Vanity Fair

vanity fair

Editor in Chief Radhika Jones Deputy Editor Kira Pollack Creative Director Chris Dixon Director of Editorial Operations Caryn Prime Executive Editors Eric Bates, Claire Howorth, Daniel Kile Editor, Creative Development David Friend Executive Fashion Director Samira Nasr Visuals Director Clinton Cargill Market Director Nicole Chapoteau Legal Affairs Editor Robert Walsh Director of Special Projects Sara Marks Research Director David Gendelman Entertainment Director Alison Ward Frank Beauty Director Laura Regensdorf Design Director Justin Patrick Long Senior West Coast Editor Britt Hennemuth Production Director Mia Tran Copy Director Michael Casey Associate Editors Mary Alice Miller, Louisa Strauss, Keziah Weir Research Editor Mary Flynn Reporter-Researchers Brendan Barr, Simon Brennan, Michael Sacks Copy Manager Michael Quiñones Editorial Finance Manager Geoff Collins Accessories Director Daisy Shaw-Ellis Senior Visuals Editors Tara Johnson, Cate Sturgess Entertainment Editor Caitlin Brody Special Projects Manager Ari Bergen Copy Production Director Anderson Tepper Production Manager Susan M. Rasco Assistant to the Editor Daniela Tijerina Accessories Editor Alexis Kanter Research Manager Taylor Smith Editorial…

contributors

Kimberly DREW “Upon a Star,” p. 78 “My favorite part of this process was when Lupita told me about her desire to guide her own narrative,” says Drew, the New York–based curator, writer, and activist who profiled Lupita Nyong’o for this month’s cover story. “I was impressed by how caring she is. She’s a strong-willed and wise person.” Aatish TASEER “A Rake’s Progress,” p. 116 In his profile of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister, Taseer found a cautionary, if familiar, tale. “What fascinated me most was his inability to resolve the push and pull of East and West,” says Taseer, author of The Twice-Born. “I have dealt with that too. But to me, he is a symbol of how wrong the meeting of cultures can go.” Jul ian LUCAS “Dread’s Rebellion,” p. 124 Lucas, a writer and critic…

written in the stars

It’s been just six years since Lupita Nyong’o appeared in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, and five and a half years since she won an Academy Award for her performance—her first role in a feature film. Since then, she has established herself as a lodestar in the firmament of contemporary cinema. She’s worked with Ryan Coogler in Black Panther, Jordan Peele in Us, and J.J. Abrams in the final Star Wars trilogy, the last installment of which comes out in December. This fall, Lupita makes another debut, this time as an author. She has written a children’s book, Sulwe, about a child “born the color of midnight.” The book is close to her heart, she tells Kimberly Drew in our cover story; she was moved to write it after…

correspondence

“It was creating performance art out of one’s own aspirations.”—John Green, Washington, D.C. Connecticut Convict Your two August stories about the travails of hedge funder Chip Skowron and Purdue Pharma’s David Sackler were similar in that both were rewarded with big paydays for doing wrong [“Look Homeward, Hedgie,” by Chris Pomorski; “Bitter Pill,” by Bethany McLean]. Skowron, who served time for securities fraud, and Sackler, whose family rode a tidal wave of OxyContin profits to the Forbes World’s Richest List, both plead their cases in your pages—and both fail. Skowron, who now feels most comfortable in prison, albeit one that he leaves each night after visiting his former cellmates, might be the same old “Hedgie” if his neighbors in Greenwich had not cast him out socially. And Sackler, who is upset that…

opening act

Harris Dickinson speaks with V.F.’s Britt Hennemuth. Your first film was Beach Rats, a coming-out drama that was a breakout success at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. How were you discovered? I spent a lot of time in my mom’s bedroom making self-tape auditions because the light was good. I was working in a hotel in London when I got the script, and I Skyped [filmmaker] Eliza Hittman from my childhood home. I have her to thank for my launch because you can’t ask for more than what she gave on that film. She gets a text from me now and again with a little smiley face and an update. What are your memories from your first trip to Sundance, that all-American film festival? The three other, completely uninhibited actors in Beach Rats…

culture

TALK OF THE TOWN Calf’s liver. Jellied consommé. A martini with a “sidecar” of the second pour on ice. Musso & Frank Grill has earned a devoted dinership serving such holdover classics, and this month, Hollywood’s oldest restaurant marks its centennial—an achievement in a town of fickle fad dining. What’s the grill’s secret ingredient for success? Keith Richards might describe it best: “tradition.” The waiters’ red jackets match the leather booths at the family-owned institution, where legends past and present have sat: Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Garbo, and Tarantino, who featured Musso’s in his recent film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. And to ring in its 100th birthday, The Musso & Frank Grill book—part guest book, part cookbook—by V.F. contributing editor Michael Callahan, is out this month. —BRITT HENNEMUTH “I always go into Musso &…