Editor’s Letter
, Editor in ChiefParis Hilton.) Artists themselves, they are rendered into artworks by
photographer Hassan Hajjaj, who creates bespoke costumes and sets that
channel his subjects’ energy and attitude. Elsewhere in the issue, Mark Seal
visits London for an exclusive interview with James Stunt, who (true to
his surname) infamously facilitated the loan of a number of forged paintings
to the House of Windsor. And Jesse Hyde reports from the Amazon, where
a massacre of farmers who protested the selling o of land for prot shines a
light on the human toll of deforestation and shows how deeply climate
change connects to issues of inequality and corruption—all, increasingly, the
themes of our era, the scandals hiding in plain sight.Blonde is on any screen nearby, I will absolutely
park myself in front of it; sorry if you need
anything from me for the next two hours. She
could have had a tidy, superlative, Tracy Flick
career picking up Oscars and such, but instead
she expanded into acquiring and producing,
and she is responsible for a real shift in the stories
we see onscreen and the roles they create for
women, from Wild to Big Little Lies to her new
Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere, costarring
Kerry Washington and based on the best-selling
novel by Celeste Ng.
Reese and I are kindred spirits in our love of
contemporary ction, which is why I’m thrilled
that Ann Patchett wrote our cover story. (Ann’s
work similarly hijacks my time on a regular basis;
please do not tempt me with Commonwealth
or Bel Canto.) Her Nashville bookstore, Parnassus
Books, is on my road-trip bucket list, and there
is so much to love and mull in the conversation
she and Reese had there, amid the novels and
the canine personalities. For our cover, Jackie
Nickerson photographed Reese in a nursery
near her Los Angeles home, a tting environment
for a woman whose mission is growth, not
just for herself but for her whole industry, and
whose work is as generative as it is performative.
She makes it all look easy, whether the “it”
at hand is wearing a couture gown or playing
a morning-news anchor on The Morning
Show, which (as Ann writes) might well be the
denitive ctional document of the #MeToo
movement—but Reese’s success is rooted in
ambition, dedication, and intellect.
Beyond our shores, James Reginato tours
the circuit of high-ying, high-earning celebrity
DJs, by which we mean both DJs who have
become celebrities and vice versa. (Example of
the former: Marshmello. Example of the latter:Reese Witherspoon has
been a hero of my personal
canon ever since Election,
and I watch and rewatch
her work compulsively. If
Walk the Line or Legally
Radhika Jones,
photographed in the
Vanity Fair Oscar
party studio by Mark
Seliger, February 9, 2020.24 VANITY FAIR APRIL 2020MARK
SELIGER