Khawam instead proposed they
push for a bill in Congress. “I had no idea
what she was talking about,” Stayskal said.
DURING THE SPRING of 2019, while the
Supreme Court considered ruling on the
Daniel case, Stayskal, with Megan by his
side, walked into the Rayburn House
Office Building in Washington, DC, to
appear before the House Subcommit-
tee on Military Personnel chaired by
California representative Jackie Speier.
“Feres is the product of judicial activism
and Congress’s silence,” Speier said in her
opening remarks. This hearing essentially
was Khawam’s plan B.
Plan A had been to get the Senate Judi-
ciary Committee to consider clarifying the
language of the FTCA, which would essen-
tially “overturn” Feres. They had tried for
months. They hustled meetings with
members of the Republican-controlled
Senate Judiciary Committee. The major-
ity of Republicans on the committee were
supportive, but they all said the same
thing: Nothing was going to happen with-
out the backing of Lindsey Graham, then
the chairman of the Senate Judiciary, who
refused to see Stayskal.
So Khawam walked Stayskal to the
Democrat-controlled House Armed Ser-
vices Committee. “It was more important
to get something through than it was
to fight something you couldn’t fight,”
Stayskal told me. Khawam thought they
still might be able to get a bill passed that
would not directly address Feres, but that
would put into place a process that would
allow active-duty service members to have
136 VA N I T Y FA I R
a chance at something approximating
justice. What Khawam had in mind was
modeled on the workers’ compensation
process: a system of claims and reviews.
The point of Stayskal testifying was
to educate the members—and generate
media attention and public support. With
Megan and Khawam seated behind him,
he laid out a summary of his story. He held
it together pretty well until his close.
His voice cracking, he said: “The last
thing I want to say is, this does affect me
obviously. But my children are definitely
the true victims, along with my wife. The
hardest thing I have to do is explain to my
children, when they ask me: ‘This doesn’t
make sense. How is this happening?’ And
I have no good answers to give them. I
say, ‘That’s why I’m coming up here. To
help convince these folks in Congress
to change this.’ ”
Another witness, Paul Figley, testi-
fied to the Department of Defense’s
perspective on why Feres is “necessary.”
From 1991 to 2006, Figley was the deputy
director of the Department of Justice
office that handled all tort litigation.
Figley argued against any change to
Feres, stating that the military already
offered its members death gratuity
benefits, subsidized life insurance, free
medical care, and compensation for
service-connected deaths.
“If Congress overturns the Feres doc-
trine,” Figley said in his prepared remarks,
“injured service members could obtain
their benefits from the military compen-
sation system and then seek tort damages.
They or their attorneys would argue in
our adversarial court that someone in the
government was at fault for causing their
injuries. Having members of the military
litigate about who was at fault for a train-
ing accident, ill-fated combat mission,
or surgical procedure would disrupt the
relationship of mutual trust necessary to
an effective fighting force.”
Five months after Stayskal’s testimo-
ny, in September 2019, a bipartisan bill
cosponsored by Speier was referred to
the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill
emerged with bipartisan cosponsors. In
December 2019, the SFC Richard Stays-
kal Military Medical Accountability Act of
2019 became law.
The gist of the act looks like this: Each
branch of the military assigns an attorney
or attorneys to field claims from its mem-
bers. The alleged malpractice must have
occurred in a Department of Defense
medical center, hospital, care center, or
a DOD-covered health care provider.
Claims must be filed within two years
of the alleged malpractice. However, in
order to accommodate Stayskal’s case,
claims filed in 2020 for events in 2017 are
eligible. Payments of up to $100,000 are
made by the DOD; larger payments are
made by the Treasury Department. Any
damages will be less the payments from
other existing service member programs,
such as group life insurance, death gra-
tuity, the survivor benefit plan, and VA
disability compensation.
What Stayskal and Khawam accom-
plished is potentially seismic. For the first
time since the 1950 Feres decision, Con-
gress, in effect, has acknowledged that
harm or death caused by military medical
malpractice outside of combat situations is
not “incident to service” and that victims
do deserve to be compensated for their
pain and suffering and loss. According to
information the DOD Office of General
Counsel included in a presentation this
past February, as of December 31, 2021, the
total number of Stayskal Act claims filed in
the Air Force was 105; in the Navy, 101; in
the Army, 149. Only two settlement offers
had been accepted by claimants. Both of
those were Air Force: one for $20,000 and
another for $10,000. According to Kha-
wam, no claims had yet been paid. Under
the Stayskal Act, non-economic (pain
and suffering) compensation is capped
at $600,000.
The compensation cap is just one of the
things that Stayskal doesn’t love about the
act that bears his name. He is proud of
the work he did to get it passed, but he
will be the first to tell you this new pro-
cess is not nearly the justice active-duty
service members deserve. That, he said,
will only happen when the Feres doctrine
is abolished. What troubles Stayskal and
victims like him and their families most
is that without the ability to sue, there is
no discovery process to compel the DOD
or the government to produce documents
or information; and without that, there
can be no accountability; and without
accountability, there can be no justice.
The last night I was with Stayskal, we
talked on the back porch of his parents’
place in Pinehurst. Megan waited for us
to finish so we could go to dinner. “I did
all I could,” Stayskal told me. “My hope
is somebody will pick up where I left off,
expand on it, get Feres reversed. I probably
won’t be alive to see it, but that’s my hope. I
mean, why do we forgo all of the rights that
we fight for? All the rights that I say I am
defending, that you have asked me to instill
in other countries, why do I lose those?”
HIS SMILE. DEZ Del Barba has got one of
those smiles—when he smiles, you can’t
help but smile. When I arrived at his par-
ents’ home last winter, I talked first with
Mark and Kamni, and Dez swung by
after he got off work before heading to
his apartment. He’s 25 but could still pass
for a Lincoln High School student. It’s the
boyish face. He’s got his mother’s dark
hair and dark eyes; the kind of face that
his grandmother, who’s in the other room
watching TV, can’t help but squeeze and
kiss. She’s done that a lot in recent years.
Kamni, too, of course. Perhaps that hap-
pens more frequently, more intentionally,
when you almost lose your child.
Dez walked through the front door and
Kamni got up, wrapped her arms around
him, and squeezed him close, a side hug;
she leaned into him. He wore an Army
green T-shirt with the logo of his basic
training company, black shorts, and sneak-
ers. Pretty much what he wears to the gym.
Kamni had sent me videos of him work-
ing out. In the photos taken of Dez shortly
after his diagnosis and throughout much
of the eight months of the skin grafting
and amputations, you might have thought
he crawled away from an IED explosion.
Today, except for the black prosthetic from
the knee down, there’s not a visible sign of
what he survived.
On a pain scale of 1 to 10, Dez says,
“Ten doesn’t come close to doing it jus-
tice. The actual grafting part, the nerve
damage is so severe, you don’t feel that
as much. Unless they are taking out the
staples.” The flesh-eating infection had
ravaged Dez from the waist down. The
skin doctors used to replace that skin was
taken from “donor sites” on his chest and
back. “So I was in the uncomfortable
position with skin taken off of my upper
body,” Dez explained, “and then laying
down on this thing like a net. A net thing
that stuck to the flesh. The flesh that the
net stuck to was my back. So I would get
up and it would rip off more skin and
blood—that was the most painful out of
everything.” Imagine that feeling you get
when you experience a paper cut, but only
constantly, and all over your body. That’s
how a doctor explained to Kamni what
Dez experienced.
It took well over a year for Dez to physi-
cally heal enough to begin to restart his
life. He finished his degree, and when I
met with him last winter, he was new to
a tech sales job. He had his own apart-
ment not too far from his family. As far as
emotionally healing, that’s ongoing. Dur-
ing the first eight months he spent in the
hospital—with the procedures, the ampu-
tations, watching the toll it was taking on
his parents, thinking about his girlfriend,
Julia, and what a future would look like—
he said, “I kind of thought every night
before I went to bed, tomorrow I’ll wake
up and I’ll be back in college and I will
have my normal life again. And it never
came.” As soon as he got out of the hospi-
tal, September 2019, he got some fentanyl
and with it attempted to end his life. In his
drug-induced stupor, he answered the
nightly FaceTime call from Julia and she
immediately called 911.
Afterward, he spent time in a psych
ward, in therapy with other service mem-
bers. His perspective changed. “I saw kids
there that were there because they didn’t
want to be in the Army anymore. It was too
mentally tough on them. Maybe the drill
instructor was yelling at them too much
or the barracks buddies were too mean to
them. I’m there because this happened to
me. I was like, I’m stronger than I think I am.
I just picked myself up and I stopped wor-
rying about what my old life was. I started
thinking about what my life can be. And
what my life will be. I still have shit days,
man, where I lay down in bed at night.
Last week maybe, or two weeks ago, I’m
like, Fuck, why the fuck, I’ve literally lost ath-
letic ability. My body looks totally different
than what it was before. My mental tough-
ness is totally different than it was before.
But that’s it. I just have to keep going.”
Dez would hear his parents talk about
Feres beside his hospital bed, and eventu-
ally he googled it. He couldn’t believe it
was real, but then he was focused on get-
ting through the day.
This past March, three years after Stay-
skal testified before the House Committee
on Armed Services, Dez Del Barba walked
into a hearing room and did the same. Dez
and the Del Barbas still want answers, still
want accountability for what happened—
not just to Dez, but to countless other
active-duty US military personnel. They
want Feres abolished. Here’s part of what
Dez read from his statement:
“Today as I sit in front of you all, three
years and 19 days have passed since I
contracted necrotizing fasciitis at Fort
Benning...and I still have no clear answers
on the status of any quality assurance
investigation that may or may not have
been initiated promptly. What happened
to me did not have to happen. This was pre-
ventable…. If I was your son, if I was your
brother, if I was your loved one, would you
sit stagnant waiting for answers? I would
hope not. You’d fight for their rights, and
you would never stop until the questions
are answered and the responsible people
are held accountable.” Q

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DEC 2022/JAN 2023 137

 P roust Questionnaire

HUGH JACKMAN
The award-winning actor and
star of The Son on birthday presents,
the ocean, and his love for Bill Nighy

What is your greatest

extravagance? Food. If you
were to die and come back
as a person or thing, what
do you think it would be?
Seaweed. I love the ocean.
It would be nice to float around
and then sometimes wash
onto shore. Which living
person do you most admire?
Michelle Obama. What is the trait you most deplore in
yourself? When I “poll the audience” and my need to
please others. When and where were you happiest? The
birth of my children. Which talent would you most like
to have? To cook. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? Jean
Valjean. If you could change one thing about yourself,
what would it be? Indecisiveness. It can be really annoying,
especially when I am out to dinner and can’t decide between
the chicken or the fish. What is the trait you most deplore
in others? When people talk over others. What is your idea
of perfect happiness? Seeing my family thrive and being
underwater. What is your greatest fear? Fear itself. What
do you consider your greatest achievement? My son and
daughter. What is your favorite journey? Inward. What
do you consider the most overrated virtue? Kindness.
On what occasion do you lie? When someone asks, “Do
I look good in this?” What do you dislike most about
your appearance? My feet. Which living person do you
most despise? No one. Which words or phrases do
you most overuse? Sensational and awesome. What is your
greatest regret? Not listening to my gut. What or who
is the greatest love of your life? My children and my wife.
If you could change one thing about your family, what
would it be? More time together. What is your most
treasured possession? The three books my wife made me
for my 50th. They encapsulate my life to that point. What
do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Loneliness.
Where would you like to live? Sydney and of course NYC.
What is your favorite occupation? Acting. Who are your
heroes in real life? Ken Burns, Bill Nighy. What is your
most marked characteristic? Openness. What do you most
value in your friends? Honesty and loyalty. Who are your
favorite writers? Hermann Hesse, Richard Powers. What
are your favorite names? Olivia and Caitlin. What is it
that you most dislike? Cruelty and liver. How would you
like to die? Peacefully in my sleep, but not yet please.
What is your motto? If it scares you, say yes! What is your
current state of mind? Contemplative. Q

138 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 DEC 2022/JAN 2023

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