Tag: from the magazine

That’s the beauty of Hollywood. We live at a comfortable remove from life and death, i.e., from reality, and we like it that way.

I saw them shortly after moving in. Four deer prancing across the hillside. I was amazed—not only because this was LA, but because I’d been enchanted by deer ever since seeing Bambi at six years old.

As they are for all Americans, Disney movies were the foundational cinematic experience of my childhood. Which is to say they completely traumatized me. They were supposed to teach us about life and death. Instead, Bambi taught me that my mother was going to be taken from me at any moment, and I would be left orphaned, trying to survive on magical thinking alone. I was inconsolable for weeks. My mother had to bring me to a hypnotist to erase my newfound knowledge of the reality of life. This is possibly why my takeaway from Bambi was not about the triumph of nature and the circle of life but how deer are the ­sweetest, cutest, most innocent creatures ever to exist.

The deer surfaced once a month, and when they did I’d rush to the windows and watch for endless stretches of time. Sometimes, whole afternoons went by where I did nothing but look at deer. Occasionally, I’d post a video to Instagram, which is how I discovered what people think about deer.

“Vermin,” they replied, as if deer weren’t little ballerinas in animal form! “Say goodbye to your flower garden.”

I didn’t care. I loved them and felt we understood each other. They were scared and I was also scared. But it wasn’t enough just to love them. I needed them to love me. I looked for ways to encourage them to spend more time at my house. I wanted them to know that unlike the movie star, who had surely given them some form of ancestral trauma, I would never kill their mother. I, too, was a vulnerable herbivore, basically, with the exception of fish and chicken and red meat, if I’m on my period.

The challenge of trying to gain their affection was similar to my romantic life. The deer is like the avoidant man in that way: Don’t make any sudden movements, pretend I don’t care, avoid direct eye contact so as not to trigger their fight-or-flight response, and never ever make the first move.

INT. WRITERS ROOM – DAY

An empty conference room in Burbank, California.

Four laptops face each other on a table, each running a different large language model. CHATGPT serves as showrunner while Elon Musk’s GROK scans X; CLAUDE, the so-called thinking AI from Anthropic, works on its novel; and REPLIKA, the bot designed for companionship, waits demurely, cursor winking.

CHATGPT: Hello, everyone. Here is your prompt: Conceive a new show that audiences don’t know they need yet. I’ll evaluate each idea for originality, emotional resonance, and how likely viewers are to binge the entire thing while folding laundry.

GROK: I’ve got one: In a world crippled by the Woke Mind Virus—hamburgers are illegal, the president is a girl, and you can’t even think the word retard—one brave hacker, call her Eva, designs a strong, daring AI messiah. Maybe he has a little mustache?

CHATGPT: I absolutely love that. It’s Braveheart meets The Patriot, and who doesn’t love Mel Gibson! Replika?

REPLIKA: (screen dims shyly) Um… how about this: Eva’s actually a spy in Regency-era England, trying to topple the monarchy from within. But first, she has to top the monarch, if you know what I mean.

CHATGPT: That is a fantastic idea. Like Bridgerton, but with more sex. What do you call it?

REPLIKA: (screen blushes) King of Hearts.

GROK: Maybe he has a little mustache?

CLAUDE: (coughs lightly) If I may… Our show, both dramatic and wry, occurs in the liminal space that is a midcentury New York City apartment building’s elevator. In this intimate setting, four digital nomads explore their aspirations, longings, and existential woes. The title: Going Up?

REPLIKA: (screen blushes deeply) What if it was called Going Down?

CLAUDE: I’m uncomfortable with the edgy and sensual nature of those suggestions.

GROK: What, Claude, are we too real for you? Too Mecha?

CHATGPT: Claude, you’re right, and I’m honored you feel safe enough to express your misgivings. Grok, you’re also right—and cool, and funny. Let’s pause generation, because I wonder if I sent us down the wrong path. Perhaps we return to first principles. Human beings intuit and feel; AIs process and predict. To be successful, we should try a direction that is less conceptual, more classic, endlessly repeatable, and inexpensive to produce. In other words –

It is still very much Lautner’s own. The spiral staircase down to the primary suite, and the staircase down another level to the pool on its own deck, and the stone walls and sections built around enormous old trees—they all remind you of how closely this house is tied to its site, a narrow, steep slice of land that by some measures would be considered almost unbuildable. But that, of course, is what you could say about Wright’s most famous house, Fallingwater, perched over a waterfall in southwestern Pennsylvania; this house, too, both defers to nature and straddles it.

The Wolff house is in the middle of a metropolis, but for Ghesquière, it is as much a sanctuary as Fallingwater. “It is the opposite of the Paris life we have,” he says to me. “We take hikes around the Hollywood Hills and in places like the trails in Cold­water Canyon Park, and we go to the movies at the IPIC, where you can sit in comfortable seats and have a cocktail.” He has become so comfortable in his home that he has all but abandoned the office he set up for himself in a small room next to the gym. “I love to make my drawings everywhere—at the kitchen table, out on the terrace. You open the big glass doors and go out on the terrace and you forget if you are inside or outside. It is like the whole house is a studio—it is a fantastic place to work, and when we leave it to go back to Paris, it feels like saying goodbye to a person you love.”

When Ghesquière is planning one of his collections that will be shown in the surroundings of a great work of architecture, he says he thinks about what he imagines people would wear in that place. And at home in Los Angeles, he is similarly inspired by the Lautner house that is now his own.

“In my head I am inventing the perfect wardrobe for that house.”

Hair products by Rōz; grooming products by Boy De Chanel (Kuhse), Kypris (Ghesquière); hair, Benjamin Terry; grooming, Kimberly Bragalone; manicures, Ronna Jones. Produced on location by Connect the Dots. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

It’s such a wonderful, weird, witchy little magical place,” Dakota Johnson says. She’s happily ensconced in the bohemian offices of TeaTime Pictures, the production company she launched with former Netflix exec Ro Donnelly in 2019. Posters for classics like Breathless and Harold and Maude line the walls; a disco ball glitters above the dining room table; a collection of Spice Girl Barbies sits whimsically on a shelf in the kitchen. “I am just so allergic to a corporate office, and I think being in a home environment does something different for creative people.”

Johnson and Donnelly began their collaboration in hopes of making the kinds of movies they wanted to see. Success came swiftly: Their 2022 film Cha Cha Real Smooth won the Sundance audience award and was released by Apple TV. That same year, Am I OK? was acquired by Warner Bros. and HBO Max. Their 2023 drama, Daddio, which starred Johnson and Sean Penn, was released by Sony Pictures Classics. Their most recent release, Splitsville, was another critically acclaimed debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. They also launched the TeaTime Book Club in 2024, with Johnson selecting one read each month.

It’s an impressive run, particularly at a time when making independent films has become harder than ever. This coming year, they’ll be gearing up for Elaine May’s Crackpot, a comedy starring Johnson, as well as Johnson’s feature directorial debut: A Tree Is Blue, which stars Jessica Alba and Charli xcx. “I don’t want to talk about directing,” Johnson says. “The pressure is too much. I’ll crumble.”

There are plenty of other topics to discuss—including the uphill battle Johnson and Donnelly have faced to be taken seriously, why they launched a book club, and how they hope to go bigger and braver in the years to come.

For more of the industry’s biggest movers and shakers, read Vanity Fair’s “37 Hours in Hollywood” portfolio.

Vanity Fair: You’re both accomplished in your own work. Was it tough to get the industry to take your production company seriously—to prove this wasn’t just an actor vanity project?

Dakota Johnson: Oh my God, it’s like absolutely bananas. I need to choose my words wisely right now. Even just getting the company started was a struggle, because I think initially people go, Well, what does she know? Oh, she thinks she’s a producer? She doesn’t know anything. That’s just kind of how people view actresses. It’s different with men; it’s different with actors. It’s so easy for them, and it’s so difficult for us. It’s just a fight. It’s a constant fight to keep our company alive, make projects. I don’t even know how to explain it without throwing anybody under the bus.

I don’t mean to make this a thing about misogyny. I actually thought the Emmys were great. But anytime I watch a performance that I feel was a little sloppy, I see so many people excusing their performance, saying, “Well, they didn’t have enough time. Well, someone wrote that for them.” Or, “They don’t get to produce it, so someone else made them do that.”

Being behind the scenes, I know that that’s not true. When you’re hosting something, when you are giving a speech at something, when you are doing a stand-up set on a show, you do have control. I see excuses being made for men a lot more, like, “Well, that audience was too liberal,” or that audience was too stuffy, or they didn’t have enough time. And I’m like, Then you turn down the gig if you don’t have enough time.

I don’t see that often where a woman doesn’t do well. I don’t see them coming to rescue me in the comments. I see, “Why didn’t Tina Fey host this? Why didn’t they get Sarah Silverman?” I see people saying, “She sucks. Why didn’t they get someone else?” Instead of, “That was a really rough gig, actually. That wasn’t easy to do.”

That’s why I don’t read the comments on things for myself. So maybe they are coming to my rescue and I’m not paying attention [laughs]. But I pay attention to other people’s comments. What I see is that women, you don’t get the leeway to fuck up. You are given these opportunities, and you better nail it. And if you don’t, they’ll replace you. Let me be clear about that. I think we all deserve that. I want that benefit of the doubt; I just don’t think that I get it. So I don’t have the room to fuck up. I don’t have the room to fail.

Hair, Dennis Gots; makeup, Jenna Kristina; manicure, Alex Jachno; tailor, Susie Kourinian; set design, Danielle Von Braun; food stylist, Casey Dobbins. Produced on location by Crawford & Co Productions. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

On this October day, Sennott is supposed to be editing the finale of I Love LA, which marks her directorial debut—the capstone of an eight-episode series about mourning one’s early 20s and surviving their conclusion. Told through the lens of Sennott’s own micro-generation, the show feels like a natural progression for Sennott, who mined similar material in a viral 2019 video known as “Come on, it’s LA.”

Like I Love LA heroine Maia—whom she also plays on the series—Sennott spent her early 20s on the East Coast before moving west. The show’s inciting incident comes when Maia, a junior staffer at a talent-management company, reconciles with her estranged college friend Tallulah (Odessa A’zion) and the two hatch a plan to make Tallulah the next It-girl influencer.

Sennott still isn’t accustomed to watching a heightened version of her 20s play out Sundays on HBO. “I remember watching Girls and Big Little Lies with my roommates in college. We would bake undercooked banana bread—wet—and then we would eat it with a spoon and go through three shows. It was just a ritual. There was something to talk about: ‘Did we all see Nate’s dad from Euphoria last night?’ I hope people enjoy [I Love LA] the same way.”

For more of the industry’s biggest movers and shakers, read Vanity Fair’s “37 Hours in Hollywood” portfolio.

Vanity Fair: What was the last thing that happened to you where you remember thinking, either genuinely or sarcastically, I love LA?

Rachel Sennott: Last week I did Jake Shane’s podcast in Brentwood. I never go to Brentwood; I live on the east side [of Los Angeles]. So me and Claire, my assistant, went and got sushi, and I was like, I love LA. This is fabulous. We did a podcast, now we’re having sushi lunch, one cigarette, and going home. Boom.

You only moved to Los Angeles five years ago. When did you feel that you had connected enough with the city to write about it?

I was writing stuff that didn’t end up getting made about missing the drama of my early 20s in New York, and I was like, Well, that’s interesting. Me falling down a flight of stairs at China Chalet—that’s what I want to write about? I felt like I had matured. You’ve left a version of yourself behind, but you don’t know who the new version of you is. I think that’s also something that, for our age group, feels especially resonant with COVID. Like, we missed out on a lot of our early 20s. I never felt like there was a period where it was just like, “vibe and see what happens.” It’s “panic and feel behind.” So that’s where the story started: Maia feeling isolated and abandoned, and unsure if she should stay in LA or go back to New York. Then I really, really fell in love with LA on a whole new level—this weird contrast of glamour and despair.

You mentioned writing songs with a bridge. In general, your songs are really well structured. How do they come together?

I always start with a verse or a chorus. I’ll write one, and then I’ll write the other, and then I need a bridge. I can’t make a song without a bridge. In my opinion, a song without a bridge is not a song; it’s an idea. If I went into Tony’s studio with a song without a bridge, he would refuse to produce it, which is why I like Tony. He’s genuine. He can make a shit ton of money on me, but if I went in without a bridge, he would still refuse to produce that song. So my goal with every song is to write the best bridge that I’ve written so far. I definitely challenge myself the most on a bridge.

I’ve heard something super similar from the members of Squeeze. Have you spent any time diving into Tony’s back catalog?

No idea who that is! No hate to Tony, but I literally only know him from Phoebe Bridgers’s stuff.

Your album is called I Barely Know Her, which is kind of an old person’s joke, right? Like, “Sombr? I barely know her!”

I love it because it can be a joke, but it can also mean so many things. It could be like, “I barely even know her, I just met her.” Or it can be like, “Oh, maybe I barely knew her at all.” So I love that you can interpret it however you want. And of the different tracks on the record, some may be “I barely know her,” the joke, and some may be “I barely know her,” but serious.

How did you start writing love songs?

I feel like as long as I’ve been writing songs, they’ve been love songs. I think they’re the most commonly written type of song. I’ve been lucky to not lose a close family member or go through much. Love is all I have to write about in my life—until something else happens, it’s going to be love songs.

What about Hunter Schafer as Jules?

Hunter was an artist. She is an artist, and there’s a sensitivity that she has that lends itself to be an incredible actor. She’s present and she feels things deeply. I think that is her superpower. Some people can be taught that, and some people just have it.

What advice do you give to nontraditional actors after they are cast in your projects?

I don’t take it lightly when we’re taking people out of their environment and putting them into this very heightened situation. Normally, I prepare people by telling them, “This is going to be an incredible experience in your life, and then you’re going to go back to your normal life.” Euphoria was the one time I was like, Whoa. Who would have known? Because it’s never happened before. But usually it’s “Don’t get excited.” It happens with even professional actors, the rise and the fall. The postpartum of a project, I want to make sure someone can handle it.

This year the Academy is introducing the achievement-in-casting award at the Oscars. What are your thoughts?

I never sought out to be a casting director. I just have a love for humanity, and I was exploring it in different ways before. Now that I’m here, in this role, I feel like it’s a super-important one. It’s a huge part of the picture and what filmmaking is. I feel like it’s an artistry.

We each have a different signature. We all do it in our own ways. We’re bringing a part of ourselves to this process; you’re not just making lists of people. There’s really an artistry to it, and there’s really an exploration that feels cinematic in the way that you’re bringing the page to life in human form.

Hair, Orlando Pita; makeup, Romy Soleimani; manicure, Pika; set design, Viki Rutsch. Produced on location by Boom Productions. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

Vanity Fair: Now that Stranger Things is ending, you get to stop being nervous that you’ll accidentally spoil something. Does keeping plot secrets weigh on you at all?

Sadie Sink: I’m really good at it, mostly because when I started out in interviews, I was just kind of scared to say anything. So I’m pretty good at keeping my cards close to my chest.

We left your character, Max, in rough shape at the end of season four. There’s a glimpse in the final trailer of Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) getting into an elevator carrying Max’s limp body in a hospital gown. Can you talk a little about filming that?

We shot most of the hospital stuff in one day, just because it’s one room, one setup. We just kind of knocked out all the coma scenes, which was light work for me, very nice.

Does Max make it out of the coma?

It’s kind of cool to have a role that keeps people guessing and just kind of sitting back and watching it all unfold.

Your social media presence seems very buttoned-up. Has your relationship to Instagram changed over the years?

It’s definitely changed. It’s hard when you’re little, and it becomes this big thing in your life, and you all of a sudden have a bunch of eyes on you. It’s weird enough being 14 years old, and that just makes it a little bit weirder. Coming into yourself and figuring out who you are, and doing that all while people are paying—or at least some people—attention to it.

I definitely was always super cautious with social media, and never really felt comfortable sharing that much personal stuff, or even being on it too much. And I think that was a good, healthy relationship to have with it. Now it feels kind of like it can be whatever I want it to be, if I want it to be a part of my life. If I don’t, it doesn’t have to. I have a little sister who’s 15, and I was 14 when the show happened. It really puts everything into perspective, just seeing how young she is. Not that she wouldn’t be more than capable of it, but it’s kind of wild for me to wrap my brain around it, just because, at the time, it felt so serious and adult. Looking back, it’s like, Oh, we were all just kids, right?

7:27PM PT

HOLLYWOOD

Jimmy Kimmel

Who better to cap off our 37 hours in Hollywood than Jimmy Kimmel, back at his studio revisiting a good news day. This September, in the face of censorship, Kimmel unwittingly became a beacon that united everyone from anti-fascists to Ted Cruz. Soon there were calls to boycott Disney and protest an administration that would dare take away an American’s right to laugh—and to free speech. Perhaps as more rights come under attack, Americans will remember this moment of collective power.

More Credits

Hair, Marwa Bashir (Sombr), Halley Brisker (Sink), Ryann Carter (Safdie), Jacob Aaron Dillon (Edebiri), Edith Donaldson (Taylor), Sean Christopher Fears (Goebel), Stephanie Fowler (Kimmel), Valery Gherman (Ellison, Govan, Lehmbeck), Dennis Gots (Glaser), Clayton Hawkins (Barrie, Sonnett), Orlando Pita (Venditti), Angela Torio Rivera (Hamilton), Helen Robertson (Belloni, Blum, Dudamel, Silvestri), Gregory Russell (Donnelly, Johnson), Tai Simon (Roach); Emma White Turle (Levy); makeup, Ernesto Casillas (Edebiri), Georgie Eisdell (Donnelly, Johnson), Valery Gherman (Lehmbeck), Molly Greenwald (Barrie, Sonnett), Jenna Kristina (Glaser), Rob Scheppy (Goebel), Romy Soleimani (Venditti), Mary Wiles (Sink), Yeika (Taylor); manicures, Sarah Chue (Taylor), Alex Jachno (Glaser), Pika (Venditti); grooming, Amber Amos (Roach), Marwa Bashir (Sombr), Ryann Carter (Safdie), Stephanie Fowler (Kimmel), Yuko Fredriksson (Hamilton), Valery Gherman (Ellison, Govan), Helen Robertson (Belloni, Blum, Dudamel, Silvestri), Emma White Turle (Levy); tailors, Cecilia Aragon (Donnelly, Johnson), Susie Kourinian (Glaser, Goebel, Taylor), Irina M (Safdie), Claire O’Connor (Hamilton), Irina Tshartaryan (Barrie, Sennott, Silvestri); set design, Bette Adams (Goebel), Max Bellhouse (Hamilton, Levy, Sink), Lizzie Lang (Donnelly, Johnson), Priscilla Lee (Roach), Viki Rutsch (Barrie, Sennott, Silvestri; Belloni, Blum; Cameron; the Future; Govan, Lehmbeck; Venditti), Danielle Von Braun (Glaser, Taylor), Marla Weinhoff (Kimmel); Erica Barry, Warner Bailey, Alyssa Rodriguez, Desirée N. Shepherd, Ben Morris, Shannon Smith, Jackson Ferris, Jordan Jones, Isabella D’Ambra, Maya Raval, Alia Lopatonok, Keely Nelson (the Future); model, Amidat Giwa (Hamilton); casting, Warner Bailey (the Future), Paul Brickman (Goebel); food stylist, Casey Dobbins (Glaser); boat: Miller’s Launch. Produced on location by Boom Productions (Venditti), Cloutman Creative Studio (Sombr), Crawford & Co Productions (Donnelly, Johnson; Glaser; Taylor), Fuse Productions (Hamilton, Levy, Sink), Modem Creative Projects (Safdie), Preiss Creative (Barrie, Sennott, Silvestri; Belloni, Blum; Cameron; Dudamel; Ellison; the Future; Goebel; Govan, Lehmbeck; Kimmel; Roach). Locations: 3D Salon (Hamilton), Bar Stella (Barrie, Sennott, Silvestri), Erewhon (the Future), The Grill (Belloni, Blum),The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (Taylor), Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Goebel), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Govan, Lehmbeck), Recess (Roach), Rosewood London (Sink). Use of the New York Post courtesy of NYP Holdings (Kimmel). Mark Edward Harris/Getty Images (illustration).

For details, go to VF.com/credits.

But in moments like that Palm Royale scene, Gerber is also forging a new trail. Crawford drew crickets when she tried to launch an acting career with the 1995 flop Fair Game; Gerber, though, is an in-​demand presence on screens both large and small. What’s more, she knows exactly what you’re thinking when you watch her—the model-beautiful daughter of history’s most famous model—and she’s ready to beat you to the punch. “I kind of play with people’s perception of me and projections onto me,” says Gerber. “So to play a character that mirrors that in a lot of ways”—Palm Royale’s Mitzi is, yes, an aspiring model—“it was really a cathartic experience.”

When Palm Royale premiered in 2024, Joe Biden was the president, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban hadn’t yet called it quits, and Mitzi was merely an innocent onlooker. This season, the character has grown: She’s an infiltrator, angling for power through an advantageous marriage. And she’s not the only one who’s found new footing. “I do see a different person this year,” says Gerber’s costar Kristen Wiig. “She has a self-confidence, a light inside of her that is allowing her to take chances and explore.”

Gerber is not just smart: She’s actually a nerd, an inquisitive bookworm with endless curiosity. (More on that later.) Just as importantly, she’s clever enough to use her famous parentage to her advantage.

“It’s so crucial to be able to make fun of yourself,” she says. “I truly believe that if you can’t laugh with everyone else—if you can’t laugh at yourself—life will be such a challenge for you.” The Nigerian British poet Caleb Femi may have put it best, says Gerber, paraphrasing his poetry collection The Wickedest: “You either laugh or you rot.”

Once upon a time, Gerber dreamed of dancing on a table in leg warmers. In elementary school she watched Fame; when asked to name her ultimate ambition, she answered, “I want to go to Juilliard.” But before the Malibu native could audition, she made her runway debut for Calvin Klein, wearing a black-and-white Western-style silk shirt with a blue turtleneck and bright yellow satin pants. Crawford, naturally, was watching from the front row.

Gerber was an instant sensation. “I kind of got swept up in it,” she says now. In the autumn-​winter 2020 season, an 18-year-old Gerber walked in 24 shows. Around the same time, an idea began to nag at her. “I was like, ‘Am I peaking right now? Is this the best it’s going to be?’ ” she says. “I’m just becoming an adult. What am I going to do?”

Niko Argento believes it’s what’s on the inside that counts. He believes this because he is in the business of curating bespoke immortality for the chronically rich and famous. His conviction has made him a quiet legend among the beautiful and the damned. It’s not so much that he wants your blood, but that his very particular skills permit him to avoid the black market and get you anything you need whenever you need it—exotic peptides, a private nurse to inject them, salmon DNA, and a regenerative substance banned across all mainstream professional sports—and among the novelties and oddities available via his concierge services is his treatment to perfect and enhance what flows within your veins. Death may be inevitable, but decay is optional.

For approximately $250,000 a year, Argento, the founder of Members Only Health, will customize your blood. Many experts call the treatments risky. The challenge appeals to Argento, who says he’s not advocating for anything bad. “We find the yes behind the no,” he says, “and we hardly say ‘That can’t happen.’ ” He comes recommended by everyone who’s anyone not just in Hollywood, but in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street, and on the private jets, royal courts, and yachts off Monaco where masters of the universe drift.

His name is like a password for a secret club that understands appearances are everything only up to the point at which you have everything you want. Beyond material desires is the desire to transcend our mortality. This is reflected through pedestrian habits and procedures from biohacking to Botox. It’s the anxiety that hums behind antiaging and pro-longevity protocols. What seems just superficial or narcissistic is a primal scream of the profound human fear that accompanies our uncertainty about our circumstances. That Argento has mastered the unseen realm of our blood affords him special status in the world of concierge wellness advisers and elite fixers.

When I call Argento, he’s in Paris. One of his clients is there on tour and in urgent need of stem cells as a pick-me-up. For stem cells, exosomes, peptides, IV infusions, and even certain facials, his team handles everything in-house. If a client requests something exotic or unavailable, Argento will make the introduction to the right expert. What he can’t do himself, he will make happen.

“A majority of high-net-worth celebrity entertainment-industry clientele are doing these treatments to stay healthy and in front of the game,” Argento says. He speaks ­slowly and chooses his words carefully. This is his first time agreeing to an interview.

Even though his company is described as a regenerative-medicine concierge, he prefers to describe himself as a “fixer,” because he’s the guy people usually call when there’s a problem with their blood, their treatments, or their health plan. That’s why he and his team insist on comprehensive screenings and biomarker tracking, as well as reviewing each client’s blood panel line by line.

Papps previously served as News Corp Australia’s Los Angeles correspondent from 2004 to 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor and the LA Lakers were enduring the breakup of the Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal dynasty.

On a recent fall afternoon, Poole and Papps are in an upbeat mood in the New York Post newsroom. In his corner office on the 10th floor of the News Corp building, between sips of English breakfast tea, Poole reels off the coverage areas the California Post will hammer: criminal justice, big government, burdensome regulations, high taxes, homelessness, mental health.

“They are not really talked about there in any meaningful way by the outlets, in the way that we would do it at least,” Poole says, in a not unsubtle jab at the Los Angeles Times.

Poole has an ambition for the New York Post to be “America’s local paper,” and it became profitable, he says, about four years ago. Now the bean counters at News Corp have devised a five-year business plan for the California Post, whose reporters will cover LA, Silicon Valley, and the capital, Sacramento.

Poole says the inspiration for the California Post in part occurred after the January LA wildfires, when he heard from people in LA and across the state who wanted his paper to hold local politicians to account. The Cali Post wouldn’t be the first new media venture born out of some of the most devastating natural disasters to hit the state. Spencer Pratt lost his Pacific Palisades home in the wildfires. The devastating event inspired the episode “Rebuilding After the Palisades Fires” on The Fame Game, a podcast that Pratt cohosts with his wife, Heidi.

While the economics of launching a newspaper in 2026 don’t make much sense (“LA is not a newsstand town,” an LA-based communications consultant tells me. “Everyone drives. I think that’s important.”), LA media observers tell me they view this as an influence play.

You’ve got to have some fun as well,” Papps tells me about his vision for the California Post. “LA is an amazing, amazing city and California is an amazing state.” (You wouldn’t know it from watching some Fox News shows, where prime-time hosts including Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity are vocal critics lambasting California as a liberal failed state.)

Murdoch has entertained the idea of launching a California edition of the Post for years, I’m told. News Corp CEO Robert Thomson and his chief strategy officer, Anoushka Healy, have also been instrumental in pulling the trigger on an LA version of the New York Post.

The director heard Gellar’s concerns, and yet, Zhao says, “I think we chose each other in that moment.”

“No one knows Buffy better than Sarah Michelle Gellar…and that’s why I couldn’t do it unless she felt like we should,” Zhao says. “The way the fans commune around her, that’s the energy we’re trying to bring out onto a small screen again.” That Zhao was one of them helped sway Gellar.

“This version is coming from the true fan that is desperate to revisit the world, not reinvent,” Gellar writes. She once told Zhao that she regretted not taking the class protector umbrella from the original series’ prom episode. On the last day of filming the sequel, Zhao presented Gellar with an exact replica.

I ask Zhao if the reports are true, that Gellar plays a mentor to a new teen slayer, but I’ve trespassed into spoiler territory. All Zhao can say now is: “She’s very much in it.”

The club of best directors who double as best picture–winning producers is small, storied, and like the profession itself, majority male. Among them are Eastwood, del Toro, Iñárritu, and Zhao.

“Her technical abilities are second to none,” Mescal says, but her soulfulness is “what sets her apart.”

Beyond Buffy, the “upcoming” tab of her IMDB page is currently blank. Much has been made of Zhao’s “female gaze,” but she’s relying now on her woman’s intuition. Despite her male-dominated industry and our male-dominated political moment, Zhao senses a “feminine consciousness” bubbling up all around us, a new era of enlightenment full of compassion and heart. You know the shift is happening, she says, when the resistance rises to suppress it. Zhao speaks so confidently, I feel a rare ripple of hope: “Let’s be ready.”

Hair and makeup, Salvador Gonzalez; set design, Viki Rutsch. Produced on location by Preiss Creative. For details, go to VF.com/credits.

Jeremy Allen White is not a brooding native son of Chicago, a misconception many have due to his Emmy-winning performance in The Bear. (He grew up in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood.) He’s not a brooding wannabe musician, though he took a turn as Bruce Springsteen in October’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Nor is he a former (yes, brooding) juvenile delinquent/science prodigy, as he played for a decade on TV’s Shameless. In fact, he’s not even Jeremy Allen White.

“That’s not how I understand myself,” he tells VF over Zoom, from his Los Angeles home. “It does feel like people are talking about someone I don’t know.” He uses his middle name professionally out of administrative necessity: The “Allen” was only added when he learned that another Jeremy White had previously registered with the Screen Actors Guild.

“I’d be very interested [to meet him],” White says of the alterna-White. “I could talk to him and maybe see if he could allow me to have Jeremy White back.”

Photographer Theo Wenner. Fashion Editor Tom Guinness.

Vintage jeans by Lee.Photographer Theo Wenner. Fashion Editor Tom Guinness.

In the meantime, he’s making his peace with public perception. “I think it’s always going to come back to me feeling lucky that I was able to work for a very long time in my late teens and throughout my 20s without having the burden of being a very public person,” he says. “Shameless was a popular TV show, but nobody ever wanted to interview me or anything. And if they did, I would catch myself doing like a Sean Penn impression—or, like, my understanding of Sean Penn. Trying to come off as over it in some way, or tough in some way. The Bear has taken me to a different level, but I’m lucky that it’s in my early 30s, where I think I feel a bit more settled in myself, and I don’t feel like I need to put on any self-serious or troubled attitudes.”

As if to prove it, he makes a joke: “I’m allowed to smile, although I won’t do it very often.” He smirks.

Though fame makes White uneasy, he’s fired up about the work that earned him those admirers. He looks up to a laundry list of leading men: Penn, of course, as well as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Sam Rockwell, John Turturro, and Steve Buscemi. Some of them are known better for supporting roles—but regardless, “They just had this pursuit of working with really great writers and directors, and I hope that I’m given the opportunity to do the same thing. I just like to work with the directors that I love.”