2022-02-01 Vanity Fair

request. In turn, we dismiss the con- You CANNOT until the deaths of Taylor and Sandra
cerns of Black womanhood as trivial or pit “the Blacks” Bland, it would have been easy for many
divisive, failing to see Black women’s to believe that Black women aren’t
pain as real or in need of our attention.” against “the victims of police violence at all. The
alphabet people,” Black Ass Lie finds us able to focus only
A famous Chappelle’s Show sketch on one target.
mocks the infamous tape of R. Kelly uri- nor can you
nating on an underage Black girl that separate “THE Despite Chappelle’s shortcom-
first circulated in Black barbershops, BLACKS” from ings with regard to understanding and
over bootleg tables, and on porn sites reflecting the experiences of Black
in 2002. In a “video” for a song called “WOMEN.” women and LGBTQ+ people, those of
“(I Wanna) Pee on You,” Chappelle all races consider him to be an impor-
instead casts adult women; instead of hold à la Roots. If Black women and tant Black voice. Watching Chappelle’s
satirizing Kelly as an alleged predator— girls cannot summon the enthusiastic Show is essentially as close to read-
we already knew he’d married Aaliyah support of our own folks, you can easi- ing critical race theory as the average
when she was 15—he’s merely mocked ly guess what sort of solidarity we enjoy American White boy will likely ever get.
for an unhygienic kink. (R. Kelly was from White folks and non-Black people People go to him for profound racial
acquitted of child pornography charg- of color, many of whom gladly bene- insights; sometimes he delivers, other
es in 2008, but this September he was fit from the fact that at least they aren’t times he is weighed down by how little
convicted of sexual exploitation of a Black and female, but also from the he seems to think of Black people who
child and sex trafficking, among other amount of labor Black women perform aren’t what he’d consider men. If we
crimes (and whose victims include Aali- on behalf of “diversity” causes. In 8:46, can’t challenge him to think a bit more
yah), and faces more child pornography the acclaimed short special that Chap- deeply about certain urgent issues, that
charges related to the 2008 case. He pelle recorded and released during the has profound ramifications.
has maintained his innocence.) season of protests inspired by the death
of Breonna Taylor, he manages to talk In the gorgeous “If He Hollers, Let
It is hard for me, as a woman in her about police violence for nearly half Him Go,” a National Magazine Award
30s, to think about the reactions I saw an hour without naming a single Black finalist essay, the writer Rachel Kaadzi
adult Black men, and women, have to woman who’d fallen victim. Ghansah is among the chorus: “Dave
the Kelly tape back then and for many Chappelle is without a doubt his gener-
years after. To me, it seems that the THE ERASURE OF Black Bitches mur- ation’s smartest comic.” Citing his
bit and the positive reception to it spoke dered by the state reminded me of the upbringing around “Jewish kids, Black
volumes about the inability of Chap- polarizing efforts to center us in the kids, and Vietnamese immigrants,” she
pelle, and most people, to have empathy anti–police violence movement sparked credits the comic with using “these expe-
for Black girls and women. We wouldn’t by the death of Missouri teen Michael riences to become America’s consul and
laugh—side by side with White folks— “Mike” Brown in 2014. Though many translator for all things racial. More than
about any of the instances of Black of the most visible young organizers any comic of his generation, he lanced
men or boys being harmed by state were Black women and/or LGBTQ+ the boil of how race works and also prod-
violence. How could Black women be people, there were others who felt that ded at how nuanced race had become.”
asked to laugh at rape jokes alongside, acknowledging how these populations
essentially, the same folks who’d be fare at the hands of the police distract- It might be incredible that someone
allowed to rape us with impunity? It’s ed from “the bigger picture.” I took could compel such praise as a racial
the Black Ass Lie. many trips to Ferguson to cover the pro- translator, a spokesperson for his people,
tests, and I was always struck by the while having such a shitty lens on gender
Scholar and sister-friend Brittany presence of Black trans women. I knew, and sexuality. Alas, what more can
Brathwaite dropped a gem in a recent and I knew they knew, that the com- you expect when the Black man’s needs
conversation: “There is this commu- munity would never have shown up for are Black needs, the Black man’s plight
nal grief over the death of Black men, them in the same numbers. Indeed, is the Black plight, but when it comes to
but not over the rape of Black wom- some of the people marching for Mike the Black Bitches, we’re on our own.
en. People get so upset that they have to Brown would have gladly participated We have ourselves and sometimes some
miss work, because they read about a in violence against those Bitches. And of the other Bitches to call upon. That’s
man they never met getting killed in a due in part to the Black Ass Lie.
city they’ve never been to.” But when it
comes to crimes against Black women’s I’d wager that the majority of Chap-
bodies, she says, “the cognitive disso- pelle’s Black critics (present Bitch
nance is astounding.” The airing of a included) do not seek to see the gifted
two-part, ten-hour docu-series dedi- comic silenced. We want to be able to
cated to decades of his sexual violence laugh too. If anyone deserves to, we
should have had the nation in a choke do, because the joke has been on us for
far too long. Q

FEBRUARY 2022 39

Vanities /Tech Talk

Into the

METAVERSE

Like it or not, the next stage
of the internet revolution is
coming By Nick Bilton

A
A COUPLE OF years ago, I was sitting
with Bob Iger in his office at Dis- where humans, as avatars, interact Science fiction has long looked toward SHUTTERSTOCK.
ney headquarters in Burbank when with each other (and other artificially augmented reality—and now it’s almost here.
he asked me if I wanted to see some- intelligent versions of people) in an Just how dystopian will it be?
thing cool. “Sure,” I said, uncertain online virtual world that has been built
what magic trick he was about to pull to resemble the real world. As tech- can think about the metaverse as an
out of his hat. He walked over to his nology has grown and morphed, the embodied internet, where instead of
giant wooden desk, covered with Star ideas around the metaverse have too, just viewing content—you are in it.”
Wars, Marvel, and Disney parapher- and we’ve seen iterations of it brought Now Zuckerberg has changed the name
nalia, and grabbed his iPad. He then to dramatic life in Ernest Cline’s of the company to Meta.
proceeded to show me video clips from novel Ready Player One, where people
movies Disney was working on at the interact—and also die—in the virtual In a world where the metaverse exists,
time, all footage of people and ani- OASIS, or in The Matrix, where they die rather than hosting a weekly work
mals that I was sure were filmed with too. (Don’t worry, you’re not going meeting on Zoom, you could imagine
actors but that Iger informed me were to die in our metaverse, at least not yet.) meeting in a physical representation
100 percent CGI. My mind literally of your office, where each person looks
couldn’t decipher between reality and “Over the next five years or so, in like a digital version of themself,
a computer-generated version of it. this next chapter of our company, I think seated at a digital coffee table drinking
As I sat speechless, Iger looked at me we will effectively transition from peo- digital artisanal coffee and snacking
with his trademark all-American smile ple seeing us as primarily being a social on digital doughnuts. If that sounds
and said, “The crazy part about all of media company to being a metaverse boring, you could meet somewhere
this is that every time we render a new company,” Mark Zuckerberg told The else, perhaps in the past, like in 1776
scene, the technology used to make it is Verge in an interview earlier this year New York City, or in the future, on
already outdated. It’s already obsolete.” (before the company was beset by its a spaceship or on another planet—if it
most recent slew of scandals). “You made sense for the meeting, of course.
Now the whole world is getting clos-
er to having that same experience. For
better and probably for worse, the meta-
verse is about to change everything.

The term metaverse was first coined
in Snow Crash, a science fiction novel
published in 1992, in which author Neal
Stephenson imagines a virtual world

40 VA N I T Y FA I R ILLUSTRATION BY Q U I N T O N M C M I L L A N

You could choose not to be yourself but about now. But Second Life was a you’re on (or in). But there will be count-
rather some form of avatar you picked closed system and, what’s more, the less ways in which you can access it.
up at the local online NFT swap meet, or technology just wasn’t ready. You can imagine entering some aspects
at a virtual Balenciaga store. You could of it on your smartphone or computer,
dress like a bunny to go to the meeting. TO UNDERSTAND HOW the metaverse or perhaps through a game console or
A dragon. A dead dragon. And that’s just might become real, you have to go back your television, which would give you a
one measly little meeting. and see how technology has evolved different kind of immersive experience.
over the last four decades to bring us But where the true metaverse expe-
You could take a British history class the digital world we live in today. riences will likely flourish is through
taught by a digital representation of At first, there was simply the internet, virtual reality and augmented reality.
King George III or learn about the the- a bunch of tubes and wires connect-
ory of relativity from Albert Einstein ed together that allowed people to send Over the past few years, several
himself. You could attend a TED Talk, email and chat on message boards. By companies, including Facebook, Apple,
or give one. You could hook up your 1989, Tim Berners-Lee had created the Google, and Ray-Ban, have been
exercise bike to race against Maurice World Wide Web, which allowed peo- working on creating digital glasses,
Garin in the Tour de France or your ple to connect to the internet through a headsets, and contact lenses that could
running machine to race against Usain browser, which in turn went to millions end up adding a layer of the metaverse
Bolt at the Olympics (and lose). You of websites, spawning the advent of to real life. In this scenario, the meta-
could go to the zoo. You could be an things like Yahoo and Google. A decade verse wouldn’t just be a place you go in
animal at the zoo. Visit the Louvre. later came Web 2.0, which brought the digital world but a place layered
The International Space Station. You user-generated content in the forms of on top of the real world—augmented
could go for a walk on Mars. Float in Blogger, Flickr, and Pandora, and this reality. You could imagine wearing
space. You could go to a theme park your avatar out in the real world, where
and ride the world’s biggest roller You could be an other people who are wearing head-
coaster and maybe even throw up in AVATAR you picked sets see an augmented version of their
real life. You could go shopping, try- reality, including you dressed up as
ing on outfits that are actually mailed up at the local your avatar, which could also change
to your house once you pay for them, based on who is looking at you. Maybe
probably in Bitcoin or Ethereum. NFT SWAP MEET you appear as a three-headed puppy
There are also lots of potential dark to your kids but a professional in a suit
sides of the metaverse. Don’t be sur- or at a virtual to your coworkers. You could sit in a
prised to see Nazi rallies and people Balenciaga store. coffee shop in New York while a friend
who choose racist and dangerous ava- sits in a coffee shop in Paris and have a
tars, or hackers stealing from people eventually morphed into social media. real coffee together, even though you’re
or performing metaversal terrorism, All of these were new layers placed not in the same place.
whatever that becomes. atop the original foundation of the
internet. Today we largely interact in In order for the metaverse to become
For all the talk about NFTs, the meta- an app-based layer, where we engage truly successful, it will need to feel so
verse is where they start to actually with content and with one anoth- real that it becomes unclear if you’re
make sense—kind of. Perhaps you own er through apps we download to our in reality or in the metaverse. The rea-
a Beeple NFT that’s worth $70 million. smartphones—Twitter, Facebook, son that such a scenario has been left to
In the real world, you can only show it Snapchat, Slack, and so on. The next the annals of science fiction until now
to someone on your computer or brag layer is the metaverse. is because the technology hasn’t caught
about it on social media. But in the up. Computer chips, processors, screen-
metaverse, you could hang it on the wall The ways in which you enter the rendering capabilities, and 3D software
of your digital house so your digital metaverse will likely be what makes or engines are simply not fast enough. But
guests can enjoy it. Or you could put it in breaks it. Today we access the inter- that is all changing, quickly.
a digital art museum and charge people net with such ease via apps—you just
a small fee (paid for in crypto) to come pick up your phone, press a button, and Then there’s the question of what
and see the piece like it’s the Mona Lisa. you’re talking to people on Facebook, the science fiction has predicted. In
reading a book on the Kindle app, Snow Crash and Ready Player One, the
A lot of this might sound like some- or playing Fortnite. The metaverse will metaverse is not a totally happy place.
thing you may have heard about before, have to work the same way: Click and In fact, it’s often portrayed as a dysto-
or even seen and engaged with in a pia, run by one megalomaniac who is
crude technological form. Back in 2003, hell-bent on ruling over everyone in
a version of the metaverse called society, and doing so through the tech-
Second Life launched as a stand-alone nology he runs. Not too dissimilar
world that you could hang out in, not to a certain someone who just changed
too distinct from the stuff we’re talking his company’s name to Meta. Q

FEBRUARY 2022 41

Photographs by
EMMA SUMMERTON

EVERYTHING’S At home
with the
COMING UP internationally
famous
42 VA N I T Y FA I R actor, singer,
author, and
entrepreneur
as she tries
to be all things
to everyone—
and succeeds

By
REBECCA
FORD

Styled by
LEITH CLARK

PRIYANKA

FEBRUARY 2022 43

Priyanka Chopra “UPSTAIRS IS CRAZY. This is definitely not normal.” and sandals, her long hair still damp HAI R , S H O N H Y U N GS U N J U ; MAK E U P , L I S A E L D R I D G E ; MAN I C U R E , M I C H E L L E H U M P H R E Y ; TAI LO R , M I C H E L L E WAR N E R ; S E T D E S I G N , S E AN T H O M S O N .
Jonas, photographed There’s a flurry of activity at the Chopra Jonas place in Encino. from the shower. In person, she is warm PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY SHINY PROJEC TS. LOCATION: SPRING STUDIOS, LONDON. FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS.
by Vanity Fair on and charming, with a ready laugh and
November 10, 2021, Dozens of people are rushing around, moving cars in and out of engaging eyes. She moves from deep
in London. the garage, carrying boxes, and unwrapping dishes and glass- conversation to light jokes with ease.
ware. Priyanka Chopra Jonas sits down across a table from me “She can come across as so regal and
Clothing by in the quiet game room downstairs and laughs: “I swear it’s not refined, which she certainly is, but she’s
Valentino; sandals always like this.” also got this carefree joy about her and
by Loeffler Randall. she just exudes it,” says her husband.
Priyanka, which she prefers that I call her here, is readying for “She’s an incredible host in that way. I’m
Clothing by a party, gathering her family, in-laws, and Hollywood friends more of a reserved person at first, and I
Schiaparelli; ring for the first major event at her home in the San Fernando Valley. open up with friends and people as I get
by Bulgari High The house itself is a major event, by the way: a 20,000-square- to know them better, but she can make
Jewelry. foot home with a two-lane bowling alley, an indoor basketball you feel like you are in the family and a
court, a movie theater, and an infinity swimming pool that gives part of the inner circle right away.”
way to a gorgeous view of the distant hills. The party will be a
Diwali celebration as well as a housewarming. Priyanka and Jada Pinkett Smith, who starred in The
her husband of three years, Nick Jonas, bought the place for Matrix Resurrections with Priyanka, puts
a reported $20 million at the end of 2019, just before the pan- it this way: “She’s just a ball of light. She’s
demic forced everyone inside. They spent their first six months funny and she’s witty, and she just enjoys
together doing what some of us did in those early, unsteady days: life. It’s magnetic.”
eating pizza every night, watching movies at four in the morning,
sleeping in. Since then, though, they’ve had to be largely apart, Behind that light and magnetism, of
working in different parts of the world. “I want to be at home,” course, is a driven woman who has tran-
Priyanka tells me. “I’ve been away for almost a year now.” At scended what’s previously been possible
the moment, her husband is occupied upstairs. “We both have a for an Indian actor in Hollywood. After
shoot today. So that’s the thing about this house—both him and becoming one of the biggest movie stars
I have had 20-year careers, and I think we finally built a home in India, Priyanka left home at the peak
that accommodates our individual lives.” of her Bollywood career and created,
step-by-step, a career in America that’s
Hosting tomorrow night’s party will allow Priyanka to do reaching new heights. Last year, she pub-
something she does exceedingly well: make people feel wel- lished her memoir, Unfinished (now a New
come. Many of the friends and collaborators I talk to about York Times best seller); launched her hair-
her note her ability to put anyone at ease, and I feel it almost care line, Anomaly; raised millions of
immediately. Priyanka’s wearing a casual plaid navy shirtdress dollars to aid India during the pandemic;
opened an Indian restaurant in New York;
and starred in the Matrix sequel. Later
this year—with the rom-com Text for
You and Amazon’s ambitious spy series
Citadel—Priyanka will finally be playing
lead film roles as she had in India. It’s a
moment she has been building toward
for 20 years. She is an outsider who broke
down barriers and built a place for herself
within the walls of Hollywood. Now she’s
on a mission to welcome others in.

“It’s taken a lot of pavement pounding
to be able to get people’s attention, and to
be able to get an acceptance of the fact
that someone like me can be the lead of
a Hollywood feature,” she says. “There’s
very few of us from South Asia who get to
do that. I hope that the part that I play in it
will sort of push the envelope a little bit.”

P RIYANKA, WHO’S 39, hasalready
lived many lives. She was born
in India—her parents were mili-
tary physicians—then moved
to the U.S. as a teenager to live with her
aunt. Routinely bullied for being Indian,

44 VA N I T Y FA I R FEBRUARY 2022





Priyanka returned to India after three Choice Award for the role—she won two—and when Quantico
years to finish her high school education wrapped after three seasons in 2018, she had already begun
at the Army Public School in Bareilly. In appearing in a smattering of films, playing a vampy villain in
1999, her mother and brother entered Baywatch, a yoga instructor in the comedy Isn’t It Romantic, and
her in her first pageant, and she went on a fiercely determined mother in the family drama The Sky Is
to win Miss India World and ultimately Pink. The last of these was produced by Purple Pebble Pictures,
Miss World 2000. Within 10 years of which Priyanka cofounded with her mother, Madhu Chopra.
launching her Bollywood career, she The company has a TV deal with Amazon, and Priyanka says
became one of the most successful she’s focused on telling predominantly South Asian stories and
actors working in India’s massive movie ones centered on women: “I’m looking at doing very hyper-
industry, the world’s largest producer of specific storytelling.” As for the responsibility that comes with
films, with billions of tickets sold a year. representing South Asians in her work, she adds, “I may make
Priyanka often shot multiple films simul- my mistakes, because this is not a mantle I was looking for. But I
taneously. She became insanely famous. think collectively, each one of us can push Hollywood, and push
Can’t-walk-down-the-street famous. It the powers that be, and be demanding and not just polite about
was then that her manager, Anjula Acha- it. I’ve been polite for a very long time. Now it’s time to say, ‘I’m
ria, urged her to move back to the U.S. to sorry, that doesn’t work,’ and to fight for your characters. As a
pursue a music career with the legendary producer, I’m so grateful that I get the opportunity to do that,
record executive Jimmy Iovine.
“I’m more of a reserved person at first,”
Other Hindi film stars had tried to says Nick Jonas, “but she can make you
break into the U.S. market, but none feel like you are in the family and a part
achieved anything like the same stardom. of the inner circle right away.”
“I wasn’t looking to do work in America,”
Priyanka tells me. “I was at this amazing to be able to make stories and look for stories that normalize
point in my career. I was doing critically different cultures of the world.”
acclaimed work and winning awards. So
she called me, and I kind of laughed at Last year, Priyanka executive produced and starred in The
the idea.” In the end, she took the leap White Tiger, an adaptation of an Aravind Adiga novel exploring
and signed a record deal with Universal India’s caste systems through the experience of one wealthy
Music Group. Priyanka became the first family’s driver. “When she sets her mind to accomplish some-
Bollywood star ever signed at CAA and thing, which could be producing a film, it could be her business
released a few singles, collaborating with ventures—she’s relentless,” says the film’s writer-director,
Pitbull and will.i.am. “It was just magi- Ramin Bahrani, whose screenplay was nominated for an Oscar.
cal,” she says. “So those three, four years “And when it comes to the performance, she’s the same. Lots of
just went by. I was being serenaded by questions. And all good questions. Great instincts.”
this rock-and-roll lifestyle.”
When I ask Priyanka how the roles she’s looking for have
It was booking the lead role of FBI changed, she pauses. “I’m scared to say this,” she says. I encour-
trainee Alex Parrish in the ABC series age her to go on. “When I first came here, to get the attention,
Quantico in 2015 that allowed Priyanka to I had to sort of shed my ethnicity a lot more so that it was not
move from a fledgling music career back alien,” she says. “I had to play parts which were more American
into acting. “Quantico for me was a really to get a seat at the table. Now that I’ve got a seat at the table,
big win,” she says. “Not just because of I’ve reverted back to playing parts that embrace my ethnicity.”
being the first time an Indian or South
Asian actor was lead of a network show, Dress by Dior; shoes M IDWAY THROUGH MY conversation with Priyanka,
but, more than that, because I was not put by Manolo Blahnik; I start to see flashes out of the corner of my eye:
in the box, like the show wasn’t My Big Fat jewelry by Bulgari Nick’s photo shoot is under way just up the stairs.
Indian Wedding.” High Jewelry. The game room is partly a shrine to music. The
walls are hung with big vintage rock photos: the Rolling Stones
The Parrish character was written onstage, the Beatles arriving at an airport to a crush of reporters,
without a specific ethnicity in mind, Kurt Cobain in a reflective moment. At the far end of the room,
which is something Priyanka had longed there’s an upright piano and an acoustic guitar lying on a couch,
for: She didn’t want to be pigeonholed along with an old arcade-style Pac-Man machine.
for being Indian or cast as a trope. Once
she’d won the role, she added some
touches from her own background,
including speaking Hindi on the show.
“After that, I just started looking for
parts like that, where my ethnicity is
something that is an asset [but] I’m
not defined by it.” Priyanka was the
first South Asian actor to win a People’s

VA NI TY FA I R FEBRUARY 2022 47

There’s an absurd narrative about Priyanka and her husband picture is going to be zoomed in on, and
that sometimes slithers into view, implying that she married people are going to speculate,” Priyanka
Jonas, who’s 10 years younger, to get more famous. In 2018— says. “It’s just a professional hazard….
shortly after the couple’s glam multiday wedding in a palace in Because of the noise of social media,
Jodhpur, India—The Cut actually ran a piece accusing Priyanka because of the prevalence that it has
of being a “scam artist” who had somehow ensnared the singer. in our lives, I think it seems a lot larger
The piece received the trashing it deserved for being sexist and than it is. I think that we give it a lot more
xenophobic and was eventually taken down with an apology credence in real life, and I don’t think it
from the outlet. For the record, Priyanka is much more success- needs that.”
ful globally, with twice as many Instagram followers as Jonas, for
starters (71.5 million to his 31.8 million). She’s starred in more One recent social media backlash
than 50 films, won India’s version of the Oscar for the 2008 flared up when The Activist—a new real-
drama Fashion, and been on the cover of Vogue India 11 times. ity competition show that Priyanka may
Priyanka doesn’t trot these stats out herself, obviously—she’s in judge—was criticized for pitting activists
love with the guy, not competing with him—but it’s clear that the against each other. “I have no idea what
ignorance about who she is, and what she’s accomplished, ran- they’re going to do with it yet,” she says
kles every so often. In March 2021, when the couple was about now, adding that the producers have gone
to host the Oscar nominations announcement, an Australian back to the drawing board to retool the
show. “I’ve been involved with Global
“She’s just a ball of light,” Citizen for so many years, and I know the
says Jada Pinkett Smith. “She’s funny strides that they’ve made when it comes
and she enjoys life. It’s magnetic.” to global poverty and climate change.
They’ve done incredible work. So, it’s
journalist tweeted, “No disrespect to these two but I’m not sure Clothing by Louis really tragic when something like that
their contribution to the movies qualifies them to be announc- Vuitton. happens because that is never the inten-
ing Oscar nominees.” Enough already. Priyanka responded, tion.” Again, I can see the frustration
“Would love your thoughts on what qualifies someone. Here work its way under her skin. “It makes me
are my 60+ film credentials for your adept consideration.” She sad because I try to live my life as a good
included a link to her IMDB page. “I usually don’t get mad, but person every day, doing the best I can, just
that just pissed me off,” she tells me now. like everyone else. And it would just be
nice to be seen for that sometimes.”
Priyanka is the first to acknowledge how much the U.S. has
inspired and supported her, but there are challenges that have Jonas tells me he’s never seen his wife
come with diving into a new market and culture. In those early get overwhelmed by the pressures of
days on these shores, she humbled herself when she met with fame. “We both know that public life is
studio executives or magazine editors; she explained who she was something that comes with what we do,”
back in India. But now, being dismissed can sting. “I’ll be mad, he says. “But we’ve set real boundaries
I’ll be angry, I’ll be annoyed,” Priyanka says. “I’ll speak about around our personal lives, our privacy,
it to my family. I might cry a little bit, but it doesn’t change my and worked really hard to create that little
relationship with my work and what my actual quest is. My quest safe haven for ourselves with our friends
is not people’s opinions. My quest is my job. My quest is making and family.”
sure that when someone watches something that I have done,
it moves them or they enjoy it. My personal life, who I am, all That safe haven includes a tight circle
of that is not my job.” of loved ones. Even while I’m visiting
their home, Jonas’s family is upstairs, in
Her personal life, of course, remains under a microscope town for the Diwali party. Priyanka jokes
nonetheless. On a random Monday in November, Priyanka that her mother—who lived with her and
changed her Instagram handle to just her first name, and the Jonas after COVID-19 cases skyrocketed
infernal machine known as the internet decided that it meant in India—pushed her to launch her pro-
trouble for her marriage. Then she responded to a video that duction company when she was turning
Jonas had posted with lusty comment and cute emojis, and the 30 by telling her, “ ‘Oh, my God, you’re
world was soothed. All this happened during a 12-hour period not going to have an acting career any-
on just one day of her life. “It’s a very vulnerable feeling, actu- more because everybody wants to work
ally, that if I post a picture, everything that’s behind me in that with a younger one. So we need a busi-
ness.’ ” Her mother, she adds lovingly,
48 VA N I T Y FA I R has eased up recently. “Her attention is
diverted by my marriage. She’s very much
an Asian mom, very excited about the fact
that I finally did it.” She laughs. “She had
no hope.”

Presumably her mother also hopes
for a grandchild? “They’re a big part of
our desire for the future,” says Priyanka.

FEBRUARY 2022





“By God’s grace, when it happens, it hap- This year, Priyanka will also shoot an untitled comedy with
pens.” I point out that both their lives Mindy Kaling that she and Kaling developed together. “That
seem busier than ever. “No, we’re not one is a really big piece of my heart for many reasons,” she says
too busy to practice,” she says. I laugh and of the film, which was inspired by her wedding and the uniting
clarify that I wasn’t talking about sex but of her Indian culture and Jonas’s American one. “I remember
rather about their breakneck pace with when Universal bought it in the room. We held hands under the
work. They will have to slow down when table. Because I was like, I don’t remember the last time I’ve
a child enters their lives. seen a buddy comedy with two brown people.”

“I’m okay with that,” she says. “We’re There are even more projects in the works. Priyanka is devel-
both okay with that.” oping Sheela for Amazon, in which she’ll play Ma Anand Sheela,
the spiritual adviser made famous in the Wild Wild Country doc-
T HE NEXT TIME I speak to Pri- umentary for her part in the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
yanka, she’s in an entirely in Oregon. And she will return to India to film her first Hindi
different place, both physically project in a number of years, a road movie centered on three
and mentally. It’s three weeks women, which will also star two other Bollywood actors, Katrina
later, and she has returned to London to Kaif and Alia Bhatt.
shoot the epic action series Citadel. She’s
working nights and jokes that she’s still But I sense a push and pull in Priyanka that seems new to
on L.A. time despite the new location. her. She’s close to capturing the Hollywood career she’s always
She is alone instead of in a busy home
filled with family and friends. “I want to do movies that are not always
bright and shiny. I want to work
Amazon aims to make Citadel a glob- under the tutelage of really brilliant
al action franchise, with Priyanka and minds. And I want to be pushed.”
Richard Madden starring in the “moth-
er ship” series, followed by spin-offs in Clothing and gloves dreamed of, but—like many women at the top of their field who
Italy, India, Spain, and Mexico. The show by Erdem; sandals by have chosen to prioritize their mental health—she clearly doesn’t
has demanded months of her time and Loeffler Randall; want to spend all of 2022 grinding herself into the ground, or
energy. Among other things, she will get earrings by Bulgari being alone in an empty London apartment, working nights.
to speak six languages in it. Later this High Jewelry. “I’ve always been such a worker bee,” she says. “My priority has
year, Priyanka will also have her first lead Throughout: hair always been the next job. I’m a very, very ambitious person. But I
role in a Hollywood feature film, Text for products by Anomaly; think the woman in me is craving balance. I’m craving my family
You. “I’m such a sucker for a good roman- nail enamel by life. I’m craving being able to do things for the soul that I didn’t
tic comedy, like a date-night movie that Bio Sculpture. do because I was just ‘blinders on’ and working.”
makes your heart go soft,” Priyanka says.
Priyanka admits that her path has left her with some bruises
To understand the variety of projects and scars. “I think maybe that’s why I’m becoming a lot more
on Priyanka’s plate right now, you just introverted as I go along on this journey in the entertainment
have to remember the goal that gleams business now,” she tells me. “I’m starting to protect myself a lot
up ahead: to build a career as varied as more because I realize how much it takes out of you. It takes a
the one she had in India. There, Priyanka part of your soul, constantly trying to make sure that you say the
played an Olympic boxer, an autistic teen, right thing, do the right thing, dress the right way, not make a
a femme fatale, a general’s wife, and a mistake, not trip because the whole world is going to watch. Or
model. In the 2009 comedy What’s Your not fall when you’re walking up on a red carpet or say something
Raashee?, she played 12 different charac- wrong or have a bad fucking day.”
ters. “People here haven’t seen her in a
diverse set of roles like they have in Priyanka knows 2022 is going to bring change. “I feel like I am
India,” says Acharia, Priyanka’s manager. at a precipice of reinvention,” she says. “What is the new me?
“I see her like Julia Roberts. We saw Julia I’m very excited about the future. I’m terrified of it too. Change
Roberts in comedy, and then we saw her is always scary. But I’ve done it multiple times in my life.”
strip down for Erin Brockovich. For Pri,
what’s exciting is how people respond This time, she intends to care for herself as much as she does
when they see who she really is.” for her career. “When does this article come out?” she asks as
our time wraps up. I tell her that it’s the February issue. “That’s
Priyanka echoes the sentiment. “I what I want to do. By the time this piece comes out, that’s what
think as an actor, it’ll be a really crucial I will be doing.”
time for me,” she says. “I want to do mov-
ies that are not always bright and shiny. I believe her. Q
I want to be able to unravel as an artist
onscreen, I want to work under the tute-
lage of really brilliant minds. And I want
to be pushed. I’m ready to be pushed.”

VA NI TY FA I R FEBRUARY 2022 51

The

MUSIC
MAN

Photographs by

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

Styled by

MICHAEL FISHER

52 VA N I T Y F A I R

HUGH
JACKMAN

IS RETURNING
TO BROADWAY
IN ONE OF ITS
MOST BELOVED
MUSICALS.
MICHAEL
RIEDEL GOES
BEHIND THE
CURTAIN TO
REVEAL HOW
THE INDUSTRY’S
NEXT BIG HOPE
SURVIVED
CHARGES OF
OBSOLESCENCE,
SCOTT RUDIN’S
DOWNFALL,
AND COVID-19

FEBRUARY 2022 53

In next plane to New York, because there was talk of closing the
FEBRUARY 2020, HUGH JACKMAN and Sutton Foster, a two-time borders. Rehearsals for The Music Man were to start again in
July. If he were stuck abroad, he could be in breach of contract.
Tony Award winner, began work on a splashy Broadway revival of Jackman and Furness returned to New York on March 19, to “a
ghost town,” he said.
The Music Man. Produced by Scott Rudin, then Broadway’s most
Rehearsals did not start in July. Broadway, in fact, shut
powerful and prolific impresario, and directed by Jerry Zaks, the down for 18 months, destroying the livelihoods of thousands
of actors, stagehands, ushers, restaurant staff, parking garage
production was shaping up to be the event of the fall theater sea- attendants, and others connected to the theatrical trade. The
$2 billion that Broadway annually poured into New York City’s
son. When tickets went on sale, the advance soared to $30 million. coffers evaporated.

Rehearsals that February were intimate: just Jackman, Foster, BUT THE MUSIC MAN, defying the pandemic, has survived. On
February 10, it’s scheduled to open at the Winter Garden The-
Warren Carlyle, the show’s choreographer, and a few people atre (where the marquee has been up for more than a year), its
advance, now $35 million, in the bank.
from the music department. Rudin popped in from time to time,
Broadway’s return last fall was spotty. Disney’s Aladdin
as did Zaks. Jackman and Foster had never worked together. The opened, then had to shut for two weeks after a COVID outbreak
among cast and crew. Ticket sales for all but a few shows were
goal was to develop the chemistry between Jackman’s “Profes- weak, with international tourism, Broadway’s trough for years,
having dried up.
sor” Harold Hill, the charismatic flimflam salesman of musical
There’s a sense on “the Street” that Broadway’s real return
instruments, and Foster’s Marian Paroo, the guarded but dis- won’t come until late winter or early spring, just around the time
that Jackman, the biggest box office draw in the business, will be
cerning town librarian—“Marian, the Librarian,” as the show’s leading a cast of 45 actors, employed for the first time in a long
time, in “Seventy-six Trombones.”
creator, Meredith Willson, had called her.
JACKMAN AND THE MUSIC MAN go back a long way. He audi-
By the end of four weeks, the chemistry was there. Confi- tioned for the show in high school. He memorized the opening
number—“Rock Island,” better known from its lyrics as “But he
dence in the room was high. And then, early on the morning of doesn’t know the territory!”—and got the part of Salesman #2.
Another student, David Anderson, landed the lead. “He was
February 28, Jackman woke up and could not breathe. It was, he really good,” Jackman said of Anderson. But envy was in Jack-
man’s eyes. One day, dammit, he thought, that part could be
remembered, the first time in his life that he thought, “If I wake his. (Jackman lost touch with Anderson. But, David, if you’re
reading this, Jackman says he’ll leave two tickets under your
up tomorrow morning and I’m sicker than this, I think I’m going name at the box office.)

to go to the hospital. I thought, Shit.” Jackman’s chance to play Harold Hill came in 2018, when
Rudin offered him the role. Jackman’s friend Barbara Cook—
Carlyle arose that day coughing and feverish but was deter- Marian in the original 1957 production—had long encouraged
him to do the show. “To have a successful Music Man, you have
mined, he says, to “drag myself ” to rehearsals. Foster had a to have a Harold Hill all the women in town want to fuck and
half the men want to fuck too,” she told him.
temperature of 104 degrees, a bad cough, and an inability to
But Jackman was “indecisive,” he recalled. He wanted to do
taste or smell. She decided to call in sick. But when she checked an original musical, not a revival. So he passed. A year later, with
no original musical in development, he changed his mind. He
her phone, Jackman had already done the same. “Hugh can- was 51. He knew he wouldn’t have the stamina to tackle the phys-
ically demanding part of Harold Hill much longer. “It’s time,”
celed,” Carlyle said. “He has never canceled.” he told his agent. They rang Rudin. But there was a problem: A
British producer now had the rights and was planning a London
Jackman, Foster, and Carlyle all think they had come down production. “Let me look into it,” Rudin said. Jackman went to a
corner of his apartment, sat down, put his head in his hands, and
with COVID-19, though tests were scarce back then. Two weeks thought, You’re an idiot. It’s gone. It won’t be done for another
10 years. “I was really down,” he said.
later, on March 12, New York governor
Rudin called back the next day. “It’s done,” he said. “It’s yours.”
Andrew Cuomo shut down Broadway. A That was the Rudin magic. Nothing stood in his way. His taste
was impeccable, his ability to land major stars unrivaled. His
THE BOY FROM OZ bunch of theater producers gathered at string of Broadway hits included The Book of Mormon, Hello, Dolly!,
Sardi’s that night to commiserate. One
Hugh Jackman of them had a cough. A few days later,
shows off his many of them, including Rudin, came
athleticism in NYC’s
Canal Park.

Sweater by Brunello down with COVID.
Cucinelli; pants by Jackman had flown to Australia that
Theory; hair products
by R+Co; grooming same day to meet up with his wife, Deb-
products by Boy orra-Lee Furness. He got a frantic call
de Chanel. from his lawyer telling him to get on the

54 VA N I T Y FA I R

and To Kill a Mockingbird adapted for the stage by Aaron Sorkin. and all the wonderful things I was hoping to do with [Hugh]

Rudin oversaw every aspect of his productions: script develop- were whisked away.”

ment, marketing, advertising, right down to seating arrangements

on opening night. He was also as tough as they come and never

shrank from a fight. He got into a nasty lawsuit with Stephen THE NEXT YEAR THE ELUSIVE movie career Jackman had been

Sondheim over the rights to Sondheim’s musical Gold!, in which trying to pursue kicked in after he landed his breakthrough role,

Rudin had been an early investor. He battled Harper Lee’s estate Wolverine in X-Men. The film went on to gross nearly $300 mil-

when it objected to Sorkin’s portrayal of Atticus Finch as a one- lion worldwide.

time racist. (Both lawsuits were settled out of court.) Before X-Men, Jackman had been offered the part of Peter

Rudin had recently formed a production company with Allen, the flamboyant, bisexual Australian songwriter and per-

his two friends, Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC, and David former, in a musical based on Allen’s life called The Boy From

Geffen, one of the founders of DreamWorks. They would put Oz. Jackman knew it was a good role but turned it down, fear-

up the money for The Music Man. Jackman was in good hands. ing, yet again, he’d be “pigeonholed” in musical theater. But

when he saw the show in Sydney, starring a very capable Todd

McKenney, his heart sank. He’d made a big mistake. It wasn’t

JACKMAN NEVER ASPIRED to be a musical theater star. At drama just a good part—it was the perfect part for him.

school in Australia, he studied Shakespeare. When he gradu- A few years later, as he was reading the script for the second

ated, he landed a part in a TV series. He thought he’d make his X-Men movie, he got a call from the producers of The Boy From

living in television and, one day, the movies. But then his agent Oz. They were taking the show to Broadway. They wanted him to

sent him in for the role of Gaston in the Australian production of play Peter Allen. This time he grabbed it. His agent had doubts.

Beauty and the Beast. He wasn’t much of a singer but he got the Jackman’s movie career was taking off. Now was the time to

part, though Disney insisted he take singing lessons once a week. cement his relationships with the studios. But Jackman wasn’t

When Beauty and the Beast closed, he auditioned for the role about to watch someone else’s name appear on the marquee.

of Joe Gillis, the cynical screenwriter, for the Melbourne pro- “I can’t go through that again,” he told his agent.

duction of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard. He didn’t The Boy From Oz opened on Broadway on October 16, 2003.

want to be pigeonholed as a musical theater performer, but he The critics adored Jackman, “a rising movie star,” said one, but

couldn’t resist meeting the show’s director, Trevor Nunn, who dismissed the show as a by-the-numbers bio musical that, in the

led the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1970s and went on words of The New York Times, “settles for a staleness and hollow-

PREVIOUS SPREAD: GROOMING, MIA SANTIAGO. FOLLOWING SPREAD: HAIR, DJ QUINTERO (FOSTER); MAKEUP, LISA AHARON; GROOMING, JERRY POPOLIS; to stage Cats and Les Misérables. At the audition, Nunn told him ness that even Mr. Jackman’s blazing presence can’t disguise.”
TA I LO R , T H AO H U Y N H . T H RO U G H O U T : S E T D E S I G N , M A RY H O WA R D. F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F. C O M / C R E D I T S .
to pretend he was singing to a young, idealistic Joe Gillis, who The producers promised to keep the show running through

detests what he’s become. It was a nifty bit of direction, Jack- Christmas. After that, all bets were off. A “rising movie star”

man thought. After the audition, he called his agent and said, “If did not guarantee strong ticket sales in January and February.

this guy offers me the part, I’m in.” Nunn,

meanwhile, told his assistants, “I don’t

need to see anybody else.”

Jackman’s run in Sunset Boulevard was AS POPUL AR AS IT IS, THE MUSIC MAN HAS ALWAYS
cut short in 1997 when Lloyd Webber, his

company then on shaky financial ground,

dogged by its reputationshut down every production of the show.
BEEN FOR BEING,

But Jackman and Nunn kept in touch. A
year later, when Jackman was in London, A S T H E N E W YO R K SO P H I S T I C AT E S O N C E T H O U G H T,

he called Nunn, who was about to take .

old-fashioned cornyover the Royal National Theatre and was
AND

planning his first season, which included

a revival of Oklahoma! Nunn told Jack-

man to come round for an audition. “Just

bring a Shakespeare and sing a song from Oklahoma!” Nunn said. Jackman was deflated. Then one night that October he noticed

Jackman met with Nunn and four associate directors of the the- that many of the men in the audience were paying more attention

ater. He performed a Shakespeare monologue, and the directors to their Blackberries than the show. It dawned on him that they

immediately started debating what it meant, as if they were in were checking the score of the Yankees-Marlins World Series.

graduate school. When he sang “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” Jackman had a line: “I know what you’re thinking: Is he or

the directors sang along. Jackman left the meeting puzzled. I isn’t he? It’s true. I’m Australian.” That night he changed it to: “I

definitely got this gig, he thought, or I’ve completely screwed know what you’re thinking. What’s the score on the baseball?”

this up and this is the worst audition of my life. People looked up from their handheld devices. Jackman ran

The audition was “phony,” Nunn would later recall with a offstage to get the score from the TV set in his dressing room.

laugh. “I’d already cast him as Curly.” He just wanted to make He came back on and announced it to cheers from the audience.

sure the other directors were on board. For the rest of the night, he provided World Series updates. The

“A major discovery” is what one London critic, echoing his audience loved it.

colleagues, called Jackman. Unfortunately for Nunn, in his And so did Jackman. Peter Allen had always bantered with

view, “about 20 Hollywood film producers thought the same, his audience, so why shouldn’t he? Jackman started poking fun

FEBRUARY 2022 55

56 VA N I T Y FA I R

BROADWAY
ROYALTY
Jackman and costar
Sutton Foster
rehearse at Gibney
Dance, New York.

Foster’s top by
Prism2; hair
products by Virtue;
makeup products
by Sisley Paris.
Jackman’s hair
products by Mitch;
grooming products
by Make Up
For Ever.

Styled by PHYLLIS POSNICK FEBRUARY 2022 57

at latecomers, a bit he stole from fellow Australian Dame Edna. Zaks was putting the finishing touches on the musical adapta-
“Take your time, sweetheart,” he’d say, always in character. tion of Mrs. Doubtfire when the producer came to the theater on
“Not much has happened, trust me. Do you want me to sing March 12 and told everyone that Broadway was shutting down.
the first song again?” Everybody thought Jackman’s ad libs lifted Zaks, “terrified” of COVID, he said, decamped to Bellport, New
the show. Well, not everybody. One of the creators wrote Jack- York, and read But He Doesn’t Know the Territory, Meredith Will-
man a letter berating him for departing from the text. Jackman son’s charming memoir of the making of The Music Man. Zaks
ignored it. Pretty soon, he was bringing people onstage to dance read it five times. “It’s my bible,” he said.
with him. On one occasion, he tried to get a reluctant man to
stand up and dance. The man wouldn’t budge. “Okay, you sit. Willson spent six years—1950 to 1956—writing The Music
Everybody else stand.” They did. Sometimes, he admitted, he Man. He based it on his memories of his idyllic childhood in
got carried away. A woman once yelled, “I want to bite your ass!” Mason City, Iowa. He created Harold Hill, the phony bandleader,
“Come on up and do it,” he replied. She did—and left a bruise. because he’d been a musician all his life. He played the piccolo
in John Philip Sousa’s band and the flute for the New York Phil-
Word got around town. That stale bio musical was a hoot, and harmonic under Arturo Toscanini. Acting out all the parts and
all because of Jackman. The box office exploded. Women went accompanying himself on the piano, Willson auditioned The
wild, mobbing him at the stage door. Celebrities flocked to the Music Man for dozens of backers and directors. The legendary
show. Barbara Cook saw it 12 times. Jackman gave Barbara Wal- Moss Hart, director of My Fair Lady, hated it. Finally, Kermit
ters a lap dance onstage. Steven Spielberg told him he should host Bloomgarden, producer of Death of a Salesman, picked it up.
the Tonys. He did—and drove up ratings. The last three months of Broadway sophisticates told him it would never work. It was,
the run were sold out, with scalpers getting huge markups for what they said, old-fashioned and corny.
was no longer being called The Boy From Oz. It was now known
as The Hugh Jackman Show. Jackman left after a year, no longer The Music Man, starring Robert Preston and Barbara Cook,
just a “rising movie star” but a gold-plated Broadway sensation. opened at the Majestic Theatre in December 1957, won five Tony
Awards, including best musical (beating out the groundbreak-
IN 2011 JACKMAN, now a big movie star, had an idea about doing ing West Side Story), and ran for almost three and a half years.
a one-man music and dance show. He and his friend Warren It became a staple of high school and amateur theater groups.
Carlyle, who had been in the chorus of Oklahoma! and was now But it was only revived once on Broadway, in 2000, directed by
a choreographer, went to work on the stage of the Curran The- Susan Stroman, who went on to stage The Producers.
ater in San Francisco. It was just the two of them. “We were like,
‘Well, what songs do you like? What do you want to do?’ ” Carlyle As popular as it is, The Music Man has always been dogged by
recalled. “That’s how we built it.” The show roared into New York its reputation for being, as those New York sophisticates once
on an advance of $10 million. Scalpers were getting $1,500 for thought, old-fashioned and corny. Sondheim and Hal Prince
orchestra seats. One day Jackman was walking to the theater. A had transformed musical theater with sophisticated shows such
scruffy-looking man came up to him and said, “I’ve got tickets as Company, Follies, and A Little Night Music. A guy in a plumed
for Hugh Jackman tonight.” Jackman lowered his sunglasses and
said, “I am Hugh Jackman, mate.” By the end of its 10-week run, “JACKMAN IS extremely
Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway had grossed nearly $15 million.
AND HE CAN FLIP A CANE. YOU ASK HIM TO JUMP
WHEN COVID SHUT DOWN New York that bleak March, Jackman,
masked and gloved, walked his dog and made runs to the local I’VE HAD 24 YEARS OF TRYING EVERY
grocery store. Carlyle holed up in his apartment on the Upper
West Side and walked his dog too. “The poor dog is exhausted,” humiliate him. HE’S ALWAYS
he said. Foster retreated to her weekend house in upstate New
York, sat on her couch, drank wine, and watched movies. She hat marching around and twirling a baton seemed a little hokey.
was eager to return to Broadway after a six-year absence, dur- But as Zaks went through the show—and plunged into Willson’s
ing which she’d starred in the TV Land series Younger. She’d memoir—he realized something. Willson had “affection” for his
burst on the scene in 2002, when she’d taken over the leading hometown, but The Music Man is not sentimental. Harold Hill
role in Thoroughly Modern Millie after the original star left due and Marian Paroo are tough people “who couldn’t be more con-
to creative differences with the director. She won the Tony for vinced of the fact that they don’t need to be in love,” Zaks said.
best actress in a musical. In 2011, she picked up a second Tony as “You’ve got these two forces bumping up against each other.
Reno Sweeney in a revival of Anything Goes. She was a Broadway It’s the best spectator sport. Watching people try to cope with
A-lister. But she still had to audition for Marian the Librarian. avoiding connecting. It’s great comedy. It’s fertile air.”
She was intimidated—and not just because Jackman was in the
room. Marian is typically played by a soprano, and some of the AS THE COVID LOCKDOWN wore on, Foster got off the couch
notes are a bit high for her range. The music director arranged and took dance-cardio classes over Zoom. “I started training
the songs “Till There Was You,” “Goodnight My Someone,” five times a week,” she said. Jackman went into gear as well. He
and “My White Knight” in her key. After she finished singing,
Zaks stood up and said, “Okay, we want you to do it.”

“I was aflutter,” she remembered.

58 VA N I T Y FA I R

got a key to a rehearsal studio where he and Carlyle, wearing Jackman said he was “blindsided” by the Rudin controversy.
masks and keeping 20 feet apart, plunged into choreography “I hadn’t worked with Scott before, but he’d only been fantas-
for the show. “I’m not a dancer,” Jackman said. “It’s not in my tic to me—as a friend, as a collaborator.” But, Jackman added,
bones. But I can learn it. I can get there. So I thought, having “There’s no reason”—and no excuse—for Rudin’s treatment
all this time, there’s no way I’m going to waste it.” He also was of his staff. “I certainly won’t stand for it when I’m in a room.”
mindful of the fact that Foster had won two Tonys for dancing
up a storm. “She can learn a new dance in three hours, and she’s Zaks said that he, too, can’t excuse Rudin’s behavior, yet add-
the best dancer you’ve seen on Broadway.” ed, “I miss him. I miss his theatrical intelligence and his taste.
He makes you do your best work.”
Jackman’s assessment of his dancing skills amused Carlyle:
“In his defense, he’s extremely dexterous. You give him a cane, Diller recalled that he “shivered” when Rudin announced
and he can flip a cane. You ask him to jump and he can jump he was leaving the show. “It’s Scott’s production,” Diller said.
really high. I’ve had 24 years of trying every single possible way Neither he nor Geffen knew how to take the reins of a Broadway
to embarrass and humiliate him. He’s always managed to over- musical. “It’s not what we do. It’s what Scott does.” But Diller
come and succeed.” moved quickly to calm the waters, hiring Kate Horton, a high-
powered British producer who ran the Royal Court Theatre in
While Jackman and Carlyle were flipping canes, Rudin was London, to take over the show. Rudin has a financial interest
on dozens of Zoom calls trying to figure out how to bring Broad- in The Music Man, but Horton, Diller told me, is now the boss.
way back. Other producers were paralyzed with fear, but Rudin (She declined to be interviewed.)
“was working like a dervish,” according to a source who was in
on those Zoom calls. “It was the best version of Scott.” Rudin AS THE RUDIN SCANDAL unfolded, the Black Lives Matter
pushed for federal and state grants that, in the end, helped give movement erupted on Broadway, even with theaters dark
shows the millions of dollars they needed to reopen. from COVID-19. In anticipation of productions’ return, activ-
ists demanded pledges from Broadway executives for more
And then on April 7, The Hollywood Reporter dropped a diversity onstage and off. The Music Man, whose book contains
story titled “Unhinged,” detailing Rudin’s abusive treatment some cringeworthy Native American stereotypes (they’ve been
of office assistants. Most of it wasn’t new. In 2005, The Wall dropped from the revival), became a target. It “sets forth a sani-
Street Journal had run a profile of Rudin called “Boss-Zilla!” He tized, insular and very white America—regularly exploited by a
proudly told the Journal that his management style was “a cross recent president…to stoke racial fears and pit Americans against
between Attila the Hun and Miss Jean Brodie.” The stories of one another,” a culture critic wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “It
throwing cell phones and teacups at assistants were the stuff of asks audiences to cheer for yet another romanticized fraud.”
legend, and there was always a sense that if you could survive
a year working for Rudin, you could go anywhere in show busi- That’s a bit much to pour on a musical comedy from another
ness—and, in fact, many of his former assistants did. But the era. But people involved in the show feared an onslaught of such
attacks. A rumor raced around the theater world that Zaks had
dexterous. YOU GIVE HIM A CANE, cut “My White Knight” from the show because of the word white.
The rumor was absurd. “My White Knight” is Marian’s descrip-
AND HE CAN JUMP RE ALLY HIGH . tion of her ideal man and has nothing to do with race. But the
uproar sprang from the atmosphere swirling around the show.
embarrassSINGLE POSSIBLE WAY TO AND
In point of fact, Zaks’s revival, with some contemporary
MANAGED TO OVERCOME AND SUCCEED.” updates to its book, has a diverse cast, one third of whom are
people of color, including Emma Crow, Nicholas Ward, Phil-
THR story landed at a time when work culture had changed. lip Boykin, and Rema Webb. As for the charge that the musical
Now there was little tolerance for bullying. The article raised romanticizes a con man when much of America is still in the grip
a pointed question: When so many people in the entertain- of Donald Trump, Stroman laughed and, quoting a line from the
ment industry were under intense scrutiny for past behavior, show, said: “Well, the con man gets his foot ‘caught in the door.’
how had Rudin managed to avoid the gaze? And it contained a If Donald Trump got his foot caught in the door, we’d all be bet-
damning anecdote. Rudin once smashed a computer monitor ter off. Donald Trump never changed. Harold Hill falls in love.”
on an assistant’s hand. The assistant ended up in the hospital.
“When I read that, I knew it was over,” said a producer who’s HAROLD HILL DOES FALL IN LOVE. But until he does, the audience
worked with Rudin. must believe he’s out to fleece the people of River City. Both
Jackman and Zaks want him to have a harder edge than he’s
The press piled on, and Rudin, once a master manipulator had in previous productions. “If he gets off the train [in the first
of reporters, found that they had stitched him up in a bag and scene], and he’s happy, I’m not interested in that,” Zaks said. “I
tossed him in the river. He announced he would “step back” want to see Harold Hill get off the train and force me to imagine
from all of his projects, including The Music Man. He has not what he’s thinking.”
spoken publicly since that announcement.
“He’s not a nice guy,” said Jackman. “He’s not a terrible guy.
He’s making a living, and he’s sort of on the bottom side, probably
a little rougher edge to the bottom side of things.”

Jackman, flashing that grin that’s charmed audiences all over
the world, added, “He’s got to be a lot less Hugh Jackman.” Q

FEBRUARY 2022 59

WHO TORCHED
THE CEO OF
PORNHUB’S
MEGA-MANSION?
ADAM LEITH
GOLLNER
INVESTIGATES
A CASE OF
ARSON WITH NO
SHORTAGE OF
POSSIBLE SUSPECTS,
AND THE ADULT
SITE’S SHADOWY
FOUNDERS—
UNDER FIRE FROM
ACTIVISTS,
EVANGELICALS,
AND VICTIMS
OF REVENGE
PORN—BREAK
THEIR SILENCE

60 VA N I T Y FA I R SIZZLE REEL

A mosaic of 2,200 video
clips from I Love Your Work,
a 2013 project by artist and
technologist Jonathan Harris
that documents the everyday
lives of sex workers.

 Artwork by J O NAT HAN HAR R I S

THE
HOUSE

T H AT
PORN

B U I LT

FEBRUARY 2022 61

SHORTLY

BEFORE MIDNIGHT conflagration raged all night. “It took a
while to control because it was a big place,”
ON SUNDAY, denied the charges: “Any suggestion that explained Caroline Chèvrefils, a police
we allow or encourage illegal content is officer on-site that evening. As her shift
APRIL 25, completely untrue and defies rational ended around 6:30 a.m., the fire depart-
reason, from both a moral and business ment was still extinguishing flare-ups.
2021, PORNHUB CO-OWNER Feras Antoon standpoint,” he told me. Still, Canadian
lay in bed sleeping when his cell phone senators and MPs called for a criminal Whoever set the fire was a profession-
started blowing up. The ringer, on silent, investigation. In the uproar, credit card al: Nobody was injured, the surrounding
didn’t wake him. processors suspended payments on homes were barely damaged. Antoon’s
the site. Lawsuits proceeded on several entire crib, however, was pyro’d. All that
How, in fact, did he sleep at night, fronts. An internal memo Antoon wrote remained was charred concrete, twisted
knowing that Pornhub had negatively about the company missing its year-end metal, and a rusty two-story archway
affected so many people’s lives? He’d financial goals was leaked. Suddenly, where the front door would have been.
been asked that very question two attention shifted to his big-ass man cave. To this day, it protrudes from the rubble
months earlier, while being harangued “As his dream home gets close to comple- like a headstone—or some telltale sex toy.
at a Canadian parliamentary hearing. His tion,” noted the Daily Mail, Antoon “faces
response was hardly contrite: “We are a money crunch nightmare. His empire Did Antoon have any idea who was
very sorry if this has caused any impact is in danger of crumbling.” On April 22, responsible? “I don’t want to accuse any-
on victims.” He went on to say, with an he placed his château on the market for one until I know the facts,” he told me.
evidently clear conscience, how proud he nearly $16 million. Police insist the case is ongoing. Did they
was “that we built a product that gets 170 have any hard leads? “There are no more
million people visiting a day.” Three days later, a security guard details to reveal,” Chèvrefils told me after
monitoring surveillance footage at Porn- confirming that two unidentified suspects
Pornhub, with its undulating ocean hub parent company MindGeek’s office were seen breaking and entering.
of explicit content, is often ranked in Montreal noticed something unusual.
among the 10 most viewed websites in The CCTV feed from Antoon’s uninhab- Everyone had a theory. Some sug-
the world. More Americans use it than ited, nearly completed house showed two gested Antoon had set it up to collect the
use Twitter, Netflix, or Instagram. As trespassers on the premises. Adding to insurance money—an allegation he dis-
a result, in his hometown of Montreal, the intrigue, the estate was situated right missed. Others were persuaded that the
Antoon is known as “le Roi de la porno”— along so-called Mafia Row, a secluded livid father of an underage victim had the
the King of Porn. And the king’s castle, it road where at least a few local Cosa place burned down as revenge for home-
turned out, was the cause of those frantic Nostra bosses had resided. Why there? made MPEGs uploaded onto Pornhub.
late-night calls. “It’s a quiet street with few cars,” he told Still another faction pointed to Q-minded
me; plus, the place was within walking anti-pornography crusaders. Or, given
At the time, Antoon had been final- distance from where he grew up. Surely the precision of the firebombing, wasn’t
izing construction on a 21-room mega- he realized that the strip had ties to orga- it a signature mob job? Months later,
mansion: 11 bathrooms, nine-car garage, nized crime? He declined to answer. He Montreal police issued a bulletin about
6,000-square-foot ballroom and sports did concede, however, that he now wish- a citywide arson spree, though there was
wing. “I was building the house of my es he could erase the mansion from his no mention of the Pornhub blaze.
dreams,” the notoriously press-averse memory: “I want it forgotten.”
Antoon told me in his first interview in Whatever the cause, Antoon’s inferno
more than a decade. “And everything was That said, he can’t help recounting how was searingly symbolic. It represented
going great.” Or so it seemed. With peo- he lay in bed that night, powerless, two not just bad juju befalling the XXX site,
ple housebound by the pandemic in early miles from the still-unfinished building, but an overheated, inflammatory politi-
2020, Pornhub saw a surge in smut-surf- asleep at home with his wife and children, cal climate in the ongoing war against
ing numbers: U.S. traffic increased by up as the company’s security officer alerted online porn.
to 41.5 percent in the first month of the 911. By the time police showed up, the
lockdown. The brand became ubiquitous Pornhub Palace was in flames. BEFORE THE INTERNET, portrayals of sex
in popular culture, appearing in gags on acts were the purview of adult magazines
late-night comedy shows and the busi- ANTOON FINALLY WOKE up when his and movies. Today, hard-core sex is
ness pages. (Quoth Fortune: “Should brother got through on the landline. Driv- instantly accessible on mobile devices,
Pornhub Buy Tumblr?”) ing over, he told me, he kept hoping it social media feeds, and VR headsets. This
would turn out to be something small— shift in carnal consumption has had far-
But then, starting in December, a series maybe just some teenagers messing reaching effects, transforming sexual
of legal and P.R. scandals slammed the around. In reality, it took up to 80 firefight- norms, implicating underage viewers—
company. First, a New York Times exposé ers to battle the blaze. Flames soared 150 and victims—and creating new forms of
accused the firm of knowingly hosting feet skyward. Neighbors were being evac- cyber-capitalist sex work. Beyond the
child sex abuse materials (CSAM). Antoon uated in their pajamas. Arriving at the masses watching porn, many at home also
scene, he recalled, “I was devastated.” The make it—and they make money doing so,
through sites like Antoon’s. As society
grapples with the implications, Pornhub
has found itself at the center of a vitriolic
global conversation.

62 VA N I T Y F A I R

FIRE STARTER woman’s saying something about her left, as usual, is divided: Centrists want
own experience gives us strong, if not regulatory oversight; many progressives
“No question this was intentional. indefeasible, reason to think it true.” And insist on the importance of heeding the
Whoever did it knew what the hell questions of belief and consent—espe- needs of sex workers; they are opposed
they were doing.” cially those involving abuse—are where by, among others, those with sex-worker
Pornhub’s current troubles began. exclusionary radical politics.

The site, founded in 2007, became Still, the most vehement anti-porn—
notorious for allegedly hosting revenge and anti-Pornhub—voices are those on
porn, in which nonconsensual intimate the fundamentalist fringe. During the

Forty years ago, debates about porn material is uploaded by former lovers, lead-up to the torching of Antoon’s man-
focused on the idea that the sex industry almost always men. For years, Pornhub sion, extremists began doxing Pornhub
was inherently dehumanizing and rife didn’t seem to do much to help victims employees and issuing violent threats
with abuse. Activist Andrea Dworkin remove unwanted clips. Take the case of online. Shepherding this movement was
famously argued that porn was detri- British soccer player Leigh Nicol, who is an outfit called Traffickinghub, an offshoot
mental to women, full stop. But not all suing Pornhub over a sex video it shared of the evangelical Christian organization
second-wave feminists agreed. A vocal of her, without permission, stolen by an Exodus Cry, which has well-documented
faction argued for an erotic-positive iCloud hacker. “It ruined my life, it killed anti-LGBTQ+ and antiabortion origins.
approach to rejecting sexual repression. my personality, it zapped the happiness Both groups have dedicated themselves to
The phrase “pornography is violence out of me,” Nicol stated. “I still bear abolishing Pornhub, whipping their sup-
against women,” wrote Ellen Willis, an those scars.” porters into a punitive frenzy. “Burn them
influential pro-sex feminist, “was code to the ground!” read a tweet shared on the
for the neo-Victorian idea that men want Survivors like Nicol have now been Traffickinghub founder’s profile four days
sex and women endure it.” ensnared in a partisan minefield, many of before the arson attack. Under an image
them inadvertently. She and the 33 other of Antoon’s new house, another follower
The argument remains as contentious plaintiffs in her class-action lawsuit are wrote, “I fucking wish that whole man-
as it is unresolved. This fall, the Times being represented by Michael Bowe, for- sion will burn to re-create the hell they
published an op-ed by Michelle Gold- mer counsel to Donald Trump, who also must burn in.”
berg—“Why Sex-Positive Feminism Is represented a disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr.
Falling Out of Fashion”—citing a TikTok- in his recent sex scandal. Bowe’s com- Some sex workers deemed the arson a
based “Cancel Porn” movement. Then plaint accused Pornhub of being “one of hate crime. Alana Evans, president of the
again, Cosmo contended that “As we all the largest human trafficking ventures in Adult Performance Artists Guild, classi-
know, women enjoy porn just as much as the world.” The company responded by fied it—without providing evidence—as
guys do.” In fact, an estimated one third calling him “a soldier of the ultra-right- “a terrorist attack against our industry”
of Pornhub’s users are women. And the wing effort to shut down the adult content by “anti-porn super-religious people.” A
current feminist perspective on the porn industry.” It isn’t only the right that has longtime erotic industry advocate, Evans
debate might best be summarized by taken up this fight; many prominent lib- told me she’d been receiving messages
Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan in eral voices have chimed in too. But the from zealots warning that “they were
her new book, The Right to Sex: Feminism
in the 21st Century: “If a woman says she “I can’t even count how many comments I saw from people saying
enjoys working in porn, or being paid to to BURN THE COMPANY OR MY HOUSE DOWN. For a
have sex with men, or engaging in rape while, it was easy to dismiss the tweets as just people on the internet
fantasies, or wearing stilettos—and even talking. Then my house burned down.”
that she doesn’t just enjoy these things
but finds them emancipatory, part of her
feminist praxis—then we are required,
many feminists think, to trust her. This
is not merely an epistemic claim: that a

FEBRUARY 2022 63

gonna burn my house down like Porn- connect with models, escorts, or like- HELL TOWN
hub.” She maintained that the fire “was minded partners. Many other websites
the first time we saw such an extreme have also hosted revenge porn and non- Feras Antoon built his mansion right
act of real violence against our consensual material, but unlike most of along Montreal’s so-called
community since the days of [Hustler those outlets, whether on or off the dark Mafia Row, once home to godfathers
founder] Larry Flynt being shot” by a web, Pornhub has brand-name recogni- and dons.
white supremacist in 1978. tion. The site is free and open to virtually
anyone, regardless of age.
“I can’t even count how many com-
ments I saw from people saying to burn One might assume that the portal

the company or my house down,” Antoon would stringently ensure that its wares conspiracy and sex trafficking. THIS AND PREVIOUS SPREAD: STÉPHANE GRÉGOIRE/RADIO-CANADA.
said. “For a while, it was easy to dismiss involve consenting, grown-up actors An online petition to “shut down
the tweets as just people on the internet and amateurs. Moreover, the site ped-
talking. Then my house burned down.” dles an almost unimaginable diversity super-predator site Pornhub and hold
of freaky sex, including acts involving the executives behind it accountable”
ANTOON, A BRAWNY tech exec with a cross-eyed elves, nose worshippers giv- has received more than 2.2 million sig-
trim gray beard, is the Syrian-Canadian ing nasolingus, and furry cosplayers. natures. It’s clear, though, that even if
CEO of Pornhub’s parent company, (No kink-shaming, please.) But it isn’t Pornhub were to go belly-up, revenge
MindGeek, which also runs YouPorn, all innocuous. Some taglines feature porn and CSAM wouldn’t simply vanish.
Digital Playground, and numerous other keywords like “demolished” and “annihi- After all, compared to Pornhub’s 13,229
masturbation-oriented brands. Mind late” in conjunction with various orifices. CSAM infractions in 2020, significantly
Geek racked up an estimated $500 mil- Harsher videos involve performative—or more child porn makes its way to Face-
lion in net revenue in 2020 through ad what can appear to be actual—violence. book (an estimated 20.3 million incidents
sales, affiliate marketing, and premium in 2020), Google (546,704 incidents), and
subscriptions; its digital marketing net- Over the past year, the company began Snapchat (144,095 incidents).
work, TrafficJunky, gets 4.6 billion implementing changes to facilitate con-
impressions per day. tent removal—and to prevent illegal PORNHUB’S ORIGIN STORY is virtually
material from making it onto the site. unknown. But it began at Montreal’s Con-
Pornhub features DIY sex tapes, gloss- In a widely reported purge, the site also cordia University, which also happens to
ily produced skin flicks, and everything restricted access to millions of unverified be my alma mater. Without ever crossing
in between. Much of the content inten- videos. MindGeek partnered with 40 paths with the founders, I completed my
tionally blurs the line between reality and nonprofits, including the National Cen- undergrad degree in 2004, the same year
illusion. Is it an amateur video—or made ter for Missing and Exploited Children, that Antoon’s brother-in-law Stephane
to look amateur? Are those legal adults so that suspect content could be instantly Manos and his business partner Ouissam
“pretending” to be teenage cheerlead- disabled if a trusted designee deemed it Youssef graduated from the Faculty of
ers—or not? The real-world ramifications unsafe. Additionally, anyone searching Engineering and Computer Science.
of conflating fake and fantasy aren’t for CSAM on the site started receiving While still at school, Manos and Youssef
MindGeek’s biggest concern, though. deterrence notifications. created an online porn company called
Most of its executives’ troubles stem Brazzers, which focused on high-produc-
from the fact that until late 2020, unveri- None of that absolved the owners for tion-value photos and videos of
fied users could upload content—as they prior actions or inactions. In fact, accord- well-endowed women in, as Antoon later
can on typical social media sites. ing to a lawsuit that was just settled under called it, the “MILF niche.”
terms that are confidential, for a number
Yet Pornhub isn’t just any social media of years the company disseminated a “Since 2004, Brazzers has been the
site. It’s a vertically integrated multichan- series of videos by a U.S. firm (that Mind- number one name in original adult enter-
nel jack stack: endless interconnected Geek apparently verified) that depicted tainment, period,” explains the site, now
web pages showing grids of clickable criminal assaults and rape. The original operated by MindGeek. Current COO
pornos, searchable by theme, along with purveyor of the videos is now a fugitive; David Tassillo, another Concordia engi-
links to private “cams” and ways to one associate is serving 20 years for neering grad, told me that the company

64 VA N I T Y FA I R

founders got the name from one of their programmer named Fabian Thylmann of herself—recorded when she was 14—
cousins who had such a heavy Middle for a reported $140 million. Thylmann taken down from the website.
Eastern accent that when he’d say broth- started buying up competitors such as
ers, it sounded like brazzers. xTube, Reality Kings, and Webcams. Soon, a merry-go-round of lawsuits
com until 2012, when he was charged started being filed on behalf of underage
Manos and Youssef dubbed their hold- with tax evasion. By then, with Keezer, or nonconsenting victims: an Alabama
ing company Mansef, a portmanteau of Youssef, and Manos gone, Tassillo and case invoked the Trafficking Victims Pro-
their last names. They set up an office Antoon were running the company. They tection Reauthorization Act; a California
with Matt Keezer, a fellow student who engineered a management buyout and complaint sought $1 million each for 40
specialized in search engine optimiza- created MindGeek by joining forces with plaintiffs; a Canadian firm demanded
tion. Keezer, who ran a company called Bernd Bergmair, a reclusive, tight-lipped $600 million in damages. One suit char-
Interhub, reportedly bought the Pornhub Keyser Söze–like flesh magnate believed acterized MindGeek as “a classic criminal
.com domain name for $2,750 at a Play- to hail from the Austrian foothills. Little enterprise run…just like the Sopranos,”
boy Mansion party. In 2007, the three was publicly known about Bergmair an assertion the company dismissed in a
cohorts launched Pornhub, a site with beyond the fact that he owned a popular statement as “utterly absurd, completely
an immodest assortment of free, brows- porn site called RedTube and lived in reckless, and categorically false.” When
able sex clips, some pirated, some from London with his wife, a Brazilian model. Pornhub released an app last summer
Brazzers. Keezer, Youssef, and Manos (The ultimate silent partner, Bergmair directing museumgoers to classic nude
have since left the company; attempts has never spoken out publicly.) paintings, legal action was threatened by
to reach them for comment went unan- the Louvre and the Uffizi. As one Mon-
swered. But back in 2007, the founders As the majority owner of MindGeek, treal source put it: “They’re in trouble all
shared several core qualities. They were Bergmair stayed in the background, over the world.”
entrepreneurially minded. They were IT effectively shrouding the company in
hustlers. And they were members of an secrecy. MindGeek became “a lot more Stoking the ire was the ostentation
unlikely real-world community: They hidden,” Thylmann said in 2017. “They of the CEO’s Mafia Row domain. “It
played on the competitive foosball circuit. just went completely under the radar.” attracted too much attention,” Antoon
admitted. “I felt a very negative karma
Foosball isn’t just a popular barroom PORNHUB AND MINDGEEK, though about it. It was supposed to bring joy and
game; it’s also a sport with leagues and physically based in Montreal, are actu- I felt it was only bringing negativity, so we
rankings. Keezer was a founder of the ally headquartered in the hoary tax decided to sell it.”
Quebec Table Soccer Federation. He haven of Luxembourg, with offices in
and Pornhub’s cofounders “met during Cyprus, Romania, London, and L.A. The The day after the arson, the anti-porn
some kind of foosball tournament,” Tas- company’s valuation isn’t clear, but organization Traffickinghub tweeted a
sillo told me, acknowledging that table Antoon has been seen driving red-hot photo of Antoon’s castle next to a por-
soccer “is highly, highly part of the story.” Ferraris and banana-yellow Lambos with trait of Fleites, then living in her car. On
vanity plates like MRCEO and YALA. top of it all, Canada’s government forced
Soon after its launch, Pornhub expand- “Yala in Arabic means let’s go,” Antoon Antoon and Tassillo to testify at an ethics
ed to such a degree that it needed some clarified, “indicating getting to work on committee hearing.
sales management. Onto the payroll something quickly, with little patience.
came Antoon and Tassillo. Which is me.” Laila Mickelwait, the head of Traf-
fickinghub, was also invited to give
Traffic skyrocketed—but things also These days it is Pornhub’s detractors remarks. She told me, via email: “Feras
went south. In 2009, U.S. Secret Service who have little patience. The most seis- and David…wrote a personally signed
agents seized $6.4 million that Mansef mic attack on the company came a year letter to the parliamentary committee
had wired to its American bank accounts. ago—in the form of a Nicholas Kristof attempting to deplatform and silence
Court documents claimed the funds were New York Times op-ed stating that Porn- me, but their sinister tactics didn’t
potentially connected to money launder- hub was “infested with rape videos. It work.” That letter echoes sentiments
ing. Though Mansef denied the charges, a monetizes child rapes, revenge pornog- reflected in another letter sent to the
judge forced it to forfeit $2.2 million. The raphy” and “children being assaulted.” committee by members of the Adult
owners raised further suspicion when local The article featured a young woman Industry Laborers and Artists Associa-
media observed a “mysterious private named Serena Fleites who’d gone to tion. “Please stop platforming extremist
security detail”—tinted-window SUVs— extraordinary lengths to have footage religious propaganda that harms sex
keeping 24/7 watch over their homes. workers,” it requested, calling out Mick-
elwait, Traffickinghub, and the National
By 2010, Mansef was sold to a German Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly
Morality in Media). “Their goal is not to
While the internet continues its Wild West resistance to law and end child sexual assault, or to stop non-
order, PORN KEEPS GETTING EVER MORE MAINSTREAM. consensual content uploaders, but only
to enforce their religious moral beliefs
When Facebook and Instagram went down one day last fall, surrounding pornography.” The official
Pornhub saw a 10.5 percent traffic spike. hearing, at times, seemed like a circular
firing squad.

In front of the panel, Mickelwait
focused on CONTINUED ON PAGE 98

FEBRUARY 2022 65

“WHO
THE

FUCK

CARES

ABOUT

ADAM

66 VA N I T Y FA I R

by

JOE HAGAN

photographs by

SEBASTIAN KIM

M c K AY ? ”

With Don’t Look Up, the wickedly funny director puts 67
his existential dread, plus some laughs, on display

FEBRUARY 2022

A the most personal movie he’s ever made. “It combines a lot of my
feelings over the past 10, 20, 30 years,” he says. “A lot of it’s humor.
DA MMcKAY HAS AN IDEA A lot of it’s sadness. A lot of it’s fear and worry. It’s all in there.”

FOR HOW A PROFILE OF ADAM McKAY The script grew out of McKay’s alarm over climate change,
what he calls “the biggest story in 66 million years. It’s the big-
SHOULD BEGIN. gest story in the history of upright apes.” As it happens, McKay
has had a spectacular run at making movies for upright apes.
“I would say,” suggests the writer and director of Anchorman, He’s now the kind of director who gets to cast DiCaprio as a
Talladega Nights, and The Big Short, “ ‘Adam McKay believes that schlubby Midwesterner and Streep as a toxic Donald Trump–like
personal profiles have destroyed America.’ ” president—as he does in Don’t Look Up—and to use what he calls
“the big kids’ toys” of Hollywood to articulate his cinematic
McKay is speaking from his cramped home office in Los Ange- op-eds. “This is a populist movie,” he insists. “This is a movie
les, where he wrote the script for Vice, the 2018 Dick Cheney meant to be seen by large amounts of people.”
biopic that blamed the former vice president for destroying
America. The professional satirist has been hard at work. But success, as we’re obliged to say in the personal-profiles
business, has come at a price—bouts of depression, a heart
“I kind of like the idea that this is for Vanity Fair,” he goes attack, a rotating cast of therapists, a tortured relationship with
on, “because in a way, the ‘vanity fair’ is over. Like, the idea of his mother, and a bitter breakup with his former creative partner,
celebrity. Personal profiles are becoming really ridiculous. Who Will Ferrell. As it turns out, every movie is the most personal
the fuck cares about Adam McKay?” movie McKay’s ever made—until it’s over and he moves on to
the most personal movie he’d ever made. On one level, it’s the
McKay’s publicist might not agree with this take, since he nature of his art—locating the pulse of the zeitgeist and mak-
has a $100 million Netflix movie he’s promoting, Don’t Look ing entertainment from it before the zeitgeist moves on. And
Up, which stars highly bankable celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, McKay is nothing if not a topical writer and director. But it begs
Jennifer Lawrence, Tyler Perry, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, a question: How does McKay move on from a movie about the
and Jonah Hill. end of the world?

Then again, undermining the story is a very Adam McKay After I’m buzzed in to Adam McKay’s more than 70-acre com-
thing to do. One might even say it’s his superpower. Remember pound and escorted into his backyard by Daniel, his six-foot-nine
when he rolled the ending credits halfway through Vice, a joke bodyguard slash piano teacher, I am almost immediately speechless.
on the fairy-tale version of Cheney’s story? Or when, in The Big
Short, Margot Robbie breaks the fourth wall to explain mort- I had read about McKay’s tree house but had no idea of just how
gage-backed securities from a bubble bath? And so McKay’s massive and elaborate it is. A 12-acre network of platforms, rooms,
critique of the Vanity Fair profile is merely professional instinct. and even a hot tub are connected by rope swings, ladders, and tubes
Later he proposes a one-on-one basketball game to see who gets 80 feet off the ground.
to write the opener of this story, an idea the writer nixed given
that McKay is six feet five and a basketball fanatic. (He still sends McKay comes zip-lining right at me at an incredible speed from
me several fictional openers, just in case.) the top of a 100-foot-tall sequoia.

It’s true that we live in an era of cultural deflation, when it’s “Hey!” he says when he lands, grabbing my arm in a Gladiator-
hard for any one person, short of a would-be dictator, to claim style arm-clasp greeting. “Do you want some beet juice?”
the attention of the entire culture, which long ago fractured along
internet-drawn lines. In a sense, that’s what McKay’s latest movie When McKay greets me at the door of his modest-for-Holly-
is about. Two astronomers, played by DiCaprio and Lawrence, wood house in the leafy Hancock Park district of Los Angeles,
discover a world-destroying comet headed for Earth, and the he’s still in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and New Balance sneakers after
political and media reaction to imminent doom is a hopeless working out with Darren, his trainer. For the next four hours he’ll
farce of culture-war squabbling, narcissism, shallowness, and keep a towel draped around his neck as if he just emerged from
ignorance—in other words, pretty realistic. McKay says it’s also an NBA locker room. Twenty years ago, McKay was diagnosed
with an essential tremor, which means his neck and head, and
sometimes his voice, quaver involuntarily, not unlike Katha-
rine Hepburn (“I call it ‘my friend Arnold’ and you never know
when Arnold is going to visit”). During interviews, he lies on his
back to stabilize his tremor, giving the impression of a guy who’s
more laid-back than his endless list of writing, directing, and
producing credits would suggest. The towel is less a Hollywood
affectation than a Linus-like security blanket.

An avowed democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders stan, and
longtime Twitter warrior, McKay might come off as a caricature
of a Hollywood liberal if he wasn’t hyperaware of his own ripe-
ness as comedy material. “I’m a 53-year-old white guy, and it
happened that I chose a profession that pays probably a hundred
times more than it should,” McKay says. “If there’s justice in the
world, I’d probably be making $140,000 a year. My daughter
looks at me like I’m the fucking Monopoly guy.”

68 VA N I T Y FA I R

McKay is the rare director who’s been able to make political Before DiCaprio signed on, he asked McKay if they could

films that (mostly) avoid coming off as self-righteous. An old include a speech in the script, something akin to the “I’m mad as

friend of his from the Second City theater in Chicago, Kelly Leon- hell”sceneinNetwork.“AndIwaslike,‘Speechesaretricky,man,’ ”

ard, says he’s taken Michael Moore’s place in the conversation. McKay recalls telling him, worried about sounding preachy.

Vice was a more or less accurate presentation of recent history “ ‘It’s like drum solos. They were awesome in the ’70s, but….’ ”

but emotionally heightened and edited into a postmodern fugue DiCaprio countered that they could undermine the speech

of McKay’s political anger. “His body of work has, underneath it, for laughs, and so together they rewrote the speech 15 times. “I

an analysis of power, a social commentary on inequities,” says his think it’s the biggest laugh in the movie when I test-screened

friend David Sirota, the Guardian columnist and a former Sand- it,” McKay says. (DiCaprio tells me McKay is one of “the great

ers adviser. “Anchorman is one of the funniest movies ever, but comedic geniuses of our time.”)

there’s also deep social commentary in there about the media.” For the role of the president of the United States, McKay craft-

The road to McKay’s latest movie began a decade ago; ed a composite of every bad trait of recent vintage, including Bill

then McKay read a U.N. report in 2018 outlining the scientific Clinton, and a double dose of Trump. McKay flipped the gender

consensus on climate change—and freaked out. “I couldn’t and set his sights Netflix-coffers high: Oprah Winfrey or Streep.

sleep for two nights after I read it,” he says. “I had one of those “I’m like, ‘Meryl Steep’s the greatest film actress in history,’ ”

moments where I went from, ‘Hey, we gotta fucking take care McKay says. “ ‘I’ve seen her be funny. Let’s try Meryl. She’ll

of this, this is crazy,’ to ‘Holy shit. It’s happening now. It’s not probably say no.’ And she said yes. And we’re like, ‘Holy shit.’ ”

80 years from now, it’s now.’ ” Hill was already a superfan of McKay’s work with Ferrell (his

McKay first befriended Sirota after reading a story he wrote favorite is Step Brothers) and signed on to play Streep’s son and

on NAFTA back in the early 2000s. After Trump was elected, White House chief of staff Jason Orlean, an unmistakable cari-

McKay and Sirota began discussing a climate change film that cature of a coked-up Donald Trump Jr. “Adam and I talked a lot

wasn’t about climate change so much as “the rejection of science about the idea of a bratty kid who grew up with a lot of privilege

and facts embedded in the climate discourse,” recalls Sirota. getting too much power in government,” Hill tells me.

McKay toyed with the idea of a drama—“an epic three-hour mov- Within a month of production, the pandemic hit and the

ie about these two young world went into lockdown,

people that go on a journey followed by the harrow-

across the country”—but Of his erstwhile creative partner, ing presidential election,
decided the better idea followed by the January
was right in front of him, 6 insurrection. The news

a metaphor Sirota used in McKay says, kept italicizing the mes-
his newspaper columns: sage of the movie. “I swear

Climate change was like “I’M LIKE, ‘FUCK, WILL FERRELL’S NEVER to you, I did not want Don’t
a comet headed for Earth Look Up to be this topical,”

and nobody seemed to GOING TO TALK TO ME AGAIN.’ McKay says. “I had to make
care. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s it a little crazier. That was

the movie,’ ” says McKay. So it ended not well.” the big change. I think real-
(Sirota, consequently, is ity outflanked us.” (McKay

billed as coproducer.) commissioned a podcast

In 2019, McKay flew to about the making of the

Ireland, where he owns a film, called Last Movie Ever

lake home, and churned out the script “in a furious way that I Made, which will come out after the film’s release on Netflix.)

never had before,” he says. Lawrence, who had wanted to work Don’t Look Up offers plenty of comedic knives for Trump-

with McKay, signed on to play astronomy postgrad Kate Dibi- ism (the title is the rallying cry of science deniers), but it’s also

asky, and bids came in from Sony, Universal, and Paramount. a brutal send-up of the media. Blanchett’s take on a morning

But only Netflix, says McKay, agreed to give him the latitude show anchor for a show called The Daily Rip is as close to Mika

he wanted, especially with the controversial ending. They also Brzezinski as one could get without being an impersonation.

dangled enough cash to cast the biggest, most expensive stars Even The New York Times comes in for a spanking.

in Hollywood. (“They are what we call ‘liquid,’ ” McKay says McKay says any likenesses to actual people and institutions

of Netflix.) are, as they say, purely coincidental. “I do think tremendous

He sent the script to DiCaprio, a longtime climate change shame on The New York Times for hiring that climate change

activist who was looking for a movie with “environmental under- denier,” he says, referring to columnist Bret Stephens. But

tones.” In their first meeting at McKay’s house, DiCaprio asked he also believes the Times is too beholden to its own vaunted

what kind of tone the film would have, and McKay mentioned sobriety, treating the alarming reality of rising CO2 like another

the 1976 film Network (which “might be my all-time favorite story in the daily mix instead of the screaming headline McKay

movie”), Dr. Strangelove, and the 1951 Billy Wilder film Ace in believes it should be. Then again, if you’re a top editor at the

the Hole, which starred Kirk Douglas as a cynical reporter who paper, McKay ventures, “are you really going to go into a meet-

gins up a media circus. Unlike The Big Short or Vice, which were ing and go like, ‘Hey guys, I think we should put a headline that

dramas with implied satire (Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld), says, ‘We’re fucked.’ ”

Don’t Look Up is a full-frontal skewering, though not the slapstick Perhaps not. Which is why McKay made an entire movie

fare he used to make with Ferrell. to say that.

FEBRUARY 2022 69

W E’RE DRIVING THROUGH L.A. in a rented Kia, McKay’s five-story building across the street. McKay recalls Close yell-
long legs folded up in the tiny passenger seat, towel ing from below, “Do it for real!” McKay threw down a crash test
still around his neck, when we spy the Hollywood dummy wearing the same clothes, and an actor dressed as the

sign in the distant hills. grim reaper emerged to negotiate his revival, prompting the real

What, I ask, comes to mind when he sees it? McKay to pop out.

The opening credits of the sixth season of Laverne & Shir- “His material was always super smart and super dumb,” says

ley, he says, when the characters moved to Los Angeles. “Every Leonard, who took over the Second City in 1992 and ushered in

time I see it, that’s all I think of,” he says. “Me being in second, a new vanguard, including Carell and Amy Poehler. “He knew

third grade seeing it and then being like, ‘Why are they going to how to make dumb comedy sublime.”

L.A.?’ ” (To try and become movie stars, naturally.) In 1994, McKay helped produce and performed in a Second

That was 1980, when McKay was living in Malvern, Pennsyl- City production called “Piñata Full of Bees,” featuring, among

vania, with his mother, following his parents’ divorce. He’d spent other skits, McKay as Noam Chomsky teaching a roomful of

his early life in Worcester, Massachusetts, where his bass-player schoolchildren the real history of America. The show was a

father struggled for work while his mother waitressed and went success and proved, for McKay, that American audiences were

to night school. For a time they lived on food stamps and got ready for a weirder brand of comedy than had come before.

around in a used mail truck. When he was nine, his mother got “It turns out some of those people in the suburbs do want the

remarried to a dermatologist and started voting Republican as stranger stuff,” he says.

McKay became obsessed with comedy (Monty Python, Steve “Piñata” went on to the Kennedy Center and bombed bad-

Martin), hip-hop (Schoolly D, Public Enemy), and NBA bas- ly, but not before drawing the attention of Saturday Night Live

ketball (the Larry Bird–era Celtics). After graduating in 1986, founder Lorne Michaels, who gave McKay an audition. McKay

he went to Penn State for a year, disliked the fraternity culture, sold himself not as a performer but as a writer. “It was the smart-

transferred to Temple University, in Philadelphia, to study est move I ever made,” he told Charlie Rose in 2010.

American literature, and took up stand-up comedy. “I think my During a party in Chicago to celebrate his new gig, McKay

first six times onstage, I bombed, and then I got one laugh, and met future wife Shira Piven, a theater director and the sister of

I remember what the laugh was,” he says. “The first Robocop actor Jeremy Piven, who comes from a storied Chicago theater

had just come out and I said, ‘So this is a movie about a fascistic family. “Shira got to see me looking as cool as I’m ever going to

police officer who doesn’t have the emotions of a normal human. look, with people toasting me, me giving speeches,” he recalls.

So when does the fictional version of this come out?’ ” “If I was going to meet the woman I’m going to marry, the love

He was feeling like a failed hack when a friend named Rick of my life, that was the night to do it.”

Roman came back from Chicago and regaled McKay with stories Piven, it so happened, was moving to New York at the same

of the improv scene around Second City and its guru Del Close. time, and they began dating. She found McKay funny and

McKay immediately dropped out of college, sold his comic book charming—and unusually relaxed for an artist of his voracious

collection (two dozen issues of X-Men), bought a used Chrysler output and apparent ambition. His favorite word, she said, was

New Yorker, glued a lobster claw to the hood, and left town. casual. “Adam McKay is a walking paradox, honestly,” she says.

“We called it the jive bomber, and we drove to Chicago,” he “He always appeared to handle things in stride. Now, whether

recalls, “and I walked into Improv Olympics at Papa Milano’s or not he does do that is another question, but just every differ-

and Roman did not lie: There were 120 people jammed in there ent phase of his life, he was like, ‘Oh, okay, this is happening,

with this group called Blue Velveeta doing incredible long-form let’s do this now.’ ”

improv that I’d never seen before in my life. I was like, ‘Holy McKay was recruited the same week as Ferrell, whose SNL

shit.’ ” (His mother was appalled and offered him money and audition was Ferrell pretending to yell for his kid to get off the

a new car if he went to law school. “Oh, my God, no,” he said.) roof of his house. Leonard recalls McKay first telling him of a

McKay joined an experimental Second City troupe and lat- comedian from L.A. who had a “Peter Sellers quality.” The first

er cofounded the Upright Citizens Brigade with Matt Besser, skit McKay wrote with Ferrell was the VH1 Storytellers parody

Horatio Sanz, and Ian Roberts. (Roman, who coined the group’s in which Ferrell, as Neil Diamond, describes ghoulish stories

name, drowned in his car during a freak flood in Chicago in 1992; behind the beloved hits (“Forever in Blue Jeans” was about the

McKay had to identify his body at the morgue.) The original idea time Diamond killed a drifter to get an erection).

for UCB, before it became a multicity institution, was to create At SNL, McKay felt like a man unleashed. “I remember

scripted pranks and street theater. McKay was reading Artaud, one time I wrote for 25 straight hours, forgot to eat, got up,

smoking pot, imbibing the got light-headed,” he says.

avant garde theater of Rich- “They had to put limits on

ard Maxwell, and listening “McKay’s material was always the amount of sketches you
to any band Steve Albini was could write because I could
in. For one stunt, McKay just write all day long.”

advertised his own suicide SUPER SMART and SUPER DUMB. McKay became head
by pasting flyers around Chi- writer and began making film

cago featuring his grinning He knew how to make shorts for SNL. He remem-
actor’s photo and the tag- bers the moment he knew he

line “No Joke.” An audience DUMB COMEDY SUBLIME.” wanted to make movies. His
was shepherded outside to first commercial parody was
see McKay standing on the called “Old Glory Insurance,”

70 VA N I T Y F A I R

LAST SUPPER
Adam McKay’s new satire, Don’t Look Up, takes a sharp look at the climate around climate change.

GROOMING PRODUCTS, AUGUSTINUS BADER; GROOMING, JOANNA FORD. an ad for a scam policy for elderly people who fear being attacked Hollywood craftsmen were having to shoot this scene where
F I L M S T I L L : N I KO TAV E R N I S E / N E T F L I X . F O R D E TA I L S , G O TO V F. C O M / C R E D I T S . by a robot. McKay was shocked when, after drafting the silly script, [Ferrell, as local TV anchor Ron Burgundy] tells a woman that
a car service picked him up and delivered him to a film set where San Diego means ‘a whale’s vagina,’ ” recounts McKay.
“there’s a perfect 1950s threatening robot with a perfect 82-year-old
woman, in perfect wardrobe. It was like, ding.” As a director, McKay would show up to the set with lists of
one-liners and read them through a bullhorn for actors to try
After talking with McKay at Hotel Sabatique’s exclusive café and out over multiple takes. In Anchorman, Ferrell’s vocal warm-ups
spa for about 20 minutes, I am sure of only one thing: This is not before going on air went from throat-clearing noises to wacky,
Adam McKay. improvised news headlines. “Adam would yell things out, off
the top of his head, like, ‘The human torch was denied a bank
Sure, he wears glasses like the writer-director and is relatively tall, loan,’ ” recalled Paul Rudd, who played Burgundy’s best friend.
but his face is all wrong and his hair is distinctly blond. “You got me, “And Will is good at keeping it together, but I remember that one
man. My name’s Sean.” got him.” (The line ended up in the movie.)

The man who had previously presented himself as Adam McKay Anchorman and Anchorman 2 were products of the Bush years,
now says, “McKay had some other shit going on.” when Ferrell’s straight-faced idiocy was the perfect instrument for
McKay’s takes on George W. Bush’s retro masculinity. Talladega
We’re driving down Melrose Avenue when we approach the Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, the NASCAR comedy starring
Spanish-style double arches of the Paramount Studios lot. It Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Amy Adams, doubled as a Rorschach
was here, 20 years ago, that McKay and Ferrell first pitched a of the country’s political divide during the Iraq War without ever
movie idea to a studio executive. It was called August Blowout, mentioning the Iraq War. It was probably the funniest movie
about a used-car lot. To shape the characters and the setting McKay or Ferrell ever made together, and it earned $163 million.
for the script, McKay and Ferrell had interviewed a bunch of
used-car salesmen. “We would always ask the guys, ‘Why do Talladega Nights was “the number one movie in the country, big-
you put yourselves in your own TV ads?’ ” recalls McKay. “One gest opening I’ve ever had,” says McKay. “Michael Moore called it
guy wiggled his hand and goes, ‘To get laid.’ ” ‘the most subversive movie of the year.’ And it was everything you
would want out of that experience. And in the classic Hollywood
The script was rejected. McKay and Ferrell went back and fashion, I’m at the lowest point I’ve been at for a while.”
wrote Anchorman.
McKay was depressed.
These were the glory days of the partnership, when they were That’s when he began seeing the Hollywood super-therapist
so giddy with jokes, they could barely finish a scene without fall- Barry Michels, whose “shadow work” involves unorthodox
ing into hysterics. “We both just kept laughing because veteran methods of tapping the unconscious, C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 5

FEBRUARY 2022 71

GENERATI
MAKING WAVES

Video storyteller and social media
influencer Asmaa El Khaldi, of the
Gaza Sky Geeks consortium, walks
along the beach in Gaza City.

ON GAZA

Veteran war correspondent JANINE DI GIOVANNI revisits
Gaza and finds resilience and hope among its 2 million

Palestinian residents—two thirds of whom are under the age of 25

PHOTOGRAPHS BY FATIMA SHBAIR

G 2008 (the first Gazan war), followed by lives. Without prompting, they made
three subsequent Israeli military engage- sketches of stick figure people taking their
GAZA’S LATEST CONFLAGRATION, back ments in Gaza. fathers away in the night. Or planes drop-
in May, was ruthless, deadly—and, some- ping bombs. Even though these children
how, inevitable. After Israeli police tried Those schoolchildren? They were part rarely cried, I will never forget that many
to expel longtime Arab residents from of the very same bright-eyed generation had the thousand-yard stare that I would
East Jerusalem, Palestinian demonstra- that many viewed as the Palestinians’ best later see in young soldiers in conflicts I
tors took to the streets in Gaza, the West hope. But hopes here are often dashed. As covered—sometimes for Vanity Fair—in
Bank, and Israel itself. Jewish settlers the months went on, the Israeli-Palestin- Afghanistan and the Balkans, Rwanda
marched in response. When violence ian conflict would be supplanted in the and Somalia, Iraq and Syria.
spread to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jeru- news cycle by other wars and flare-ups.
salem, one of the holiest sites in Islam, And the young people remained in place. The tragedy, it turned out, was that
Israeli security forces clamped down, In fact, nowhere in the Middle East were these deeply traumatized children—or
using rubber bullets and stun grenades Arab youths more continually confined the teenage stone throwers I met years
on worshippers. There was a global cho- and concentrated than in the Gaza Strip, ago—would become the same grown-ups
rus of indignation. the seven-mile-wide, 25-mile-long stretch who now comfort their own children dur-
of Mediterranean land adjacent to Israel ing bombing raids. At times I have found
Soon, Hamas and the group Palestine that is home to some 2 million Palestin- myself interviewing the sons or daughters
Islamic Jihad sent cascades of rockets ians, two thirds of them under the age of of people I encountered two generations
onto Israeli settlements, the first major 25. This confinement is part of a crippling
escalation since 2014. Israel, concerned siege imposed by Israel and neighboring
for the security of its citizens (13 of whom Egypt, resulting in untold privations and
would be killed), answered with a sus- a restriction of movement that amounts
tained bombing campaign, pounding to perpetual detention.
Gaza brutally for 11 days. The result: 261
people dead, according to the U.N., 130 of Gaza’s 20- and 30-somethings, it so
them civilians, of whom 67 were children. happens, tend to be highly educated, mul-
On one day, May 16, on one street—Al- tilingual—and jobless. Sixty-four percent
Wahda—44 people were killed. of the youth labor force is unemployed,
largely due to the occupation. Nonethe-
Both sides were taken to task. Hamas, less, year after year, they have proved
some said, had needlessly escalated the indefatigable. I came to Gaza this past
conflict by resorting to rockets. The Israe- summer to find out how—and why. I met
lis, others argued, started it and then did with young entrepreneurs and farmers,
the inexcusable with an excessive and artists and actors, environmental activists
relentless use of force in their assault and computer coders, athletes and aca-
on the citizens of Gaza. Under the scru- demics. With many women, I talked about
tiny of social media, Israel seemed to their being powerful change agents in a
have crossed a dangerous new thresh- male society. And everyone I encountered
old, prompting condemnation far and spoke not only about their sense of claus-
wide, from Western capitals to the halls trophobia and fear, but also about their
of Congress. pride in what they’ve sought to accom-
plish in the tiny tinderbox they call home.
Whatever the case, the nightmarish
carousel of retaliation came, as it always I HAVE BEEN REPORTING from Gaza
had, with a chilling and predictable fre- for more than 30 years. I arrived
quency. Indeed, local schoolchildren in 1989, during the first intifada,
can track the armed confrontations which began in a Gaza refugee
like clockwork, as if reciting their math camp and spiraled into a six-year
tables: 1987, 2000 (the first and second rebellion against the Israeli occu-
uprisings, referred to as the intifadas), pation, lasting until the historic 1993
signing of the first Oslo Accord between
Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The first
intifada was nicknamed the Revolution
of Stones because young street protest-
ers used slingshots against gun-toting
Israeli soldiers. In those days, I sat on
the floor with children at the Gaza Com-
munity Mental Health Program with a
visionary doctor called Eyad el-Surraj
and asked them to draw pictures of their

74 V A N I T Y F A I R

I HAVE FOUND MYSELF INTERVIEWING THE SONS OR DAUGHTERS
OF PEOPLE I ENCOUNTERED TWO GENERATIONS BACK. THIS IS A FORBIDDING

CYCLE OF TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA.

back. This is a forbidding cycle of trans- which the U.S. and Europe have designat- the P.A. and was cited as a future change
generational trauma. ed as promoting terrorism)—most people agent, died in “unnatural” circumstances
are frustrated with the leadership, yet the while in P.A. custody, according to a local
There is also an agonizing sense of population’s options are limited. Speak- justice minister. His family has accused
wistfulness, of a people conscious of a ing out against Hamas or the Palestinian the P.A. of assassinating him.
world outside that they can never see Authority (P.A.)—the entrenched, largely
or experience. Many Gazans have never corrupt party that oversees much of the In short, the people of Gaza, young
even been to Erez, the crossing point West Bank—is dangerous, and trying to and old, are at a fourfold disadvantage.
between Israel and Gaza’s northern point, forge new young Palestinian leaders can The P.A. frequently exercises collective
which has grown into an airport-style be perilous. Last June, Nizar Banat, a Pal- punishment on all Gazans because they
terminal. As for Hamas—the militant estinian activist who frequently criticized are effectively under the rule of Hamas,
organization that governs Gaza (and which is waging an ongoing battle with

NO EXIT

Night descends
on Gaza City,

urban center of
the Gaza Strip.

FEBRUARY 2022 75

TRUE GRIT

Raji El-Jaru,
founder of the

rock band
Osprey V;
farmer Abdullah
Abu Halima, in
Beit Lahia, with
irrigation pipes
damaged in
May’s Israeli
bombardment;
Haneen Khaled,
actor with the
Theatre Day

project.

the P.A. Hamas has not effectively gov- two children and leads a team of more “All my life I was told, ‘You’re just a girl,
erned or been able to provide basic public than 20 hipsters. They sat in front of you can’t do it,’ ” she recalled. “There I
services for years. Israel imposes its own MacBooks with cups of half-drunk coffee was, a trained scientist, running errands
harsh restrictions on those who live in the by their sides, working on websites and for men.” She managed to land a U.N. job,
territories. And Gaza’s closest Arab neigh- logos. Many of the men sported Brook- where she met her husband and settled
bor, Egypt, often treats it with disdain. lyn-esque facial hair; a few of the women in to raise a family. But she felt thwarted.
This all leads to a debilitating collective had nose studs. It could have been Bush- “Everything was pink and nice. I was
impotence. “There is a sense of constant wick, Austin, or Seattle. watching TV and gossiping with my
helplessness,” says Yasser Abu Jumei, a mother. It was a low point.”
Gazan psychiatrist. “They have disap- “It’s a safe space,” Al-Khazendar said,
pointment for many reasons, but mainly leading the way past a large goldfish tank, Al-Khazendar studied YouTube videos
it’s about the human rights violations artificial grass walls, and a fully stocked and shifted her focus from computer cod-
that are happening. Why is humanity kitchen for her staff. Kids are welcome. ing to design. Slowly, she built a business
watching and doing nothing? It makes Her son, Zain, 12, sat in a corner, absorbed printing patterns on fabric, mugs, and
[Palestinians] feel more pain.” in a computer game. There was an area T-shirts imprinted with go-girl slogans
for freelancers, a kind of Palestinian like YOU ARE THE POWER. She met
The late Ron Schlichler, a diplomat and WeWork that the company provides for with strong opposition from her fam-
former U.S. consul general to Jerusalem, free, along with laptops and seed money. ily and friends, who said her husband
once said, “You Israelis can do all sorts of Part of Al-Khazendar’s mission is philan- would leave her to find another wife.
things to the Palestinians, but you won’t thropic: She trains apprentices until they She shrugged them off, found a bigger
buy them and you won’t break them.” are ready to join her team. workspace, recruited brighter young
people, and kept working. “Gazans are
Not a chance. Not the members of She sipped fresh mango juice and had people who fight, and I am a striver,” she
Gaza’s Generations Y, Z, and Alpha. on skinny jeans, moccasins, and a blouse declared. “We keep going.”
emblazoned with rhinestones. Open,
O NE MORNING I met effusive, and sunny, she wore a yellow- Striving is a good way to describe
Rozan Waseem Al- and-gold butterfly necklace as a symbol young Gazans. Many I know speak
Khazendar, 36, in her of freedom, she explained: her personal perfect, nuanced English and usu-
pink-and-green atelier logo. She had clearly overcome the two ally another European language or two,
on the fifth floor of a major strikes against her: being a woman which they have picked up online. They
modern building in and a Gazan. are curious, vibrant, hardworking—but
Gaza City, high enough to block out the also slammed by the fact that they can-
noise from the street below. A designer Despite having graduated with a not export their products, get money in
and brand influencer, she is married with degree in computer science and, later, and out of Gaza, or procure basic mate-
studying coding in Egypt, she wound up rials. Venmo doesn’t work, nor do bank
getting secretarial work, fetching coffee.

76 VA N I T Y F A I R

transfers—or even Amazon. Obstacles work in their fields—accounting and Walking through their greenhouses,
are everywhere. “Try buying a new Apple computer science, respectively. So, in they spoke of their lack of support and
charger for your MacBook Air in Gaza,” 2020, they attempted to grow their future the weight of feeling isolated. But they
Al-Khazendar said. “Impossible!” out of the very soil, drawing on their fam- insisted they aren’t giving up.
ilies to teach them vital skills. “Nearly
Many young Gazans get postgraduate 80 percent of university graduates are Sara Roy, an associate at Harvard’s
invitations from elite European or Ivy unemployed in Gaza, even before the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and
League universities but can’t secure exit pandemic,” al-Najjar told me. “But we the child of two Holocaust survivors, has
visas to make their visa appointments at still dreamt of having our own income.” worked in Gaza for four decades. In books
American embassies. If they stay, the and articles, she has dived deep into this
job market is unimaginably competi- Ruck’s father, a farmer, taught them sense of isolation while examining Gaza’s
tive; one young dentist lamented the fact how to grow vegetables, and they began financial fissures. She identified a syn-
that after his graduation ceremony from to deliver them by bicycle. They rented drome of “de-development” in Gaza, a

“WE ARE DANCING ON THE BRINK. THAT’S HOW WE
YOUNG PEOPLE PERCEIVE GAZA. WE ARE ALWAYS ONE STEP AWAY FROM

FALLING, YET WE ARE NOT LIVING. A CONSTANT FALLING STATE.”

Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University, “There were three dunams of land (less than an acre) process that rids an economy of much of
seven graduates for one opening.” and planted peas, lettuce, and radishes. its productive capacity and deprives its
They plan on expanding to the frozen- workers of the building blocks needed
One afternoon, I drove out to Khuza’a, food market. But their list of grievances to build a strong economic base. “In the
a remote farming region in the middle of is long. Israeli border closures limit travel Gaza Strip,” Roy told me, “there is an
the Strip, near Khan Younis. Passing cac- for their professional development or for economy, if one can still call it that, that
tus trees and unpaved roads, I pulled up obtaining crucial materials, like fertilizer. is unviable, unable to function rationally
to a simple concrete house. On the front They feel unsafe being so close to Israel and normally.” And the long-term con-
porch sat two of the three Green Girls, proper; Qudaih pointed to a nearby bor- sequence, she stressed, is the untapped
an all-female agricultural project. Aseel der fence and a looming watchtower. potential. “Imagine if Gazans put all the
al-Najjar and Ghaidaa Qudaih (the third And they claimed that herbicide spray- energy and creativity they now expend
partner, Nadine Ruck, was not around) ing from Israel had damaged their crops. on survival—finding menial employment,
are university grads who couldn’t find

FEBRUARY 2022 77

feeding their children, securing clean Together, these attributes are formidable. structures after repeated bombings.
water—into productive activities.” In the local refugee camps, for example, When I arrived at the tiny office on
where there is scant privacy—and little
“Gaza is a closed place,” added Dalia electricity by which to study—parents Halabi Street, Mashharawi was not
Shurrab, a 30-year-old with an under- make huge efforts to help their children there: She had recently emigrated with
graduate degree in physics who runs earn top grades so they can get into the her family to Saudi Arabia. Her brother
Mompreneur, a mentoring program for best universities. Kamal and the chief engineer, Moham-
women. She had been overseeing 66 med Almazainy—both educated in the
all-female projects, including one that Brian K. Barber, a social psychologist
develops car batteries. But shortly after and international security fellow at the
the May bombings, she left Gaza for think tank New America, has studied in
Jordan. Now she monitors the start-up Gaza for years. He told me that Gazans’
ventures remotely. “I want to raise my academic achievement is extraordinary
kids in a healthy environment.” “not necessarily despite their circumstanc-
es, but because of them. Achievement is in
In 2018, Shurrab got a taste of the out- part defensive: So, you tell us we’re nothing,
side world during a fellowship in Silicon worthless? We’ll show you.”
Valley, where she worked with Google.
“It was my first time out of Gaza. The first Having long charted Palestinian
time I took a train! The first time I took a youths as they have grown through
bus!” The experience left her hungry for adulthood, Barber believes that identity,
greater knowledge, which, in her view, is learning, and morality are all of a piece
sorely limited in Gaza. “You can’t get out in the social mindset here. “A good per-
if you want an educational exchange—to son,” he explained, is often defined as
learn new tech, for instance, to update someone who achieves as much educa-
your skills. If you stay inside, the gov- tion as possible, cares for and extends his
ernment [Hamas] is controlling the or her family, and “finds personalized
education, and they are too lazy to update ways of supporting the cause. Educa-
the curriculum.” tion brings esteem from the culture and
is the only perceived avenue to secure a
But Asmaa Abu Mezied, a 33-year-old positive future.”
economics and gender adviser work-
ing in Gaza, said the situation can’t be O NE DAY I stopped in
blamed entirely on Hamas. “Usually, at SunBox, in Gaza
when we speak about our suffering,” City, which provides
she maintained, “Hamas is used as a affordable off-grid
boogeyman to internalize the economic solar panels to fami-
collapse rather than holding the occu- lies. A brilliant civil
pation accountable. But the occupation engineer, Majd Mashharawi, 28, found-
is the cause—the main contributor to ed the company in 2017 because she got
the economic deterioration of the Gaza fed up with having to study throughout
Strip.” Abu Mezied is also anxious about college by candlelight, a result of the per-
young Gazans like Shurrab emigrating. sistent power outages. Mashharawi’s goal
She made the case that the brain drain is was to help the local population become
systematic on Israel’s part—an attempt less dependent on Israel for electricity,
to get rid of the best minds. She asked but she wanted power to be accessible to
grimly, “How about flying us all to Mars? everyone, not just wealthy Gazans, so she
It would have the same result.” offered a pay-as-you-go option for those
who couldn’t afford the start-up kit. Her
Education is the cornerstone for prog- other tech firm, GreenCake, manufac-
ress here, and the Palestinian concept of tures eco-friendly construction materials
sumud—steadfastness—is paramount. to help rebuild Gazan homes and other
Gazans have a deep commitment to
learning and one of the strongest sens-
es of family that I have ever witnessed.

GAZANS’ ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IS EXTRAORDINARY,
“NOT NECESSARILY DESPITE THEIR CIRCUMSTANCES, BUT BECAUSE OF THEM.

SO, YOU TELL US WE’RE NOTHING, WORTHLESS?
WE’LL SHOW YOU.”

78 VA N I T Y F A I R

GREEN DREAMS

Aseel al-Najjar and
Nadine Ruck, part of an

all-female farming
collective in Khuza’a.

U.S.—were closing up after a day’s work. of resignation. She spoke over the din of Al-Azhar University, he had a dream:
In impeccable English, Kamal told me, a distribution truck, dispensing drinking to grow more diverse crops in Gaza,
“The biggest challenge for entrepre- water in the aftermath of the bombings, regardless of the impediments such as
neurs here is the political situation. We which had damaged pipes and facili- limited water and the dwindling avail-
can wake up one day to news that there’s ties. (In the 100-degree heat, the truck’s ability of usable farmland. Studying
another war. Everything gets closed sound system was incongruously blast- alternative farming methods, includ-
down, and it may last for months, as it ing “Jingle Bells.”) “That’s how we young ing successful Israeli ones, Abu Halima
did in 2014.” The other issue is the dam- people perceive Gaza. We are always one borrowed $120,000 in 2020 to buy 48
aged economy. “You can’t rely on or step away from falling, yet we are not liv- solar panels and install 8,200 meters of
make plans to grow because of the illogi- ing. A constant falling state.” hydroponic pipes. It was a big project and
cal policies imposed by Hamas, Israel, or a big risk. But he reckoned that by using
Egypt. Most entrepreneurs fail within the That sense of one step forward, two an innovative, solar-powered irrigation
first five years because of that. There is steps back is ever present. Abdullah Abu system, he could maximize water usage,
no winning.” Halima, 33, is a farmer in Beit Lahia, on plant several different crops, and make
the northern tip of Gaza, whose life was seasonal, organic vegetables available
“My colleagues and I are dancing on altered forever last May. Armed with all year. Over C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 9
the brink,” said Abu Mezied with a tone a degree in information systems from

FEBRUARY 2022 79

The renowned writer, culture
critic, and scholar of the

demimonde LUCY SANTE,
on finding herself

BECOMING

Photographs by RYA N M C G I N L E Y

80 VA N I T Y FA I R

A NEW DAWN

Lucy Sante, beside the
Hudson River, in Ulster

County, New York.

FEBRUARY 2022 81

from my home in Ulster County, New York, to Utica and back

for my first COVID vaccine—appointments were hard to find in

those early days—trying all the while to decide whether to hit the

mall in Albany in search of a wig store. Tired of the drive and a

bit fearful, I went straight home, but I came out to my therapist

the following day.

Trembling but resolute, I told Dr. G at our weekly Zoom ses-

O sion that I had always wanted to be a woman and now felt it
urgent that I take the necessary steps. Dr. G had consistently
maintained an imperturbable nothing-human-is-alien-to-me
equanimity, but I was nevertheless stunned by her quick and
unsurprised assent. “It makes sense,” she told me. “It sounds
like a good idea.” In the four or five years I’d been seeing her,
I had never broached any mention of gender. My inner omertà
relegated all such thoughts to the deepest, darkest corners,
guarded by dragons. I’d seen therapists for nearly 40 years by
then, but only one previous practitioner had ever come close to
breaking the silence. Around 1991, Dr. P got me to admit that
I had tried on my mother’s dresses and undergarments in early
adolescence, although we never got a chance to explore the ram-
ifications. Not long after I made that admission, Dr. P died of a
massive heart attack 20minutes after I left his office. My relation-
ships with therapists had been checkered before and after—one
tried to convert me to New Age spirituality; one spent most ses-
sions talking about herself; one admitted that her expertise was

in child psychology—and I never fully trusted another until

I began seeing Dr. G.

In trans circles, a transgen-

ON FEBRUARY 15, 2021, I downloaded the application called FaceApp to my phone, just for a der person who is not yet fully

laugh. I’d had a new phone for a few months, and I was curious. Although the app allowed aware of their nature is called

users to change age, shape, or hairstyle, I was, specifically and exclusively, interested in the an “egg”; when the moment

gender-swap function. I fed in a mug-shot-style selfie and in return got something that didn’t of revelation occurs, the egg

displease me: a picture of an attractive woman in whose face my features were discernible. is said to crack. Subject to

Changing genders was a strange and electric idea that had lived somewhere in the recesses individual temperaments,

of my mind for the better part of my 67 years. But I had seldom allowed myself such a graphic cultural and environmental

self-depiction; over the years I had occasionally drawn pictures pressures, and any number

and altered photographs to visualize myself as a woman but had of mysterious X factors, that

always immediately destroyed the results. And yet I didn’t delete can happen at any time. It is often said that while all trans stories

that cyber-image. Instead, over the next week or so I hunted are individual, all of them are the same—the order of those two

down and fed in every image of myself I possessed, beginning at phrases can be reversed. While the shape of the arc is generally

about age 12: snapshots, ID card pictures, studio portraits, book consistent, some people are aware that they are trans from earli-

jacket photos, social media pictures. The effect was seismic. est childhood, some realize it at puberty, and others only tumble

I could now see, laid out before me on my screen, the panorama to the truth much later in life. After that, the egg can crack

of my life as a girl, from giggling preteen to last year’s matron. immediately, or it can take years—or, as in my case, decades.

I had always hated seeing pictures of myself, but these made

every kind of sense. My desire to live as a woman, I could now

see, was a coherent phenomenon, consistently just under the O NE DAY IN the fall of 1965, C H O R E O G R A P H Y , LU I S A O PA L E S K Y.
surface of my nominal life for all those decades, despite my best when I was 11, I was sitting in
efforts to pretend it wasn’t there. the kitchen of our tract house
in New Jersey, waiting to be
After that, something took over, a wave of pure momentum picked up by a friend’s father;
that persists even now, on good days overriding my always-crip- we had recently moved, and
pling self-consciousness. Whatever that force might be—very my friends were all now five
likely the tectonic power of something long confined that is miles away. For some reason
suddenly released—it converted insight into imperative. My

cover with myself had been blown, and I had no choice but to there was a mirror on the

take action. The last two weeks of February are a blur in my table, and I picked it up and looked at myself. I wore my hair in a

mind because so much was going on inside me that I couldn’t modified bowl cut, which needed a trim just then. I gathered the

keep track. I was about to make a radical break with my previous longish loose strands above my temples and bent them into spit

existence, but I have no way to reconstruct just how I proceeded curls, wetting them so they’d hold their shape, and brushed down

to its execution. All I can remember for sure is driving 300 miles my bangs. I widened my eyes and softened my mouth. I looked

82 VA N I T Y F A I R

CHANGING GENDERS WAS A STRANGE and I loved wearing them on
AND ELECTRIC IDEA that had lived the rare occasions when they
somewhere in the recesses of my mind for the fell into my lap—a red floral
blouse left behind in an East
Village apartment I moved

better part of my 67 years. into, a whole pile of laun-
dry abandoned atop a dryer

in student lodgings at the

University of Geneva—until

just like a girl. Then I heard a footstep upstairs and quickly messed I expunged them, rapidly. To me, back then, there was some-

up my hair again. That was the first time I played with my appear- thing sordid about transvestism, something not genuine. As

ance in that way, although thinking of myself as a girl had already it was, I prevented myself from taking any further action.

been an intermittent preoccupation that I fought hard against. I couldn’t shop or even browse at certain Manhattan haunts

In the following years the thoughts became more constant. such as Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique, or visit the Edelweiss or

On those rare occasions when my parents left me alone in the Club 82, or, later, spend time at the Pyramid Club, even though

house—I was an only child, and overprotected—I experimented at one point it was less than half a block from my apartment.

with my mother’s clothes and undergarments. I didn’t leave Anyway, however much I could appreciate drag culture from the

them on for long, though, because I thought my mother would outside, it wasn’t my jam. I wanted to be a woman, not a satire.

be able to detect my body odor once puberty set in. She was I was uninterested in big hair or big tits or high heels, and I hated

vigilant about keeping me on the straight and narrow, and as the thought of being gaped at by men. At least that was reason

my adolescence went on, she would subject my room to regular number one. Number two was that I was terrified of the power

sweeps, with no drawer or cubbyhole neglected and no text, of my wish. I was mortally afraid of the very process I am now

printed or handwritten, unscanned. She was looking for—what undergoing, although I also knew too little about it to be able to

exactly? Porn? Drugs? Atheism? In any case, it had the effect judge. When I was in single digits I used to imagine being trans-

of making me hypervigilant. I learned to never write anything formed into a girl overnight. Some nights I would yearn for it; on

down that was private—I have never kept a diary—and to subject the others I shook with fear at the prospect. It was too desirable

every piece of printed matter I might be tempted to take home but too unobtainable. I could never really be a woman, so I had

to a rigorous shakedown, leaving on trains or park benches most to resign myself and keep the thoughts from overwhelming me.

of the underground newspapers I eagerly consumed. Not until the internet came along, bringing with it a range of

I was then beginning to take an interest in research, and so transgender sites, did I know much of anything about hormones.

began, gingerly, to research my condition. My resources were

meager, but then the culture was meager in turn. Transgender

people were punch lines, figures of fun; the image was of some- N OW AND THEN I talk with J, a
one in a shapeless polka-dot dress with a bad wig and stubble. friend of more than 40 years
I followed French pop music enough to know Jacques Dutronc’s who transitioned two or three
“Il est cinq heures, Paris s’éveille”—five o’clock in the morning years before me. We compare
is when the transvestites (les travestis) go home to shave. At my notes, and although our back-
all-boys Jesuit high school I leafed through yearbooks from the grounds and personalities are
1920s and ’30s in search of photos of students playing female very different, our trans his-
roles onstage, which had ceased to be the custom. I knew a bit tories are hilariously similar.

about Christine Jorgensen, the transgender pioneer of the 1950s, We laugh at the fact that as

and she at least looked and acted like a woman, but in my view children we both thought we were the only humans on the planet

at the time hardly anyone else did. who had ever wanted to switch genders. But that was our time, so

What did it mean to be transsexual (a term that was in popu- different from the present. My parents have now been dead for

lar use at the time)? It appeared to entail traveling to Bangkok or 20 years, but I cannot bear to imagine their reactions. Although

Casablanca and getting one’s downstairs business excised. The I was an only child, I had an older sibling, stillborn a year and a

thought hurt, and I avoided it. (A few years later, when I was 20, month before my birth. My parents named her Marie-Luce and

IwaswalkingaroundMalmö,Sweden,lateatnight.Ipassedaporn bought her a 10-year grave (in land-poor Belgium, graves are

shop where, in the middle of a dense collage on the front door, leased). I gathered that my mother had suffered miscarriages

I spotted a photograph of a pretty young girl with a penis. How previously; in any case, the doctors gave her cautious approval

could that be? What could that mean? I was shaken.) I plundered to try pregnancy once more, but only once. When I was baptized,

the library for materials, which were scant. I read Krafft-Ebing’s my parents inverted my sister’s name and added a few more

bloodless classifications and endless sexological tomes that typi- saints in gratitude.

cally accorded half a page to

“transvestism,” with diag- However much I could appreciate drag
noses ranging from neurotic culture from the outside, I WANTED TO
affliction to permissible as an
occasional bedroom kink.

But was I a transvestite? BE A WOMAN, NOT A SATIRE.
I did love women’s clothes,

FEBRUARY 2022 83

My mother’s depression lasted the entire time I knew her, so Then I would have periods of repudiation, when I would ban-

I don’t know for sure when it began. Her family life was unhap- ish any such thoughts and diagnose my situation as a fetish,

py, but she certainly presented cheerfully enough in snapshots an unhealthy ideation, a neurosis that I imagined might

from her postwar 20s—her smile was never as genuine after that be cured by a good relationship with a strong woman who

time. For one thing, the vexed process of childbirth clearly took would fully bring out the man in me. In both of these states

a heavy toll on her. She seems to have mixed up Marie-Luce and I kept my assorted gender questions and fixations scattered

me, or at least I got used to being called ma fifille or ma choute around different regions of my consciousness, refusing to

(because mon chou is masculine, she had to invent a feminine accord them coherence. Thoughts about appearance went

form). Although in areas of Europe pink had long been for boys over here, my various failures to fulfill a male role went over

and blue for girls, my mother bucked convention, dressing me there, the more existential questions were thrown on a shelf.

in blue in honor of the Virgin Mary. I was effectively sexless as

a child, drawing and reading and playing with my large fam-

ily of stuffed animals, to whom I assigned family positions. My A FTER MY EGG cracked I rode
mother and I were very close then, twice traveling back from what trans and AA people call
New Jersey to Belgium and living for months without my father “the pink cloud” for a solid
while she settled affairs and debated moving back. But when three months. That roseate
puberty brought along secondary sexual characteristics, every- mass of suspended water
thing turned. From sometime around then until I left home at drops, which I was constant-
18, my mother hit me every day, usually a backhand across the ly warned about trusting too
dinner table. She also twice underwent electroshock therapy, much, turned out to consist

after which she’d suffer temporary memory loss and mistake largely of the momentum I’m

me for her brother. still riding, along with an evangelical faith in the process. For

No one knows the causes of gender dysphoria. Only limited me it also entailed a crash course in all sorts of things, from

scientific research has been done on that or other transgender relearning how to move to the history of transgender medicine

matters (what we know about the immediate and long-term to developing firm opinions about collars, sleeve lengths, and

effects of hormone replacement therapy remains largely folk- silhouettes. Although I somehow managed to maintain my

loric), because there is so little funding for it. In many cultures, duties as an educator, teaching a college writing course during

including our own, transgender people are situated at the very this period, my real occupation was transitioning. I could focus

bottom of humanity, the unthinkable. We are lepers, and if we on little else.

are vulnerable we are preyed upon and often killed. Unsurpris- Very quickly I joined a trans support group and consulted

ingly, the mob mentality that drives such superstition is present an endocrinologist—I started hormones on May 10, and they

within us transgender people also. caused me to crash off my cloud, although that didn’t last long.

Before my egg cracked, I kept up my surreptitious interest in I once described myself as a creature made entirely of doubt,

transgender matters, watching YouTube videos and scrolling much of it self-doubt, but as soon as I made up my mind to

through endless photos of Japanese otokonoko models. Even so, come out, last February, I ceased doubting. That is to say,

I was distinctly uneasy when I was confronted with the actuality I experienced regular bouts of dysphoria, which in this

of transitioning genders, especially involving people bearing context means intense recurring periods of self-doubt, self-

some sociological resemblance to me, such as Chelsea Man- hatred,anddespair,whichhappenirregularlyforvaryinglengths

ning or the Wachowski sisters. It seemed like they’d just gone of time, typically (for me, by now) about two or three days a week.

too far—they’d never be able to get back to land. But such was Yet paradoxically I had never before experienced such

the depth of my denial. wholehearted conviction. Even in the throes of those bouts

I felt an unaccountable bed-

None of us really knows anything except rock of certainty.
provisionally. Now, as Lou Reed put it, “I’M SET My road-to-Damascus

moment was cataclysmic
in its effect. “This cracks

FREE TO FIND A NEW ILLUSION.” open the world,” I wrote
on an index card, breaking

my custom of not writing

such things down. “I’m so

For more than 55 years, I lived in a state of denial that kept relieved.” Unfortunately, it happened 14 years into the best and

my gender quandary suspended, as if pickled in a jar. I passed most fulfilling relationship I’d ever enjoyed. I’d met M just as my

through periods of indulgence, when I would give in and marriage was reaching its breaking point, and she’d been my

daydream. I had a range of stock fantasies that I rotated and anchor ever since: my best friend, my copilot, my stern editor,

embroidered upon: cast as a girl in the school play, then per- my heart. Things were not always entirely smooth between us,

suaded to go out on the town in costume; hired as an assistant but we’d just spent a happy year locked down together. Why did

by a wealthy society woman who amuses herself by dressing it have to happen then? Why couldn’t it have happened after the

me up as a girl; new roommate assigned to me in college has collapse of my first significant relationship, around 1980, when

been dressing as a girl for years and has a full wardrobe. But they I was certain I’d never find anyone else again? Or 10 years later,

were transvestite fantasies, to my thinking, ultimately sterile. after the demise of my first marriage, C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 7

84 VA N I T Y FA I R FEBRUARY 2022



IN 1708, THE SPANISH GALLEON
SAN JOSÉ SANK IN A DEADLY
BATTLE AGAINST ENGLISH WARSHIPS,
TAKING WITH IT BILLIONS IN
TREASURE. CENTURIES PASSED BEFORE
A SECRETIVE ARCHAEOLOGIST FOUND
THE WRECK, BUT NOW NATIONS
ARE AGAIN WARRING OVER WHO
MAY CLAIM THE GOLD AND GLORY

By J U L I A N SA N C T O N

86 VA N I T Y FA I R

Illustrations by

YUKO SHIMIZU

WHAT LIES
BENEATH

FEBRUARY 2022 87

JUNE 8,
1708
THE COUNT OF Casa Alegre knew a squadron of English war- who is said to have told Montezuma’s messenger, “I and my
ships was lurking in the area, but he thought he could avoid it. companions suffer from a disease of the heart which can only
As captain of the Spanish galleon San José, he was charged with be cured with gold.” That craving didn’t abate with time. In
leading the Tierra Firma fleet from the Caribbean back to Spain, Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera,
17 ships in all, loaded with several years’ worth of treasure from the lovelorn protagonist, Florentino Ariza, is stricken with “an
the New World, enough perhaps to turn the tide of war in Europe. overwhelming desire to salvage the sunken treasure [of the
Casa Alegre had no doubt the English would be after the pre- San José] so that Fermina Daza”—his beloved—“could bathe in
cious cargo. If he could reach the harbor of Cartagena de Indias, showers of gold.” Colombia’s most celebrated author, García
on the coast of what is now Colombia, the fleet would be safe. Márquez valued the treasure at “five hundred billion pesos
in the currency of the day,” a magical realist embellishment.
Then they appeared on the horizon to the north. Four Eng-
lish sails. To give the fleet’s merchant ships a chance to reach Since no manifest has been found, historians can only guess
the harbor, Casa Alegre had no choice but to turn and fight. He at the amount of silver and gold coins the galleon carried on
hoisted the red battle flag up the mainmast and sailed toward its final voyage, including contraband: perhaps 7 million to 12
the enemy, accompanied by two armed galleons. million pesos, believed by many to be worth more than $10
billion in today’s money.
As in a bar brawl, the two most fearsome combatants sought
each other out. At sunset, the 70-gun HMS Expedition, helmed by Regularly referred to as the Holy Grail of shipwrecks, the San
Commodore Charles Wager, took on the 62-gun SanJosé. For more José had been the object of several extensive searches over the
than an hour, they traded broadsides, sailing past each other while decades, becoming only more legendary the longer it remained
firing their cannons at close range, pulverizing wood and bone. undiscovered. And then, on December 4, 2015, Colombian pres-
ident Juan Manuel Santos sent the following tweet:
What happened next is unclear. Night had fallen, and the air
was thick with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Bellowed including the coordinates of the wreck.
commands, screams of agony, and bursts of cannon fire reso-
nated across the water. The English heard a powerful explosion
from deep within the San José and felt the heat of the blast. A fire
broke out on the ship, and soon the Spanish side went silent. By
the time the smoke cleared, the galleon was gone. All that was
left was a field of flotsam onto which fewer than a dozen young
sailors clung for life.

It had sunk in a matter of minutes. Wager did not consider
the battle a victory but a devastating failure. As the flagship, the
San José carried far more silver, gold, emeralds, and pearls than
any of the merchant vessels. Wager’s prize had slipped his grasp,
and its treasure now gilded the seabed at unknowable depths,
along with the bodies of Casa Alegre and almost 600 of his men.

I N THE THREE centuries since, the San José has become a
myth. Its legend is built upon gold, which does not oxi-
dize. A gold coin will shine as brightly after 500 years
on the ocean floor as the day it was minted. So too
in the imagination. The luster of gold from the New
World entranced explorers from Columbus to Hernán Cortés,

88 VA N I T Y FA I R