It’s always the same come-on. We’re invited into their lounge, or maybe their bedroom. The vibe is casual, intimate: undone hair, no make-up and lots of eye contact. Then at some point, usually within the first 10 minutes, this fascinating creature will lean in close and, in a whisper, confide. Something like, “I am trying to sort out the wreckage of the past.” (Robbie Williams, 2023.)
Or: “Let me make you a promise: I’ll only tell you my darkest secrets.” (Selena Gomez, 2022.) Or: “As reliable as the rhythmic beating of my own heart is my need to talk to you.” (Bruce Springsteen, 2020.) And, from that point on, it’s done: you’re lost in the celebrity-documentary vortex.
It was in the spring of 2020 that I first realised I’d been sucked in. I’d become increasingly reliant on 1990s basketball analogies to communicate my every emotional state. Luckily, most of my nearest and dearest were also among the 23.8 million who’d recently binge-watched Michael Jordan’s The Last Dance docuseries on Netflix. So, as with the Chicago Bulls’ Big 3 line-up during the crucial 1993 Game 6 play-off against the Phoenix Suns, there was intuitive understanding.
Once upon a time, documentaries were admired as an oasis of integrity in showbiz’s ethical desert. In every other sector of film and television, star-power rules supreme, but the documentarian remained unbiddable and incorruptible, pointing their camera towards the human stories that really matter — war, climate change, injustice, art.
On the rare occasion celebrity was a subject for documentary, it was treated with scepticism, as in Geri, Molly Dineen’s 1999 study of the former Spice Girl, in which the Bafta-winning film-maker can be heard sharply correcting Halliwell’s mistaken belief that she would have “complete control and it will be edited if there’s anything bad”. As if! Even after 2004, when Michael Moore’s Iraq War doc Fahrenheit 9/11 won the Palme d’Or, broke box-office records and ushered in the Golden Age of documentaries, the pay remained stubbornly low and the journalistic standards resolutely high.
Cut forward only a few years, however, and documentary is as enamoured with celebrity as the most scoop-hungry paparazzo. Sit down to select your evening’s entertainment and note that seemingly every athlete, actor and musician of note has a documentary streaming, or one in the works. “I can’t tell you the amount of calls I’ve gotten from celebrities wanting to make their films since Beckham,” says Fisher Stevens, the director of Netflix’s recent hit series about the sarong-sporting football icon.
Stevens has eclectic interests — previous docs have been about dolphin-hunting in Japan (The Cove), toxic relationships (Crazy Love) and anti-Trump politics (The Lincoln Project) — but it’s the celebrity films, he says with a soft chuckle, that slide most smoothly into production. “I think people are fascinated with celebrities, especially those who kind of had a moment and then are still relevant. You get to look back at those periods, the music and styles, and there’s a certain reminiscing and nostalgia… That seems to be what people are wanting.”
Stevens himself is also an actor and a recognisable face, well-known to Succession fans as Hugo, the slippery Waystar RoyCo comms exec. What’s less well-known is his real-life role in shaping the public images of high-profile figures. Prior to Beckham there was 2016’s Bright Lights, a touching portrait of the relationship between Star Wars’ Carrie Fisher and her equally stellar mother Debbie Reynolds, and Before the Flood, which helped rebrand Leonardo DiCaprio from modelising movie star to concerned environmental activist.
Though, in fairness to all parties, it’s clear that was never the film’s primary intention. DiCaprio is only about the sixth-most charismatic person featured in Before the Flood, after several courageous climate scientists and a strident Indian rice farmer. He exerted his star power in a different way, says Stevens. “That was my third or fourth climate-change film and my most seen, because it had Leo.”
Since the rise of the streaming platforms, with their insatiable hunger for new content, the commercial logic behind the celeb-doc boom has only grown more stark. Non-fiction entertainment is much cheaper and quicker to produce than the scripted stuff, requiring no expensive sets, costumes or FX — and certainly no screenwriters or actors with their stroppy union demands.
Yet this kind of programming can be just as popular and just as prestigious. It’s this latter attribute that gives documentary the edge over its reality-TV cousin. Selling Sunset is never going to be rewarded with an Oscar nomination, no matter how artfully Chrishell skirts the edge of a Hollywood Hills infinity pool in her six-inch Louboutins.
Still, there has to be more to it than just “here’s a famous person who has agreed to let us film”, right? Kate Townsend, Netflix’s VP for original feature documentaries and the woman responsible for green-lighting so many of these projects, hopes so. “The most important thing is that we are able to shine a light on issues beyond the individual themselves,” she says of her commissioning criteria. “We’re looking for people who have relatable challenges and complexities in their everyday lives, as well as those special qualities that make them unique […] People have been surprised by the insight these films have offered.”
For Stevens, the presence of these necessary qualities can only become apparent through forging a personal connection. “I want to make this clear about the way I make films: I don’t make them like a journalist. I’m a humanist and I’m a film-maker. I need to feel a connection or it’s just gonna suck.” And by this, he doesn’t mean hanging out and socialising — although there is a bit of that. “I mean, when I’m in a room and there are cameras on you, I need you to be just talking to me and not fucking acting and posing. I don’t want you performing.” This also allows him to ascertain the celebrity’s true reasons for wanting to open up on screen, he says. “It wasn’t until I went out to dinner with David [Beckham] and his wife that I knew… When people get to a certain point in their lives and start to be able to look back, I think it becomes therapeutic.”
There was a similar impulse behind another recent documentary series, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, according to its director, Gotham Chopra. “Jon and I are both big fans of the New England Patriots, and he’d seen a series I’d done on [NFL quarterback] Tom Brady. He reached out and said, ‘Hey, you know Tom’s got 20 years of success? I’ve got 40.’ Of course I was interested.”
Chopra’s resulting four-part show makes liberal use of the “Interrotron”, a favourite technique of the celeb doc, first popularised by the esteemed documentary trailblazer Errol Morris when he used it to interview the former US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara for his Oscar-winning 2003 feature The Fog of War. Despite the Interrotron’s intimidating name — a jokey coinage of Mrs Morris’s — it’s really just a mirror contraption devised to give the illusion of direct audience engagement. “You create eye contact, which makes a huge difference,” explains Chopra. “If you tell a subject, ‘Answer my question, but look at the camera,’ there’s a separation and it becomes performative, versus when they’re engaging, making eye contact and having a human conversation.”
So beware: what feels like a soul-bearing connection between you and the famous person may actually just be a soul-bearing connection between the famous person and a hired camera operator. But, either way, the therapy parallel is inescapable. “That’s what it feels like, a lot,” agrees Chopra. “Many years ago, I worked with [NBA player] Kobe Bryant, and one of the things he said was, ‘This is like therapy!’” And not just a one-off taster session, either: “With Jon [Bon Jovi], the series running time is four hours, but that’s based on hours upon hours upon hours of interviews.”
In addition to all the free therapy, documentaries provide famous folks with a great new way to sideline the frequently unreliable or hostile press. Social media had already opened up that direct line of communication with the public, but in a short-form medium liable to misinterpretation. Far better a 90-minute film — or a 490-minute series — in which to detail your grievances and showcase your talents, without risk of interruption or contradiction. Fine, but what’s in it for the audience? How many of these films would pass my (recently devised) “Last Dance Test For Documentary Impact”? That is, can they take me, the indifferent viewer, and transform her into an invested and passionate subject-area expert faster than Dennis Rodman snatched up rebounds against the Atlanta Hawks in 1997?
In a recent episode of the industry podcast Doc Talk, Lois Vossen, the executive producer of the PBS documentary series Independent Lens, argued for a re-affirmation of journalistic values via a tightening up of terminology. “I don’t want to point fingers, but we take the work seriously in terms of what is a documentary as opposed to what is entertainment,” she told her fellow esteemed panellists. “There is nothing wrong with non-fiction entertainment! It is fabulous! I’ve had some of my best Friday nights watching non-fiction entertainment! The Greatest Night in Pop on Netflix [about the recording of the 1985 charity single “We Are The World”] is so much fun to watch […] But everything is now labelled ‘a documentary’. Some of it is, in fact, non-fiction entertainment.”
Yet even within these less-exacting boundaries, some celebrities — or rather, their publicity teams — seem to fundamentally misunderstand the “entertainment” bit. Take that aforementioned piece of Netflix non-fic-ent. It’s Lionel Richie who has the most screen time and the producer credit, and he collaborated with the film-makers to bring together all the big names — just as he did back in 1985. But it’s not Lionel Richie who comes out of it looking the coolest. That would be ever-the-outlaw Waylon Jennings, who walks off mid-chorus. Nor is it Lionel Richie who makes for the most compelling viewing. That would be publicity-averse Bob Dylan, shifting around uncomfortably amid all the showbiz schmoozing as if he’d rather be somewhere — anywhere — else. And neither Dylan nor the late Jennings appears as an interviewee.
Documentary royalty Ken Burns, for one, intends to hold us all to a much higher standard than mere entertainment. Back in April 2020, the two-time-Oscar-nominated film-maker responsible for such exhaustive and authoritative works as The Civil War (1990) and Country Music (2019) publicly criticised the involvement of Michael Jordan’s Jump 23 company in The Last Dance — a series ostensibly about the Chicago Bulls’ 1997–1998 NBA season, but really about Michael Jordan and what a virile, sporting demigod he is. “If you are there influencing the very fact of it getting made, it means certain aspects that you don’t necessarily want in aren’t going to be in, period,” Burns told The Wall Street Journal. “And that’s not the way you do good journalism… and it’s certainly not the way you do good history.”
In The Last Dance’s defence, the director Jason Hehir cited the necessity for access. Clearly, without Jordan — who also held the rights to the 1997–98 season archive footage — there could be no docuseries.
But I know a man who disagrees. “It was never the plan to speak to Michael Jordan,” says Yemi Bamiro, the south-London-based director of eight documentaries, including the Chuck D-fronted Fight the Power and 2020’s One Man and His Shoes — the best film about basketball that isn’t actually about basketball. “When we were trying to get money for it, that’s all anyone would ever ask us: ‘Have you got Michael Jordan?’, ‘Have you spoken to Michael Jordan?’” Not only did Bamiro not seek out a meeting with the big man, he was actively avoiding him: “We were actually really scared that he might catch wind of the film and try to shut it down.”
Since Bamiro’s focus was not Jordan’s basketball career but his most-lucrative marketing deal — the Air Jordan trainers — he put his energy instead into securing interviews with people such as the Nike marketing exec Sonny Vaccaro and the bereaved mother of a young man murdered over a pair of Air Jordans. This meant One Man and His Shoes had to be entirely self-funded, but the indirect approach also resulted in a well-rounded, multi-faceted portrait of — if not the man himself — the wide-ranging impact of his fame and legacy. It worked so well, in fact, that a similar, Jordan-omitting story structure was later adopted by Air, the starry Hollywood drama featuring Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother and Damian Young as the back of Jordan’s head (because that’s as much of him as ever appears on screen). This time, though, the film was made with Jordan’s blessing, and several script revisions were done at his request.
Notably, Air director Ben Affleck is not afforded the same degree of privacy or autonomy in his wife Jennifer Lopez’s latest self-funded documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told. He appears on camera multiple times, including in one scene in which he wryly points out the otherwise unacknowledged irony of that title: “If you’re making a record about it… that seems kinda like telling it.” Yet even he of the “Depressed Ben Affleck Smoking” meme could not fail to be won over by J Lo’s exuberant self-belief eventually.
Her documentaries — for there are several — make an artistic virtue of their self-financed, self-produced status. Like many other sex symbols of the 1990s and 2000s, Lopez is engaged in wrestling back control of her own narrative from male-dominated media and entertainment industries. Docs like J Lo’s and Framing Britney Spears (2021), Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream (2013) and Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana (2020) implicitly ask us to also reflect on the culture of sexism that may have gone unnoticed in the not-so-distant past.
Julia Nottingham, who has produced several films in this vein, including the timely Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story and the superlative Pamela: A Love Story, feels that trust-based collaboration is the only way to work with stars. She compares the films made by her Dorothy St Pictures company to the glossy, authorised autobiography that has pride of place in the bookshop window display. “And obviously, when you go to the autobiographies, there are ones that are ghost-written, there are ones that are actually written; there’s a whole host of them…”
But wouldn’t you rather read that than the trashy, unauthorised, likely part-fanfic biography, found on a lower shelf with a reduced sticker? “We always want the most authentic version,” says Nottingham. “I’m definitely not interested in the Pamela Anderson story that’s told by commentators and full of pundits, because you don’t get the truth.” And there is a feminist subtext here, too: “Like, not to get too personal, but my mum is a divorced woman in her seventies, and watching the Pamela film boosted her confidence. It gave her a spring in her step!”
In other cases, a rigorously independent film-maker is a necessary prerequisite for any genuine reckoning with the past. Kevin Macdonald bristles at the suggestion that his recent film High & Low: John Galliano might be mistaken for “a celebrity puff piece [or] part of a campaign to rehabilitate” the disgraced fashion designer. Indeed, the documentary opens with a replay of the now-notorious 2011 footage of Galliano spewing anti-semitic abuse at strangers in a Paris bar, which remains as shocking as ever. “I thought, did they [early critics of the film] ever actually watch it? Because that’s really not what this film is.”
High & Low was funded by an independent French financier with Macdonald’s final cut written into the contract, and he commends Galliano for being amenable to this arrangement: “It was quite a long flirtation, but once he’d decided, he never brought a PR to a meeting. He never said ‘This is off-limits’. [It was] ‘You can ask anything that you want.’ When he saw the cut — which, contractually, I had to show him for factual accuracy — he made a couple of points like, ‘That’s not a couture dress, it was actually prêt-à-porter — how dare you?’, but he didn’t say a thing about anything else. And I was really amazed by that, because it’s very personal, obviously, and really impacts his life.”
Macdonald admits there was likely some ego involved in Galliano’s decision to participate. “I think part of his agenda was, ‘Well, Alexander McQueen has a really great film about him [Ian Bonhôte’s “zero-access” 2018 documentary, though hardly surprising as McQueen died in 2010]. Why don’t I? Because I’m also a great designer.’”
Do I detect a haughty undertone to Macdonald’s well-bred Scottish accent? If so, it’s well-earned. As the director of Whitney (2018) and Marley (2012), Macdonald can be fairly considered a master of the form, alongside Asif Kapadia, the director of Amy (2015), Senna (2010) and an upcoming Roger Federer doc for Prime Video, reportedly in collaboration with the tennis champion himself. [This story was written before the release of 12 Final Days in June].
What will be the exact nature of Federer’s involvement? Will he have any say on the edit? No idea, because Kapadia did not reply to my request for an interview. Now, in the spirit of the tell-all, let me be transparent: there is an earlier draft of this feature in which I’ve used this paragraph to avenge that minor slight, by heavily and unfairly insinuating that the admired documentarian has sold out to Big Streaming, but wiser heads at Esquire prevailed. Take note, Robbie Williams, Michael Jordan and other score-settling celebs: this is how a truly empowered and independent editor can save you from your own pettiness and improve the final product.
Kevin Macdonald, on the other hand, is here to defend himself against such insinuations, and does so with vigour: “I look at the many films on Netflix and elsewhere, which are produced by the stars in question, and I think, ‘Hang on a minute, why are you attacking me?’” he continues. “When I’m raising really complicated, difficult issues, and where the star in question has no say over the film and there’s no financial connection… And yet you give David Beckham a completely free pass, because you want to see inside his garage!”
On that last count, we’re mostly guilty as charged. I know I wouldn’t mind a glimpse inside Beckham’s garage, not least to check whether Victoria’s dad’s old Rolls-Royce — the subject of Beckham’s most famous, British-class-system-dismantling scene — is now parked there. But Macdonald raises a more important point. When both the puff pieces and the serious documentaries look the same, stream on the same platforms and sometimes even have the same directors, how are we, the cultured consumers, supposed to tell the difference?
Macdonald says he knows where the all-important line is and — pardon the name-drop — it was Mick Jagger who showed him. Macdonald had just finished making One Day in September, his 1999 Oscar-winning documentary about the terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics, when he got the call: “‘Would you be interested making a film with Mick Jagger?’ And I’m like, ‘That sounds like the most frivolous, fun thing in the world!’” Hanging out on yachts with a rock legend was as fun as expected, but then came the time to put the film together. “He saw it and he didn’t like it, and basically got it re-edited.” The 60-minute film (or rather, “promotional tool to sell CDs”, according to one review) eventually aired on America’s ABC network to low ratings and a baffled Thanksgiving-night audience. “That was my wake-up call. I thought, ‘I don’t want that to happen again. It’s too painful.’ So from then on, I’ve always had final cut.”
Certainly what emerges from watching High & Low is a sense of mutual, artist-to-artist respect. Galliano would no more interfere in Macdonald’s film-making than he would abide interference in his own Maison Margiela autumn/winter 2024 collection. “I think John is smart. He said to me, right at the beginning, ‘I know some people are never going to forgive me, but I want people to understand me.’ And I think that is a subtle, but important difference.”
If it’s our understanding these celebrities want, then they’ve got it. Facilitating understanding, as opposed to judgement, also seems a noble enough goal for the documentarian. But after watching hours and hours of these films — after seeing Ricky Hatton crying into his cuppa, Taylor Swift reading aloud from her teenage diaries and Steve Martin taking his laundry to the dry-cleaners — I’m disturbed to realise that the feeling goes beyond mere “understanding”. I’m ready to take a bullet for these poor, misunderstood souls.
As both the director of numerous biographical docs and the son of the New Age thinker Deepak Chopra, Gotham Chopra has a theory: “You start to hear that music, like [Bon Jovi’s 1986 album] Slippery When Wet, and it does bring you back, but I think underneath there’s also a character story that’s mythic and archetypal. Because, at a certain level, everybody is talented. It’s actually the grit, the resilience, the work ethic that leads to the success. And I think there’s something relatable, but also aspirational, to that.”
So maybe the free therapy provided by these films isn’t only working for the celebrities. Maybe it’s working for us, too. This might mean, as Chopra suggests, treating these docs as audio-visual self-help manuals to live by. Or it might mean a chance to relive and reflect on our own pasts through the celebrity’s carefully curated archive. We’re watching Take That rolling around in jelly but, simultaneously, we’re remembering who we were when we first saw Take That rolling around in jelly. So when you think about it, Jon Bon Jovi really was looking deep into my eyes, speaking straight to my heart, after all. Interrotron, be damned.
Originally published on Esquire UK
In the fall of 2019, I found myself wandering around Times Square in search of a billboard featuring National Book Award-winner Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel, The Water Dancer. “I’m not sure what street it’s on, but you’ll see it,” the book’s marketer had told me that morning, so there I was, dodging tourists with my head and iPhone turned to the sky. At the time, I ran social media for Random House (Coates’s publisher).
We typically celebrated a book’s publication week on the company’s Instagram account by posting a stylised photograph of the finished book, but whenever Oprah Winfrey got involved, as she did by selecting The Water Dancer for her eponymous book club, the publicity, sales, marketing, and advertising plans expanded exponentially. It’s not every day in publishing you get to see Oprah and Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation at the Apollo Theatre.
In an industry that sees five hundred thousand to a million new titles published each year in the United States alone, there are very few ways to make a book stand out. In recent years, programmatic celebrity book clubs—mainly Oprah’s Book Club (Oprah Winfrey), Reese’s Book Club (Reese Witherspoon via her media empire, Hello Sunshine), and Read With Jenna (Jenna Bush Hager via the Today show)—have exercised significant influence over which books garner buzz both among readers and within publishing companies, elevating sleepy debut novels to best-seller status and making big books even bigger.
First, a disclaimer to any self-important readers expecting a fiery takedown of the celebrity-book-club format: As someone who wants to see more books in the hands of readers, I am wholeheartedly in support of famous people using their immense clout and privilege to promote books instead of the many other products they could be paid handsomely to endorse. An article built on cynicism for something so overwhelmingly positive would be disingenuous click-bait, and you will not find that here.
But just because these book clubs are a net positive doesn’t mean they’re above investigation or critique. Ever since their rise in the late 2010s, the biggest celebrity book clubs have held immense sway over which titles land on the best-seller lists, and their future has an outsize impact on the commercial publishing industry. In order to better understand how these groups operate, I spoke to the teams behind the scenes, as well as to other publishing-industry insiders.
First, let’s address the assumption that these book clubs are just brand extensions with celebrity figureheads who don’t read the books or participate in their selection. Celebrities start book clubs for the same reasons as the rest of us: They love to read and want to discuss what they’re reading with more people. Not once in any of my reporting did I catch a whiff that Witherspoon, Hager, Winfrey, or any of the other celebrities are not die-hard readers, which is obvious when you consider how much work it would take to head up a book club in which you don’t plan to participate.
“If they wanted attention, there’s a thousand ways they can do it without reading books,” said Leigh Newman, director of Oprah’s Book Club. “Oprah is a real reader. She’s always reading. I have spoken to some of the other book clubs, and that seems to be common throughout all of them. I don’t think anyone is doing it as a PR stunt. I think they all love books and they want to talk about books; that’s why these conversations are so comfortable.” Newman even called back after we hung up to tell me she once met Jenna Bush Hager at a party and can attest that she’s a passionate and engaged reader.
Given that all of the major celebrity book clubs are fronted by women, there’s something inherently sexist in one of the most commonly asked questions about celebrity book clubs: “Do they actually read?” As actress Emma Roberts, whose online reading community Belletrist launched in 2017, noted in an interview with author Melissa Febos, “When I’m reading a book on set, some people will come up to me and ask, ‘You read?’ And I say, ‘What part of that is surprising? Because I’m an actress? Because I have blonde hair? What is it that literally stopped you in your tracks to be shocked that I can read and do read?’ That’s really crazy.”
Despite their clear love of reading, celebrities aren’t running their public programmatic book clubs in a vacuum. How they operate and make their selections is a subject of much speculation within the publishing industry, which is nearly as clueless as consumers. In our conversations, Hager, Newman, and Karah Preiss (cofounder of Belletrist) all described similar systems reliant on four to eight staff members outside of the named celebrity who make connections within the publishing industry while sourcing books from agents, editors, and publicists—much the same way most book-related media outlets do.
Sarah Harden, CEO of Hello Sunshine—which was sold to a media company backed by private-equity firm Blackstone Group in 2021—told me that Reese’s Book Club doesn’t accept pitches. “We pride ourselves on really trying to be outward about it, because we don’t want to perpetuate the inequities in the industry where if you know someone, if you can get to the right person, you get a leg up,” she said. There are two full-time staffers on Harden’s team and a group of literary scouts at Baker Literary Scouting who “read for Reese to make sure that nothing slips through the net that is worthy of consideration,” she says. In any given month, 100 to 150 books make it onto their long list for consideration.
All of the book clubs claim that there is “no formula” to their selection process, and on many levels, I believe them. While their selections may be intentional, I don’t think there’s any secret contract between Reese Witherspoon and HarperCollins to explain why nine of her book club’s eighty-five non-young-adult picks through June 2024 were published by a single imprint: William Morrow. Rather, these decisions happen in all of the major book clubs in much the same way that most opportunities in the publishing industry happen: through an elusive blend of personal taste, connections, cold pitching, and good old-fashioned luck.
This randomness is reflected in the inconsistent timelines of when authors and publishers are informed about upcoming book-club picks—that can occur anywhere from a year before publication (possibly as a result of a connection) to after a book is already on sale (mostly luck). Sometimes a manuscript arrives nine months early through a shared agent at a big agency like CAA and a deal is locked—perhaps even far enough in advance to adjust the book’s publication date to better fit the book club’s schedule.
Sometimes a books editor or producer thinks the celebrity will enjoy the galley from the strength of a pitch email. Other times it’s pure luck: For example, Winfrey selected The Many Lives of Mama Love after finding a random manuscript in her living room with no idea where it came from. (That sound you hear is the sound of a thousand publicists fainting.)
“It isn’t like a political game of chess at all,” said Hager. “We have found that because we have a specific mission to highlight debuts and diverse books, and because we’ve worked really hard working with every agent and publisher and editor, we’ve created a pretty efficient and incredible pipeline.”
While I fully believe that celebrities aren’t playing some nefarious game of imprint chess to benefit themselves, the pieces are still visible on the board. Of the two hundred combined books selected until June 2024 by Witherspoon since 2017, Hager since 2019, and Winfrey since 2012, thirteen were from a publisher outside of the Big Five (the five largest publishing houses: Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette).
More than 40 percent of those books were published by Penguin Random House alone. That doesn’t happen without a lot of people playing chess to make sure it happens, even if the people behind the book clubs aren’t intentionally participating in the game.
Every book club adamantly denies that imprints or agents are a determining factor in the book-selection process, but only a publishing rookie in an industry built on connections would take that at face value. Kelly (whose name has been changed), a book marketer who has worked on multiple celebrity-book-club campaigns, told me how much easier it was for one imprint she worked for to secure Witherspoon’s book-club seal for future books after landing its first one.
“It meant we had an ‘in’ to Reese,” she explained. “We were able to get the next book directly to the person who actually makes the decision, instead of the assistant of the assistant of the assistant slowly going up the chain.” Despite their best intentions, it’s clear that celebrity book clubs are influenced by the same ouroboros of nepotism that affects the rest of the business, just like blurbs or review coverage. Even if the book club itself is imprint agonistic, you still get the same distorted result.
Although every book-club representative I spoke to confirmed that they actively solicit and feature books from independent publishers, the outcomes speak for themselves. Around half the books picked by Oprah’s Book Club since it relaunched in 2012, arguably the most reliable New York Times best-seller maker in the industry, were published by Penguin Random House, whose authors are already miles ahead of so many others—simply because of their backing from the world’s most powerful publishing house.
“I feel bad for smaller imprints who don’t work with bigger agents,” said Kelly. “That’s the beauty of what celebrity book clubs have done, right? There’s no rubric. There’s no specificity at all, so no one can be like, ‘What the fuck?’ They’re just picking books they connect with. But what does that mean?”
To be clear, it’s not Reese Witherspoon’s, Oprah Winfrey’s, or Jenna Bush Hager’s job to feature independent publishers and make sure they’re spreading their sales power more equally across imprints. That their pet projects have a tremendous influence on a complex and vital industry isn’t really their problem, but they also claim to care immensely about authors and the industry whose waters they’re playing in, so it would be worthwhile for them to pay more attention to this one element. If celebrity book clubs committed to selecting authors outside of the Big Five, it could have an enormous impact on smaller houses and their authors.
There’s a lot of speculation that the “meaning” behind all of this is a front for celebrities to source new onscreen projects. In recent years, Hello Sunshine has produced several buzzy book-to-screen adaptations, such as Where the Crawdads Sing, Big Little Lies, and Daisy Jones & the Six. Winfrey has the well-known Harpo Productions, while Hager signed a first-look production deal with Universal Studio Group and created her own production company, Thousand Voices, in 2022.
The women at the helm of these book clubs are far too smart for anyone to claim that optioning isn’t factored into their decisions, but it’s important to note that I found no formal links between book-club selections and a book’s film or television rights. As an example, Andrea Bartz confirmed that the film rights for her thriller We Were Never Here were already committed to Netflix before Witherspoon ever expressed interest.
The book was still selected as a Hello Sunshine pick in August 2021. “Two or three times a year, I hope there’s going to be books that we make into films and TV shows, but we’ve always got to manage that with a really high level of integrity as well, because the minute the book club feels like we’re only picking stuff that we’re making into film and TV, we’re done,” said Harden.
“You would really cut yourself off to make a club that is solely dedicated to finding intellectual property,” explained Preiss, whose own book-club offshoot, Belletrist Productions, focuses on literary adaptations not exclusive to Belletrist’s book-club picks. “There are very specific types of books that make for good television shows, and in this TV market where limited series are not selling in the same way, most literary fiction does not make good television. When it works, that’s wonderful, but it’s not what we’re doing.”
Even if screen rights are not technically part of the book-club deal, several people I spoke to pointed out how celebrity book clubs can still play a role in the negotiations. “It is understood that it goes hand in hand with a lot of things,” said Kelly. “The author may not be getting what they want on one side of things, but they’re going to sell a shit ton of books. So it’s like, what do you want? What are you willing to give for that?”
It’s critical to understand the role that publishers, editors, and agents play in determining which books are selected for the book clubs. Publishers can’t promote every title equally, so much like deciding which authors to send on book tours or who to pitch for the national morning shows, they tend to push hardest for the books to which they gave the largest advance, in the interest of recouping their investments. “If they paid high six-figures for a commercial women’s fiction book that seems it would fit well with one of the celebrity book clubs, obviously they’re going to make a push for it in that way,” said Kathleen Schmidt, founder and CEO of Kathleen Schmidt Public Relations.
So what is the impact of these book clubs, and why do authors and publishers care so much about landing those few coveted spots? Publicist Sam Mitchell explained: “There’s really the sense with fiction, especially with a debut novelist, that you’re just running with your hand on your head if you don’t get into one of these book clubs. There’s just no way up toward whatever measure of success you want—usually the New York Times best-seller list, but really any kind of big buzz—unless you get into the sanctified hall of one of those three big book clubs. And that can be really depressing and off-putting, especially for the first-time authors.”
Desperation for recognition from celebrity book clubs is no doubt connected to the decline of books coverage at traditional media outlets. Not only do national outlets like NPR no longer pack the promotional punch they once did, but due to continued layoffs across the industry, from glossy magazines to local newspapers, there’s also simply less traditional media coverage to go around. “It’s interesting to hear even these massive names in publishing say, ‘If Reese could just pick my book, it would change things even for me,’ ” said Kelly.
Even without access to every single book’s lifetime sales data, it’s clear that these book clubs have a major impact on reader behaviour as well. Forty-eight of Hager’s sixty-eight picks have appeared on the best-seller list, as have sixty-eight of Witherspoon’s ninety-seven. All twenty-seven titles selected by Winfrey that were published on the same day they were announced as book-club picks went on to become best-sellers. I can tell you from a decade of working in the book-publishing industry that these success rates are incredibly rare.
But while Reese’s Book Club, Read With Jenna, and Oprah’s Book Club continue to offer a one-way ticket out of potential obscurity, there’s no denying that they hold less brand equity than they once did, especially among younger readers. Members of Gen Z remember their moms buying Oprah Book Club picks before they could even read, but they don’t watch morning television. Reese Witherspoon may get my heart racing as a middle-millennial who saw Legally Blonde in theatres twice, but readers a decade or two younger than me aren’t likely to care what her book club’s commercial-fiction pick is—at least not in the same way major publishers do.
“Because you now have people like Dua Lipa and Kaia Gerber doing their own book clubs, it makes the other ones look kind of stale in a way,” said Schmidt. “There just isn’t as much brand equity in book clubs as there used to be. How many people are listening to what’s being said on morning shows anymore? It’s TikTok’s world, and we live in it.”
It’s too early to know whether Dua Lipa’s Service95, Kaia Gerber’s Library Science, or even Dakota Johnson’s brand-new TeaTime Book Club will have a significant impact on book sales, but I heard anecdotally that publishers are starting to pay attention.
The viral rise of Gen Z and BookTok is something that came up in every conversation I had with publishing employees. Whereas celebrity book clubs offer a model of positioning books that are powerful and often universally appealing, the idea that a book is for everyone can actually be a turnoff. “It’s not cool anymore to have that book-club sticker on there,” Schmidt said. “It’s cooler to say, ‘I saw this on BookTok’ or ‘This is being discussed all over BookTok.’ I feel like Gen Z especially does not want the sticker on the book.”
Those on the publishing side also pointed out how many of the most popular books on TikTok are radically different from what the celebrity book clubs select. “What we’re worried about in publishing right now is ‘Do we have enough romantasy?’ That’s not their picks,” said Kelly.
“Iron Flame—you couldn’t get that book off the best-seller list if you paid The New York Times to take it off. That’s not what they’re looking at. To some extent, they’re talking to an audience that makes sense for them right now, but that audience is growing older. They’re going to stop paying attention, because they’re going to get bored. And instead of adding to the audience with younger people who are reading these big TikTok books, they’re missing it.”
Preiss, whose Instagram book club is less influential than the Big Three but still holds weight within the industry, echoed this point. “Gen Z is more focused on genre, and Reese doesn’t do genre,” she said. “Romantasy and romance are really the future of books. I love literary fiction, [but] to what extent are you actually talking to readers? To what extent are you asking readers, ‘What the f*ck are you reading?’ They’re reading Taylor Jenkins Reid. People are reading Colleen Hoover.”
For years, the signals that mattered most in publishing came from the highest of highbrow sources. Anyone who worked in the industry prior to the 2010s will tell you about the glory days when a rave New York Times review and one national NPR segment led to a spot on the best-seller list. For many, it was hard to accept that Reese Witherspoon holding your book could do more for it than ten NPR interviews. Now BookTok may be the next bitter pill industry insiders need to swallow. The literary quality of the books selected by celebrity book clubs is miles above that of many of the titles amplified through BookTok—and for that matter, BookTok is even harder to predict than the media or the celebrity book clubs.
Aside from Winfrey finding a manuscript in her living room or Roberts discovering a book in an obscure literary magazine (which she does), most of these book clubs are making selections based on what publishers, agents, and editors are placing in their direct line of vision. Publishers are trying to do the same with BookTok, but their efforts to influence the algorithm are a drop in the bucket compared with the authentic power of readers on the platform. “It’s getting much harder for publishers to send that signal out, because it’s really consumers that are sending the signal now,” Schmidt said.
Whether or not the book clubs continue to carry weight for actual book sales in a rapidly changing industry remains to be seen. I, for one, see the solution to the potential (and potentially inevitable) waning power of these major celebrity book clubs as more (and more diverse) celebrity book clubs. That rising tide could lift countless boats in a struggling industry. As author and professor Clayton Childress said in a previous article on book blurbs, “There’s no middle class in publishing,” and anyone on the inside will tell you that a small group of massive best-sellers tends to fund the rest of the business.
Sometimes celebrity book clubs annoyingly make a big book bigger (The Nightingale as a Reese’s Book Club pick in 2023—why?), but a lot of the time, these celebrities are creating best-sellers out of thin air, which then drive major revenue for publishers. The words “Taylor Swift Book Club” probably keep a lot of people up at night, but it’s mind-boggling to think about how much money a Taylor Swift Book Club pick would generate to fund smaller projects.
Because of the popularity of BookTok, I expect to see more Gen Z celebrities launching book clubs in the near future, and I’d appreciate it if we could skip the “Do they even read?” discourse that’s already come for a new generation. Case in point: Kelly told me the sales team at her imprint recently tied the sales spike of an extremely literary novel to Kaia Gerber’s book club, which caused shock waves throughout the room. “It was a meeting of a hundred people, and they were like, ‘I can’t believe Kaia Gerber can understand this book,’ ” she recounted. In reality, Kaia Gerber and her team have great taste in books.
We need more communities that inspire readers to pick up a new book, not fewer, and ones led by a more intersectionally diverse group of celebrities with different reading styles than what’s currently on display. The male celebrity-book-club market is practically untapped, as is the potential for a big name to build a community around a certain niche genre.
In our conversation, Harden mentioned how Witherspoon typically picks lighter, easier Hello Sunshine titles in May and December because those months are busy times for moms. It’s great that Hello Sunshine is able to fulfil that need for a key demographic of readers, and it makes me ache for more celebrity book clubs that speak to specific communities and their unique reading preferences.
“What’s the problem with a bunch of people with big profiles having book clubs?” said Preiss. “I think everybody wants to find something sinister about it; they want to look for the ulterior motive. Even if there was an ulterior motive, who gives a shit? The context is key. It’s really hard to sell books, and it’s incredibly hard to compete with various forms of media. Nobody is Doctors Without Borders over here running a celebrity book club, but if you can let go of the earnestness, I do think it’s still worth doing. What’s the alternative? That celebrities don’t have book clubs?”
That’s not an alternative any of us should want to explore.
Originally published on Esquire US
For a couple of days, a corner of the internet was speculating which same-haired celebrity Charli XCX was referencing in "Girl, So Confusing", a song from her latest album Brat. Someone who sounded like the English singer wasn't quite a fan of, but didn't exactly seem to be hating on either.
Then the new single dropped and she called it: the Internet did indeed go crazy.
As their lyrics spell out: It's you and me on the coin / The industry loves to spend
The timeline (great, I'm now said industry) will tell that the two female artists shared the era that their respective careers took off. Top the semi-simultaneous debut with certain aesthetic parallels, and comparisons (confusion, for a specific interviewer in 2014) ensued. Rather than capitalise on the drama pitting women against women, XCX took an unprecedented spin on the narrative. She worked it out on the remix.
Not to join the overnight literary students who may be dissecting the discourse and romanticising what it means to be a Girl's Girl, I'll freely admit that Lorde's echoing verses still give me goosebumps.
There's a lot more written vulnerability that reads deeper than simply driving marketing for album sales. There are no overly-poetic metaphors hiding the jealousy and self-doubt (plus weight/image struggles!) that resonate all too well with anyone who is/has been a girl.
The key visual is a clever touch too. Whether intentional or not, having herself back-facing the viewer in the forefront almost feels like she's representing Lorde, whose mutual likeness they already acknowledge in the remix.
As much as both versions depict navigating the byproduct complexities of being a girl, the issue isn't women-only. Here's a free therapy session—if we are truly at peace with ourselves, the opinion of others wouldn't do much to jeopardise that.
And that could be the point of reflection here. When we are self-assured with our egos, it wouldn't matter whether the opinion is accurate, or if the person giving it has influence.
You wouldn't fight to justify yourself by turning your own projections into a rivalry; to feel good about yourself if the outcome swings sentiment in your favour against your "foe".
This isn't the first time Charli XCX went olive-branching. In "Just Desserts", the collaboration similarly puts to bed a spat with fellow indie-pop singer Marina Diamandis. Who, as the other same-haired rumoured subject of "Girl, So Confusing", also had something to say.
As one commenter suggests, that's essentially what the song is. And perhaps that's a lesson for any trending feud, not just among the hip-hop community where beef is so very profitable.
Sure, circumstances could be different where no prior friendship was established between both parties. Yet, taking moral high ground can exist in publicly handling private insecurities. Especially with the fame-bestowed obligation to be a role model that prolific individuals often forget they have these days.
Via this commercially and culturally viral hit, Charli XCX just proved that doing so can be just as, if not more, impactful.
No one could ever recreate what Gay Talese did for Frank Sinatra in 1966. They are and were respectively two great powerhouses in their own calibre, and nothing will come close to the written legacy presenting a fresh angle of not only the figure himself, but the culture he was embedded in.
Anyway, the premise here isn’t nearly the same. Lucien Laviscount isn’t unwilling to be interviewed, he merely seems really pressed for time. He doesn’t have a cold either. He just has a broken rib, though he didn’t quite specify how. It has been a crazy couple of days.
Friends, family, and associates were not involved in crafting this piece either. The only third-party accounts available are sifted from prior interviews with him. One particularly memorable (shoutout Fashion Magazine) for effusing such enthralment by his looks and charms that it’s borderline comedic.
The story often begins as a child model for David Beckham’s clothing line at Marks and Spencer, where the former athlete casually comments that the boy should try his hand at acting. It’s that demeanour that got Laviscount scouted for the campaign in the first place.
Laviscount rose to prominence in his teens through a couple of British dramas, strangely all taking namesake from locations—Waterloo Road, Grange Hill, Coronation Street. For international audiences, he plays Earl Grey (kudos to the writers) in Scream Queens and more notably, Alfie in Emily in Paris.
There’s his upcoming rom-com This Time Next Year and we would go on but this isn’t an IMDB page. Though it will be a pity to leave out that music video he did. Not appearances as a man-turned-werewolf in a Calvin Harris release, or a centaur-turned-man in Shakira’s recent hit; which if combined would probably make the rarest bingo card. No, it’d be fronting his own music in the most random 2012 club banger (for those interested, it’s “Dance with You” featuring Mann).
He has since come far. Now, the rumour mill churns of his Bond candidacy. The 32-year-old English actor takes this call from London, despite coming off a shoot in LA and his posts showing him last in Miami. After the call, that very evening, he’ll jet off to Cannes for the film festival.
He does wish, fully acknowledging it’s not something he should say, that people would work on the weekends. Perhaps then, Mondays wouldn’t be so swamped. He is possibly the poster child for “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life”. It’s not a mantra he recites, but it does surface as a running theme in previous coverages.
He actually just flew in from Antigua, where his professional bodybuilder father is from, and where he has been based since the pandemic days. So really, it’s about managing four days of his life at a time. Anything after will be too much to cope with, but of course, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Once again reinforces the grateful-to-be-here vibe.
Laviscount is insistent that he takes nothing for granted. He’s really happy for everything that has happened in his life and grows with it. Besides relaying how he’s learning and getting a better perspective of what the world for him looks like and who he is now, he encloses another almost boilerplate statement about how you won’t be able to live where you want to if you live in the past.
Surprisingly, motivational one-liners and all, the actor doesn’t quite deem himself an optimist. Even though he strikes as the type to believe in the best of everyone, and resonates with uplifting shows like Acapulco; a tale of overcoming odds and achieving dreams. Even though in a similar vein, when most consider audition processes daunting, he finds excitement in bringing what he has to the table and putting his unique spin on a part that was never written for him.
Underdog trope aside, the notion of optimism was never an option to Laviscount. In his books, it would only mean the reality of the situation is not recognised. His feet are very much planted on the ground. Great things do happen... with hard work and conviction. In other words—in his words—you can’t be a real optimist unless you are a realist at heart.
If anything, he would brand himself as a realist, but ultimately he rejects being labelled. Like many thespians, he hates being pigeonholed. Which is why the actor wouldn’t want to be solely defined by his occupation. His penchant for creating—whether writing, acting, having a fashion brand, fostering an incredible space for people to learn, whatever form that takes—is something that will always be part of him.
He attributes his unquenchable thirst for exploration to the energy he has. Busy savouring a moment where he is confident in his abilities but on the other side of that same coin, advocating the pursuit of ambitions outside of one’s career.
At the minute, it’s interior design and architecture. It fills his Explore feed on Instagram. The interest probably stems from the aspect of building something visual yet tangible that can live beyond him. He then draws opposing observations between the art world and the industry he inhabits. How in the former, nothing is ever truly finished and there’s freedom to curate individual moulds. Whereas the latter may be equally subjective to audiences, but its course and result are commonly dictated by the opinion of one.
It would be like storytelling; where the storyteller gets to decide how the story is told. Where the reader’s perception is very much shaped by the hands of the writer. Would the license wielded by the author to weave an entirely verbatim-free narrative paint a balanced picture of fact and poetry?
In a delicious twist of irony, storytelling is one key concept Laviscount’s soul is drawn to. For a man who abstains from labels, it’s the sole identity that stays on his social media bio. In separate capitalised words, no less: Story Teller.
According to him, the tales don’t exist unless they are told. The massive appreciation he has for stories extends to people who are just as passionate about telling them. Capturing intrinsic moments of people’s lives and delving deep into their being are nothing short of magic and beauty.
In his yarn, Laviscount is on a continuous journey to discover what the best version of him will be. Navigating life and its many expectations, seeing through the good and the bad, acquiring a variety of experiences and influences with sheer wonder and wide-eyed amazement.
These could be politically correct answers. Or they could be genuine worldviews. Spoken sentences might be rephrased with a keen awareness that responses will be retold. Or they might purely be a reflex to remain neutral. As Laviscount maintains a consistent core, void of career cynicism and characteristically driven, the approach to be guided by inspiration and gratitude is how he aims to take on and run with whatever comes his way.
Or at least, that is how this story goes.
Photography: Philip Sinden
Fashion Direction: Asri Jasman
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Styling: Tanja Martin
Hair: Fluffy the Original Barber
Makeup: Charlotte Hayley Mcritchie Trujillo
Producer: Guoran Yu at APEX COMMUNICATIONS
Executive Producer: Even Yu at APEX COMMUNICATIONS
On-Set Producer (UK): Kate Zhu
Production Assistant: Kingvarit Vongchanphen
Photography Assistant: Jon Conway
Styling Assistant: Ania Egan
Retouching: Yang Liu
This year's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (or, you know, Coachella 2024) has been exceptionally remarkable, with headliners such as the eclectic Tyler, the Creator as well as powerhouse performers from K-pop group ATEEZ to J Balvin. Iconic ska band No Doubt also made their return to the stage after a decade-long hiatus.
Besides the notable lineup, Coachella is the occasion for festival dressing, and this year's did not disappoint. As arguably the most popular music festival in the world, Coachella drew a huge number of attendees over the past two weekends, with many dressed in their most eye-catching fits. The headliners and performers were put on outfits that matched the intensity of their setlist while celebrity attendees made sure they stood out in the sea of the Coachella-loving crowd.
Suits aren't commonplace at Coachella—this is not an award show red carpet—but folks like Jon Batiste switched it up with show-stopping tailoring. Everyone tend to be a bit more experimental in the way they dress. From midriff-baring top to streetwear-inspired looks, it was quite a spectacle to behold. In the gallery below, we take a closer look at some of the best-dressed men seen during the two weekends.
I often wonder what Andy Warhol would think about current celebrity culture, given his most attributed quote about a universal 15-minute notoriety. Which is not even verbatim, apparently. Prophecy aside, what would the visual artist make of the 21st century sea of trashy reality TV and viral reels?
Putting people on a pedestal traces back to royalty and religious figures throughout history. This, apart from making Jesus the OG influencer and another pun about God-shaped holes, demonstrates how an innate aspirational desire existed even before the advent of mass media. It’s almost like preparation met opportunity with the rise of Hollywood, tabloid culture and the successive Internet-accelerated commodification of fame.
There’s plenty of literature exploring celebrity impact on societal dynamics, but would it be fair to say the root of the obsession is a little more complex? Quite literally anyone can cultivate a fan base; without even being human. First, it was pets, now it’s AI thirst traps.
You have to admit the metrics are inconsistent too. Widespread circulation and exponential interconnectivity of diverse platforms today allow individuals of various fields to gain recognition, even going on to become an international phenomenon. Yet, we don’t necessarily regard their achievements with the same weight as the ones within the entertainment industry. Say, a semi-decent actor versus an exceptional... accountant. The extent of our interest can be equated with how much time these personalities spend in the spotlight; their relevance a parallel to how prominent they remain after we notice them, whether for their careers or their antics, à la Musk, Trump, etc.
So what fundamental aspects of human psychology does this enduring allure reflect? Why do we confer this status to entertainers, specifically? What makes fame increasingly enticing to each subsequent generation since? To loosely quote a TikTokker, “Think about it—medieval peasants didn’t ask the jester for a photo after his courtroom fart.”
I’m not against celebrities; I’m just not for inflating a performance beyond what it is. Being influenced is one thing, idolising is another. It’s that eternal debate of whether we should divorce a person’s work from their conduct, no doubt prompted by the characters we’ve dubbed "tortured geniuses".
If anything, these may be the least prospects whose behaviour we’d want to emulate. The very nature of the profession demands a certain spoonful of egocentric attributes. Worse still if said personas were thrown into a star-making machine from an impressionable age (doesn’t help that K-pop trainees eventually graduate to become ‘idols’).
Imagine spending your formative season ingrained with the need to be validated because your worth is directly proportionate to public opinion. Imagine being constantly engulfed by people who relate to you like a product because they have a job to do. What sort of worldview would that shape?
I’d argue that present-day fame transcends escapism. It has gone a little deeper beyond connection to identification, and thus emotional attachment. We surely know better than to consider everyone with a voice a role model, but in a time where fame is powered by the very attention and admiration we give, let’s perhaps not freely relinquish this respect and value to a fallible sense of extraordinary.
_It’s hard writing about a celebrity who [sic] international press dub “Accidental K-pop Star” and Korean media affectionately call “Nation’s Boyfriend” without rehashing facts.
These nicknames alone encompass what you need to know about the singer-songwriter. The former clues you in on his professional trajectory; from getting scouted off YouTube to placing in the finals of a Korean singing competition, subsequently kickstarting his presence in the music industry. The latter tells of his personality that has earned the collective good sentiment of fans, no doubt thanks to his bright and humorous disposition.
_What could I tell you about his recent headspace that his song “House on A Hill” doesn’t already express?
The very lyrics centred by a chorus of “what ifs” spell out his apprehensions about the pursuit of happiness. Taking after a potential property he was eyeing, the title represents the existential crisis it sparked in him about why we were taught that buying a home, among other relative “necessities”, were qualifiers for our happiness. As well as the unreliable metrics behind a sense of accomplishment, or even the motivations driving our daily grind.
“For me, it’s been as long as I’m healthy, feeling challenged and finding fulfilment in the work I’m doing, being respected and surrounded by people I love. What more do we need?” he asks rhetorically.
“Am I exhausted? Yes. Do I want to take a break? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy. I’m not Oh-my-god-life-is-wonderful-this-is-the-best-thing-ever overjoyed. It would be a little bit weird to be consistently like that. I might have taken some time but I’m getting to the point where on average, I’m always like, I’m good.”
One thing he fluctuates with, though, is his ADHD. An adversity his parents always regarded as a youth’s excuse rather than an actual condition. “It’s something I’m always trying to get a better grasp on. And I wish I had known better earlier. I wish I had sought help earlier. Cause when your parents say it’s not real, you think, oh maybe I’m just lazy. But I literally cannot focus on things. I cannot do very simple tasks sometimes. Many times. Very often,” he laughs.
He acknowledges that it didn’t necessarily exist the same way for a generation that survived war, absolute poverty, and making ends meet with backbreaking jobs. There’s no resentment, but it’s only at this point in his life that he can have that discussion with them on the realities of mental health.
_So is there diving deeper when the Atlanta-born artist has already shared similar, immensely personal stories on his mental health app, Mindset?
The platform he founded tackles difficult topics by celebrities in a real and open way, encouraging listeners to take heart in kindred struggles and normalise what would otherwise be taboo conversations. He leads by example with his own experiences of feeling vastly displaced twice in his lifetime.
Once as a child of immigrants in America, who spoke no English and was bullied for being different. The second time returning to Korea as a foreigner, navigating its culture when he had since lost his native language. You can hear the slight weariness in his voice as he recounts becoming an outsider yet again after having tried so hard to fit in.
This social-cultural recalibration, on top of attempting to carve out a living on unfamiliar ground, marked a murky season. Oddly, seeking help was not an option. It all came down to optics. Should the public find out, he was told, they’ll think he’s lost it, and his career would be over.
“That was such a weird perspective to wrap my head around,” he exhales, expounding on mental health in a way that echoes his fervent speech at the TIME 100 Impact Awards last year. “It is at our core. It is the beginning of who we are and how we react and how we socialise and how we love and how we are. So it’s something that everybody has to deal with.”
“And there is no one right answer. It’s finding what works for you as an individual,” he explains, raising how it’s not easy to find a good therapist, plus the cost doesn’t exactly make it a service accessible to all.
“It’s more than saying get therapy, be on this medication, meditate. I immediately fall asleep when I do meditations, so it doesn’t benefit me. But if I talk to a trusted advisor, friend or family, walking it through with them is my form of therapy. And every song that I write now. It comes from real-life encounters and what I’m going through.”
_Where do I begin mapping out the evolution of the 35-year-old’s over decade-long vocation?
He went from mimicking sounds because he barely understood the language he was singing, to finding his voice and colour as a musician. He describes it as an eye-opening process where he has witnessed growth, especially in lyrical content.
“Where it was previously young and playful, or I may not even fully know what I’m saying, everything now very much has intention,” he affirms. “Also, the confidence in my approach. Because the hardest thing about being a creative is that you’re creating stuff that’s not there, there aren’t really guardrails on what’s good or bad. Everything’s very subjective. And it’s always been nerve-wracking.”
The next steps will probably put him in a comparable situation. Having hosted/podcasted at the helm of DIVE Studios with his brothers, he foresees the next chunk on time going into acting, writing and producing. While something may or may not already be in the works, releasing a consumer product (maybe skincare, maybe wellness) is another venture he often ponders.
_I could perhaps tell you how Eric Nam is like on a Zoom interview at 6pm LA time instead.
How he’s casually in a green hoodie and his house is in disarray because he’s leaving on a flight to his ensuing world tour spot the next day. But his skin looks amazing (so yeah, he should drop that skincare line).
How he gets a little more serious than what you had expected from prior appearances. How he considers each question sincerely, with no qualms leaving pockets of silence to reflect before commenting. How these responses run long, and how he apologises for them midway. How words are chosen carefully when broaching delicate subjects, not out of distrust but in acquiescence that positions can always be misconstrued. How these spiels ultimately return to what was asked, and how he peppers endings checking if they make sense.
How he lately enjoyed a film called Didi because it made him feel seen. And amid the excess entertainment we’re inundated with, properly demonstrated what good content is supposed to do. How while it was fun, poignant, and made him laugh; its quality also served as a sobering reminder to do everything with purpose.
“I’m thankful that I’m able to do what I do right now, but honestly, there are moments I don’t know how much longer I’m going to do this,” he admits. “So we really have to enjoy what we do. We’ve been conditioned to be hypercritical so that we don’t receive criticism, and so when we see something we don’t like in or about ourselves, we tend to be very mean to ourselves, which is unfortunate.”
“There should be a practice of being grateful and complimentary of yourself. Not arrogant, not complacent. Just recognising effort and when there are things that you cannot control. Having a good head on my shoulders is something I strive for, and when I do make a mistake or something doesn’t work out, it’s fair to be disappointed.”
“There are several other factors beyond my resolve that determine whether something is successful or not. There’s timing, luck, trend; with all that’s going on in the world, anything can happen. It’s now about holding myself accountable to make the best possible decision and put my best foot forward. Whatever comes after, I must live with and have grace for myself because there’s no point in beating myself up over things I cannot control.”
_Perhaps I could explore why Eric Nam still wants to do what he does.
Why despite counting himself blessed with the opportunities he’s had, it doesn’t mean that they came freely. Why some may think everything was handed to him because they are not privy to the hurdles and the way he had to grapple behind the scenes to get to where he is today.
“Those who know, know that I was one of the first tours to go to these markets and open them up. I’ve seen people who literally do exactly what I do, and I’m more than happy to help guide them when they hit us up, but being that first one to do it was so tough,” he shares.
“So even if I don’t become the number one artist in the world who has a bajillion streams, it doesn’t matter. It’s about being as trailblazer-y as possible. To be bold and make something that seems incredibly impossible happen.”
“That’s what I want my legacy to be. It could change completely because this tour, these acting gigs and start-ups, there’s so much going on that I’m like, how do I do this? So that’s kind of where I’m at now. I hope that giving it as much as I have with the intent of doing things right, it will be to people a point of empowerment and inspiration.”
There’s a split-second Nam seems to be at peace with his answer, before he characteristically goes, “Does that make sense?”
Photography: Shawn Paul Tan
Styling: Asri Jasman
Hair: Christvian Wu using KEUNE HAIRCOSMETICS
Makeup: Kenneth Chia using YSL BEAUTY
Photography Assistant: Xie Feng Mao
Styling Assistant: Chua Xin Xuan
With the release of Dune: Part Two right around the corner, the cast has been on a press tour the world over. There's no denying that they're taking the fashion seriously too. From red carpet premieres to photocalls, Timothée Chalamet and Austin Butler—portraying Paul Atreides and newly introduced Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, respectively—have been showcasing a diverse array of looks. Each outfit chosen had been statements in their own right, and are deserving of as much hype as the movie itself.
At CinemaCon 2023, Chalamet was decked out in a grungy look as he wore an edgy leather vest by Helmut Lang over a white T-shirt and skinny leather motorcycle trousers with built-in knee pads. To finish off the biker aesthetic, a pair of pointed black leather boots was the footwear of choice.
At the casts’ appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Chalamet's edgy outfit consisted of a sleeveless black sweatshirt with grommet detailing by Junya Watanabe x Stüssy, leather trousers from Alexander McQueen and black boots. However, he switched things up with a cozy knit from Hermès during the taping.
Butler arrived in a black unbuttoned shirt, wearing a matching black pinstriped suit over, and boots. He also had on a thin silver chain necklace, proving that it's what one needs to complete any suit look.
Chalamet wore a sleeveless calf hair top from Hermès' yet-to-be-released Autumn/Winter 2024 menswear collection, matched with trousers and chunky leather boots. Butler, on the other hand, opted for something a little more relaxed with a simple white T-shirt under a grey unbuttoned three-piece by Givenchy.
The duo kept it smart in Mexico City. Chalamet wore a custom Prada suit and a black poplin v-neck shirt with what is decidedly his more experimental look thus far. The blazer was tucked in and accessorised with a double tour Prada belt.
Butler rocked a striking pinstripe suit from Saint Laurent’s Spring/Summer 2024 ready-to-wear collection with cutting shoulders. Completing the look, he opted for a gold-buckled belt—not too excessive but also not too modest.
In Paris, the Dune lead stayed rather safe with a black turtleneck and sleek leather pants (notably a recurring trend with the actor) from Bottega Veneta's Spring/Summer 2023 collection. Cartier jewellery and a pair of Oliver Peoples sunglasses completed the easy look.
Butler exuded effortless style in a monochromatic Fear of God ensemble, featuring loose-fit clothing with relaxed shoulders—a departure from his usual tailored suits. He completed the look with understated David Yurman jewellery.
Chalamet wore a custom shiny metal breastplate from Givenchy with a graphic turtleneck. He had also worn a black wool jacket featuring a notch lapel with matching wool trousers. Cartier accessories such as a platinum Cintrée timepieces from the Rééditions collection and a sizeable silver ring.
Butler dressed smart in yet another Louis Vuitton ensemble, which consisted of a sharply tailored black jacket over a crisp white dress shirt, and a striking pair of flared pants reminiscent of the '70s. He kept it easy with a pair of black dress shoes, and a ring for a little hint of jewellery.
Chalamet's fish scale wool sweater was from Bottega Veneta’s women’s collection, reiterating that clothing has no gender. And if his legs looked longer than usual, that's all thanks to the chocolate brown leather pants matched with a set of Ripley Boots by Bottega Veneta as well.
Butler was wearing a custom three-piece double-breasted suit by Louis Vuitton in an offbeat shade of grey. The unusually wide-lapel blazer and waistcoat, once again, blends a sense of timelessness with a contemporary twist that Butler tends to favour.
Chalamet reunited with designer Haider Ackermann, donning on metallic trousers that were difficult to not miss, and paired with an oversized black shirt. For accessories, he wore a custom Cartier necklace featuring invert-set diamonds in orange, yellow, brown, and white hues, designed to mimic the desert landscape in Dune.
Butler's penchant for tailoring saw him taking on a black Sabato de Sarno for Gucci overcoat paired with a white vest. It's perhaps simple in execution but sleek and dramatic all the same.
Chalamet was seen sporting powdery blue overalls from South Korean designer Juun.J's Spring/Summer 2024 collection, in a deliberate move to twin with fellow lead Zendaya. He finished off the look with simple silver necklaces and a pair of Chelsea boots in the same exact shade, sticking true to the runway look.
Butler was also dressed in blue, opting for a Valentino suit with a silk shirt of a lighter shade. But instead of keeping to the monochromatic tones of the clothes, the footwear of choice was a black pair of dress shoes. A silver necklace completed the entire look.
For Seoul's premiere, Chalamet chose a sleek white suit paired with black leather boots, both courtesy of Gucci. Continuing his partnership with Cartier, he wore a single Cartier diamond necklace for a touch of elegance—just one of his many moments with the luxury brand throughout the press tour.
Butler kept it classic with a black pinstriped double-breasted suit layered over a white dress shirt, matching the entire ensemble with a black tie and black dress shoes.
Dune: Part Two will show in cinemas on 29 February 2024.
The 66th Annual Grammy Awards continued to be quite a show. Taylor Swift may have made history as the first person to win "Album of the Year" four times, but there were more noteworthy moments that happened onstage. Swift's award was presented by Celine Dion, who made her first public appearance since taking a break from performing after being diagnosed with stiff person syndrome. The legendary Joni Mitchell—with a career spanning 60 years—performed for the first time on the award show, while Tracy Chapman made her return to the Grammy stage after a nine-year break from performing live.
Aside from the showcase and honouring of musical brilliance, the Grammys also served as a dazzling runway for fashion statements. From John Legend to 21 Savage, the evening’s attendees and nominees offered quite a visual feast. After a year filled with memorable musical journeys, the fashion too had to follow suit. And there wasn't any lack of it on the red carpet—proving once again that at the Grammys, excellence extends beyond beats and lyrics.
View the best menswear looks at the red carpet of the 66th Annual Grammy Awards in the gallery below.
“I am going to kill you.”
Pedro Pascal says this to me with a smile, which doesn’t mean that he’s joking. We’re sitting across a table from each other and occupying two of the twenty seats at the tiny Tokyo Record Bar on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. A few days earlier, I had polled a handful of clued-in New Yorkers with the following question: “What’s a good vinyl bar to take Pedro Pascal to?” Unanimous answer: Tokyo Record Bar! I was imagining a chill lounge space where we’d have some privacy to talk, play a few records, and maybe drink a little tequila. Pascal thought that’s what it would be like, too. Which is not a coincidence—because that’s what I told him.
But Tokyo Record Bar is not that kind of place at all. Instead, it’s a (very good!) seven-course meal in a (very cool!) basement with a (very delicious!) sake pairing. Meanwhile, it’s six-thirty in the evening, and Pascal’s got dinner plans with his “very bossy, please don’t print that” little sister, Lux, at eight. The clock is ticking, and now we’re locked into a whole experience. It feels a bit like the world’s grooviest hostage crisis.
But it is an experience, and we’re going to enjoy it. A reggae cover of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough” spins on the turntable, and we sing along because it’s impossible not to. We are suddenly aware that we’re easily the oldest patrons in the house. “Is anyone in here thirty?” he asks, subtly gesturing around the room. “Maybe, but for sure nobody here is forty,” I answer. The sake arrives, we fill each other’s cups, we say cheers, his friendly eyes light up, and he leans in to tell me something.
Just then the music stops mid-song. “ALLL RIIIIIIGHT!” hollers our hostess from the center of the room. “HOW ARE WE DOOOOINNNGGGG?!?” Pascal’s eyes meet mine and widen as she explains the rules of the place—how to make song requests, what we can do with ourselves if we have any food allergies we failed to disclose when we made the reservation, that the main rule is to HAVE FUN!!!—with the peppy energy of an improv teacher. This is going to be a Whole Thing.
“I was about to tell you that I was kidding and I’m not going to kill you,” Pascal says as the hostess finishes her introductory remarks and Reggae Michael lurches back into gear. I nod, and he nods. He waits a beat. “But I am going to kill you.”
You do not want Pedro Pascal to want to kill you. And it’s not because he has convincingly played some cold-blooded killers onscreen over the past several years. No, what you—all of us, apparently—want is simply more Pedro Pascal in your life. Because if you’re like 99 percent of the population with access to premium streaming TV right now, you can’t get enough of him. And you want him to be your hero or your fashion muse or your pal or maybe even your daddy. He’s a sex symbol and a serious actor in one friendly but unknowable, cuddly but perhaps slightly dangerous package. One of one.
To say that Pascal is having “a moment” doesn’t quite do justice to the kind of exceedingly rare, career-transforming period of cultural resonance that he’s experiencing. After spending much of his twenties and thirties living the life of a struggling actor, Pascal, at forty-eight, has suddenly been propelled to a lofty new level of fame. His face has been familiar for years. There was the short arc on Game of Thrones that ended with his character’s memorable skull-crushing death, for instance. And his role as a relentless DEA agent for a few seasons on Netflix’s early prestige-era Narcos. But his life has been changed by a pair of blockbuster TV series: This winter he captivated viewers in the role of Joel, an antihero survivor in a postapocalyptic America, in season 1 of HBO’s runaway hit The Last of Us. Then he returned for a third season playing the title character on Disney+’s The Mandalorian. In one he defends a surrogate daughter in a world ravaged by fungus-powered zombies. In the other he protects Baby Yoda (aka Grogu) from Imperial Forces and other threats.
Each of these franchises is a massive piece of intellectual property: a video-game adaptation and a Star Wars spin-off, respectively. Rather than getting lost in all the noise and effects, Pascal has managed to craft characters that provide the emotional center to the storytelling—elevating both the shows and himself in the process. “He’s a part of some spectacularly successful things,” says his longtime friend and fellow actor Sarah Paulson. “But sometimes in those situations, the show is the superstar. It’s really exciting to see that he is the thing that is becoming the superstar out of this.”
It’s an uncommon mix of qualities that may account for Pascal’s near-universal appeal. “I’ve always said there are two kinds of actors: There are actors you feel slightly intimidated by, and then there are actors you want to take home and hug and give some soup,” says Craig Mazin, a creator and executive producer of The Last of Us. “And he’s both. Somehow he’s both.”
Jacket by Dolce & Gabbana; vintage jeans by Lee; vintage belt available at the Leather Man, N. Y. C.; boots available at Stock Vintage, N. Y. C.
Things are moving at a speed that would be destabilizing for someone less prepared to handle the success. But Pascal gives every impression of being comfortable at the center of the whirlwind. Over the course of a few lengthy conversations—and seven tasty courses at Tokyo Record Bar—he reflects on his long road to stardom, his peripatetic life, and what might be next for him. Whereas many actors his age may credit their homelife with keeping them grounded, Pascal does not have kids or even a steady home of his own these days. There’s an apartment in L.?A. that has sat empty while he’s been working on sets in far-flung locations like Canada, Europe, and Pittsburgh. “I had a moment of thinking, You’re in your forties and you don’t own a home? Grow up. But I’m relinquishing expectations around what it is to be middle-aged and what it means to be fully grown up,” he says. “Why am I trying to force a square shape into a triangle?”
And then he sighs and puts it simply: “I just don’t want to make any decisions.”
The streets of New York City typically offer celebrities a degree of anonymity. Actors and rock stars alike blend into the flow, and busy New Yorkers either don’t notice their presence or feign indifference. Pascal used to live in the city, and while he’s had a few years of being famous (“Around 2014, I started to feel some people’s facial expressions change around me on the train”), right now is a new thing. The usual rules don’t apply. Virtually everyone he passes is very much aware of him, and he’s increasingly attuned to that reality. He walks with his shoulders back and straight, his stride quick and decisive, but his head just slightly down. A couple times per block, someone will pass him, turn around, and approach to ask for a picture. And a good half of them say a version of this: “I’m just so happy about what’s happening for you right now.” Frequently those exact words in that exact order. A lot of people do this. Pascal is gracious to each one—he maintains eye contact, he connects, and the fan leaves happy. He’s grateful for the love he feels, but to an observer, it’s easy to see how the intrusion could start to become problematic at some point.
Our dinner at Tokyo Record Bar is happening exactly a week after Pascal hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time, and he’s still recovering. “I’m usually not all that interested in challenging myself,” he says unconvincingly. He mentions a few exceptions, such as shooting The Last of Us for twelve months in Alberta and going toe-to-toe with his idol (“my god”) Nicolas Cage in last year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. “SNL was all of those challenges stuffed into one week of my life,” he says. Then he smiles and adds: “I could not have had a better time.”
If you saw it, you know how true that is. “Anybody who watched that episode,” says Pascal’s close friend Oscar Isaac, “I mean, how could you not just fall in love with him? I think that’s why there’s so much goodwill, because you can feel that big heart bursting inside that chest of his.”
What is in Pascal’s chest at the moment is mucus. He’s a little bit under the weather, with a cold that’s been lingering since he woke up from the SNL after-party. He’s going to need to rest, but there’s no telling when that will happen. He has ongoing press for The Last of Us, as well as The Mandalorian to promote. And in May, he’ll be in Cannes for the premiere of Strange Way of Life, a western short he filmed last year with Ethan Hawke and famed director Pedro Almodóvar. In the movie, Pascal and Hawke play former gunslingers who rekindle an old friendship—possibly of the romantic variety. Almodóvar raves about Pascal. “I asked Pedro to play someone solid, emotional, crafty, a cheat if necessary, warmhearted,” he says. “And he played all those nuances with incredible ease. He can be adorably sentimental and hard as nails. He’s a great comic actor, and he can also be impenetrable if necessary.”
But the most important thing this week is that Pascal’s family—including his older sister, Javiera, and his younger brother, Nicolás—is flying in from all over the world to watch Lux, who will soon be getting her M.F.A. from Juilliard, perform in Ayad Akhtar’s The Who & the What. There are dinners to plan, hotel rooms to sort out. He is desperate not to let anyone down. And he wants to maximize his time with Lux, whom he hasn’t seen since he was in New York for a movie premiere last year. “I get anxious about when I’ll be back again,” he says. “So I’m just trying to see her as much as possible.”
In 1976, when he was just nine months old, his mother and father—she was a child psychologist and he was a fertility doctor—fled Chile to escape the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who’d seized power two years earlier. They got asylum in Denmark, then moved to the U.?S. and initially settled in San Antonio. The family later moved to Orange County, California, when Pedro was eleven. He’s flipped between the east and west coasts ever since.
Pascal pulls out his iPhone to scan the QR code for Tokyo Record Bar’s sake menu. The picture on his lock screen is of Prince, mid-eighties, mid–guitar solo. His parents took him and his older sister to a movie theater in San Antonio to see what Pascal accurately calls “the very rated-R Purple Rain” in 1984. His dad loved to go to the movies. “My mother had too restless a mind for that, an artist’s mind,” he says. “But in that theater, she fell in love with Prince.” So young Pedro fell in love with the movies and with Prince.
Jacket by Dolce & Gabbana; vintage jeans available at What Goes Around Comes Around; vintage boots by Florsheim; necklace by Werkstatt: Mu?nchen; bracelet and silver-and-gold ring by Title of Work; gold ring by Britt Bolton.
His mother would drop him off at the movie theater in the morning and tell the staff she’d pick him up at six. And a kid can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark only so many times. “I saw The Big Chill,” he says, “and there was this joke about herpes, which I had no idea what that was, but everyone laughed, so I laughed. You want to keep up.” He saw the trailer for the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple. Heavy stuff. “It was exciting not getting it. Knowing that that was the thing that was waiting for you.”
After Daft Punk and A Tribe Called Quest, Pascal’s song comes on. It’s “Come See About Me” by Diana Ross and the Supremes. His shoulders bounce. His expressive eyes express joy. “Come see about me, leave me alone, come see about me, leave me alone.” He laughs. “That’s my catchphrase.” When I look down, I notice that he has snuck his third course, a (very tasty!) lettuce wrap, onto my plate. Sleight of hand. I will be eating for two tonight so that he can bring an appetite to the family dinner. “This will be your first exposure to my evil,” he says.
The song wakes a memory up. “My mom did have that blouse from The Big Chill, though. The vintage one. Here, let me look it up.” I know which one he means, but he Google Image searches anyway, and suddenly we’re two middle-aged guys bopping to Diana Ross and yelling excitedly about JoBeth Williams. He is maybe back on the fence about killing me.
Another one of the grown-up movies Pascal watched with his family was the 1982 Costa-Gavras film Missing, a thriller based on true events and set in the Pinochet-era Chile his parents had left behind. There’s an extremely tense scene in which Sissy Spacek’s character is stuck in the city after curfew. “She reminds me of my mom. She’s not a hundred pounds, five-foot-two, just like her.” He was seven, and in his eyes as he tells the story, he still is. “I had a visceral reaction to that once I realized that she could have been in that kind of peril. It overwhelmed me. I started crying and I kind of can’t remember what happened after that.”
These days, he sees his mother in Lux, who is seventeen years younger than Pascal. She and Nicolás returned to Chile with their parents when she was just a baby. “She ruled the household right away. When my older sister and I would visit, we were like intruders. Our mother was her mother, but for us to think that we were entitled to this woman’s attention in any way was absurd.”
We are talking during a particularly grim week for trans people, a population that includes Lux, and you are probably reading this during another one. I ask what this moment in time is like for her, and his immediate reply is: “You mean in terms of the pandemic?” His eyes tell me he knows that’s not what I mean, and I’m immediately sorry I asked. Can’t Lux just be Lux, have an exciting week, do her graduation show, see her family? Why does she have to dignify every Twitter and CPAC jackass with a response? Can’t everyone who isn’t straight or cisgender just exist, without having to make a statement? It’s possible I’m projecting all of that onto his answer. But also, maybe not. I’m telling you: Those eyes are expressive.
“I wouldn’t want to speak on her behalf,” he continues, “but she is and has always been one of the most powerful people and personalities I’ve ever known. My protective side is lethal, but I need her more than she needs me.”
Texts from siblings and cousins are still coming in—an Airbnb has fallen through here, the location of tonight’s dinner has been forgotten there. We get the check and start to hightail it out of Tokyo Record Bar. But not before the guy next to us, who’s been keeping his cool this whole time, tells Pascal he’s a big fan and he’s just so happy about what’s happening for him right now. And then the chef does the same.
The mysterious grown-up feeling Pascal got from movies as a kid led him to New York in 1993 to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He quickly fell in with a group of recent graduates of the city’s celebrated Fame school, LaGuardia High. “I got an entire New York family through them,” he says, “to the point where they still forget I didn’t actually go to high school with them.” Sarah Paulson was a member of that family, another person to see the light in the darkness of the movie theater. “We would go to see movies all the time in those years,” she tells me, “and we would get so lost in them. You can fill in the blanks about the why of that however you like, but I think there were things we wanted to escape mentally, emotionally, spiritually.”
Pascal relives these years for me over brunch at Cafe Mogador on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village the Monday after our fraught experience at Tokyo Record Bar. He had a lot of lean times post-NYU. “I was getting my ass fucking kicked,” he says. He spent the late nineties auditioning for commercials and industrial films while waiting tables at a laundry list of Sex and the City–era New York restaurants: Time Cafe, El Teddy’s, Pangea, Ruby Foo’s, and on and on—most of which he got fired from, and two of which he says are the places where he “really learned how to drink.” He’d get close on an acting job, and they’d go with the other guy, but the feedback would be good enough for his representation not to drop him. “I guess that, and this delusional self-determination, and no real skill at anything else, is what kept me going.”
Coat and knit, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; necklace by Werkstatt: Mu?nchen
And then the next year, back in Chile, his mother died. Pascal, who was twenty-four at the time, flew home immediately to be with his family, including his much younger siblings. “They were very young kids, so much younger than me and my older sister, so even if they hadn’t lost a parent, we would still feel parental toward them. And I didn’t naively think I could fill a space like that, but I just always wanted to be like, I’m here.” To honor his mother, he began using her maiden name, Pascal, as his stage name.
The date on his mother’s gravestone is February 4, and this year that happened to be the date Pascal was hosting SNL. “I was so scared that week that I was talking to her.” He would get home after a long day of rehearsing for the show, “and then there would be that terror waiting for me—that practical fear of bombing in front of the world. And then I talked to her, and it was really comforting. I had sort of the realization that it would be nice to talk to her more.”
“What did you say to her?” I ask.
“I love you. I miss you. Thank you. I’m scared. I would love it if you would help me believe in myself, because I know you do. You know?”
A breath. “That’s enough.”
It’s obvious that the pain of losing his mother is still profound and very present for Pascal, which makes it difficult to discuss. But it’s not just his own feelings he’s thinking about. Safeguarding the emotions of others—including his siblings, his father, and their extended family—is always front of mind for him. “It could have to do with the fact that I don’t have my own family, and that my siblings and my chosen family are where I invest all of my emotional energy,” he says. “But I’m also a little protective of people’s experience in general.”
Even mine. “The possibility of you feeling bad about the record place the other night? That haunts me,” says Pascal. “I would want to erase that for you.” That protective urge comes through naturally in his work. He is intuitively empathetic. An instinctive guardian.
Around 2000, Pascal moved back to New York and returned to the grind—more auditions, more near misses. “He’s talked about this publicly,” Paulson says, “but there were times when I would give him my per diem from a job I was working on so that he could have money to feed himself.” Pascal worried that it was never going to happen for him. “I died so many deaths,” he says. “My vision of it was that if I didn’t have some major exposure by the time I was twenty-nine years old, it was over, so I was constantly readjusting what it meant to commit my life to this profession, and giving up the idea of it looking like I thought it would when I was a kid. There were so many good reasons to let that delusion go.”
Jacket by Dolce & Gabbana; tank by AMI; vintage jeans by Lee; necklace by Werkstatt: Mu?nchen; gold ring by Britt Bolton.
In 2005, he was cast in Manhattan Theatre Club’s off-Broadway production of Beauty of the Father along with Oscar Isaac. The two developed a tight bond. “There doesn’t seem to be a separation in his depth of feeling, as a human being on earth and as a character in a play,” says Isaac. “The emotional through line is consistent, just really raw and honest.” Isaac has had a bit of a career liftoff himself since then, and now he’s getting to watch it happen to his friend. “He’s my family,” says Isaac. “And I don’t have a fucking clue about the fame part of it—I just see somebody who’s finally really getting the recognition that he’s due.”
Indeed, the fact that Pascal had to work through so many setbacks on his journey to superstardom makes it all the more satisfying for his fans in the industry. “This was not somebody Hollywood sweated to make a star,” says Mazin, the Last of Us co-creator and EP. “They didn’t keep him out, but they didn’t drag him along, either; they just sat there with their arms crossed. And he fought all the way, and every single time, he connected.” He adds, “I’m just honored that my name will be forever near his in a Wikipedia page.”
Pascal’s emotions are right on the surface, radiating out through those expressive eyes. So it’s a little surprising that some of his Hollywood peers compare Pascal to one of American cinema’s most famous stoics: Clint Eastwood. Jon Favreau, the creator of The Mandalorian, tells me, “The original Boba Fett armor and the T-visor were based on Clint Eastwood’s the Man with No Name, where they used angles and the brim of his hat to hide his eyes. We wanted to adhere to that tradition, and Pedro felt that he had the power and the ability to breathe life into a costume and made it something more.” Bradley Cooper, who is a friend and a fan, also references the Hollywood gunslinger: “I would argue that he’s playing kind of a Clint Eastwood iconic archetype in The Last of Us.”
Mazin says he had Pascal in mind for the role of Joel on The Last of Us from the beginning: “It was about finding that vulnerability in Joel, to rely on the fact that the natural tough-guy-ness was there but not to lean too hard into it. Pedro has this likability, but he also has this other thing where he can very successfully play tough, tough men who do bad, bad things.”
When the cameras aren’t rolling, Pascal takes on a much different, and sometimes sillier, persona. Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie on The Last of Us, says she and her surrogate father on the show have developed a shared protectiveness. “I’ve learned from him to be kinder to myself, which is a thing he’s not very good at, in terms of the pressure he puts on himself,” says Ramsey. “But I guess that’s something that he taught me hypocritically, then I taught to him back.” A pressure valve arrived in the form of Pascal’s surprising affection for an early-eighties Olivia Newton-John pop hit. “He would break out in song a lot on set,” she says. “?‘Xanadu’ in particular. I don’t think it’s on the official soundtrack, but Pedro singing ‘Xanadu’ is the theme song of The Last of Us.”
Okay, let’s address this daddy business. Daddy is a word that comes up in the Pedro Pascal conversation and his various social-media fan accounts a lot. Like, a lot a lot. He plays around with it, too, saying things like “I am your cool, slutty daddy” into cameras on red carpets. A sketch on his episode of SNL addressed it head-on, as the cast yelled things like “You are so father,” “We have to make you daddy,” and “You have us in a choke hold”—things that are both chaste and explicit, childlike and informed by deep fetish-speak. Sexual but not. It’s, um, kinda weird. Paulson, who made a cameo in the sketch (as Mommy), says: “I’ve been dealing with this mommy business for a few years now, and I actually don’t understand what a lot of it means.”
Craig Mazin has a theory about Pascal’s daddy appeal: “I think everybody either has fond memories of a positive father figure in their life or they have a terrible gaping space in their heart where a positive father figure ought to have been. Nostalgia or longing for let’s call it nontoxic masculinity. And he has that, but he also has this expressive pain behind his eyes.”
Pascal shrugs. “Plus, I’m old.”
Whatever it is, Paulson says, “Knowing Pedro as intimately as I do, I would not want him to be my daddy, personally. I want him to be my pal that I can hang out with until all hours of the night, but Daddy?”
Season 1 of The Last of Us ended exactly the way the first video game did, which means—spoilers will follow; you have been warned—Joel has learned the vaccine can be produced only via a surgery on Ellie’s brain that will kill her. So he has murdered the hell out of most everyone in the hospital they spent nearly the whole season trying to get to, and he has just lied to her about it. It’s brutal. And it is possible that the pure love from the public might get a little more complicated. “Maybe at that point I’ll get myself off the streets for a while,” he says with a sparkle. “Maybe it’ll be time for a vacation.”
Coat and knit, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello; necklace by Werkstatt: Mu?nchen.
There is an open secret we should bring up here. If you’ve played The Last of Us Part II, which millions of people have, you know that?.?.?.?something kind of major happens to Joel. Season 1 has taken some liberties while still following the plot of the first game fairly closely. So it’s fair to assume that we’ll have to prepare ourselves for, let us say, a show with a lot less Joel in it. Ramsey has not come to terms with the possibility. “If that does take place in the show,” she says, “I don’t know that I’m emotionally ready for it.” Mazin isn’t talking. “This should be fairly obvious to anyone by now, but I don’t fear killing characters,” he says. “But the important thing to note is that neither Neil [Druckmann, who co-created and exec-produces the series with Mazin] nor I feel constrained by the source material.”
Pascal hasn’t played the game or watched the scene where the thing happens, but he knows about it. And while he has no information about where the writers will go, he says, “It wouldn’t make sense to follow the first game so faithfully only to stray severely from the path.” He looks at me, eyes lit up with mischief, and shrugs again. “So, yeah, that’s my honest answer.” Some open secrets have to stay that way.
We begin to wrap up at Cafe Mogador, and the conversation turns to the challenges of working with the Grogu puppet. There are two, he tells me, including “one that is connected to what feels like the wires that control the Space Shuttle. Its eyebrows and eyes and lips and jaw muscles and ears and everything move in the most realistic way; it feels like a very real scene partner.” And then it’s time to go. As we leave, a woman pops out to say hello and that she’s a fan and that she’s just so happy about what’s happening for him right now. It’s her birthday, he asks her name, and they make conversation for a moment before she excuses herself because she doesn’t want to bother him. We walk back to his hotel and talk some more about Prince. Earlier, I’d told him about the time I was in the same room with the Purple One and he had a bodyguard who was in charge of a giant plastic swear jar that people had to put a dollar in if they took the Lord’s name in vain. This delighted Pascal: “I think I might believe in God now.”
There is something undeniably inspirational about the way Pascal has followed his long and winding path to this point. He has a few more projects in the pipeline and, at the moment, almost infinite potential next steps. How does he plan to leverage his newfound clout? All he knows for sure is that his next move won’t be motivated by trying to keep this level of heat. “What’s next? I have no fucking idea,” he says. “I just hope that I have the maturity to not chase something that would mean more from the outside.”
“It’s just so psychotic,” Paulson says. “Everybody wants a piece of him.” She has some advice for Hollywood producers about why viewers connect with him, and how they should be regarding him. “You just want him to succeed,” she says. “And that to me, I feel like, is the sign of a major movie star. I’m ready for him to take the reins from the guys from romantic comedies past, like Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson and all these guys. He can be all that. Let’s remake Die Hard with Pedro. Remake all the Lethal Weapon movies with Pedro.”
Hey, it could happen. But there is plenty to navigate along the way. This is the moment when he stops being the underdog and starts being the Big Dog. When the public scrutiny gets more intense. When the people who want to tell him how happy they are for him transform one by one into people who want something from him.
I don’t know if he saw the paparazzo who snapped pictures of us as we walked; I just know I didn’t. It’s not until later in the day that the photos show up on Pedro Pascal Instagram fan accounts and someone sends me a link. (“P loves those New Balances,” says a commenter.) We hug goodbye at the corner near Pascal’s hotel, and he definitely sees the guy in the tracksuit with the FedEx envelope who pulls out something for him to sign. Then there are three of them, and then six, and ten. No joy in the eyes, only want. They don’t say they’re huge fans or that they’re just so happy about what’s happening for him right now. Instead, it’s: Here. Sign this. Take a picture. Give me something to put on eBay. They’ve been here all day, waiting. I see him sign a couple items, but I lose sight of him as the huddle blocks him out.
I just see the door open and then close behind him.
Story: Dave Holmes
Photos: Norman Jean Roy
Styling: Bill Mullen
Grooming: Coco Ullrich for La Mer at TMG-LA.com
Production: Crawford & Co.
Prop Styling: Michael Sturgeon
Tailoring: Todd Thomas
Creative Direction: Nick Sullivan
Design Direction: Rockwell Harwood
Visuals Direction: James Morris
Executive Director, Entertainment: Randi Peck
Executive Producer, Video: Dorenna Newton
