GQ USA 12.01 2022

←
jacket $930
Séfr

sweater $1,075
Boglioli

shirt $367
Needles

pants $930
Fendi

boots $1,095
Gianvito Rossi

→
jacket $1,650
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sunglasses $480
Ahlem

grooming by
larry king.
tailoring
by michelle
warner. set
design by sean
thomson at the
magnet agency.
set assistant,
maximilian
kindersley.
produced by
farago projects.
location:
peckham liberal
club/location
collective.



Giannis
Antetokounmpo
photographed on
the Mediterranean

Sea, at Costa
Navarino, Greece.

“She definitely didn’t have access to any of it,” Giannis said.
“I’m like, ‘Mom, you went through this for all five of us?’ ”

And then Mav emerged, and to his genuine surprise,
Giannis started sobbing again.

N O T L O N G A G O , Giannis Antetokounmpo watched ←← B Y N O W , M U C H O F his story is known. How he was dis-
his partner, Mariah Riddlesprigger, give birth to their covered as a gangly kid running around an Athens play-
second son, Maverick, and when he saw Maverick he PREVIOUS PAGE ground; how he didn’t touch a basketball until he was
immediately burst into tears. This happened with 13. How he had yet to become even the best player on
Antetokounmpo’s first son, Liam Charles, too—that sweater $900 his second-division Greek team when he was drafted in
Giannis wept. “But I thought maybe it was because he Etro 2013 by the Milwaukee Bucks, who picked him at 15. Who
was my first one,” he told me. He doesn’t think of himself was this guy? Would he be any good? Well, this is what
as someone who cries, he said; he’s survived too much hat $425 happened next: Most Improved Player (2017), Defensive
deprivation, too many provocations, to be reduced to Worth & Worth Player of the Year (2020), two MVP awards (2019, 2020),
tears by just anything. and an NBA championship this past July. A journey
watch $9,100 unfathomable in its sheer improbability, its storybook
We were in the living room of his red brick house in Omega ending, an ending that may in fact be just the beginning
the Milwaukee suburbs, hiding out from the August sun. of something even more grand and unlikely. He is already
Mariah was napping in the other room. Liam, big now bracelet $17,700 back out there, defending his title. Got handed his cham-
and curly haired, was wandering around saying hi to Shay Jewelry pionship ring and went right out and scored 32 points in
everything that moved. Mav was in Giannis’s lap. Giannis 31 minutes against the Brooklyn Nets in the first game
was trying to explain just what these boys did to him → of the season.
when they arrived. shirt $450
Ralph Lauren Some players seem haloed in greatness from the
Giannis and Mariah named Liam in part after moment we lay eyes on them. They don’t always attain
Antetokounmpo’s father, Charles, who passed in 2017, tank top $42 it, but you see it with athletes like LeBron James or Kevin
and so Giannis thought that might have been part of it, for pack of three Durant within seconds: They are playing a di≠erent,
too, at the time—that maybe he was crying out of delayed easier game; they are competing more against history,
grief. Ever since his dad died, he’d felt an emptiness he Calvin Klein against gravity, against spectral forces in the dark, than
didn’t know how to fill, he said. Then all of a sudden Underwear they are against the regular guys around them. Guys who
here was this new being with his father’s name. I lost are talented but not great. I’d argue that Giannis was one
somebody that I loved, Giannis thought, and now I’ve shorts $2,250 of these guys, first: a curio, an intriguing combination
got somebody back that I love a lot. But his mother told Loewe of traits and potential, but no more than that. He was
him: Let the memory of your father be the memory of regarded, in his early NBA days, as capable, not destined.
your father. “You cannot fill that void,” Giannis realized. sunglasses $420 “He looked like a guy who was going to be a project,” his
He still thinks about Charles every day. When his team, Saint Laurent by longtime teammate Khris Middleton said. Giannis will
the Milwaukee Bucks, won the NBA Finals in July, one Anthony Vaccarello tell you himself: “What I am today, nobody saw it. You
of the first things Giannis did after the buzzer sounded know why nobody saw it? Because I didn’t see it. Ask my
was find a quiet place in a very loud arena to sit and talk watch $6,550 mom. No. ‘I thought you would be an NBA player and
to his father: “ ‘Man, we’ve come a long way. I wish you TAG Heuer have a better life. Not what you are today.’ ”
were here to see this. Please watch me.’ You know?” But
Liam, Giannis decided, would be his own person, not a pendant necklace What is he today? Something remarkable. Singular.
replacement for the father Giannis lost. (throughout), his own One of one. All summer I’d be walking around, and flashes
of the Finals, in which the Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns
Then Giannis was in the delivery room again this past 4-2, would come back to me, unbidden. These moments
summer, marveling at what Mariah had to endure. “Seeing are lore now. Giannis’s block on Deandre Ayton at the end
what the body has to go through in order to bring this of Game 4, a feat of athleticism so impossible and other-
beautiful, sweet thing into the world, it’s insane,” he said. worldly that it’s even more confusing in slow motion, how
Giannis is one of five boys; looking at Mariah, he thought he did it. Even to Giannis himself: “I look at the block—
of his mother, who gave birth to her first son in Nigeria How the fuck did I do this shit? ” This is a player who
and then to four more after she’d emigrated to Greece, had fallen to the floor two weeks earlier in Game 4 of
doing so without most of the painkillers or other com- the Eastern Conference finals with a left-knee injury so
forts Milwaukee hospitals use to help mothers ease chil- gruesome that he told me his knee looked like an elbow
dren into the world. In Greece, they were undocumented, afterward. “My leg was the opposite way,” Giannis said.
citizens of no nation. No one helped them. “Six months “To this day, I feel the e≠ect, the traumatic stress. I still
before I came to the NBA, I was selling stu≠ in the street,” feel it, and I think I’m going to feel it until I die.”
Giannis told me. “My mom was in the market. I used to
go help her. People don’t know about this, but I did it.” Somehow he played in all six games of the Finals any-
Epidurals? Extended hospital stays? Postpartum doulas? way. And when he jumped to block Ayton’s shot, that was
the leg he jumped o≠. How the fuck is that possible? He
was in one place and suddenly he was in a completely
di≠erent place in about a millisecond.

In the shower, after the next game, he started cramp-
ing; his lips turned purple; his hands got white. “I’m
naked, I only have my towel,” lying on the trainer’s table,
he remembered. “I ask, ‘Can you give me that trash can?’
Throw up five times.” They gave him an IV—he was so
dehydrated it took them 45 minutes to find the vein.

100 GQ.COM MOTY 2021



102 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

Then he went back to the hotel and got a second one. ← After that, if I disappear in the night, good. Don’t even
This happened again after Game 6, he said: that he shirt $1,695 talk about me, don’t even remember me. I don’t care.”
needed an IV. In that game, he scored 50 points, even Dolce & Gabbana
while there were possessions in the fourth quarter where He called out to Mariah: “Babe, do you want to be the
it looked like he could barely walk up the floor. Went 17 pants $295 face of the league?”
of 19 from the free-throw line when all series he could Emporio Armani
barely make one of two. As pure an exercise of concen- “No,” Mariah said, sleepily.
tration and will as you could ever, or will ever, watch. sneakers $85 He loves basketball but is not of basketball. “Let me
Greatness achieved. Nike show you downstairs,” he said, suddenly.
He padded down the carpeted stairs in his socks,
S O : H O W D O E S A now 26, formerly stateless kid from his own watch through his not particularly giant suburban house, which
Greece become…this? A champion. One of the two or Rolex he bought from an old teammate, Mirza Teletovi´c. The
three best players in the league. Some of it, he said, is door frames were too small for him, and he had to duck
just luck, genetics. He is 6 feet 11. He’s 242 pounds. He bracelet $22,000 under each one. Next door, the ground had been torn
moves so gracefully around his own house, even with the Shay Jewelry up and the foundation laid for a second house for his
leftover limp from his knee injury in last year’s playo≠s, mother, who currently lives upstairs.
that you are forced to reevaluate how poorly you’ve been ↓ Down in the basement, he has a weight room. Soon he
getting around all these many years on this earth: Am I sweater $375 will have a basketball court, too, connected to it. Giannis
walking…wrong? Is there a better way? But the NBA is Emporio Armani famously would go to the Bucks practice facility so often,
full of men who are tall and acrobatic. The body, sure, at so many di≠erent times of day and night, before and
whatever, it’s impressive, but if you ask him how all this shorts $715 after games, that the team sometimes took action to keep
happened, what he’ll say is: “I’m going to work as hard as Rick Owens him out so he could rest: “They had this term, ‘lockout,’
possible. God gave me that gift.” that you cannot go to the gym, because they know I will
sunglasses $625 go to the gym. Now, see what I did?” He gestured toward
Even the night his father passed. “I went Dita
to the gym,” Giannis said. “He was there
with me.” watch, his own

Stubbornness, persistence, hard work, bracelet $22,000
going to the gym even on the night your Shay Jewelry
father dies—that can get you pretty far.
But Giannis, in the past few years, began
running up against the limits of hard work,
he said. There’s a sports psychologist who
works with the Bucks, and Giannis talks to
him almost every day. They work on cop-
ing mechanisms. They work on anxiety.
They work on being in the moment. They
work on separating the guy who is argu-
ably the best basketball player in the world
right now from the guy holding his new-
born child trying to knock down the walls
between him and his own feelings. One
thing the sports psychologist led Giannis
to try was: Cry! And not just at the birth
of your sons.

“I had to break down the barriers
I was talking about and be by myself,
cry, and realize, ‘I got to fucking help
myself,’ ” Giannis said. “This guy, he’s
like, ‘Sometimes, being persistent and
stubborn? Sometimes it fucks you up.’ ”

He looked down at the sleeping baby he
was holding. “You’re not going to put the
curse words in here, right?”

H E C A N B E like this: a little innocent.
Seemingly unsure of himself, despite
his absolute certainty pertaining to bas-
ketball. “Silly,” Khris Middleton told me,
a≠ectionately. Superstar athletes have
long been conditioned to think of them-
selves as brands, spokespeople for the
million- and billion-dollar businesses they
front. This is not Giannis. “I don’t want
to be the face of the league,” he said, ada-
mantly. “I want to play great basketball.

well. The limit is not the sky. Go beyond

it.” LeBron had signed o≠ with the sketch

of a crown.

Giannis beheld the inscription proudly:

“That’s big time, you know?”

He is aware, if distantly, that by the

hypermasculine competitive codes of the

NBA, you are not supposed to venerate your

competitors, let alone collect their jerseys,

let alone adoringly read what those compet-

itors write on those jerseys to note-taking

reporters. But Giannis has never been good

at those codes, and at times he has found

freedom in defying them. For instance, he

said, “People that talk to the sports psy-

chiatrists and stu≠ like that, they label us

‘soft.’ We’ve seen that in the past, like, ‘Oh,

man, I’m having anxiety.’ ‘Man, you’re soft.

Go deal with that.’ That’s how it’s labeled.

That’s why it’s hard for people to talk to

somebody and open up. Even for me, it was

extremely tough.”

He’s convinced that all the really good

athletes are secretly in some form of ther-

apy. Some not so secretly. They use a word

or a phrase and he knows. The other day,

Giannis was watching Naomi Osaka, the

three-part Netflix docuseries, and was

struck by the way the tennis star spoke

about the challenges that have come with

her success. “She wasn’t happy, she wanted

to get away from the game and all that

stu≠, and it’s fucking hard, man,” Giannis

said. He was talking about her, but he was

talking about himself too. “I started doing

it when I was 18. When you’re that young

and you’re doing it, people don’t under-

stand the amount of pressure because at

the construction outside, toward what would soon be ↑ the end of the day, you don’t only have to perform and
his own facility. “Fuck lockout. Sorry. Oh, my God, I’m his own suit
cursing. E≠ lockout. I build a gym right here.” G. Papadogamvros be the best, you have the big brand that you got to fuck-

He also has a slew of framed jerseys down in the base- sweater-vest $190 ing carry on your shoulder. You have your own country,
ment. Some of the jerseys are hung, proudly, on the wall; MSGM
others are stacked haphazardly on a pool table or near Japan, that you got to carry on your shoulder. Or Greece,
the bar stocked with alcohol that Giannis doesn’t drink. sunglasses $625
Many are his, but curiously, he also has dozens of framed Dita in my case. You have all these people that you got to take
jerseys from other NBA players too, leaned up against the
wall, or hung, or on the pool table. his own watch care of. Sometimes…”
Rolex
He’s got a framed Blake Gri∞n Pistons jersey. He’s got He paused. “I’ve never said this: I don’t want to
one from Kevin Durant, and one from Steph Curry. James →
Harden—“A lot of people think that I have beef with James sweater $1,340 fuck up.”
Harden, which is not true,” he said, because if it were, why
would his jersey be here? He continued the tour. “This Tom Ford That fear of fucking up, of not being able to carry the
right here is from Luka Donˇci´c, the wonder boy. Anthony
Davis. L.A., you know him. Joki´c. I love the game! Oh, this shorts $120 weight and support the people around him, was what
is mine from this year. This is from the MVP I won. The Stüssy
All-Star MVP. Bradley Beal. Damian Lillard. Derrick Rose. drove him for a long time. He said he was just walking
I love Derrick Rose. LeBron James, man. Look! Look what hat $75
he wrote for me.” OAS around Milwaukee yesterday, remembering what it

Many of the jerseys are signed, some with brief mes- sunglasses $187 looked like to him when he first got here. “You’re 18,” he
sages, but this particular one, a LeBron Lakers jersey, had Ray-Ban
a longer note, and Giannis read it out loud: “To Giannis, said. “You have very small experience of life, of being by
a.k.a The Greek Freak. Continue to strive for greatness necklace
every single day you wake up, brother. Love everything $16,000 yourself. I came here, and I was scared. I never felt lonely
you represent to this game of hoops, and o≠ the court as Tiffany & Co.
in my life, and I was scared. I was going back to the hotel
bracelet $11,900
Shay Jewelry at 8:30 p.m. because I was scared. I was by myself.”

his own watch Scared of what, I asked him.
Rolex
“Scared of life! I was fucking 18,” Giannis said. “I

was a kid.” Playing a sport that was still new to him

with a bunch of grown men. “So, I was already scared

of life, now you’re putting me on the basketball court?

I’m scared of these dudes, for sure. But you know what

I knew? I have no fucking choice. I have no option. I

can’t fucking stop. If I stop everything, my family, I can’t

help them. I cannot be in a position to help them. So I

kept going.” (continued on page 140)

104 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

grooming by
athena skouvakis
for this is not
another agency.
tailoring by
margarita dosoula.
produced by
poplight productions.

Questlove height of the ’60s tumult of know who Mavis Staples is but it been released as a movie at
protests and assassinations, were “actually living through the time, could have served as
The musical polymath was “an exact mirror” of the those times.” The concert, a key generational document in
who recast a watershed summer of George Floyd. filmed by Hal Tulchin, who could the way that the documentary
moment in cultural history “Because of where we were never find a buyer for what he Woodstock did. Instead, says
politically,” the Roots drummer dubbed “the Black Woodstock,” Questlove, ’70s music show
When Questlove was editing and first-time director says, served “as a Band-Aid over a Soul Train wound up being
his documentary, Summer of “where we were with the bullet wound,” Questlove says, “Black Joy central.” To make his
Soul, which uses lost footage protests, with the elections, with “a means to keep people calm, film at all, Questlove had to find
of music legends like Sly Stone our loved ones like Bill Withers give them some joy, and prevent his own inner peace. “I went
and Mahalia Jackson to tell dying,” he knew that the movie them from rioting, as they did through a transformation during
the forgotten story of the 1969 would connect with millennials the year before.” the pandemic where I was one
Harlem Cultural Festival, he and Gen Z’ers who might not of those people that lived in no,”
wasn’t just thinking about the That crucial moment of Black he says, “and now I want to see
past. He was thinking about joy the festival provided, had what living in yes is like. No is
how that moment, near the safety, and people that live in
safety, they live in fear. People
that live in yes are open. And
this is what happens to you
when you live in yes. There’s
a whole new world you never
knew before.” — B E N W I L L I A M S

106 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

Rep. federal eviction moratorium and Jason “I wound up going through
Cori Bush sharing her own story of being Isbell multiple levels of discipline for
unhoused. Her efforts worked: this just because I wouldn’t
knew she had to say something. The Biden administration The singer-songwriter back down. I mean, I was in
extended the moratorium. prioritizing public safety trouble for weeks and weeks,”
over ticket sales he tells me from his home
After the Texas abortion bill outside Nashville. “I developed
took effect, Bush again drew When Jason Isbell was growing a tolerance for it, if not a taste
on her painful life experience, up in rural Alabama, a teacher for it: being the squeaky wheel
bravely testifying before a House had his class read a story and in those situations.”
panel about her own abortion take a quiz: true-or-false, simple
as a teenager and the horrific stuff. One question about a Isbell is still the squeaky
sexual encounter that led to the shotgun blast referred to the wheel, though his platform
procedure. “In the summer of ammo as buckshot. Because has gotten bigger and the
1994, I was raped,” she told the the story specifically mentioned stakes higher. In August, as
panel. “I became pregnant, and he and his band, the 400 Unit,
I chose to have an abortion. To were preparing to hit the road
all the Black women and girls for the first time in a year, he
who have had abortions and will announced that concertgoers
have abortions, we have nothing would have to provide proof

(continued on next page)

Marcus
Rashford

The soccer star who
missed a penalty kick—and
took a stand against the
racist abuse that followed

Layshia In July, with the European
Clarendon Championship final between
England and Italy tied, Marcus
The WNBA’s first trans and Rashford stepped up to take
nonbinary player—and the his shot in the game-deciding
league’s voice of change penalty shoot-out. England was
on the cusp of its first major
The backlash came fast and “It’s lonely,” admits Layshia Trump Administration. Just title in 55 years. They were
strong. Isbell found himself Clarendon, the WNBA’s first hours after assuming office, playing at Wembley Stadium,
at the center of an ongoing openly trans and nonbinary President Joe Biden signed the bastion of English soccer.
debate, against the backdrop of player. The 30-year-old guard for an executive order aimed at “Football’s coming home!” fans
a pandemic that’s already been the Minnesota Lynx, who uses preventing discrimination on the chanted. Rashford’s shot struck
politicized beyond measure. all pronouns interchangeably, basis of sexual orientation or the post. Then his teammates
Certain venues refused to made headlines in January when gender identity, but the debate Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka
comply with his health and they revealed on Instagram about where trans and gender missed as well, and once again
safety standards, so those that they’d undergone top nonconforming bodies belong England lost in the cruelest way.
shows were moved elsewhere or surgery. Clarendon, who was in American sports continues
canceled altogether. Detractors selected 9th overall in the to rage. Afterward, a different sort
on Twitter went to town. 2013 WNBA Draft, had come of cruelty surfaced. Rashford,
“People are shocked when I say out as gender nonconforming Nearly a year after surgery, Sancho, and Saka, who are
something like, ‘I don’t want several years prior—another Clarendon still feels bewildered Black, were subjected to
you to die from coming to my transformational moment in the at times. “You know what it’s like heinous messages of racist
concert,’ ” he notes wryly. history of the league. to blaze a fucking trail?” they abuse on social media. In
ask. “That means you’re hacking Rashford’s native Manchester,
In any case, he doesn’t mind “People think I just do shit, down weeds in the forest. How a mural of the England star was
the fight. You could even say and they’re like, ‘Oh, you’re so do you get through the forest defaced. The striker responded
he welcomes it. “I’m a white brave,’ and ‘It’s so easy, and it’s when there’s no fucking trail? It’s with a defiant stand, issuing
man from Alabama. I can take so fun,’ ” Clarendon says. But not just like the path less taken. a statement on social media
a lot of criticism because they say their revelation was There is no path.” in which he apologized for
I have received so much followed by myriad transphobic the missed penalty kick but
encouragement,” Isbell says. “I comments demanding they Still, they feel hopeful about declared, “I will never apologize
need to use that confidence for be removed from the WNBA. the larger role the league can for who I am.”
something that’s bigger than Top surgery, they clarify, was play in this pivotal moment: “The
just my own career.” frightening too: “I was terrified, W is perfectly positioned to be Addressing his thought
crying, and afraid of the the league that is for people who process in the wake of the
—GABRIELLA PAELLA responses. I was afraid of how I are marginalized because of episode, Rashford tells GQ
would be treated, afraid of how gender. That’s why the W started that he felt a responsibility
this could change the way I was in the first place, and I think to confront the attacks:
perceived, all of those things that’s the league that it still is.” “Comments that touch on my
that anyone [marginalized] skin color, I’m just not willing to
struggles with.” —WILLA BENNETT accept. More so for young boys
and girls who look like me. They
Clarendon’s Instagram don’t need to be reading that
announcement earlier this year and questioning whether people
came amid a wave of state bills feel the same way about them.”
attempting to ban trans youth
in sports altogether, an agenda After Rashford posted
aggressively pursued by the his letter on social media,
something remarkable
happened. The mural was
covered with messages of
admiration and support, many
from children. “I’ve always tried
to just be true to myself and
everything I was taught as a
child,” Rashford says. “I’m proud
of who I am and where I come
from. No comment is going to
make me feel otherwise.”

—T YLER T YNES

108 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

OPENING PAGES: QUESTLOVE, ANDRE D. WAGNER/ THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX PICTURES; REP. CORI BUSH, KEVIN DIETSCH/GET T Y IMAGES; JASON Michael several Confederate statues
ISBELL, ERIKA GOLDRING/GETTY IMAGES. THIS PAGE: LAYSHIA CLARENDON, DAVID SHERMAN/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES; MARCUS RASHFORD, KACPER Gandolfini come down in my hometown,
PEMPEL/GET TY IMAGES; MICHAEL GANDOLFINI, ARTURO HOLMES/WIREIMAGE/GET TY IMAGES; CLINT SMITH, COURTESY OF CARLET TA GIRMA. New Orleans,” Smith said
The young actor stepping recently about the impetus of his
into his father’s iconic role undertaking. “Statues of P.G.T.
Beauregard, Jefferson Davis,
When Michael Gandolfini first Gandolfini, who was born in Clint Robert E. Lee, these leaders of
heard that David Chase was 1999, the year The Sopranos Smith the Confederacy. I was thinking
interested in him for the part debuted, was only 14 when about what it meant that I grew
of young Tony Soprano in The his father died and had never The journalist reframing up in a majority Black city, in
Many Saints of Newark, the actually seen the entire series, the way we consider our which there were more homages
prequel to HBO’s The Sopranos, so he hosted watch parties nation’s original sin to enslavers than there were to
his response was a resounding with friends to cushion the enslaved people. What are the
no. His late father had etched experience. “Emotionally, it A few years ago, Clint Smith implications of that?”
the character into television’s was just hard to watch my dad. told me about a new project
Mount Rushmore, and he didn’t And I think I really became that would take him to a The project couldn’t have
want to toil in the great man’s overwhelmed by this character.” series of historical sites—from been more prescient. As half of
shadow. But then he figured Monticello to Angola prison the country earnestly searches
he’d at least audition—as a Gandolfini says he didn’t to the Door of No Return in for a new understanding of our
young actor, he could use the learn much about his dad from Senegal—to reexamine how racial history, the other half
exposure. Then he got the part. the series, but he did learn a lot these sites commemorate, and violently denies it. Half of our
about playing Tony Soprano. “I too often obfuscate, their role neighbors are demagoguing
Gandolfini knew he’d made was blown away,” Gandolfini in the horror that was American critical race theory, while the
the right choice when he started says of his father’s titanic slavery. Smith’s aim, he told other half are busy reading
having Sopranos-like dreams. performance. “I was so pissed me, was to search for meaning it. Smith has bravely stepped
“I became overwhelmed by this that he was so good. I was so in the way we tell the story of into that fray, asking a large
character, but in a way that sort touched and proud of him.” ourselves. Now, four years later, swath of the country to soberly
of signified that I was on the right that project, How the Word consider how their communities,
track,” recalls the 22-year-old. Now he’s having a hard time Is Passed: A Reckoning With and even their own families,
In one particularly vivid dream moving on. “Something about the History of Slavery Across contributed to our nation’s
sequence, he was auditioning for Tony really stays with me,” he America, is the breakout non- original sin. “You have millions
Chase. “Then I looked down and says. “I’m not sure whether I fiction book of 2021, a No. 1 New of people who are recalibrating
my hands were my dad’s hands.” love the character so much or York Times best-seller long- their understandings of what
whether it’s something to do listed for the National Book America was and what America
“Fear, in some ways, is with my dad. It’s a real fear of, Award. “In 2017, I was watching has been and what America is
so temporary,” Gandolfini like, ‘What do you do next?’ ” today,” Smith told me. “And as a
continues. “As I got closer with New projects like a role in Ari result, you have this incredible
the material, the more confident Aster’s highly anticipated third amount of pushback from people
I got.” Still, by taking on Tony feature film will surely help. for whom asking questions of
Soprano he was embarking on a After all, fear is only temporary. American history is an existential
charged journey—and making a threat to them because then
move he’d long resisted. —FRAZIER THARPE they have to ask questions of
themselves. And they have to
reassess their own sense of who
they are in the larger American
story, who their family is, who
their community is, and how they
fit into that.” —W E S L E Y LO W E RY

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 109





I T W A S A N O T H E R perfect spa-blue morning was shattering, largely because of how Mark UFOs; starring on an MTV reality show; sur-
in Beverly Hills when Mark Hoppus, a pop- Hoppus is etched into our collective memo- viving a deadly plane crash; selling more than
punk legend, accidentally told the world that ries: young, defiant, indefatigable—a forever 50 million records worldwide; collaborating
he had cancer. This was back in late June, and avatar of cheery SoCal dickishness. with Lil Wayne on a short-lived tour that
Hoppus had just taken a photo of himself spawned the most questionable rap mash-up
strapped into a chemotherapy chair, an image The band that made Hoppus famous, Blink- ever; dating a Kardashian; and, of course,
he wanted to share. But being woozy from 182, jumped into the public eye in the late ’90s, inspiring a whole generation of emo bands
the Benadryl and cocktail of cell-destroying flanked on one side by soft, radio-friendly boy and SoundCloud rappers. None of it was sim-
drugs, his clumsy fingers made haptic contact bands like the Backstreet Boys and on the ple or uncomplicated: They have broken up at
with the wrong cluster of pixels on his phone. other by over-ca≠einated nu-metal outfits least twice before reassembling into a lineup
Thus the photo—the caption read, “Yes hello. like Limp Bizkit. A skate-punk trio from San that today features only two of the primary
One cancer treatment, please”—was transmit- Diego, Blink possessed a paradoxical knack three (Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba, a longtime
ted not to his green circle of “close friends” on for writing pop songs—a fact which helped friend of the group, has since been slotted in
Instagram, but to his entire following of more explain why they were abhorred by many of for DeLonge, whose ambitions have often col-
than 1 million. A tragicomic oopsie. the bands that inspired them. (In a track called ored him as the principal trio’s iconoclast).
“Fun Things to Fuck (If You’re a Winner),”
And then, a mess: First in the form of a Fat Mike of NOFX completes an otherwise Hoppus, 49, lives in Beverly Hills, near the
concerned text from his manager, asking if unprintable tercet with “Fuck fans of Blink- top of a perfect hill where the phone recep-
he meant to do that. Then the radio stations 182.”) Yet instead of shunning fame, Blink’s tion is spotty and the shrubbery is protuber-
started calling. And then a fire hose of frantic members embraced it—a middle finger to the ant. When we met in his backyard in early
text messages from friends Hoppus hadn’t yet punk orthodoxy’s own middle finger flashed at October, he was fresh o≠ his sixth and final
told. He quickly took down the post, but the everything else. They gave their albums delin- round of chemotherapy and was eager to
genie was out of the bottle. quent titles like Take O≠ Your Pants and Jacket show me the new hobby he picked up over
(say it phonetically) and pranked anyone who the summer: collecting succulents. “After my
“Throughout the day as I’m getting che- dared enter their juvenile orbit. “When I first first round of chemotherapy, I went out and
motherapy and more bags of chemicals are got in the band and we would be in airports got a cactus that has this really cool muta-
being dripped into my body, other people are or any public restroom, Mark would go in and tion in it,” he said, showing me the plant.
reaching out and they’re like, ‘Dude, what’s pull his pants all the way down to his ankles. “And I really felt attached to it because that’s
going on?’ ” Hoppus remembered. But he We’d just be looking at this grown man with a mutated plant, and my own mutation hap-
could pay only intermittent attention to what his bare butt out, peeing into a stall,” Travis pening at the same time.” In person Hoppus
he’d unleashed. “Chemo is like being on the Barker, Blink’s longtime drummer, told me. is tall, about the height of your average NBA
worst international, overnight flight where point guard. His signature spiky anime hair
you can’t sleep or get comfortable,” he told “Mark and I were ridiculous,” said Tom was gone, replaced by an undetectable layer
me. Later, as his wife, Skye, drove him home, DeLonge, the band’s cofounder and former of light peach fuzz. When he removes his
Hoppus tapped out a brief statement: “For guitarist. “There were so many things that Dodgers hat he looks like a powerful telepath
the past three months I’ve been undergoing were just so inappropriate. I can’t even bring who wants to recruit you to his school for
chemotherapy for cancer. I have cancer. It them up. People were not safe interviewing us gifted youngsters.
sucks and I’m scared, and at the same time ever in a room, because I would turn o≠ the
I’m blessed with incredible doctors and fam- lights and then I would turn the lights back on He’s usually a vivid storyteller, witty and
ily and friends to get me through this.” and it would be illegal, what was happening.” sardonic. He’s been podcasting since the mid-
2000s, hosted a music interview show for a
He had been diagnosed a couple of months If you were born in the 1980s or early ’90s, few years on Fuse, and regularly streams on
earlier with stage 4 di≠use large B-cell lym- even if you were never a fan or a willful listener Twitch. But lately he’s been forgetting things:
phoma, an aggressive form of blood cancer, of a Blink song, the lyrics to their biggest hits— the names of close friends, places he’s been,
the same kind his mom had. “All the Small Things,” “I Miss You”—are some- stories that Skye tells him. Retrieving a mem-
how already encoded into your subconscious, ory seems to now take Hoppus an excruciat-
For those who glimpsed it, the image of sitting there, just a few blood-alcohol-content ing extra beat. “I felt so shitty,” he told me.
Mark Hoppus there in the chair that morning percentages away from being karaoke’d with- “And the brain fog is so bad. The chemo brain
out a teleprompter. In the years since those is just heartbreaking to me because I can
early hits were recorded, the group has cast feel myself diminished mentally right now.”
a surprisingly large and enduring shadow in Which is why the Instagram slipup, for him,
the culture. Their various achievements and felt so out of character. “Maybe part of me
exploits included (but were hardly limited to) subconsciously posted it to my main, but I
presciently preaching about the existence of

“I went through this whole period of
like, not why me, but of course me.
Why wouldn’t it be me? We’ve had

so much good luck and good fortune...
that of course I was due.

I was due for something tragic.”

112 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

Hoppus says he was
overwhelmed by
the support he felt
when his diagnosis
was made public.

The diagnosis had prompted him to revisit
other things too. When we initially spoke in
September, he told me that he’d recently been
going back over old Blink tracks—songs he’d
played thousands of times—discovering that
they’ve suddenly taken on new meaning.
Of note was “Adam’s Song,” a somber num-
ber that Hoppus wrote in his 20s, from the
imagined perspective of someone who felt
suicidal but ultimately made the decision to
carry on the hard work of living. “I’ve had a
lot of thoughts about my own mortality, a lot
of thoughts about what happens when I’m
gone,” he said. “And so I’ve been listening
to ‘Adam’s Song,’ thinking, Yeah, tomorrow
holds such better days.”

definitely didn’t do it on purpose,” he said. phone and turn to [the therapist]. ‘Oh, hi. So, W H E N I W A S a dipshit teenager, one Christmas
“But I don’t know. It kind of felt like a Band- yeah, I have cancer. Where do we start?’ ” my parents gifted me an Epiphone bass from
Aid had been ripped o≠ and I was able to be Guitar Center. It sounded cheap and twangy,
honest with people.” The odd timing of the call was a blessing, but I was stoked. After opening it I went to
Hoppus said. Therapy helped him navigate the family computer, printed out some tabs,
The first inkling that something was wrong the murky first few weeks where he was still and retreated to my room to learn how to
with his body came last spring, when Hoppus processing his cancer and how it would reori- play the thing. The first song I learned was
felt a weird knot in his shoulder while he ent his life. “I had a really dark time after find- “Dammit,” Blink-182’s breakout hit from their
was sitting on his couch playing Ghost of ing out,” he said. “I went through this whole second studio album, Dude Ranch. The song
Tsushima on PlayStation. He had recently period of like, not why me, but of course me. was easy to learn, no more than three or four
been vaccinated and was eager for the world Why wouldn’t it be me? We’ve had so much notes hammered into oblivion, undergird-
to start opening up again; he’d been strug- good luck and good fortune, and things have ing a sing-shouty chorus sung by Hoppus
gling mentally during a particularly dark kind of fallen into place for me specifically for that includes the refrain: “Well I guess this
period of depression. Hoppus decided to get so long, that of course I was due. I was due for is growing up.”
his shoulder checked out a few days before something tragic.”
meeting with a new therapist. The song is ostensibly about a relationship
Hoppus had long been a specimen of in disrepair and the lessons learned from
“So I walk into the therapist’s o∞ce and I’m healthy living. He’d go on long bike rides reg- those mistakes. And it functions as a tidy
like, ‘Oh, hello. How are you doing? Very nice ularly, and was notoriously obsessive about encapsulation of what made Blink-182 so
to meet you. Thanks for making the time— hygiene, even pre-COVID. (“People made fun successful: They sang about girls and heart-
hang on a second. I have to take this call,’ ” of me because I’d always sanitize my hands ache and masturbation, but fundamentally
Hoppus said. It was his doctor; the diagnosis everywhere.”) He isn’t much of a drinker and the band’s music is about perseverance. Like
was lymphoma. What followed was a blur: has long adhered to a mostly vegan lifestyle, emo, pop punk is, by design, antithetical to
More tests were necessary, but he needed which changed after his diagnosis and his anything resembling cool; it’s earnest, cathar-
to start chemotherapy as soon as possible, doctor recommended that he start eating tic, and sometimes cheesy music about being
which meant he had to get a port installed meat again, to keep his strength up. “I’ve had on the outside of something, looking in. In a
in his arm right away. “And I was like, ‘Okay, a lot more red meat than I ever have in the sense, Hoppus and DeLonge were the voice
cool. Thank you very much.’ I hang up the last probably 10 years,” Hoppus said. for a generation of disa≠ected suburban kids,
bored out of their minds and conscripted to
a comfortable drudgery, who just wanted to
get through another day and post sad lyrics
as their away messages.

One of the reasons the trio worked so well
together is that the band was always hierarchi-
cally flat, and “we’re all completely di≠erent,”
said Barker. Their creative sensibilities tugged
the band’s music in di≠erent directions, but
it would always stubbornly spring back into
a familiar shape, like pizza dough. Mark was
the glue guy, holding the center; Tom was the
experimental one with big ambitions; and
Travis was the only one who knew how to play
his instrument. (continued on page 143)

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 113

Honoring the people, the moments, and
the outfits that made this one of the most

fun and freaky years ever for fashion.

DESIGNER OF THE YEAR Demna Gvasalia for Balenciaga

In 2021, Demna Gvasalia redefined the reach and pos- of all this, relaunched Balenciaga couture, recharting the
sibilities of fashion design. Under his leadership as cre- industry’s direction from hype to handcraft. In September,
ative director, Balenciaga has challenged our assumptions Balenciaga ruled the Met Gala red carpet, and cemented
about celebrity, luxury, popular culture, and even reality a partnership with Fortnite that allowed players to dress
itself. As designers struggled throughout the pandemic their characters in its signature looks. At Paris Fashion
to adjust to virtual fashion shows, Balenciaga seized an Week the next month, the house served up a rare moment
opportunity to plunge into the metaverse and partnered of genuine surprise and delight, debuting a 10-min-
with Epic Games, the developer behind Fortnite, to create ute-long Balenciaga-packed episode of The Simpsons.
a video game for fall 2021. A few months later, Balenciaga
boot pants and hourglass jackets showed up on Gucci’s Gvasalia is a populist interested in subverting fashion;
runway, part of what both brands (which are owned by with each of these projects he is dismantling, brick by
the conglomerate Kering) deemed “the hacker project.” brick, the false boundary between the vernacular and lux-
Over the summer, Gvasalia directed two of Kanye West’s ury. His platform Crocs, satirical prom suits, and leather
stadium-size Donda listening parties—and in the midst Ikea bags—all at luxurious price points—get a rise from
the masses and expose the clichés of fashion elitism. But

114 GQ.COM MOTY 2021



with video games, cartoons, and megawattage celebrities, models in four-inch heels as “a symbolic act of liberation From left: A PREVIOUS PAGE: BACKGROUND PHOTOGRAPH, BFA/DONDA; COLLAGE SMOKE AND LIGHTNING, GETTY IMAGES (5); MICHAELA COEL, THEO WARGO/GETTY IMAGES; KIM KARDASHIAN, GOTHAM/GC IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES;
Gvasalia is finding unexpected ways to reach his people. from those absurd boundaries.” look from Molly KANYE WEST IN MASK, COBRA TEAM/DONDA; TRACEE ELLIS ROSS, JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC/GET TY IMAGES; ALL OTHER PHOTOGRAPHS, COURTESY OF BALENCIAGA. THIS PAGE: MOLLY GODDARD, BEN BROOMFIELD; RUSSELL
Goddard’s fall WESTBROOK, GILBERT CARRASQUILLO/GC IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; CELINE PHOTOGRAPH, COURTESY OF BRAND; KID CUDI, THEO WARGO/GETTY IMAGES. OPPOSITE PAGE, GUCCI: GREGOIRE AVENEL/COURTESY OF GUCCI.
“I am not interested in anything average, including Simultaneously, Gvasalia has deepened his relationship 2021 collection;
the average consumer,” Gvasalia tells me in an email. “If to celebrity, turning one of the most transactional aspects
someone is personally offended by Crocs, there might be a of the fashion industry into pop performance art. Justin Russell
more serious problem within that person than the design Bieber appeared in the brand’s fall campaign, then per- Westbrook at
of a shoe.” As for those who think they’re getting one over formed at the Met Gala and Balenciaga’s after-party. For Thom Browne’s
by pointing out the absurdity of Balenciaga’s multithou- that night’s red carpet, Gvasalia dressed, among others, spring 2022 show;
sand-dollar versions of mass-produced lowbrow objects: Elliot Page in a couture suit, and Kim Kardashian West in
“Everything I do has a reason for it,” he says. “The trashy what Gvasalia called a T-shirt but was actually more like a look from
prom suit or an ‘unreasonably expensive’ market bag did a black body shroud that rendered the most overexposed Celine’s spring
not just accidentally slip into my collection. Do I know person alive as a void. Gvasalia posed alongside her, sim- 2022 collection;
that this may not be ‘understood’ by the average social ilarly shrouded, leading many to wonder whether it was
media critique? Yes I do. Do I care? I am pretty sure you really them—and whether it even mattered at all. Kid Cudi in
know the answer. I just do fashion that I love and enjoy, it Vuitton at the
is really as simple as that.” “I did not start dressing celebrities in any strate-
gic way,” Gvasalia says. It is, however, working. “Since Met Gala.
Gvasalia ascended through the fashion industry over Kim and I walked the Met Ball the online interest in
the past six years as a provocateur, but he now sits atop Balenciaga seemingly grew 500 percent.”
it as a lover—as its most electric practitioner and big-
gest fan. The Georgian-born designer, who is 40, yanked Gvasalia continued this theme with his October fashion
streetwear and an ambivalent Eastern European menace show in Paris, staging the runway as a red-carpet entrance
into the luxury business, first as the de facto head of the to a theater. Once Anna Wintour, Page, Offset, and Cardi B
collective Vetements, and then, starting in 2015, as the were tucked into velvet seats around Gvasalia, lights went
artistic director of Balenciaga. Over the past two years, down and suddenly we were in Springfield: Gvasalia had
Gvasalia appears to have shed the angst of a designer spent the past year secretly working with The Simpsons
proving himself and is now a clear-eyed believer in the creator Matt Groening’s team to create a 10-minute epi-
power of fashion. sode of the show. “One reason we did it,” says Al Jean, the
longtime Simpsons producer and writer largely respon-
“I am happier now than I used to be five or two years sible for the Balenciaga partnership, “is [Gvasalia] was
ago,” the designer says, reflecting on this change in atti- so clearly a fan and student of the show, so we knew that
tude. (Incidentally, it was two years ago that Gvasalia left we could trust them there.” The Simpsons team was less
Vetements, in part to focus more on Balenciaga.) “I am familiar with Balenciaga, but as James L. Brooks, another
much more connected to myself, my creative vision, and Simpsons producer, says of their approach: “Innocence
my artistic mission. I am a happier person now and I am and stupidity are such great advantages.”
in love.” He married musician Loïk Gomez in 2017. “Even
though my relationship to fashion has never changed—I The Simpsons project showed how Gvasalia’s
loved making clothes ever since I was eight years old. Balenciaga is now as much represented by global celeb-
It’s my longest love affair so far to which I am very loyal rities and the people who follow their every move and fit
despite the fact that I have been hurt by it many times.” as by Berghain regulars. “My Balenciaga is for those who
Here, he added a winking emoticon. understand, value, and enjoy what I do,” Gvasalia says.
“It is for the people who are not afraid to be different,
This attitude has had joyous implications for the and, yes, it is for Kanye, it is for Kim, and for thousands
clothes. In relaunching couture at Balenciaga, Gvasalia of other people who wear the clothes we make. It is for
radically reimagined suiting as a symbol of masculini- someone who truly loves fashion, not for people who have
ty’s complex state rather than a vestige of aspirational time to debate Met Gala looks for hours. If one needs to
macho panache, partly because of his steadfast belief in debate it for hours, it means they do not understand what
gender-fluid design. “I do not think of any gender when I fashion really means and their debate stays in that tiny
make clothes,” he says. “I just make them for anyone who box of their personal comfort zone.” In other words, if you
loves and wants to wear them.” He put male-identifying open your mind, you might find love. — R A C H E L TA S H J I A N

NEW WARDROBE STAPLE

THE SKIRT

Fashion hall of famers avant-garde kilts, it was
like Marc Jacobs—and, you clear that the skirt had
know, bagpipers—have officially transcended the
worn skirts for years, and tired debate over gender
designers like Raf Simons in fashion. While you
and Yohji Yamamoto have won’t yet find them on the
featured them on the racks of mass-menswear
runway since the ’90s. But stores like J. Crew now—
when Russell Westbrook, head to Celine, Comme
Jordan Clarkson, and des Garçons, or SSENSE
Dan Levy arrived at Thom instead—you can bet the
Browne’s runway show style will trickle down soon.
this fall in resplendent,
—SAMUEL HINE

116 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

LOOK OF THE YEAR

Gucci, Fall 2021, Look No. 16

SUNGLASSES
Sporty, cycle-
inspired black
frames with gold
metal rims and the
Gucci logo in gold
lettering on black

temples.

SUIT
Chartreuse stretch

velvet with satin
details.

SWEATER Gucci creative director
Gold wool Alessandro Michele
turtleneck with on the look of the year:
allover-sequin
embroidery detail. “This look is very meaningful.
It speaks to the roots of the
BAG brand and the essence of
Brass mini bag with my work. A suit in a bold,
GG Supreme motif acidic, unusual color that
conveys the idea of an
and leather strap. elegance also shaped by the
refinement of the hue and
SHOES the combinations. The suit
Leather-sole is paired with something
moccasins in gray apparently unsuitable—this
leather with Lurex and fully embroidered
Horsebit and web ring-neck sweater. I believe
detail. Paired with this look talks about me and
camel cotton socks what I brought to Gucci: a
with tone-on-tone great sense of color and a
Gucci logo. concept of styling that gives
men the opportunity to have
a wider and freer playground.
This image, this color, this
look are the essence of a
certain type of masculine
beauty and refinement.”

—NOAH JOHNSON

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 117

WATCH OF THE YEAR flavors. It’s militaristic, price this year, but no watch
originally inspired by an has persevered quite like
Cartier Tank actual French battle tank, the 100-year-old Tank. Still,
yet also represents the by relaunching the more-
The Tank is a spectacular likes of Muhammad Ali and pinnacle of elegance. Other affordable Must line this
shape-shifter of a timepiece. Princess Diana. It comes related and bizarrely shaped year, Cartier has ensured
Beloved by Tyler, the Creator, in mossy green, deep vintage Cartier watches like that Tanks remain relatively
and Rami Malek, it also once cabernet, and yellow-gold— the Crash and Pebble are attainable—even as its
found devotees among the a mix of unlikely and classic exploding in value at auction popularity skyrockets.
houses, some doubling in
—CAM WOLF

GROUP FIT OF THE YEAR ‘THE FRENCH DISPATCH’ CAST: STEPHANE CARDINALE/CORBIS/GET TY IMAGES. CARTIER TANK:
PHOTOGRAPH, MARTIN BROWN; PROP STYLIST, SHARON RYAN FOR HALLEY RESOURCES.
‘THE FRENCH
DISPATCH’ CAST

at Cannes

Before the pandemic, red-carpet events often felt
sterile: guys shuffling in well-tailored navy and black
suits. But pandemic-enforced distance from these types
of gatherings made hearts grow fonder—and fits grow
bigger. Nowhere was that more apparent than at the
Cannes Film Festival, where stars of Wes Anderson’s
new film, The French Dispatch, gathered an ensemble
of gloriously unharmonious looks. Timothée Chalamet
traded in his Tom Ford suit for merch from the Safdie
bros’ production company, Elara Pictures. Anderson did
his thing in neo-preppy tailoring; Tilda Swinton was a
sharp counterpoint in a Haider Ackerman suit. But for
true style aficionados, it was Bill Murray’s double watch
that sent this pic into the stratosphere. The photo of the
crew swiftly became internet dynamite as the foursome
came to represent just about any kind of quartet (“tik-
tok, twitter, instagram, fb,” one writer tweeted). The best
red-carpet photo of 2021 was fodder for a rare day of fun
online and a reminder that style is at its most powerful,
meme-able, and culturally relevant when everyone flies
their freak flag. — C A M W O L F

118 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

Aimé Leon Dore BREAKTHROUGH DESIGNER OF THE YEAR
Prada
ELI RUSSELL
LINNETZ for ERL

If most young designers require a handful of years to
hone their vision, Eli Russell Linnetz emerged fully formed
as a fashion godhead. Sure, the wunderkind came with
excellent credentials—after assisting David Mamet, he
became a protégé of Kanye West, eventually directing the
video for “Fade,” and then made a name snapping portraits
of Lady Gaga and Hailey Bieber. But in 2020, Linnetz lev-
eraged a different kind of support when, at the urging of
Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market president
Adrian Joffe, he launched his first full men’s collection with
DSM. ERL’s easy, colorful sweatshirts, long underwear,
gym shorts, and corduroys hit like a mandate for California
dreaming. This year, his puffers became a celebrity must-
have, and he debuted a perfume, called Sunscreen. He
burst into a new realm of notoriety when he dressed
A$AP Rocky for the Met Gala, swathing the musician in
a shrunken tuxedo and a silk patchwork quilt he picked
up at a California thrift store. Linnetz’s fashion ambitions
mark the arrival of a true original whose clothes embody

at its finest. — R A C H E L TA S H J I A N

AIMÉ LEON DORE: AL AMY. LOAFERS, ELI RUSSELL LINNETZ AND ERL RUNWAY PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF BRANDS. Celine

The LoaferSHOE OF THE YEAR

This spring, after a year already ascendant loafer
of being locked indoors, it became the footwear
felt like the entire country choice of the moment: all
was itching to step out in the dressy, hard-bottomed
some honest-to-goodness goodness you crave, with
shoes again—but maybe no pesky laces to tie. And
not so willing to give up the right on cue, a parade of
comfort and convenience unimpeachable loafers
of the slippers they’d arrived from every corner
been living in around the of the fashion universe.
clock. That’s how the
—YANG-YI GOH

STORE OF THE YEAR Members of the neo- how a clothing brand can
prep, post-streetwear become the linchpin of a
AIMÉ LEON New American Sportswear subculture as young people
DORE, cult have been mobbing in ALD New Balances,
Nolita for a few years now, Yankees caps, and mohair
214 Mulberry keeping the retail dream cardigans swarm the block
Street, NYC alive at the flagships for sipping lattes and snapping
brands Noah, Saturdays ’grams, waiting their turn to
NYC, and, the buzziest of shop the latest drop inside.
them all, Aimé Leon Dore. Wondering about the future
On any given day outside of brick-and-mortar? Just
the cream-colored shop ask the boss, Teddy Santis.
and café, opened in 2019, He’s usually perched out
you can witness firsthand front. — N O A H J O H N S O N

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 119

RED-CARPET RULER OF THE YEAR

Thom Browne

Lil Uzi Vert is one of the world’s preeminent fit
gods, a man who owns more clothes from more luxury
labels than there are books in the Library of Congress.
According to him, though, there’s only one designer
he wears every day without fail. “Thom Browne is cool
as hell,” Uzi says. He’s sitting in Browne’s marble-clad
New York flagship, dressed in one of Browne’s signature
shrunken gray suits, with a neon-lit space helmet—the
trademark of his new pseudonym AstroCat—cocked back
on his head. “It makes me feel more than unique,” he says
of the clothes, gazing down to admire his ensemble. “It
makes me feel complete. It makes me feel like no one
else exists.”

Uzi is hardly alone in his devotion to Browne. Over the
past few years, in fact, few designers have been responsi-
ble for more electric celebrity fashion moments. LeBron
James bought Browne suits for the entire Cleveland
Cavaliers roster in 2018. Cardi B won the 2019 Met Gala
in a labyrinthine feathered Browne concoction, and more
than a dozen (!) attendees of the 2021 edition—Erykah
Badu, Evan Mock, Sharon Stone, and Pete Davidson (in a
dress) among them—rolled through in staggering Thom
Browne looks. Dan Levy racked up a quartet of Emmys
in 2020 wearing a Thom Browne pleated kilt, and the
designer was a force at this year’s Grammys (Phoebe
Bridgers in a shimmering skeleton gown), Oscars (Minari
scene-stealer Alan Kim in a short tuxedo), and New York
Fashion Week (Russell Westbrook in a flowy white skirt).

All of this star power is relatively new for Browne, and
it’s lent a fresh energy to his work. For someone whose rep-
utation was built on the precise and methodical manner
with which he approaches every aspect of his life—from his
fastidious tailoring to his clipped haircut—there’s a fluid,
expansive diversity to the people Browne chooses to dress.
“The most important thing is that they’re true individuals,”
Browne says of his taste in ambassadors. “They’re really
true to themselves, and they do something. We live in a
world where some people are famous for not doing very
much, which is not interesting to me at all. I like people to
put the time in and be serious about what they do, and not
care about what anybody else thinks.”

Wearing Thom Browne, then, marks you as a member
of an exclusive club—but, like, an actually good exclusive
club. “His work draws a certain type of personality,” the art-
ist Amy Sherald says. “If I was walking down the street and
I saw somebody that was wearing Thom Browne, automat-
ically I would feel a kinship. The same kinship I feel when
I walk into a room full of businesspeople and maybe one
person’s an artist—you kind of already know each other.”

Browne’s longtime friend Whoopi Goldberg adds:
“People are always surprised to see me wearing Thom
Browne. People just don’t see me in it. They see tall, lithe
people. They don’t realize that everything he makes,
everyone can wear. It’s universal. He sees me [in his
clothes], and I love that.”

Twenty years after Browne designed his first high-wa-
ter suits, it feels more than ever like the world has finally
caught up to his vision. “That’s the key to success,” he says.
“Doing your thing, and just doing it and doing it and not
being swayed by everything else going on.”

Browne’s loyal followers serve as proof of that. “It’s really
the only thing AstroCat wears,” Uzi says. “Thom Browne
is the only one that reminds him of home.” —YA N G -Y I G O H

120 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

From left: Aminé, Amy Sherald, Anh Duong,
Charles Melton, Alan Kim, Thom Browne,
Whoopi Goldberg, Lee Pace, Lil Uzi Vert.
thom browne, lee
pace, charles melton,
aminé: grooming by kumi
craig using la mer at
the wall group. whoopi
goldberg, amy sherald,
anh duong, alan kim: hair
by ayumi yamamoto at
bridge using kérastase;
makeup by allie smith at
bridge using chanel.

Photograph by Charlie Engman

ACCESSORY OF THE YEAR

PEARLS From left:
Pete
Now that they’ve arrived
on the set of Saturday Night Davidson,
Live thanks to ex-scum-bro A$AP Rocky,
Pete Davidson, and in the
Major Leagues thanks to Joc
self-described bad bitch Pederson.
Atlanta Brave Joc Pederson,
pearls have officially gone
mainstream. Think of it as
radically modern, gender-
transcending masculinity—
by way of granny’s jewelry
box. — S A M U E L H I N E

SNEAKERS OF THE YEAR churns these influences into
vibrantly colored throwback
Adidas x Wales Bonner styles and Sambas with
homespun crochet details.
In a bog of overhyped Over the course of two drawing from the British The Adidas x Wales Bonner
sneakers from overhyped collections, Wales Bonner Jamaican community and collaboration won’t make you
collaborators, English has marinated three- her own dad’s wardrobe, a StockX kingpin, but there
designer Grace Wales striped sneakers like the Jamaican dancehall culture are few better sneakers to
Bonner’s Adidas are the Samba, Nizza, and SL 72 in the ’80s, and European remind you the whole point
thinking-person’s kicks. in international flavors, football. Wales Bonner of shoes is to wear them.

—CAM WOLF

122 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

OPPOSITE PAGE: PETE DAVIDSON, ALEX HOOKS/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GET T Y IMAGES; A$AP ROCKY, JIM SPELLMAN/GET T Y IMAGES; SHOWOFTHEYEAR LouisVuittonSpring-Summer2022
JOC PEDERSON, DAVID J. GRIFFIN/ICON SPORTSWIRE VIA GET TY IMAGES; WALES BONNER X ADIDAS, MARTIN BROWN; PROP STYLIST,
SHARON RYAN FOR HALLEY RESOURCES. THIS PAGE: LOUIS VUITTON SPRING/SUMMER 2022 AND DIESEL: COURTESY OF BRANDS. The fashion film rose to his spring-summer 2022 Williams, GZA, and Goldie, generations.” The “Amen”
prominence this year, as Louis Vuitton collection, and the young French break is the metaphor, he
designers searched for titled Amen Break after actor Issa Perica. “I was said: “The film reflects
new ways to engage with the widely sampled drum interested in exploring on a historic moment in
audiences that broke from beat that is foundational the idea of transmission,” Black art and culture when
the traditional runway. to hip-hop and jungle Abloh told GQ in an electronic music and hip-
But none of these video music. Released this June, email. “The act of passing hop emerged like twins from
projects were as essential it is a gorgeous 15-minute something from one person the same egg, and trickled
and impactful as the film fashion epic that stars to another, activating into every part of the globe.”
Virgil Abloh made for legendary musicians Saul waves of change across
—NOAH JOHNSON

COMEBACK OF THE YEAR

DIESEL
by Glenn Martens

Diesel’s low-rise, boot-cut jeans helped create the pre-
mium denim wave that swept the early aughts. And many
of us invested a small fortune in them, only to see the
trend pass. But now that Y2K has reemerged as a fashion
buzzword, the Italian denim brand has come roaring back
with Belgian designer Glenn Martens, creative director of
conceptual Parisian label Y/Project, at the helm. Martens
started at Diesel in 2020, and has already reinvigorated
the brand with his signature asymmetrical silhouettes and
radical proportions, creating pieces that take a progres-
sive approach to conventional denim for the jeans-hungry
masses. He’s also dipping into the archives—a recent
Diesel x Diesel collection included zeitgeisty leather
bombers and baggy jeans that Martens revived from the
’90s. But his focus, he has said, is actually sustainability,
taking on every aspect of the business: from the raw cot-
ton to the washes to the production chain. For a brand
the size of Diesel, that’s more than a talking point. It’s an
opportunity to make a difference. —T E O VA N D E N B R O E K E

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 123

BY MYCHAL
DENZEL SMITH
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
RENELL MEDRANO

STYLED BY
SIMON RASMUSSEN

He’s had a Hall of Fame career in the NBA, where he fashioned himself into a gender-exploding fashion icon. But when
you peel away the attitude, and the hair, and the piercings and tattoos, who is Dennis Rodman underneath it all?

124 GQ.COM MOTY 2021



as they are treated—in the main, we’re in Florida, where COVID surges seemed ManTFup, which is supposed to “improve
abominably—because they are human to be happening every week, but because this energy levels” and “increase vitality” or some-
beings who cause to echo, deep within us, is Dennis Rodman we’re talking about. I have thing. It’s the kind of product you might see
our most profound terrors and desires.” no idea how to prepare for whatever could advertised on daytime ESPN with a wink and
—James Baldwin, “Freaks and the go down at a party hosted by one of the most a nod toward heterosexual virility. Dennis,
American Ideal of Manhood,” 1985 notorious partiers of all time. to his credit, doesn’t try to sell me very hard.
“I think a lot of companies don’t want to fuck
W H E N I S E E T H A T there’s a Fort Lauderdale The festivities are set to take place at Salt7, with me,” he says in his typical half mumble.
party on the agenda for my time with Dennis which bills itself as an upscale steakhouse “[But this is] all healthy stu≠. It’s pretty much
Rodman, I get nervous. Not only because that pulls double duty as a nightclub. He just vitamins. If you want to do it, do it. Shit,
arrives in a black SUV to a crowd anticipat- whatever.” He may not be an enthusiastic
ing the full Dennis Rodman experience, and pitchman, but he is, at 60, still unapologeti-
he’s delivering with his look: His hair is dyed cally himself.
neon orange, and he’s wearing leopard-print
sweats with a teal tank that features a There’s a very South Florida crowd gath-
flamingo in the middle. Custom Crocs and ered on the patio—not quite Miami, but
light-tinted shades, to show o≠ his gold eye- maybe its older cousin. Skimpy dresses and
shadow, complete the fit. Cigar in hand, he four-inch heels alongside white linen pants
makes his way over to the red carpet, all of and loafers. Everyone’s skin seems to have
the representatives for his new venture clear- been kissed by the sun a little longer than is
ing a path, and poses for pictures. A jogger on dermatologically recommended, but they’re
her evening run stops in her tracks to call a braving the August heat nevertheless just for
friend about the scene she’s come across, and Dennis. He’s surrounded by the people he’s
I can hear her say “Dennis Rodman… that’s a collected over the years, or those trying to get
crazy thing to run up on.” close to him now. He’s in his element, greeting
partygoers left and right, snapping pictures
Tonight’s party is a promotional event for with the dozen or so hired models and cueing
a line of male supplements that Rodman has up Instagram Live to share the festivities with
recently begun endorsing—a product called his fans who couldn’t make it.

Salt7 has a large outdoor seating area and
I’m vaccinated, so I’m happy to mill about
and watch people fawn over him. One guy
o≠ers Dennis $200 in cash to take a picture
(Dennis obliges), and another desperately
wants him to sign a basketball he claims is
for his charity. Whatever else is happening,
Dennis has his cigar and all the drinks he
could want and is surrounded by a deep rota-
tion of pretty, young models. There’s seem-
ingly nothing that could come along to rain
on his parade.

And then, almost biblically, the sky cracks
open and it starts to pour.

W H E N H I S N B A career abruptly ended at the
turn of the century, Dennis partied nonstop.
He once claimed to have slept with 2,000
women in his lifetime and, more harrowingly,
once claimed to have broken his penis during
sex three times. He was almost 40 then, but
still partied like it was his job. Sometimes
it was. Like other celebrities, Dennis was
reportedly o≠ered up to six figures from clubs
all over the world to make an appearance, to
be the main attraction for a night.

But he was still spending money faster
than he could make it. Without the structure
NBA life provided, without an outlet for all
his energy, he found himself, and not for the
first time in his life, aimless. “They had bets
in Vegas when I was 40 years old about what
year I was going to die,” he tells me. “You go
in like… what they call it? The sports books
in the casinos. You go in and say, ‘Oh, 10 to 1
Dennis Rodman is going to die this year.’ That
kind of shit.”

←←

OPENING PAGES

vest $9,400
Gucci

top $4,900
Ludovic de
Saint Sernin

skirt (price
upon request)
Thom Browne

boots $195
Timberland

socks $34
Falke

sunglasses $450
Gentle Monster

earrings, nose
rings, and lip rings
(throughout), his own

link bracelet
(on left arm)
$2,695
Good Art

ID bracelets (on
left arm) $10,500
and (on right
arm) $4,500
David Yurman

link bracelet
(on right arm) $795
Martine Ali

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OPPOSITE PAGE

jacket $1,460
Botter

sunglasses $447
Miu Miu

necklace $4,235
Homer

→
sweater $2,051
Raf Simons

skirt (price
upon request)
Louis Vuitton Men’s

boots $198
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socks $34
Falke

hat $500
Stetson

sunglasses $765
Balenciaga

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 127

128 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

jacket $2,690 Basketball had been the only thing that
pants $975 gave his life structure, so three years after
Givenchy retiring in 2000, he attempted to orchestrate
an NBA comeback and was moving forward
sunglasses $150 on signing with the Denver Nuggets. Then,
Raen in October 2003, the partying caught up
with him when he crashed a motorcycle out-
medium link side of a Las Vegas strip club. Dennis would
necklace $695 later plead no contest to driving under the
influence, with his hopes of returning to the
Martine Ali NBA dashed due to a leg injury. He was sur-
rounded by people who never wished him
large chain well, if they wished him anything at all.
necklace $1,950
Celine Homme by More dependable figures from Dennis’s
life would occasionally try to intervene—like
Hedi Slimane Phil Jackson, his old coach on the Chicago
Bulls. “I like to have a good time, man. Good,
bracelet (on clean fun,” says Dennis. “But for a while it
left arm) $2,695 was kind of a little sketchy. That’s when Phil
Jackson took me to the side, and that’s the
Good Art first time Phil Jackson ever got emotional
with me. He said, ‘Dennis, I don’t want you
bracelet (on to die.’ ”
right arm) $795
For all the flashy outward signifiers, he’s
Martine Ali carried a lot of pain inside, pain that he’s
mostly kept to himself and that the partying
has never cured, though it hasn’t stopped him
from trying. The past few years, though, have
seen him opening up a bit more publicly. He’s
starting to reflect on his life now that he’s
older, and he wants to make amends, though
he’s not always clear on how.

A D A Y B E F O R E the party, Dennis and I are
sitting on a balcony at the W Hotel overlook-
ing the Fort Lauderdale strip. He’s a little
grouchy, a bit hungry—I’d been warned that
you never quite know which Dennis you’re
going to get—but we’re out here because we
both want to have a cigar.

I’ve got an illegally purchased, and poten-
tially fake, Cuban in my pocket that I picked
up earlier for this occasion. In his first real
acknowledgment of my presence, Dennis
instructs his friend Floyd to hand me one of
his, a Montecristo White Series. It’s a little
light for my taste, but it would be rude to turn
it down, and I’m in for whatever puts Dennis
in a good mood.

He takes a drag of the cigar and seems
immediately pacified, so I tell him that I was
a Chicago Bulls fan even though I grew up in
Virginia Beach, hoping to break the ice.

“Sounds original,” he says dryly. Dennis
Rodman just dissed me, and I’m choosing
to take this as a sign that the cigar has him
su∞ciently relaxed. Comfortable. We start
chit-chatting about basketball, specifically
his legacy, and I mention something about
him being the greatest rebounder of all time.

“That sounds too crazy to say shit like
that,” he says dismissively. “I would say
Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain. But that’s a
di≠erent era.” While this may be seen as an
act of humility and respect, he’s right about

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 129

that last part—about playing in a ↑ get familiar with how they play, so that debuted in the early days of COVID
di≠erent era. His was an era that I had to sit there and focus, focus, lockdown and, to some extent, recontextu-
Dennis himself helped to define. ABOVE focus,” he says. Dennis decided alized Dennis’s place in the culture. There’s
this was his role, then turned one scene where Dennis starts to explain his
He was selected by the Detroit vest $9,400 self-assigned homework of learning how the
Gucci ball would bounce and spin o≠ missed shots
from di≠erent players from every spot on the
Pistons in the second round of top $4,900 it into a craft, one he dedicated floor. The moment, however, was immedi-
the 1986 NBA draft, 27th over- Ludovic de Saint all of his free time to honing. He ately meme-ified and flattened, with Dennis’s
all, when he was 25. He had had became a key part of the legend- flailing arms and facial expression used as
an excellent college career at Sernin ary Bad Boys, a physically intimi- fodder for feelings of exasperation or confu-
Southeastern Oklahoma State dating, take-no-shit Detroit team sion. As memes circulate and transform, the
University, even though he’d skirt (price upon that regularly beat up a young original context ceases to be part of its con-
hardly played organized basket- request) Michael Jordan and his Chicago sumption, and, here with Dennis, something
ball before college. The Pistons Bulls in the playo≠s. On a team of major is lost. “What the memes obscured,
Thom Browne in very classic Rodmanian tradition, is they
obscured the genius,” says ESPN’s Pablo
sunglasses $450 Torre. “Like he’s telling you, ‘This is how I did
Gentle Monster it. This is my approach, and the fact that it
seems insane to all of you’—and he didn’t say
considered him more of a project big personalities, he was a quiet, this part—‘is clearly because I am a savant.’ ”

than a prospect, and given a roster stacked relentless grinder—an endearing fan favorite. He was far smaller than most traditional
big men at six foot seven, and despite those
with Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Rick Mahorn, The result was two NBA championships before physical limitations he led the league in
rebounds per game for seven seasons, some-
and Bill Laimbeer, Dennis needed to find a Dennis turned 30. “I worked on defense every times averaging over 18 a game. He turned
rebounding into an art form, another piece of
way to stand out and make himself valuable. day for, like, a couple of years, man,” he says. entertainment, like a no-look pass or a dunk.
He understood where to place himself on a
So he made the decision to focus almost exclu- “And all of a sudden, I perfected it to the point basketball court at any given time better than
almost any player in league history. “If you
sively on defense and rebounding: areas of the where I knew how players were going to react look at some of my tapes, when I see the ball
go up, watch me underneath the basket, how
game that require tremendous amounts of to something [before they did].” I position myself,” Dennis insists. “Because
players don’t see that. They’re always looking
energy, which played to his strengths. As a basketball fan, listening to Dennis get at the ball. They don’t look at me.”

He realized almost immediately that his into the weeds of defensive and rebounding Eventually, things fell apart with the
Pistons. By 1993, coach Chuck Daly—whom
motor wouldn’t be enough. In order to play strategy is thrilling, especially because it’s Dennis had revered as a father figure—was
gone. Suddenly, he was without the stability
defense against the league’s biggest stars— such an intellectual pursuit for him. Seeing that he had relied on. That was the year he
sat alone in the parking lot of The Palace of
“Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, all Dennis’s interiority was the most fascinat- Auburn Hills and very nearly killed himself.
He fell asleep, rifle in his lap, listening to
these guys, legendary guys,” he says—Dennis ing part of The Last Dance, the ESPN and Pearl Jam. He only woke up when the police
knocked on his window. “The cops had their
figured he would have to study up. “I had to Netflix docuseries about the Jordan-led Bulls guns drawn and all this shit,” he says.

After that incident, he locked himself
inside his home for nearly two months.
Instead of suicide, he experienced a more
metaphorical death. “I went from the
mild-mannered, humble, emotional guy to
this whole other side of Dennis Rodman,” he
says. “When I came out of my house, that’s
when the new Dennis came out.”

I T W A S I N this moment of transformation
that Dennis Rodman as he exists in our imag-
inations was born. After the season, Dennis
demanded a trade and ended up on the Spurs.
In San Antonio, he dyed his hair. He collected
more tattoos and started getting piercings.
On the court, he started yelling at referees
and was regularly ejected from games. O≠ the
court, he found (continued on page 138)

130 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

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The most
extraordinary

explorer-
mountaineer-
photographer-
documentarian of
our time, Jimmy
Chin reached
new heights with
his film Free
Solo. And now
he’s panning out
to even bigger
stories, like The
Rescue—his
account of 2018’s
riveting Thai
cave saga. So
has all the Oscar
success cost
Chin his edge?
Well, he just
dropped off the
side of a cliff—
and now it’s GQ’s

turn.

BY JACOB BAYNHAM

PHOTOGRAPH BY
SAVANNAH CUMMINS

Chin solos on a section
of the Watchtower,
a ridge in Grand Teton
National Park.

132 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

ADVENTURER OF THE YEAR

the sun dips I can feel the bite of the alpine
air. We can camp together, Chin tells me, add-
ing, “It’ll be warmer.” He remarks that he’s lit-
erally spent years of his life in a tent as I help
him set up a lightweight model he recently
took to Antarctica.

The central peaks of the Tetons encircle
us, their fingerprints revealed by a dusting
of snow. Chin lets out a little whoop. “That’s
a sick campsite,” he says. “A lot di≠erent than
the Beverly Wilshire, which is where I was
sleeping two nights ago.”

he wants it: framed in the bug-splattered of water. I follow as he sets o≠ through the C H I N S P E N D S M U C H of the year in New York
windshield of his pop-top camper van. It’s conifers with his shoes untied and his pants and on the road, but his soul lives in Jackson,
a crisp September morning, and we’re set- rolled halfway up his powerful calves. He the town where he once valeted cars and
ting out on an overnight backpacking trip in floats up the trail with the jaunty pluck of a shoveled snow to finance his quests in the
Grand Teton National Park, 10 minutes from skater Huck Finn. mountains. It’s here that he’s building a new
his home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. At the house with a huge gear room, two climbing
park’s entrance, Chin flashes his pass like a As we ascend the switchbacks, Chin elic- walls, and a kind of campground for his
VIP getting into a club. “You need a map?” the its all the commotion of a wildlife sighting. nomadic friends and their vans. From his
ranger asks. “Uh, no,” Chin says. Whispers ripple through the groups we pass. bedroom window, Chin will be able to see the
At one point a man in a teal T-shirt blurts out, Grand Teton, his north star.
Dressed in gray climbing pants, a baseball “I’m super inspired by you. Just, thank you.
tee, and a North Face trucker hat, the world’s Keep truckin’.” We met the night before our adventure at
preeminent mountain photographer and a place he was renting while his house was
adventure filmmaker grows more animated Chin shakes his hand and asks his name— under construction. When he stood up and
the closer we get to the trail. The training it’s Kevin—and we keep climbing toward shook my hand, it struck me that at 48 years
that prepared him for major expeditions Garnet Canyon and Middle Teton, which old, he could still pass for a college student
on the world’s tallest peaks almost always looms before us like a giant granite tra∞c getting up from a video game. There was a
happened here. “You can’t replicate that in a cone. On the canyon’s north rim lies our bottle of Advil and a half-eaten bag of dried
gym,” he tells me. “You can do box steps until climbing objective: a thin blade of rock called mangoes on the co≠ee table. He carried some
you’re blue in the face, but you’ve got to be in the Watchtower. It’s a jaunt for Chin but an weariness in his face, but my arrival meant
the mountains.” undertaking for most; just the approach something of a reprieve—a trip into the
requires a four-hour hike and a vertical mile Tetons. “I’m probably more stoked than you
Chin is 5 foot 8, with the chest, arms, and of elevation gain. are,” he told me before going to bed. “I need
thighs of a middle linebacker—a heft that my mountain time.”
serves him well on grueling, weeks-long expe- After three hours we reach a spring gur-
ditions at altitude. “You have to have endur- gling out of a rock field. “You kinda gotta For more than 20 years now, the moun-
ance, power, and strength,” he says. “You’ve drink straight from it,” Chin says. “This water tains have been the crucible in which Chin
gotta be hard to kill.” is alive. It’s like the pinnacle of water. It’s like has forged his singular life. He is a profes-
the fountain of youth.” He drinks and then sional climber, sponsored by The North
Grand Teton, the highest peak in the range, lies down on a boulder whose contours, he’s Face; a mountain photographer, spon-
is a 7,000-foot vertical climb with dangerous learned, make the perfect natural couch. sored by Canon; a filmmaker with National
sections near the top. Chin estimates he’s Putting his hands behind his head, he looks Geographic. He shoots big-budget commer-
scaled it 80 times, most recently with his up at the mountains like he’s admiring the art cials for blue-chip companies like Ford. More
seven-year-old daughter. In winter he skis it. on his living room wall. recently, of course, he’s also become the codi-
That’s how he trained for his 2006 ski descent rector of nail-biting, award-winning docu-
from the summit of Everest. “I was just huck- An hour later we arrive at our camp, below mentaries—Meru (2015), Free Solo (2018), and
ing laps on that thing,” he says of the Grand. the Grand Teton and in the shadow of the The Rescue (2021)—that reevaluate the limits
“There was a period when I was skiing it, like, Watchtower. We’re at 11,000 feet, and when of human potential. Through that multifac-
three times a week.” eted success, Chin has become a citizen of two
worlds: He’s a Manhattanite and a Jackson
Full days in the mountains are harder to
schedule now. Two days ago, he was in L.A. “You want Jimmy on your side in a
for a screening of his new documentary, war,” his wife says. “He’s one of
The Rescue, a film he directed with his wife, the single-most trusting, loyal,
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, about the mirac- and reliable people I know.... He
ulous, complex operation to save 12 boys just has raging fires inside of him,
and their soccer coach from a flooded cave
in Thailand in 2018. After the screening he but that’s kind of the point.”
took a red-eye to New York to represent Ford
Motor Company in a panel discussion on
climate change. Then he flew back home to
Jackson. In three days he’ll rendezvous with

134 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

After climbing in
the Tetons, Chin
rinses off the dust
and sweat with a
dip in String Lake.

rescue and that Vasarhelyi secured at the
last possible moment.

For Chin, The Rescue represents the next
act in a polymathic life, a broadening of his
scope to encompass a world of adventure
storytelling beyond climbing. Over the next
two years he’ll release a documentary about
how Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins,
founders of Patagonia and The North Face,
orchestrated the creation of a 14-million-acre
national park in Chile and Argentina.
Another is in the works about a daunting, yet-
to-be-unveiled Himalayan expedition that
Krakauer calls “astonishing in its audacity.”
Meanwhile, production is under way for Chin
and Vasarhelyi’s first scripted feature film, a
biopic about long-distance swimmer Diana
Nyad, starring Annette Bening.

Chin has summited Everest and won an
Oscar, yet it seems that he’s just setting out
from base camp on the unprecedented ascent
that is his career. The pace is unrelenting, but
Chin finds his peace within the storm. “It’s
kind of like being on expeditions,” he says.
“You just do the work and carry your weight.”

T H E R E ’ S A T E N S I O N in Jimmy Chin

that’s existed ever since he was a child in

Minnesota, where he grew up between the

rigid discipline of his parents and a wild

restlessness that propelled him outside. His

local, a dirtbag climber who’s at home on the Award for their astonishingly relatable depic- parents, Frank and Yen Yen, fled China for
red carpet. More than anything, perhaps, he’s tion of Alex Honnold’s 3,000-foot rope-less
the consummate generalist whose constella- climb up Yosemite’s El Capitan. Taiwan during the Communist Revolution
tion of skills has never aligned in quite the
same way for anyone ever before. Plus, there’s “It’s all slightly masked by the super-chill and immigrated to the U.S. in 1962, finding
the snow-melting smile. surfer vibe,” Honnold says, “but this is a man
who works very hard and gets it done. He’s work as university librarians in Mankato,
Along the way, he’s become a survivor—of not an elite rock climber. The thing that sets
accidents, disasters, near starvation, bitter Jimmy apart is he’s really fit. He’s really good Minnesota, a mostly white college town sur-
cold, trench foot, bandits, and other ordeals at staying ahead of people on the hike, on the
on expeditions in places like Patagonia and descent. He’s e∞cient, which is how he gets in rounded by fields of corn and soybeans. When
Borneo, China and Oman. “Jimmy could’ve position to get the shot and tell the story. The
become a Navy SEAL as easily as he became other thing is he has such nice skin.” their second child was born, Yen Yen named
a climber,” says Into Thin Air author Jon
Krakauer, a friend and collaborator of Chin’s. Now Chin’s circles extend far beyond him after James Dean—a harbinger, perhaps,
“He’s really good at big-wall climbing, bust- mountaineers. In 2019 he took Brie Larson
ass-hard endurance stu≠ where you’ve gotta up the Grand Teton, and he often climbs with of his future rebellion. But the couple had a
su≠er. He really thrives and excels when Jason Momoa and Jared Leto. “It’s rare that
you’ve gotta deliver, when failure isn’t an an artist like him is also a madman of the di≠erent vision for Chin and his older sister,
option, when you don’t get a second chance.” mountains,” Leto writes in an email. “He is
one of the best of both.” pushing them toward a demanding pursuit
Chin came of age in the ’90s as a peripatetic
climber floating between America’s national Chin’s next month is booked solid with of excellence. Chin started playing the violin
parks. In the early aughts, he entered the pub- events around the release of The Rescue. He
lic consciousness with his glossy expedition and Vasarhelyi followed the story closely as at age three, was swimming competitively at
photos in the pages of National Geographic, it unfolded, and Chin soon recognized that
and soon he was America’s go-to adventure cave diving, much like climbing, is a lifestyle seven, and by the seventh grade had earned a
photographer, with his own portrait illu- for the misfit rescuers at the center of the
minating the covers of Outside magazine. operation. The movie’s biggest challenge, black belt in tae kwon do.
Then he started making documentaries, and and eventual coup, was integrating the 87
in 2019 he and Vasarhelyi won an Academy hours of never-before-seen footage that the Like many of his white Midwestern class-
Royal Thai Navy SEALs filmed during the
mates, Chin had a paper route and summer

jobs detasseling corn. He fished in the nearby

lakes and hunted whitetails with his father in

fall. In winter he learned to ski, in jeans, on

the tiny hill near his house.

But Chin’s father wouldn’t let his children

forget they were Chinese. He ignored the

kids when they addressed him in English,

and every few years they returned to Taiwan,

where Chin studied calligraphy, language,

and tai chi. His parents imagined his future

as one of three possibilities: business, law,

or medicine. (continued on next page)

PHOTOGRAPH BY JUSTIN BISHOP MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 135

JIMMY CHIN

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 135 Half Dome, although he forgot his headlamp. which each member pulled over 200 pounds
“He wasn’t a fuckup,” Robinson says, “but he of supplies in customized rickshaws—o≠ered
“I feel like his drive came from internalizing was a little absentminded.” Chin his first assignment for National
my father’s constant pushing,” says Chin’s sis- Geographic: to document the remote birthing
ter, Grace Hartman. “Achieve, achieve. Never Together, Robinson and Chin learned big- grounds of the endangered Tibetan antelope.
give up. Push all the time. He never wanted to wall techniques in Yosemite and ice climbing
pat us on the back because then we’d think we in the Sierra Nevada. “We had aspirations Still, as the years ticked by, Robinson
didn’t have to do anything ever again.” to go climb the raddest shit on the planet,” watched his path diverge from Chin’s. On
Robinson says. Robinson taught Chin the expeditions Chin would stage tripod selfies of
Chin’s parents introduced him to the maj- basics of his Nikon 35-mm camera. At the campsite moments that his sponsors valued.
esty of the outdoors on cross-country road summit of El Capitan, Chin snapped a pho- He started keeping a journal for posterity.
trips to national parks. They also kept him tograph of Robinson in his sleeping bag with While Robinson was thinking about his girl-
well-supplied with books, and one of his earli- a Yosemite sunrise behind him, an image friend, Chin was strategically becoming a pro-
est influences was The Hobbit. “It just blew my Robinson sold to the gear maker Mountain fessional. “For me it was painful,” Robinson
mind,” he says. “I felt like I lived in this little Hardwear for $500. They split the money, and says. “There was a lightness to the partnership
town that wasn’t that exciting, and I wanted Chin glimpsed, for the first time, a viable route that was shifting. I’m not saying he cast me
to go out on these big adventures and explore for a life in the mountains. aside, but I wasn’t the right partner for him.”
this big world.”
Soon the pair were hungry for their first As Chin’s career gathered momentum,
Chin enrolled at Carleton College, in big-mountain expedition. Chin bought his he was making up to five expeditions a year.
Minnesota, where he joined the alpine ski team own Nikon and drove out to Berkeley to In 2003 he first tried to ski Everest but was
and played guitar in a reggae band. One sum- meet Galen Rowell, a famous mountain caught in an avalanche that sent him flying like
mer he skipped an internship in D.C. to wait photographer who’d recently returned from a kite through the air, saved only by the rope
tables in Glacier National Park, climbing his the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan. tethering him to his partner anchored in the
first peaks between shifts. After graduating in When Rowell’s assistant said he was busy, snow. He scouted ski lines when he summited
1996, he told his parents he was heading west Chin waited the rest of the day, a process he in 2004 with mountaineering legend David
to climb, ski, and sleep in his Subaru Loyale. repeated for five days before Rowell finally Breashears, and in 2006 he finally skied it with
met with him. During their meeting, Rowell his friends Kit and Rob DesLauriers—a descent
“They just couldn’t understand what he was gave Chin a slideshow of his recent trip and, that required perfect jump turns on the Lhotse
doing,” Hartman says. “They still saw in their at the end, pulled a slide from the carousel of face, a 50-degree slope of bulletproof ice. It was
mind what they wanted him to be.” Hartman two unclimbed peaks in Pakistan’s Charakusa one of the worst, and scariest, runs of his life,
had taken a di≠erent course. “I studied hard, Valley—Fathi Tower and Parhat Tower. but richly rewarding. “There was a moment
I went to Stanford, I got a job at Yale, all those “There’s your objectives,” Rowell said. “Make where I was all alone on top, skis sticking o≠
things Asian parents hope for their children. sure you bring your camera.” the summit,” he says. “I was finally about to
I just did computers. Boring. But I was happy drop in on the tallest mountain in the world.”
with that because that was their dream for me, After raising money selling homemade
so that became my dream for myself. Jimmy T-shirts, Chin and Robinson flew to Pakistan Chin’s lifestyle still caused great pain and
was not happy with that. So he totally broke in the summer of 1999. “We weren’t particu- confusion for his parents. Five thousand years
with everything.” larly good climbers,” Robinson recalls of that of language, they’d tell him, and we don’t have
first trip. “The thing about being Jimmy is we a word in Chinese for what you do. “It was a
Chin lived out of the back of his Subaru didn’t freaking quit.” very big deal,” says his sister, “basically all the
for the next seven years, drifting between way up until both my parents’ deaths. They
Yosemite, Bozeman, Mammoth, and Jackson. On their third attempt, they finally climbed were always so upset because he wasn’t doing
Hartman remembers those vagabond years Fathi Tower, a feat that created a buzz at the what he was supposed to.”
well. Every time she talked to her brother next summer’s outdoor apparel trade show in
and asked how he was, he’d say, “I’m really, Salt Lake City. That’s where Chin met Conrad Chin was filming a project on Everest with
really happy.” Anker, the alpinist who would kick-start his Anker in 2007 when he learned that his moth-
career. A decade older than Chin, Anker had er’s lung cancer had rapidly progressed. He
But even as a prodigal son, Chin couldn’t a staggering résumé of ascents in the world’s did what he almost never does—bailed on the
abandon everything his parents had instilled most challenging mountains. He had just job and flew back to be by her side during her
in him. “His father infected him with the drive,” found the body of George Mallory, the famed final days.
Krakauer says. “He didn’t have a cure. He sort of British climber lost on Everest in 1924. Shortly
did become the lawyer his father wanted, only after that discovery, his own climbing partner, Chin’s mother had always said to him,
it was di≠erent. He became a Yosemite climber, Alex Lowe, died in an avalanche in Tibet. “Promise me you will not die before me.” He’d
which is sort of a bigger accomplishment.” kept that in mind on previous climbs. Now
Anker found in Chin an authentic and she was gone. Around that time, Anker came
I N J O S H UA T R E E in 1995, Chin connected grounded climber. “I guess our adventure to him with one of the last great alpine prob-
with his first climbing partner, a Minnesotan meters are dialed the same,” Anker tells me. lems, a climb that had stymied more than 20
named Brady Robinson, who remembers Chin “Our bullshit factor and su≠ering-fools factor prior attempts by other mountaineers, and
strumming Bob Marley around the campfire. are kind of the same.” one that would open up new worlds for Chin
“People loved to hang out with him,” he says. as a filmmaker: the Shark’s Fin of Meru in the
“He’d want to have a good time and laugh. In 2001, Anker joined Chin and Robinson Indian Himalayas.
That was the life he wanted.” on their expedition to K7, a then-unclimbed
fortress of a mountain in Pakistan. Chin doc- W H E N A N K E R, Chin, and Renan Ozturk first
After college they reunited in Yosemite, the umented the trip with his 35-mm camera and attempted Meru in 2008, they turned around,
spiritual home of American climbing, where a Panasonic video recorder. The additional near-starved, just shy of the summit. In 2011
Chin learned how to ascend a rope climbing task required extraordinary e≠ort: Camera they returned, mere months after Ozturk
gear is heavy and awkward. “You’re shooting made a Lazarus-like recovery from skull and
purely on the fly,” Chin says. “You’re trying to spinal injuries, and Chin was nearly killed in a
flake the rope, have a sip of water, eat some massive avalanche in the Tetons. They climbed
food. You have to pick your moments. Every for 12 days, sleeping in a hanging portaledge,
e≠ort counts.” subsisting on spoonfuls of couscous, and haul-
ing heavy aid-climbing gear to string their way
The trio endured two weeks on K7 before through a precarious section of loose slabs
weather, fatigue, and hunger forced them they called the House of Cards. Chin’s new
to retreat. Chin lost 15 pounds but gained a camera—the Canon 5D—allowed him to shoot
mentor in Anker, who helped him sign with both stills and video, with photo lenses for a
The North Face in 2001. The next year Anker cinematic feel. This time they made it to the
invited him on a 275-mile unsupported tra-
verse of the Changtang Plateau in Tibet,
accompanied by Rowell. The expedition—in

136 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

JIMMY CHIN CONTINUED

summit, an achievement unfathomable even Chin gapes at the splendor around him, Crawling onto this narrow fin of rock, hun-
to other climbers. making the small mmm and aah noises most dreds of feet above our tent, I’m suddenly
people make when they’re slipping into a hot aware of the emptiness all around. The ridge
“Climbing at 20,000 feet, everything they’re tub. He boils water for hot chocolate. The wan- is wide enough to maneuver on, but the edges
doing feels horrible,” says Alex Honnold. ing moon is a chalk smudge in the western sky. quickly slope o≠ to a 150-foot cli≠ on one side
“There’s no oxygen. It’s incredibly cold. The and, well, I can’t look over the other side. The
wall doesn’t get that much sun. I see some- These days Chin has to manufacture his faces of the mountain are ski≠ed with snow
thing like that and I think, Why would you mountain time. Sometimes, on a travel day, and shadows. Chin points to a square foot of
want to climb it?” he’ll wake up early and run up the Grand, flat ground next to a tall rock. “Sit here,” he
making it back to the valley in time to wash says. “That way you won’t fall o≠ anything.”
Chin came o≠ the mountain with visceral the dust o≠ in a creek and catch an afternoon
footage, but to make a movie he needed a part- flight. “That’s one extra day of staying calm in Setting down his pack, Chin steps into
ner who understood the film industry. Then, New York,” he says. his harness and snaps a chalk bag around
at a conference in Lake Tahoe in 2012, he met his waist. Untethered, his back to the void,
Vasarhelyi. As a senior at Princeton, she had He told himself he wouldn’t, but he checks he assembles his rack, clipping cams to
made a movie about teenagers in Kosovo that his phone and sighs. Paradoxically, fame may a sling around his chest. I can hardly watch;
won Best Documentary at the 2003 Tribeca be the greatest obstacle to living the life that it feels like an errant thought on my part
Film Festival. The following year she assisted made him famous in the first place. might tip him o≠ the edge. He squints at
Mike Nichols during the filming of Closer. me appraisingly.
After the conference, Chin sent her his foot- “The more professional you are, the more it
age from the climb, and over the next three takes you away from climbing,” Honnold says. “You don’t look entirely comfortable.”
years they created Meru, a documentary that “Jimmy is maybe the most successful profes- I’m not. I love the mountains, but I’m no
bridged traditional climbing brag reels with sional climber of all time. He has so many rock climber. My wife taught me the basic
the raw, emotional depth of cinema verité. more demands on his time.” figure-eight knot two days ago, and I’m not
They also fell in love. sure I could repeat it.
Anker calls it the “golden handcu≠s,” the “Are you ever afraid of heights?” I ask.
Vasarhelyi’s intellectual upbringing on way success self-perpetuates. Over the years Chin shoots me a sharp look. “All the
Manhattan’s Upper East Side was at odds with he and Chin have forged such a close part- time,” he says. “You’re supposed to be afraid
Chin’s itinerant life in the mountains, but they nership that they hardly need to speak when of heights.” Then he hedges. “But it’s all kind
had at least one common denominator. “We they climb. It was like that in 2017, when they of relative.”
both had been raised by Chinese tiger moms,” climbed Ulvetanna Peak in Antarctica. Chin In other words, fear is always a voice worth
Vasarhelyi says. “He played the violin, I played was wrapping up postproduction on Free Solo; listening to in the mountains, but right now
the piano. But there’s the city and not the city, his son had just been born; and his father had it’s more of a whisper than a scream. Anker
and that’s always been a tricky point for us.” died of complications from ALS days before says Chin is cautious in his ascents. “He’s not
he departed. one of these people who says there is no fear,”
When they married, in 2013, they had a cer- Anker tells me. “He’s able to harness it. There’s
emony in Jackson and one in New York. Since “Expeditions,” Chin says. “If they don’t com- energy in there, whether it’s fear of rejection
then, the couple have had two kids, Marina, pletely kick your ass or destroy you, they’ve to make a better film, or the fear of mortality
eight, and James, five, both of whom go to often been things that put me back on track. when you’re up on a mountain.”
school in New York. Chin and Vasarhelyi main- You go out to clean your pipes. When you get Chin grabs a coil of blue rope and ties into
tain their busy lives together when they over- back you have perspective again.” an anchor around the rock behind me. He
lap and separately when they diverge. “Chai asks me to ensure the carabiner is locked.
is hard-core, at least as hard-core as Jimmy,” Even Anker, now the elder statesman of “Cool,” he says. “I’m going climbing! That
Krakauer says. “When he and Chai teamed American mountaineering, has to crane will be nice.”
up, I was like, Whoa, this is destiny. This is a his neck to see the heights his protégé has I can almost watch the manifold pressures
power couple. I bet a lot of Jimmy’s climbing ascended. I ask Anker if he ever feels a little of his life—the sponsors, the publicity, the
friends don’t know what to make of her.” jealous of Chin’s other commitments, if he sacrifices—fall away on the cli≠ ’s edge. Here
ever wishes he had a little more time on a big his focus sharpens and he moves with mean-
Those climbing friends describe Vasarhelyi wall with his good friend. “Jimmy’s crushing ing. The world shrinks to his fingers and his
as “blunt,” “matter-of-fact,” and “powerful.” it,” Anker replies. “I’m happy for my friend. feet, the rope and the rock. The mountains
But her creative synergy with Chin is unde- I’ve had to go through so much loss. I have a are his whetstone.
niable. Chin still marvels at the way she crafts list of friends 20 long that I’ve had to say good- Deliberately, Chin removes some talus
a story line. “When you work on a film with bye to. We celebrate this great life of heroism, from beneath his rope and then rappels out of
Chai, there’s so much clarity,” he says. “She has but it plays a really tough hand.” sight. Suddenly alone, I look across the canyon
this kind of Beautiful Mind thing going on.” yawning before me. A raven scratches through
Chin has had plenty of his own close calls. the air overhead with rapid, wheezing wing-
Vasarhelyi says she’s made peace with her Just last winter he was skiing the last run of beats. Behind me, boulders rumble down the
husband’s life in the mountains. “Maybe you a long day in the Tetons when the tip of his face of the Grand Teton like gravel falling in a
could say all of our films are my study of try- ski caught a rock and he started somersault- well. The mountain is digesting itself.
ing to understand my husband, or keep the ing over 15-foot cli≠ bands. Miraculously, he Before long, with the speed and grace of
family together.” escaped with just a tweaked knee. Most acci- water flowing uphill, Chin pulls himself back
dents happen on descents, he says. And it up onto the ridge looking even happier than
Despite their di≠erences, ambition unites doesn’t take much to die out here. “That’s why when he left it.
them, and their mutual admiration runs I’m drawn to being in the mountains,” Chin “Now,” he says. “How are we gonna get
deep. “You want Jimmy on your side in a war,” says. “It makes you feel really present. There you down?”
Vasarhelyi says. “He’s one of the single most are all these small reminders of your mortality, I hadn’t given this much thought.
trusting, loyal, and reliable people I know. He’s and not in a fatalistic, depressing way. It’s a “You wanna rappel down?”
incredibly decent and humble. It’s all real. He reminder that you’re alive.” I’m not sure I can do it. But there’s some-
just has raging fires inside of him, but that’s thing almost hypnotic in the timbre of his
kind of the point.” T H E S U N I S already high in the sky when voice. Maybe it’s because he meditates, or
Chin and I scramble up a snowy rockslide and because his resting heart rate is 41 beats per
M Y N I G H T I N the tent with Chin is cold and squeeze through a narrow chimney to get to minute, but listening to him is like diving
punctuated by rocks cascading down the the top of the Watchtower. Whenever I hesi- into a wave. The surf ’s still up there, pound-
southern flank of the Grand Teton. At points tate, Chin cheerfully calls out advice like “It’s ing and seething, but down here it’s serene.
it sounds like the earth is cracking open, but all about the feet!” At camp, Chin had described This is what Chin o≠ers the world: guidance
Chin doesn’t stir. the approach with words like mellow, pedes- into the terrifying unknown.
trian, and mini golf. He told two passing climb-
“I kinda slept nine hours,” he says the next ers we were “just craggin’, you know, runnin’
morning, pulling out his earplugs as the sun around.” But I know the climbing is at least a
floods through the tent door. “I definitely sleep little serious, because Chin’s shoes are tied.
better in a sleeping bag.”

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 137

JIMMY CHIN CONTINUED

“Look at where you are,” he says, pointing to He has a book coming out in December, The afternoon we left camp, Chin seemed
the anchor. “You’re on a double-locking cara- a visual memoir called There and Back: reluctant to start back down the trail. He’d
biner with a knot that I tied.” Photographs From the Edge, which pairs his stalled by repacking my pack. “It can’t look
photographs of otherworldly peaks with his like you’ve got a bunch of basketballs in it,”
It’s a voice that could talk someone o≠ recollections of the camaraderie and grit it he told me.
a ledge. took to scale them. For Chin the book is also
a way of showing Marina and James how he Finally we started tracing the switchbacks
“There’s one simple rule,” he says. “Don’t let seeks out his authenticity in the mountains. toward a meadow and a stream lined with
go of your brake hand.” boulders. More rocks crumbled o≠ the Grand,
“I don’t necessarily find the best version sending tendrils of dust into the cobalt sky. We
And before I know it, my heart pounding of myself in the day-to-day stresses of life, followed the stream as it unspooled toward
and my brake hand locked in a death grip when my kids are exploding and they’re late the Snake River below.
around the dangling rope, I’ve leaned back- for school and I’ve got five Zoom calls stacked
ward o≠ the edge. on top of each other,” he says. “I find that on “I love this place so much,” Chin said. “Look
expeditions when the stakes are very high. at that valley. It’s just so epic.”
W H E N W E H I K E out of the mountains later that I wish I lived every day with that version
day, a bull elk bugles through the lodgepoles of myself.” We kept descending, past a browsing bear
and Chin checks his phone to find 62 new texts cub, into the smell of pines again. Chin talked
and 300 emails. Back at the rental house, he Chin has a diverse and loyal group of about the urgency of life, how time is the only
moves into packing mode. There are huge pho- friends, although most only know a part of currency of consequence, how a life is mea-
tographs spread on the tables for him to sign— him. Krakauer admits Chin remains a mys- sured by the manner in which it is spent. We
one of Everest’s north face, one of an ice cap in tery. “There’s a burr under the saddle,” he says. were back in the low timber now. “I’m usually
Greenland, and another of two BASE jumpers “There’s something he’s trying to prove. That’s running this stretch,” Chin told me. “But now
in midair above Yosemite. Maggie Rogers sent what I see. There’s a wound there, and I don’t I’m gonna savor it.”
one of her records. A millionaire sent several pretend to know what it is. He has this secret
fancy bottles of tequila. All of it has to go some- garden, this interior that he guards, maybe for jacob baynham is a National Magazine
where. “It’s all about piles,” he says. really good reasons.” Award–winning writer based in Montana.
This is his first story for gq.

DENNIS RODMAN

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 130 together. “I didn’t have no brothers. No father. Detroit, where they manhandled opponents
I hung out with my sisters all the time, and they and were prepared to win both the game and
a new scene: “In San Antonio I started going was just trying to make me dress up,” he says. the ensuing fistfight. From the very beginning
to gay clubs. I started going to drag clubs. “So I was like the guinea pig of the family. they were an awkward pairing. Dennis says
I started bringing drag queens to games.” that one time, on the team plane, Robinson
Dennis found people living as boldly as he “We all had fun at the time, but that didn’t interrupted Dennis while he was playing
yearned to, unconcerned with what passed inspire me when I got older,” he says before Nintendo with a teammate. “I said, ‘David?
for acceptable in the mainstream—people who pausing, as if his brain is making a connection Why you looking at me?’ ” Dennis remembers.
wanted more than anything else to be free. in real time. “I guess it kind of made me have “He said, ‘Why you got to be the devil all the
a sense of awareness of, like, man, I used to time?’ I said, ‘What? The devil? What are you
“When you talk to people in the gay com- dress like this as a kid. Wearing a dress made talking about?’ He said, ‘You just got to be
munity, someone who does drag, something me feel good. You know?” di≠erent from everybody.’ ”
like that, they’re so fucking happy,” says
Dennis. “They hold their head up so high Those childhood years with his sisters were After two seasons in San Antonio, Dennis
every fucking day, man. They’re not ashamed spent in Dallas, where their mother worked was traded, in 1995, to the Chicago Bulls, who
of shit. They’re not trying to prove anything, three jobs to support them. Dennis’s father, were in need of a rebounder. Phil Jackson
they’re just out there living their lives.” He Philander, had left when Dennis was three admits that Rodman wasn’t exactly a front-
sometimes fantasized about having sex with years old. (Philander would go on to report- runner for the role. “I think Derrick Coleman
men, though he’s contended he never acted on edly father 29 children in total; the aptness of was the first on the list that I had,” says Jackson.
it: “I was wondering to myself, I said, ‘What his name is almost too obvious to point out.) (And Dennis? “He was down at the bottom of
if I was gay back then, in ’93, ’94? Would I be Dennis contends that his mother never once the list.”) The franchise understood that in
in the NBA?’ ” He thinks he would have been. told him “I love you” or hugged him as a child, order to get the full value of Dennis Rodman
He thinks his skills and hard work would have and she kicked him out of the house twice. She on the court, they had to let him be who he was
won out and he would have been accepted by lived through her own trauma; he said in an o≠ of it. The team hired a retired police o∞cer
teammates and the public alike. I don’t agree ESPN 30 for 30 that he’d seen her beaten and to be by his side at all times and made sure
with his sunny outlook: He had enough trou- dragged on numerous occasions, and yet she he attended sessions with the team psychol-
ble alienating some of his teammates in San still did what she could to provide. He says ogist, which was somewhat of a rarity in the
Antonio by being gay-adjacent. he doesn’t resent her for kicking him out, but 1990s. Like Daly, Jackson became something
there is still a distance between them he would of a father figure, and he didn’t sweat the stu≠
His fluidity around ideas of gender and ques- like to mend. “My situation with my mother, that had made Dennis’s tenure with the Spurs
tions about his sexuality weren’t new. When he we ain’t never had a heart-to-heart talk,” he so tumultuous. Dennis was late to practice all
was a boy, his younger sisters, who always out- tells me. “So it’s a cycle, straight up.” the time, missed shootarounds and game film
paced Dennis in size and social status, used to sessions. But Jackson was lenient. He trusted
dress him up in their clothes when they played After his mother kicked him out of the Dennis to work out every day and study film on
house, basketball became the guiding force in his own time. Dennis didn’t do hard drugs, but
his life. He jumped from makeshift family to he drank and partied every night, becoming a
makeshift family: His friends on the streets of fixture of Chicago nightlife, and then showed
Dallas; a white family in Bokchito, Oklahoma, up for every game (when he wasn’t suspended)
who took him in during his college years; then to give the team everything he had. It worked
the Detroit Pistons. He bonded easily with for three championships. “You got the greatest
anyone who could seemingly o≠er the kind of basketball player on the planet,” says Dennis of
unconditional love that he longed for. Michael Jordan, “the second greatest in Scottie
Pippen, and then you got the devil.”
Which is why his time in San Antonio was
such an uneasy fit. Of note was his frontcourt Dennis has a deep understanding of
running mate David Robinson, the all-star the game, having elevated the role of the
center, who didn’t play with the kind of tough-
ness Dennis was accustomed to coming from

138 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

DENNIS RODMAN CONTINUED

garbageman into an art form. But two decades He wasn’t the first Black man in the public Today Dennis has four children himself.
after his career ended, the greatest rebounder eye to embrace flamboyance and feminin- Two were born in 2001 and 2002—D.J., who
of all time says he doesn’t get any phone calls ity—there were already plenty of musicians, plays college basketball for the Washington
from NBA front o∞ces, or even the younger like Little Richard and Prince—but he was a State Cougars, and Trinity, a professional soc-
generation of players, to tap his expertise. “It’s large Black man in a traditionally masculine cer player for the Washington Spirit, from his
all about the analytics now,” says Dennis. “It’s profession. All of his halter tops and eyeliner third marriage. (His second marriage was to
like you got to shoot here because analytics did something I wouldn’t have been able to Carmen Electra in 1998, the result of a drunken
means you have to angle the ball, and the ball’s appreciate at the time, but can’t help think- night in Vegas.) There’s also his son Chase, who
going to shoot like this…. I’ve been doing that ing about now, in a world populated by the was born in the late ’90s by a woman Dennis
shit for fucking years.” He’s an old head with likes of Kid Cudi, Russell Westbrook, and Lil never married. His relationship with his kids
old-head views on the modern game, but the Nas X. He helped set the stage for a broader is strained, and he thinks often about Alexis,
way he talks about it makes you suspect that understanding and acceptance of varied his first, who was born in 1988. Dennis wasn’t
he wishes the next generation would call him forms of Black masculinity, however shallow around much when she was growing up.
up to work with them, to absorb what he that acceptance might be at times. Professional athletes have intense schedules,
knows, the way players have called up former and on top of that, Dennis was always o≠ par-
Houston Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon to But Dennis contends he was never trying to tying. A part of Dennis always knew he was
show them his footwork in the post. make a statement with any of it. He was just failing them. In his 2011 Basketball Hall of
trying to do whatever made him feel good at the Fame induction speech, with all four Rodman
But maybe a savant can’t teach rebounding moment. (“Camp rests on innocence,” Sontag children in the audience, he apologized for not
the way Olajuwon can teach post moves. Or wrote.) The idea to wear the wedding dress being a better father.
maybe Dennis’s other legacy is something they came to him on a whim, and he got a big co-sign
still don’t want to touch. when he ran into Steven Tyler of Aerosmith in Ten years later, he’s still working on it. “I’ma
New York the night prior. “I went out to the have a relationship with my kids. That’s com-
I WO N D E R , had Susan Sontag written an gym, and I was riding the StairMaster,” says ing soon,” he tells me on the balcony at the W.
updated version of her 1964 essay “Notes on Dennis. “And to my left was Steven Tyler, just “I just got to get them together.” Dennis envi-
‘Camp,’ ” if she would have included Dennis working out.” Dennis told him that he was plan- sions a scenario where all of his children will be
as an example. She wrote that the “essence of ning to wear a wedding dress to his book sign- together and he’ll be in the hot seat, answering
Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice ing. “Steven just jumped o≠ the StairMaster all their questions. “I want to hear it, because I
and exaggeration” and that “the androgyne and said, ‘Oh, my God, that is so fucking awe- want to know what they felt like all these years.”
is certainly one of the great images of Camp some!’ Because you know how Steven Tyler
sensibility.” In the context of a conservative dress, right? He wore eccentric drag in the ’70s. Dennis Rodman says he’s ready for a reck-
and straitlaced NBA, as a fan Dennis either And he said, ‘Do it, do it, do it!’ ” oning. He wants to repair the damage he’s
repulsed or delighted you, depending on your done to his relationships. He wants to atone
capacity to embrace what was deemed weird. And thus was born Dennis Rodman the rock for his mistakes. But the common denomi-
star, which he took on as his central identity. nator in his reasoning—“soon”—suggests he
In the mid-’90s Dennis bloomed into a per- He has often talked about not seeing race, of might not know how, and he continues to look
former. He added a little flair to his rebounds— feeling estranged from being Black. As a rock for validation in sometimes strange places.
he’d kick his legs out like a hurdler and swing star, Dennis seems to think he can transcend Like, say, Pyongyang, North Korea.
his elbows as though he was in a mosh pit— such categories. But it’s a bit disingenuous to
while his loose-ball dives became more unpre- say he doesn’t see or understand race and its In 2013, Dennis Rodman became one of the
dictable. By that point, his hair color changed attendant hierarchies and inequalities. Look first Americans to meet Kim Jong-un, supreme
almost nightly. He dated Madonna. And he through his history and you’ll encounter him leader of North Korea and successor to Kim
started to wear women’s clothes. inviting detractors to kiss his Black ass, and Jong-il. He went with a Vice documentary
he was once forced to apologize to Larry Bird, crew for an exhibition game. Apparently the
Once Dennis began to play with makeup whom he called “very overrated” on account Kims were huge Bulls fans, which pried the
and wear halter tops, his full persona took of being white. Dennis understands how race door open for what was termed “basketball
shape. He came into his own as a sex symbol, a functions in America perfectly well. He’d just diplomacy.” Dennis wasn’t even supposed
perhaps jarring experience for someone who rather not talk about it, I gather, because it to go, originally. He says they asked Michael
grew up being called ugly because of his large gets in the way of having a good time. Jordan first. Then Scottie Pippen. Both said
facial features and mismatched body, and no. “Then they asked me,” says Dennis. “I said,
who once said he didn’t have his first sexual W H E N H E WA S 19 or 20, Dennis worked as ‘Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll go.’ Little did I know… ”
experience until he was 20, when he paid a a night janitor at the Dallas–Fort Worth
sex worker to take his virginity. The Bulls tol- Regional Airport. One day he got the idea to Though it seems incomprehensible to me,
erated all the o≠-court stu≠ that made Dennis steal some watches from one of the shops. He Dennis claims he was unaware that North
who he is. “If he shows up for work, everything stole 50. The security cameras caught him, of Korea was an authoritarian regime that reg-
is fine,” says Scottie Pippen of the team’s men- course, and he was arrested, but the charges ularly commits human rights violations.
tality at the time. reportedly never went through because the “I thought it was like, well, North Korea, I’m
police recovered the watches: Dennis had going over there to sign autographs and stu≠
Which brings us to the wedding dress. given them all away. like that, take pictures,” he says. “I didn’t know
The dress was part of the promotion for his it was all that until I got over there. I was like,
1996 book, Bad as I Wanna Be, and it was in The incident underscores a central mission ‘Oh, shit.’ Nobody prepared me for that.”
that moment, riding down Fifth Avenue with in Dennis’s life, even back then: to feel good. He
screaming fans lining the street, that Dennis didn’t try to sell the watches; that’s not why he Today, he calls Kim a friend, and it’s not
Rodman realized he was a superstar. “You took them. He simply handed them out to peo- hard to see why. “They gave me the presiden-
would have thought that the Yankees won the ple he knew. “I was trying to please people…. tial suite in the best hotel in North Korea,” he
World Series,” he remembers. “And I was just I just wanted people to like me,” he once said. says. “They gave me maids, chefs.” He’s gone
going to a book signing. This is New York City, back to the country several times now, and has
not even Chicago.” It’s as indelible an image I think often about his mug shot from that been treated like royalty every time. “They just
as they come, one imprinted on us as perhaps night. In it, you can see all of the fear and lone- sat there praising me like I was one of them,”
the defining image of Dennis Rodman, even liness sunken into his face. He’s in the middle he says. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ I just fell in love with
if afterward he was mercilessly mocked by of a late-stage growth spurt—after turning 18, their country because they were so loving.”
detractors. (In the opening of the 2002 film he shot up from 5 feet 11 to 6 feet 7—but there’s
Undercover Brother, footage of Dennis in the nothing that feels adult in the way his head And here we are, back to feeling loved.
wedding dress is presented as an example of hangs. He’d been crying, and every feature that Dennis needs to feel loved so badly, he will take
the downfall of Black culture.) If he wasn’t people had labeled as ugly sticks out a little it from whatever source is willing to give it.
already, the dress marked Dennis, in the more prominently. He’s a kid here, a kid in While there’s something tender to be acknowl-
Baldwin sense, as a freak. search of a kind of love he didn’t feel at home. edged there, it creates huge blind spots. He still
doesn’t see what he did so wrong. Dennis tries
to assure me that he’s contributed to the release
of Americans from North Korean prison camps.

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 139

DENNIS RODMAN CONTINUED GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMP O

(Including Kenneth Bae, an American mission- C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 104 “I think he’s never wanted to take an easy
ary who publicly thanked Rodman, and Otto way out,” Saratsis said. “In every aspect of life.
Warmbier, a college student.) Dennis also has He went between home and the facility, He wants to be challenged.”
claimed partial responsibility for the historic the facility and home. “He lived in the gym,”
2018 meeting between Kim and former pres- Giannis’s longtime agent Alex Saratsis said. In the end Giannis decided to stay in
ident Trump, whom Dennis befriended as a “He would sleep at the gym.” Before Giannis Milwaukee because it was di∞cult. And then,
contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice. He has met Mariah, that was literally all he did. improbably, the Bucks won. “One challenge
insisted that the meeting between two world was to bring a championship here and we
leaders may be his greatest legacy. But some- “I was on a mission,” Giannis said. “That’s did,” he told me. “It was very hard, but we did.
how I don’t believe history will look back on why, seven years later, I had to fucking talk Very, very hard. I just love challenges. What’s
the meeting between a tyrant and a would-be to somebody. Because I had issues now, you the next challenge? The next challenge might
tyrant with much fondness. know? But there was no stopping me.” For not be here.” It’s not that he doesn’t love
eight years he put his head down and chased Milwaukee, he said. But he was always wary
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Dennis’s unre- greatness. Then he won a championship. of things becoming too easy. “Me and my fam-
lenting positivity is truly the thing we need Now, he said, he was working on all the ily chose to stay in this city that we all love and
to thaw our divisions. Maybe everyone needs things greatness cost him. Peace of mind. has taken care of us—for now,” Giannis said.
to hit the club with Dennis, take a few shots of Life outside of basketball. A family. That kind “In two years, that might change. I’m being
tequila, and forget the worst of what their lives of thing. totally honest with you. I’m always honest. I
have been in order to move on. love this city. I love this community. I want to
J U ST A Y E A R AG O, Giannis’s contract with the help as much as possible.”
Except it hasn’t actually worked for him. Bucks was slated to end, and he had to decide
whether to stay in Milwaukee or leave. We Did this mean he was thinking about…leav-
T H E R A I N STA RTS coming down, and the know what happened next, of course. But the ing? I asked his agent.
guests all rush to move inside, where the party way it happened, I think, is instructive, and
continues. Dennis is whisked away to a private perhaps suggests something about Giannis “I don’t think it’s, ‘I’m thinking about leav-
booth upstairs, followed by either the luck- and the unique, determined way he sets out ing the Bucks,’ ” Saratsis told me. “But I think
iest or most enterprising of the models who to do almost everything in life. he’s genuinely like: ‘Okay, I have reached the
know there will be more photo opportunities if pinnacle. The next challenge is, let’s repeat.’
they’re sitting next to him. I respect the hustle. “Everybody was texting me: ‘Leave the But what happens if you do repeat? What’s
But I already kind of hate clubs, and next to no team,’ ” he told me—other players, some of the next challenge? What is that next barrier?
one is wearing a mask in this COVID hotbed whom haven’t talked to him since he decided When you think about it from a basketball
state. Dennis is finishing one cigar and pick- to stay. He understood, he said. “It’s human. perspective, by the age of 26, this kid has
ing up another that someone brought to him, I will say I want to play with the best play- accomplished everything,” Saratsis said. “So
while also enjoying shots of Casamigos, com- ers; I wish K.D. was on my team, not against sometimes you’re going to have to manufac-
pliments of the owner. He checks in with me me. I wish LeBron was on my team, not against ture what those challenges are.”
constantly to see if I’m having a good time, and me. Steph, on my team.” And the winters
I can’t say I’m having a bad one, but my COVID in Milwaukee were cold—“cold as shit,” he O N H I S H O M E ’ S second floor, Giannis keeps
anxiety isn’t allowing me to let loose. specified. This would be an opportunity to a room full of unworn shoes. A literal room,
never see another Milwaukee winter again. filled to the literal top, in a house with only
Then Jay-Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U” comes To raise his sons in a place where they might a normal abundance of rooms. “How many
on, and Dennis remembers that I’m from see the sun from time to time. of these shoes do you think I wear?” Giannis
Virginia Beach, where the Neptunes are from. asked me, mischievously, and then answered
He gestures to me as he’s getting everyone hype. But there was something inside him that his own question: “I don’t wear them.”
It’s a jam, and I can’t help it; I oblige him by just wanted to do it the hard way, he realized.
reciting every lyric. Dennis is having fun. He’s “I chose to stay here even with all the pressure There’s every Jordan known to man here,
making sure everyone else is having fun too. because it’s easier to leave. That’s the easy and shoes that Virgil wrote on. “I’m going to
thing to do. It’s easy to leave.” sell this shit,” he said, with a grin. That’s why
He’s at home here and is willing to go all he’s devoted an entire room of his own living
night. He might even hit up a gay club after There is an aversion to easiness with space to them. Not to wear them but to keep
this, since he still goes three, four times a Giannis that can go deep. Easy is an epithet them as an investment.
week. It’s when he’s alone that the darker when he says it. Easy, in Giannis-world,
thoughts start to creep into his head: thoughts describes almost everything that isn’t pain, Mariah’s father makes jokes about Giannis.
about his own mortality, thoughts about his that isn’t su≠ering, that isn’t taking on long “You know when the birds go in the morn-
time left here on Earth. odds and trying to beat those odds. He regards ing?” Giannis said, quoting the joke. “ ‘Cheep,
the usual perks of being a player in the modern cheep’—cheap. That’s who I am.” On airplanes,
“After turning 60 years old, it’s like, ‘Shit. NBA—partying in the better Los Angeles clubs, he used to buy coach tickets and would seek
What’s left of me? How can I keep my mind in recording in the better Los Angeles music stu- out whoever was sitting in the exit row and
tune with life?’ Shit. ‘How do I prepare myself dios, acting in Hollywood—as, basically, friv- ask them to switch: “ ‘You’re a Bucks fan?’
to die?’ That’s the only thing I have left, is to olous: “Being in movies? Easy. Space Jam, all ‘Yes.’ ‘Want two tickets for the game? When?
die peacefully,” he told me on the balcony. this? Easy. Easy. I don’t want it, though.” He November?’—I’m a great seller, that’s what
is intent on life itself, by which he means the you don’t know. I’m a great seller—‘Would you
Is that it? All that’s left for Dennis Rodman painful stu≠ of existence, the stu≠ that neither trade my seat with you?’ ”
now is to die peacefully? money nor ability can finesse. Life? “It’s hard,
life.” Or at least, his was. He pointed at his I said that if Giannis Antetokounmpo
“I think I’ve got a lot more to give to people. chest: “It molds you to be this guy.” approached me to switch seats on a commer-
I think I got a little more happiness for the cial flight, I’d probably be surprised that he
youth of the world. But, for me, I think I’ve wasn’t on a private jet.
been preparing myself to die peacefully. I’ve
been thinking about that a lot lately. It keeps “Nobody has money for a private jet, man.
my mind at ease because I know I’m going Hell no, man.”
to do that. I’m not going to self-destruct like
I was back then—10, 15 years ago. Hell, no. I Not even to Greece?
got my life in control right now. Everything is “Why would you spend $150,000 to one-way
going in the right direction.” trip there? That’s $300,000. The market makes
6 to 10 percent every year… He’s laughing.”
mychal denzel smith is the author of (I was laughing.)
the New York Times best seller Invisible “So, you can make, for the rest of your life,
Man, Got the Whole World Watching with that money you just spent, 24- to 30,000
and Stakes Is High, winner of the 2020 a year, because that’s what the market makes
Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. on average. If you take that money and you
take it away, that 24- to 30,000 growth every

140 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMP O CONTINUED

year goes away—correct? So why would I 50 nuggets—one for every point he scored in everybody gathered around when they real-
teach my kids that?” the last game of the series. But he’s trying not ized we won, and immediately Coach came
to tell that story anymore, either, until Chick- and grabbed me. Go watch the tape. Coach
Giannis drives a 2011 GMC truck he bought fil-A pays up. His teammates went to Vegas came and grabbed me and I pushed him out
not long after he got here, or a Mercedes he the night the Bucks won, but he didn’t. “They of the way. I went to my family. I hugged my
bought in 2018, or the G-Wagon he got for free. understand,” he told me. His teammates have mom, I hugged my brothers, I hugged my wife-
“I don’t put my money in my stu≠ that loses been around him enough to know that they to-be, I hugged my son, then I sat down and
value,” he said. Meals, sure. He and Mariah go don’t really know him at all, he said. “If you thought about my dad, right?” They were in
out and eat well. “But ain’t nobody got time asked them if they really know me: ‘No.’ I’m Milwaukee; the whole arena was going crazy.
for spending money on clothes and time for... about work, and then I dip.” Middleton said So were his teammates. But Giannis found a
what’s it called?” that it took him five years to feel like he knew place to sit again, by himself.
Giannis even 50 percent—now, after eight, he
A stylist? figures he’s up to 60 or even 90. But Giannis, Giannis asked that I pay particular attention
“Fuck—sorry. E≠ no. Man, let me tell you he said, had matured too. “He’s grown and to what happened next, because to him what
one thing. This is me. If you try to spend time realized he’s the franchise player,” Middleton happened next illustrates something essential
on how you’re going to look to the tunnel, said. “So he knows he’s got to have some kind about him. Some of it has to do with his fam-
man, you already took away focus from the of chemistry with his teammates.” ily: how close they are, how much he depends
game. Now, if you’re talking about one thing I on them. And I don’t want to put words in his
enjoy, I love watches.” A few weeks before we met, Giannis flew mouth; it was an image he o≠ered, not an expla-
Why? Because they increase in value. He to Greece and went to the Acropolis with nation. But without speaking for him, I think
named a few, and then asked that I not say his brothers and walked around with the some of what he wanted me to understand was
which ones. He is trying to give less free trophies. And that was the extent of it. He is about the singular loneliness of the path. What
promo, now that he’s a champion: If you want already done celebrating, he said. “It’s over “hard” actually means. In the end, greatness is
your product to be mentioned by Giannis, with. The championship is over with. Over fundamentally isolating. What you have to do
from now on you’re going to have to pay. As we with. Now, I’m working. In order for me to to achieve it separates you from everyone else
talked, he’d be deep into some anecdote and get better, I leave this championship bullshit in a way that is di∞cult to undo.
then wonder if he was supposed to promote stu≠ in the past.” He is back to playing bas-
his businesses, the sponsorships he’s already ketball this fall. Back on the hard path to the The image was this: “Everybody was
acquired, the investments—like the piece of hard thing. celebrating,” he remembered. “They said,
the Milwaukee Brewers he just bought this ‘Giannis, you got to go up there.’ I said, ‘No,
week—he’s already made. Is he supposed to But before he put those memories away I’m good.’ ” They told him he might win the
promote his businesses? How does one do that entirely, I asked him if he could just give me MVP, and if he did, he was going to have to
in an interview? He was unsure. He settled for one or two—were there moments, in retro- go up and get it. He said fine—if I win, let
leaning into my recorder, listing his endorse- spect, that had stuck with him? That mat- me know. And then he won, so he got up
ments, then going back to whatever story he tered? He thought about it and agreed to share there and he said a few words. He turned
was telling. a few: the IVs he got; the long sleepless nights to Middleton, whom he’d been playing with
A mosquito flew by, and he reached out one between Game 5 and Game 6; the first frantic since the very beginning, and said, “Khris, we
giant hand and closed his fingers around it. minutes of Game 6, when he kept rushing and did it.” He held the trophy for a moment. And
“I caught that,” he said, showing me. getting ahead of himself, instead of being in then he walked away again, to be by himself.
the moment.
A F T E R H E W O N the NBA Finals, he went to “Go and see the picture,” he said. “I’m the
Chick-fil-A with the Larry O’Brien trophy and But what he wanted me to remember most, captain of the team. Go and see the picture
the Finals MVP trophy and ordered exactly he said, was the end. when they lift up the trophy. I’m not there.”

After the Bucks had won the game, “What zach baron is gq’s senior sta≠ writer.
happened?” Giannis asked me. “The team,

TOM HOLLAND

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 96 of The Current War, only to fly back to Atlanta H E R E I S TO M H O L L A N D ’ S nightmare. It started
again. “I remember, for a large portion of a few years ago, when he was just beginning
I am that Spider-Man wears a mask, because the film, Benedict [Cumberbatch, his costar to find fame, and now it happens pretty regu-
when he’s bouncing around and flying from in all three movies] had a double in Avengers larly, especially when he’s working, which is
buildings, that’s all CG. In Uncharted it’s just while he was shooting in London,” he says. to say all the time. You see, among Holland’s
me in a henley and cargo pants,” he says. By “I didn’t know that was a thing.” While nighttime a±ictions is sleep paralysis, a kind
the time shooting wrapped, he had developed filming Cherry, he lost nearly a quarter of of disconnection between your brain and your
tendinitis, and hurt all over. “That film abso- his body weight, adopting a crash diet and musculoskeletal system that can happen in
lutely broke me.” running 10 miles a day in a trash bag. “My the moment of waking. “You’re awake, but you
energy levels were so low,” Holland says. After can’t move,” Holland says.
There are times when, because of Holland’s years of being the Duracell bunny, Holland
exuberance—or perhaps his naiveté—he was burned-out. In the nightmare, Holland wakes up with
takes on more than he should. While film- sleep paralysis. Only then he realizes that
ing the last two Avengers, he would spend Looking back, Holland now realizes he he’s not alone, that his bedroom is filled with
three days on set in Atlanta, then get on a was probably burned out for a long time. paparazzi. They’re looming over him, bulbs
plane to London and do two days on the set He recalls the press tour for Spider-Man: popping, and Holland’s just stuck there, frozen,
Homecoming, for which he traveled to 17 panicking. “They’re all there, and I’m looking
countries, doing junkets and pumping out for my publicist, like, Where is the person who’s
backflips on request. By the last step of the supposed to be protecting me? What’s going
tour, in China, “I was really ill,” he says. “But on? And then when I am able to move again,
I didn’t say no. I was like, ‘I can do it, I can do I turn the lights on, and it’s over,” Holland says.
it, I can do it.’ ” I’m not going to be Sick Note. “And I think, Oh, my God, I’m in my room, I’m
Then one day, in a press conference, his body fine. There’s no one here. But then I will get up
said no for him. He walked o≠ the stage and and look for a recording device or something
threw up everywhere. “I was under a lot of that someone has put in my room.”
pressure to finish the day’s work. That was
the first time I was really like, ‘No, I’m done Hence: cognitive dreaming.
now. I’ve given you everything.’ ” But the funny thing about fame is that just
as you start to find your dreams coming true,

MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 141

TOM HOLLAND CONTINUED

so, too, can nightmares. And so it was this H A L F WAY T H R O U G H T H E making of No Way from Elizabeth Olsen,” he says. “She gave me
summer, when pictures emerged in the tab- Home, Holland did something he almost an amazing piece of advice: ‘No’ is a full sen-
loid press of Holland and Zendaya in a car in never does: He refused. No Way Home, the tence. ‘No’ is enough.”
L.A., kissing. It’s a small thing, a kiss. And climax of Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy,
ordinarily, two 20-somethings in a relation- picks up immediately after 2019’s Far H O L L A N D H A S S P E N T six years as Spider-Man.
ship embracing at a stoplight would remain From Home, with Peter Parker being If he chooses to, he could easily do another 20.
what it is, a moment of intimacy between unmasked as Spider-Man and falsely He is still two decades younger than Robert
two people. Only in this case, that kiss was accused of the murder of Mysterio. Downey Jr. was in Iron Man.
instantly beamed around the world, to be (Oddly, Parker and Zendaya’s MJ spend
dissected in reaction videos, “relationship the opening scene being chased through “I’ve talked to him about doing, like, 100
timelines,” and Entertainment Tonight. (Page New York by the press. “It’s art imitating life, more,” Pascal tells me. “I’m never going to
Six: “Zendaya, Tom Holland finally confirm except I can’t swing away in real life,” Holland make Spider-Man movies without him. Are
they’re dating with steamy car makeout.” As says.) Unable to handle the fallout, Parker you kidding me?”
if they had any choice.) Holland’s private life asks Doctor Strange to intervene, accidentally
had been in the press before, but this was causing a cataclysm of multiverse-breaking Holland, however, isn’t so sure. “Maybe it
di≠erent. Holland’s and Zendaya’s fans had proportions. Somehow—I haven’t seen the is time for me to move on. Maybe what’s best
long obsessed over whether the pair were movie—that cataclysm prompts the return for Spider-Man is that they do a Miles Morales
together (“tom holland and zendaya flirting of familiar adversaries from Sony’s previ- film. I have to take Peter Parker into account as
for 8 minutes straight”: 1.5 million views). ous Spider-Man iterations, including Alfred well, because he is an important part of my life,”
Some argued it must be a publicity stunt. Molina’s Doctor Octopus and, if rumors are he says. But also: “If I’m playing Spider-Man
“One of the downsides of our fame is that pri- to be believed, Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin after I’m 30, I’ve done something wrong.”
vacy isn’t really in our control anymore, and and Jamie Foxx’s Electro. “When they first
a moment that you think is between two peo- came up with a concept of what they wanted He has other ambitions. “He talks about
ple that love each other very much is now a to try and do, it was the impossible concept,” being James Bond a lot,” says Jacob Batalon,
moment that is shared with the entire world,” Holland says. “But they pulled it o≠.” his Spider-Man costar. “A lot a lot.” He’s been
Holland says. He has said very little pub- writing a script with his brother, Harry, and
licly about the relationship, and you sense Ever since news of those castings appeared, is currently gearing up to shoot The Crowded
it’s something he’s still navigating, trying the internet has obsessed over whether or Room, an Apple TV+ drama about dissociative
to work out how much to give. “I’ve always not Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield identity disorder. Pascal told me that she wants
been really adamant to keep my private life are also returning. “No one believes me, but Holland to play Fred Astaire in a forthcoming
private, because I share so much of my life they’re not in the film,” Holland says. (If this movie (which might be a rare perfect casting).
with the world anyway,” he says. “We sort of is a lie, and it well might be, then don’t hate But after that? Holland doesn’t know.
felt robbed of our privacy.” him. That’s work too. And really, isn’t it better
not knowing?) If he could, he’d spend six months back-
You weren’t ready to talk about it. packing around Europe. He’d go clubbing, get
“I don’t think it’s about not being ready. It’s The production of No Way Home sounds “sloppy drunk.” He’d go to Glastonbury, stand
just that we didn’t want to.” like total chaos. As the first day of filming in the middle of the crowd, feel again what it’s
Holland knows that he’ll soon be on a global approached, several key actors hadn’t signed like to be just one person in a mass of joyful
press tour, facing endless questions about it. on yet. “Some people were trying to figure out bodies. He would, in other words, be a guy in
“It’s not a conversation that I can have with- whether they wanted to do it, and we needed his 20s, exploring what it feels like to be alive.
out her,” he says. “You know, I respect her too all of them or none,” Holland says. The movie “I just can’t do that,” he says.
much to say… This isn’t my story. It’s our story. was reportedly going to be released after
And we’ll talk about what it is when we’re the upcoming Doctor Strange sequel, but He’s certain of something: “I definitely
ready to talk about it together.” when that film was delayed by COVID, it was don’t think I want to be an actor for the rest
“It was quite strange and weird and con- decided that No Way Home would go first, of my life.” Before Hollywood, Holland briefly
fusing and invasive,” Zendaya tells me later, requiring changes to the plot. Even once film- trained as a carpenter, a craft he still loves.
by phone. “The equal sentiment [we both ing was underway, the script was being rewrit- “I’ve always been really good with my hands.
share] is just that when you really love and ten on an almost daily basis. “You could ask If something’s broken, I can always figure out
care about somebody, some moments or the director, ‘What happens in act three?’ And a way of fixing it.” He has this romantic idea
things, you wish were your own.… I think his response would be, ‘I’m still trying to figure of “buying apartment buildings and rent-
loving someone is a sacred thing and a it out,’ ” Holland says. ing them out cheaper than they need to be,
special thing and something that you want because I don’t need the money.”
to deal with and go through and experience Anyway, the day finally came to shoot the
and enjoy amongst the two people that love big finale, “the crescendo scene, like, is this Lately, Holland has had another dream.
each other.” really fucking happening? It’s crazy.” Only, it It’s a variation on a common theme: He’d met
There are little things Holland is still hung wasn’t working. “I kept stopping and being a woman, got her pregnant. Once, he’d have
up on, like: How did the photographer get like, ‘I’m so sorry, I just don’t believe what found it terrifying. “You don’t know what
in front of them? Over the past few years, as I’m saying.’ ” The director, Jon Watts, took you’re going to do. How am I going to tell my
his private bubble has gotten smaller, he’s him aside, and Holland told him: It wasn’t mum and dad?” But this time he wasn’t ner-
become more protective of it. There’s a rea- me. The scene was wrong. “We sat down, we vous at all. “After, I thought… I kind of miss
son he doesn’t go out, why he keeps the same went through it, and we came up with a new my little girl now.” Holland has always wanted
sta≠ from job to job, why he spends his free idea,” Holland says. “Then we pitched it to the to be a father. “I’d be very content with just
time on private golf courses (although he also writers, they rewrote it, and it works great.” being a stay-at-home dad, and producing
just loves golf ). Because here is something a film here and there,” he says. That’s not
Tom Holland has learned: The more that you It’s a story about standing up for yourself, to say that will happen right now. “I might
say yes to everything, the more of you they and about how Holland has grown. “As a kid, a start shooting The Crowded Room and go,
will take, and take, until there is nothing left lot of my confidence was really fake,” he says. ‘You know what, this is what I’m going to do
just for you. “People mistake my kindness as “But, really, inside I was, ‘Oh, my God, I’m fuck- for the rest of my life.’ Or I might do Spider-
weakness,” he says. “Sometimes I see people ing terrified.’ ” (Russo: “If he was faking his Man 4, 5, and 6, finish when I’m 32, and never
trying to take advantage of me because I’m confidence, he is a hell of an actor.”) Because make another. I’m not sure what I want to do.”
a nice person. Let me tell you, when you’re a here’s the thing: That story about nerves being That’s the point. He’s in control.
19-year-old kid, they really do take advantage the same as excitement? It’s true. But if you
of you. You don’t know any better. Now I look don’t let your real feelings out, they tend to “Now as I’m getting a little bit older, I’m
back and go, ‘Wow, I wish someone had told show up in other places, like in your dreams. like, It’s good to have things to work for. Just
me that I could say no.’ ” don’t give 100 percent of your energy towards
Holland doesn’t have to fake it anymore. it,” Holland says. “I’m trying to live my life a
Don’t get him wrong: He still wants you to little bit more freely.”
like him. He just doesn’t want to have to give
you everything to do it. “I actually learned this oliver franklin-wallis is a writer
based in England.

142 GQ.COM MOTY 2021

MARK HOPPUS

C ONTINUED FROM PAGE 113 I certainly didn’t take any joy in causing him dealing with in that moment,” said DeLonge.
any discomfort or whatever, but he and I have “And so, it wasn’t some big meeting about
“I’m not comparing Blink to the Beatles,” always been friends.” Blink-182, it was more about brothers meet-
said Hoppus, “but if we were, I would be ing and saying, ‘How do we support Mark?’ ”
Paul, Tom would be John, and Travis would Schisms within friend circles are as natu-
be George.” (“I’d be fine with just being Ringo ral as they are awkward, but few disruptions The morning I met Hoppus at his home
and being the drummer,” said Barker, after I play out as publicly as Blink’s. I asked Hoppus happened to be a day removed from some rare
relayed this comparison to him.) Yet you can’t what he would say now to a younger version of good news. “Just saw my oncologist and I’m
achieve balance without conflict, which like all himself about navigating the creative tensions cancer free!!” he’d written on Instagram 24
long-running bands Blink had in abundance. within the band. “Probably the thing that I’ve hours earlier, this time purposefully. “Thank
In 2015, after more than two decades playing learned over the years is it’s not about me,” he you God and universe and friends and family
in the band, Tom DeLonge abruptly quit. Or said after a brief pause. “People do things for and everyone who sent support and kindness
took a break, depending on who you ask. It themselves. People do things for their family. and love.”
was a point of contention within the group, Anybody else’s [issues] are not a reflection
but essentially DeLonge says he needed space on me. I can control myself, my thoughts, my The chemotherapy cycle had worked—just
to focus on other things, like his family. actions. And beyond that, it’s not about me.” like it worked for his mother. “She’s been
my greatest resource this whole time,” said
Still, fans were surprised when, shortly O N T H E DAY Hoppus found out about his can- Hoppus, collecting himself. “Nobody knows
thereafter, it was announced that Matt Skiba, cer, he texted Barker the news, as well as Skiba. what it’s like except somebody who’s gone
whose band had toured with Blink previously, By coincidence, after a few weeks of not really through chemotherapy. And so being able to
had joined Blink-182 to replace Tom. “Mark talking, DeLonge hit up Hoppus randomly. talk to my mom and just be like, ‘I feel shitty
invited me out for lunch at this beautiful vegan “The way the universe works is strange because today. I feel really awful,’ and have her be able
eatery,” said Skiba. He thought they were going I reached out to Mark because I needed him to to say, ‘I know what you mean. I’ve had those
to talk about a children’s record they’d been sign this piece of paper that had to do with my days as well….’ ”
meaning to record as the Cereal Killers, an divorce,” DeLonge said in a recent interview.
experimental punk band they were kicking “Only because of that call did I learn he had Hoppus still isn’t quite sure what tomorrow
around, but Barker came to lunch, too. “They cancer. And he told me on the phone. I was like, holds, exactly. But who is? He hasn’t really
both sat down and told me that Tom had quit. ‘Wait, what?’ ” Hoppus added: “Tom sent me a thought about what Blink-182 might look like
I was still thinking about him leaving the band picture of him in front of these women in his now that he’s cancer-free, but he’s open to any
when they morphed it into a question: Would I video shoot and they were all in lingerie. He tex- permutation of the band, really, including
be interested in playing with Blink? And Mark ted me like, ‘Hope you’re doing good. I’m over lineups with Tom back in the fold. “We haven’t
said to me, ‘We know your schedule. We already here making art!’ And that’s when I told him.” really talked about that, but I’m open to any-
looked. It’s just a matter of: Do you want to do thing in the future,” said Hoppus. “I don’t know
it? We would have to start rehearsing imme- In any case, DeLonge would soon visit how that would work if it’s all four of us. Like
diately.’ And I said, ‘Well, of course I want to Hoppus’s house, and because the universe we’re all going to live in the same house again?”
do it.’ ” works in strange ways, Barker happened to be
there as well. “I didn’t know Travis was going Hearing Mark, Tom, and Travis all talk about
Were you worried about Tom’s feelings at to show up,” DeLonge said. “And I was like, each other, you get a real sense that there’s a
all? I asked Skiba. ‘Oh, shit, band meeting!’ ” deep a≠ection there, annoyances and all, lov-
ing one another as only brothers can. (“There
“It wasn’t until an hour or two later that I The three of them sat in Hoppus’s back- is nobody with better dick jokes than us,” added
started to consider Tom’s feelings towards it. yard for hours, opening their hearts up to one DeLonge.) For Hoppus, the past year not only
From what they told me, he left them holding another, talking about everything. DeLonge deepened his appreciation for his family and
the bag and I’ve always left it between them. went deep about his father’s death and the friends, but it taught him how to handle unex-
It’s not really any of my business.” metaphysics of the universe and learning to pected horror with humility, grace, humor,
heal. They talked about old wounds within and—this is the new one—an open heart that’s
Skiba continued: “Tom’s been nothing but a the band and the scars they’ve accumulated still learning how to feel deserving. “I’m totally
sweetheart to me, but it’s like somebody dating along the way. For all the dick jokes and toi- overwhelmed with the support and love,” he
your ex-girlfriend or your ex-wife or whatever. let humor, the trio have experienced their said, pausing. “I don’t know. People online I
It’s weird. No matter how cordial or adult every- share of darkness. Notably, in 2008, Barker have never met sending support. Cancer sur-
one is, it’s awkward. But, people just want to see was in a plane crash that killed four people vivors of the same lymphoma that I had even
drama. They want to see a fight. Neither Tom but spared him and his friend Adam “DJ AM” put together a video where they covered a Blink
nor myself are that kind of person. Even if it Goldstein. They survived but at a cost: Barker song, and it made me cry.” That song, of course,
stung for him a little—and I think he said it’s was instilled with a severe fear of flying and was “All the Small Things.”
a little weird—he’s man enough to admit that. Goldstein died of an accidental drug over-
dose just a year after the accident. (Shortly Before I left, Hoppus wanted me to take
after their meeting in Hoppus’s backyard, in a close look at the top of his head. He was
August, Barker flew for the first time in over a excited: His hair was showing tiny signs of
decade when he went to Cabo San Lucas with growth. Of returning to normalcy. “My armpit
his fiancé, Kourtney.) hair is still totally gone,” he said, “but if you
look close, all this white hair is just the shitty
The conversation that day was, for each cancer hair, and then you can see the actual
of them, a salve. “We got into more life stu≠. dark hair growing back in a little bit.”
What we’ve learned over the years about our-
selves. How we’ve grown, how nothing really You got a free bleach job, I joked.
matters when it boils down to what we were “I know,” he replied, beaming. “I wish I’d
had this in the mid-’90s.”

chris gayomali is a gq articles editor.

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MOTY 2021 GQ.COM 143

FINAL SHOT For our cover story on
Lil Nas X, see page 82.

left

Jacket, $4,320,
shirt, $795, and
bow tie, $270, by
Tom Ford. Earring,
$6,090 for pair,
by Shay Jewelry.

Shirt studs,
$2,150 for set, by

David Yurman.

right

Top (price upon
request) by Celine

Homme by Hedi
Slimane. Earring
(price upon request)
by Giorgio Armani

High Jewelry.
Link bracelet,
$17,900, and tennis
bracelet, $9,800,
by Shay Jewelry.

STYLIST, MOBOLAJI DAWODU.

144 GQ.COM MOTY 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY PARI DUKOVIC