Harper's Bazaar USA - April 2022

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HAIR: BOB RECINE; MAKEUP: KINDRA MANN FOR DIOR FOREVER; MANICURE: DIEM TRUONG FOR MORGAN TAYLOR THE REINVENTION ISSUE RENÉE ZELLWEGER Lets DOWN Her GUARD. (Sort Of.) Photograph by MEL BLES / Styling by SAMIRA NASR Dress, ALEXANDER MCQUEEN. Rings, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS. Nebula table (2021), ROGAN GREGORY.

Jacket, bodysuit, skirt, and jeans, CELINE BY HEDI SLIMANE. Earpiece, ANA KHOURI. Clash de Cartier bracelet, CARTIER. D’Orsay pumps, GIANVITO ROSSI.



THE ACTOR has withstood THREE DECADES in an UNRELENTING SPOTLIGHT, emerging TIME and TIME again with an OSCAR in hand. Her NEXT ACT—ON SCREEN and OFF—is full of SURPRISES. R Story by MICKEY RAPKIN Photographs by MEL BLES Styling by SAMIRA NASR enée Zellweger’s rescue dog Chester to Texas. She’s real in that way.” Still is, apparently. Zellweger tells needed a hip replacement. And so, just before the world shut me about her 2007 Ford Escape Hybrid and how, before the down, the actor left her home in Topanga, a rustic canyon east of pandemic, she took herself on a date to see the Avett Brothers Malibu, and drove to the vet. Traffic can be notoriously unpre- play in Santa Barbara. Of seeing a concert alone, she says, “You dictable, and she passed the time listening to Dateline NBC’s The can stay as long as you want! Dance as long as you want to, go to Thing About Pam—like all of us, relaxing to a murder podcast. the bathroom—you don’t have to find somebody. Good luck!” Zellweger, 52, spent much of lockdown on her own, tending The world is reopening, but the new normal, whatever that to endless projects around the house. “I was outside every day, is, can make for some odd moments. The day Zellweger and building things and planting things,” she says. “Nature does what I meet is no different; there we are, two strangers in a hotel suite it does and, you know, the squirrels and I were at war. Like, ‘Why in Beverly Hills attempting a face-to-face conversation after two you gotta dig that big hole there?’ I’m out there every day with very isolating years. In pre-pandemic times, this would have been my shovel and my bucket. Then I’m inside tinkering. ’Cause you a formulaic setting for one of these profiles: lunch at the Four get quiet and you get creative. Busyness is the enemy of creativity.” Seasons, salads and French fries for us, a rice-and-chicken bowl She studied her mom’s native language, Norwegian, with one of for my pup, who was also invited. (His meal is an off-menu treat those apps for your phone. (“Now my mom and I can have wonderful ordered by Zellweger.) But now, there’s no script. She is dressed conversations about how dogs don’t eat spiders,” she says with a in black workout clothes—the preferred armor of pandemic life— self-deprecating laugh.) and she is at once guarded and warm, with a laugh that could fill a barn. What emerges is a thoughtful, revealing conversation about Those pioneer-woman vibes remind me of something an managing nearly three decades in the public eye, how fate brought ex-boyfriend of Zellweger’s, Jim Carrey, once said of her: “She her a new chance at love, and a very surprising new project. ➤ thinks having a good time is renting a U-Haul and taking furniture 96 B A Z A A R

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Tailored bomber jacket and lingerie dress, LOUIS VUITTON. Earpiece, ANA KHOURI. Ring, VAN CLEEF & ARPELS.

Chester made a full recovery, and it turns out Zellweger gained like Desperate Housewives remixed with Fargo. It’s a delicious something too. The podcast she devoured on all those runs to the six-episode binge that Jason Blum, who executive produced the vet planted the seed for her latest role: starring as the murderous show, calls “heightened true crime.” It’s certainly the only show protagonist in the prime-time NBC miniseries The Thing About this season in which an Oscar winner plays a character who Pam, adapted from the podcast, which was itself adapted from drunkenly berates a low-budget wedding DJ. five twisty Dateline NBC episodes. “What makes Pam so fascinating is how benign she appeared,” “I wanted to do something that was lighter, which sounds says Zellweger. “Everybody feels like, ‘I know her. I know that absurd,” Zellweger says, “because this is, ya know, based on a lady.’ Someone who looks like your next-door neighbor or the horrific crime.” lady who would babysit you turns out to make some choices that are, to put it kindly, illegal. This person was so outrageous, this T  wo days after Christmas in 2011, Betsy Faria was sense of entitlement—I thought, okay, as an actress, that’s fun.” found dead at her home in Troy, Missouri. Her husband, Russ, discovered the body, and his 911 Fun, yes. But prime-time TV? Like, with commercials? “I was call was frantic. “My name is Russell Faria!” he a little surprised,” says costar Josh Duhamel, who plays Russ Faria’s shouted, wailing and sobbing. “I just got home defense attorney, of Zellweger’s involvement. from a friend’s house and my wife—my wife killed herself. She’s—she’s—she’s on the floor!” Blum echoes the point: “Yeah, I was surprised.” He’d pitched Zellweger The Thing About Pam in a general meeting. “Before we The jury would later use a recording of that call to convict finish the sentence, she’s like, ‘I know the whole story, I know Russ. He’d been so hysterical, the prosecution argued—so obviously everything about it, I want to do it,’ ” he says. Blum was ecstatic over-the-top—that he must have been acting. Betsy had also been but, again, you know, surprised. The actress had been in just a stabbed about 55 times. How could he think she’d killed herself ? handful of roles over the previous several years (and between Besides, if we’ve learned anything from all of these murder shows, 2010 and 2016, she went on a six-year self-imposed hiatus from it’s that it’s always the husband! Case closed, right? Well, not quite. acting), only to emerge in 2019 playing Judy Garland in Judy, for Russ’s alibi checked out. And after two years in prison, a judge which she’d go on to win an Oscar. Did she really want to play overturned his conviction. Pam Hupp? On Tuesday nights? By then, a new suspect had emerged: Betsy’s best friend, Pam “That makes me sound like we didn’t want her for the show,” Hupp, her coworker at an insurance company, who’d been the Blum says. “We all wanted her. We were all thrilled that she would one to finger Russ. Curiously, she’d also been named the bene- do it. But no one had any idea how well she would be able to ficiary of Betsy’s life-insurance policy just days before the murder. connect to this part.” Nearly a decade passed, but Pam was eventually charged with first-degree murder. Though she denies the accusation and is R  enée Zellweger was a fixture in our lives for awaiting trial, she is also currently serving a life sentence for the so many years—as the single mother Dorothy murder of another person, a man named Louis Gumpenberger. Boyd in Jerry Maguire, as the iconic everywoman Oh, and her own mother’s cause of death was recently changed Bridget Jones in three films, as the villainous from “accidental” to “undetermined.” Roxie Hart in Chicago—but then she disappeared. “I needed to not have something to do all Hupp was a modern pop-culture fascination—a woman who the time,” she has said of that period, “to not know what I’m going maybe played everyone for a fool—and the TV series unspools to be doing for the next two years in advance. I wanted to allow for some accidents.” “You get QUIET and you get Zellweger’s retreat from the spotlight was meandering and CREATIVE. fruitful. She took college classes in public policy and international law and traveled abroad (nursing her “wanderlust”). She also fell BUSYNESS is in love and weathered a breakup and took in a couple of dogs—some the ENEMY of of those “accidents” she’d hoped for. CREATIVITY.” And then, like a phoenix rising—in custom Armani Privé—she was right back on top, hoisting a golden statue from the podium, paying tribute to Garland, who somehow never won a leading-lady Oscar. Everyone wanted to know, what would she do next? We’d have to wait for the answer, as Covid-19 put a pin in the long- awaited Renée-sance. Of that Oscar night in February 2020, she says, “We danced the night away, went home, and locked the doors.” So much has changed since then—for all of us, including Zellweger. She lost a close friend of many years, the legend- ary publicist Nanci Ryder, to ALS in 2020. Then she sold her place in Topanga (more on that soon) and found herself in a new relationship with Ant Anstead, a handsome British TV host and unlikely American tabloid staple, thanks to his brief marriage to Flip or Flop’s Christina Haack. I wondered if the pandemic ➤ 04/22 99

Dress, MICHAEL KORS COLLECTION.

“I wanted to DO SOMETHING that was LIGHTER, which sounds ABSURD, because this is, ya know, BASED on a HORRIFIC CRIME.”

was somehow different, a forced retreat coming on the heels of her relationships (Kenny Chesney, Jack White, Bradley Cooper) such a triumph? Zellweger laughs. “It was heaven!” she says. “I was breathlessly reported, and her looks needlessly criticized. Her so blessed that I wasn’t directly affected by the plague. Outside casting in Bridget Jones’s Diary somehow emboldened complete of the horrific effect on society, I think I’m really cut out for a strangers to talk openly about her body, complaining she was too pandemic life.” slight—or too Texas—to play the British heroine. Zellweger famously gained weight for the role, but when she shed the pounds, well, Making Judy, Zellweger says, “was a really nice way to rekindle armchair pundits felt she’d lost too much weight. Now, all of these my love for the process,” likening it to “making a thesis film in years later, they’re talking again—or tweeting, anyway—calling college, where it’s a private experience. And you just sneak off the padding and prosthetics she wears in The Thing About Pam and figure your way through it with your couple of friends.” Which “fatphobic.” It’s a fair point, but maybe Zellweger isn’t the best is an odd way to describe a movie with a reported $10 million place to direct that anger. budget and a trove of scarves—so many scarves—but I see her point: She went off to London, slipped into Abbey Road to record, During another meeting, over Zoom, I notice a Melvin Sokolsky and against all odds resurrected the worn body of an icon in the print from the ’60s hanging on her wall. The photograph was last days of her life. originally shot for Harper’s Bazaar, but that’s just a coincidence. It’s an image of a model inside a plexiglass bubble that’s been So much has been made about Zellweger’s physicality in the suspended over the Hudson River by crane—a paper doll for film—how she held her frame, how she walked down a hallway, strangers to gawk at. When she first saw the photo, Zellweger so obviously Judy. But what has stayed with me are the vocals, tells me, “I felt like, ‘Oh, I understand her.’ ” many delivered live on set. Zellweger had to sound like Garland, of course, but the performance wasn’t an imitation; when she B  ythetimeJasonBlum—whosecompany,Blumhouse, sang songs like “The Man That Got Away”—“The night is bitter / The produced Ethan Hawke’s series The Good Lord stars have lost their glitter / The winds grow colder / And suddenly Bird and who was himself nominated for a Best you’re older / And all because of the man that got away”—the lyrics Picture Oscar for Jordan Peele’s Get Out—pitched felt personal, lived-in. Zellweger on The Thing About Pam, she was already intimately familiar with the material. Like Cold Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to see Zellweger having a Mountain before this, she’d been obsessed with the source material ball on NBC; what fun it must have been to shed the baggage and and had actively pursued the rights, a testament to her instincts. expectations of an icon to play a bloodthirsty busybody in prime Now that the project had come back around, she went all in, time. And Zellweger tears into the role of Pam Hupp like it’s a studying audio recordings of Pam Hupp’s interviews with police porterhouse, giving full Midwest camp in big white snow boots to get this woman’s vocal cadence and mannerisms down—the and an oversize puffer jacket, gnawing on a Chill Chugz straw way Pam says “blah blah blah,” the way she changes the speed of (the made-for-TV version of a Big Gulp) like an old-timey Hollywood her voice to “detract from a point she’s not landing successfully,” villain twirling a mustache. Zellweger explains. That’s the thing about Zellweger: She’s always had a firm Blum likens Zellweger’s transformation to what Russell Crowe grasp on what material moved her, even if those choices sometimes did with Roger Ailes in the The Loudest Voice. When Josh Duhamel looked surprising (or daunting). This is the woman who—hot off first saw her in costume, he was shocked. “We were doing some the success of 1996’s Jerry Maguire and just a few years removed camera tests,” he says, “and she comes walking in. I was like, ➤ from small-town Katy, Texas—reportedly turned down seven-figure offers for big studio films, choosing to wait for something that “There have been TIMES really grabbed her. What followed was a stunning run: three Oscar ON SET where a nominations in three years, a global franchise in Bridget Jones ($756 million worldwide), and a hunger to produce. At the time, producer’s ready for me to she chased the rights to a not-yet-published novel called Cold take my CLOTHES OFF. Mountain, and while she lost out to a major studio, she got the last ‘Here, DRINK this WINE, laugh: Director Anthony Minghella cast Zellweger in his 2003 adaptation, and she won her first Oscar for the role. ’cause then you’ll do it.’ And, you know, I’m not Holding on to that fierce spirit over the past 25 years in the gonna take that wine, but spotlight could not have been easy, especially in Hollywood, a I would like a PHONE.” place where—she found out years later—the character she played in 1994’s Reality Bites was referred to behind her back by some producers and crewmembers as “Tami Bimbo.” And while Zellweger is adamant that she was never a victim, her Hollywood story has not been without its battles. “There have been times I have been in, you know, on set,” she tells me, sharing a moment from early in her career, “where a producer’s ready for me to go ahead and take my clothes off. ‘Here, drink this wine, ’cause then you’ll do it.’ And, you know, I’m not gonna take that wine, but I would like a phone. ’Cause I have a phone call I need to make right now.” This is a woman who’s had her life pored over by the press, 102 B A Z A A R

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‘Oh my God, you are Pam.’ ” He adds, “I didn’t realize how Method she was. I didn’t know if I could talk to her as Renée, or am I supposed to treat you as Pam? Or am I supposed to just leave you be? Because the last thing I want to do is knock her out of whatever mindset she’s in and talk to her as Renée when she’s clearly Pam right now.” (Hearing this, Zellweger says with a laugh, “Well, that’s frightening.”) The Thing About Pam, which Zellweger also executive produced, is the first effort from Big Picture Co., an outfit she launched in 2019 alongside Carmella Casinelli (a producer on the Dakota Johnson film The Peanut Butter Falcon). This is no vanity play; Big Picture Co. has a first-look deal with MGM Television (the company behind The Handmaid’s Tale) and a slate of projects in development, including a historical drama for Peacock. Casinelli admits that the idea of Zellweger starring in a prime- time show (and not something for a prestige streamer) was “definitely a conversation,” but the pair felt confident in the new regime at NBC and “that we could thread the needle and do something very unique for broadcast.” But The Thing About Pam also hints at Zellweger’s ambitions for her production (Continued on page 143) BAZAAR

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Modern LOVE Spring COUTURE’s most STRIKING SILHOUETTES hit the cobblestone streets and quays surrounding PARIS’s Canal Saint-Martin Photographs by CAMILLE VIVIER Styling by CAMILLE BIDAULT-WADDINGTON

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Inner VISIONS COLORFUL, FANCIFUL, and occasionally SURREAL, this season’s finest HIGH JEWELRY is the STUFF of DREAMS Photographs by PETER LANGER Edited by AMANDA ALAGEM

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The HERMÈS

PRINCIPLE For artistic director NADÈGE VANHÉE-CYBULSKI, creating CLOTHES that are at once as CLASSIC as a Birkin and as MODERN as a crop top is much more than a BALANCING ACT. It’s a raison d’être. Story by LEAH CHERNIKOFF Photographs by CAMILLE VIVIER Styling by HANNES HETTA All clothing and accessories, HERMÈS.

hen Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski, artistic director “It’s POP. It’s strange of Hermès’s womenswear, was 19—or maybe to say that HERMÈS 21; those years, she says, are a bit blurry—she is ‘DEMOCRATIC,’ put together a look she was really proud of: but I really believe W “I wore huge, baggy, really oversize Levi’s with it is.…GOOD TASTE tiny, tiny, skinny black T-shirts,” she tells me. is for EVERYBODY.” “I had really short, short hair, and I used to wear these white clogs.” Those clogs of Vanhée-Cybulski’s youth resurfaced more than At the time,Vanhée-Cybulski was a student at the Royal Academy 20 years later when she paired every single look from her Spring of Fine Arts in Belgium, the Antwerp fashion school renowned for 2021 ready-to-wear collection for Hermès with a low-heeled version. producing such talents as Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, And then a funny thing happened: A fervor for the shoes broke and Dries Van Noten. She describes her collegiate aesthetic back out among fashion’s most discerning. They seemed to be on every then as “sort of techno, with mystique.” She was really into Britpop; editor’s and stylist’s shopping list, as breathless posts gushed over as a teen in Lille in northern France, she and a friend wrote for a the new “status clog.” Within weeks, they were sold out. music zine as a way to get into shows for free. Hermès’s famed leather goods, notably its Birkin and Kelly bags, It’s hard to picture Vanhée-Cybulski, now 43, with “short, short” have always stirred up a frenzy; the wait lists to get certain styles are hair, so distinctive are her long auburn waves, porcelain complex- legendary. But for a clog? “It’s one of the most simple and unattractive ion, and serene expression, which have on more than one occasion things,” Vanhée-Cybulski says of the shoe. “I was surprised.” garnered comparisons to a Renaissance portrait. Her look when we meet—a tan cashmere coat with toggle clasps, a dark sweater, jeans, What is telling about the success of the clog—and of Vanhée- and a brown Kelly 32—is also a far cry from anything that could Cybulski’s womenswear for Hermès in general (last year, third- be characterized as “techno, with mystique.” Instead, she projects quarter sales of ready-to-wear were up 43 percent compared with a precise and restrained cool, a quality she brings to the runway. pre-pandemic 2019)—is how she approaches what might seem like a contradictory remit. She needs to create seasonal collections Vanhée-Cybulski got the top job at Hermès in 2014, following that must consider and respond to trends—which are, by their the departure of her predecessor, Christophe Lemaire. Her appoint- definition, fleeting—at a company renowned for its timelessness. ment was then-new executive chairman Axel Dumas’s first major In other words, the Birkin’s appeal endures because the way it is move at the luxury house, and it signaled a dedication to ready- made—by hand, by artisans who have trained for years, using the to-wear as a growth category. Eight years on, Vanhée-Cybulski’s finest materials—has remained largely unchanged for decades. What’s found her groove, marrying the refined quality of Hermès’s craft on the runway has to change every six months. Vanhée-Cybulski with understated, modern designs. deadpans: “I’m always asking of myself, ‘What is this oxymoron? I’m doing fashion at Hermès.’ ” GOING TO WORK AT A 185-YEAR-OLD FRENCH HOUSE like Hermès, weighty with history and heritage, could feel overwhelming. She appears unfazed by that challenge. Vanhée-Cybulski has But Vanhée-Cybulski simply breaks it down into pieces. “Regarding proved to be remarkably adept at creating covetable designs that feel the DNA [of the brand]…I’m not a geneticist, but it’s Legos, right?” fresh while drawing on various elements of Hermès’s centuries-old She remembers that when she got the job, she was “very, very, very tradition of quality and attention to detail to achieve them. In her enthusiastic to start at Hermès because there’s what you know Spring 2022 collection, she finished the hems, collars, and cuffs on about the house: the quiet style, the accurateness.” Then there is roomy tunics, sleek overalls, and boxy day coats with leather trim the aura that surrounds it. Stepping into the role, she says, felt like dotted with studs, hardware typically used for leather goods. She entering a hidden realm where she could finally “see how this magic also created cinched waists using drawstrings like those found on works.” Each new collection, she explains, is a chance to design the dust bags used to protect precious leather accessories. a new structure with the same building blocks. “You need to be the architect and construct with it so it’s not stagnant,” she says. “I had been waiting for the ready-to-wear to connect to the “It’s quite dynamic.” leather goods. They are pieces you invest in; they become heirlooms,” says Robin Givhan, senior critic at large for The Washington Post, These skills come to bear in a comically real way as we settle in who has critiqued the Hermès runways since the days when Martin for a chat at the restaurant of the swanky Carlyle hotel on Manhattan’s Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier were designing for the house in Upper East Side. (Vanhée-Cybulski is in New York for a dinner, the late 1990s and 2000s. “And I think that [Vanhée-Cybulski’s] which ultimately gets canceled as Omicron rages on.) It’s the third clothing respects that.” Whereas, Givhan suggests, the Gaultier years location we’ve attempted for our interview. Vanhée-Cybulski is leaned too far into “capital-F fashion,” she says Vanhée-Cybulski inspired by fine art and photography (her husband, Peter, is a “is doing a better job of straddling the line between respecting gallerist in Paris), so we meet first at the David Zwirner gallery to this idea that these clothes have a long shelf life but also making see the work of pioneering abstract artist Hilma af Klint. The show, sure that they still feel contemporary and easy, not stuffy.” though, turns out to be a few watercolors in a single room; we see it all in 10 minutes. We then move to the café down the block, but it is impossibly loud, so we walk eight blocks to the Carlyle. As we settle into the relative quiet in our velvet seats, Vanhée-Cybulski constructs a chic little stand for my phone to record our conver- sation, using salt and pepper shakers and a laminated QR code. 126 B A Z A A R

Vanhée-Cybulski is uncharacteristically accessible for some- MODELS: IRIS DELCOURT AND CHRISTIE MUNEZERO; one in her position. Typically, an artistic director from a major HAIR: AKEMI KISHIDA FOR ORIBE; MAKEUP: VANESSA BELLINI; luxury brand will be guarded by flanks of flacks like a celebrity. MANICURES: JULIE VILLANOVA; PRODUCTION: CONCRETE REP. But on this chilly day in early December, it’s just the two of us schlepping from location to location until we find a suitable SEE THE DIRECTORY FOR SHOPPING DETAILS. place to talk. It’s intentional, she says. “I said to [the team], I just want to have a one-to-one.” She feels similarly about the brand; she wants people to be able to find a way in. I mention the broader cultural impact of some of Hermès’s most famous accessories—namely the Birkin, which shows up on everyone from well-heeled ladies in Paris’s 16th arrondisse- ment to J.Lo as she’s exiting the gym and has been memorialized in countless rap songs. “It’s pop,” she says. “It’s strange to say that Hermès is ‘democratic,’ but I really believe it is.” Strange because, for most people, Hermès is prohibitively expensive; the cost of the ready-to-wear is typically in the thousands of dollars, while a Birkin or Kelly will run in the five figures. She clarifies: “Good taste is for everybody. You can say, ‘Okay, I’m buying this piece, and it’s a piece that is going to last.’ If you divide it by the years that it lasts, it’s actually a very good rate. But you also have things that are maybe more accessible: the bracelets, the makeup, the scarf.” Before Vanhée-Cybulski’s arrival at Hermès, her profile was chicly inauspicious; unlike many of her peers, she had no public Instagram presence (and still doesn’t). But her résumé at labels known for their quiet luxury teed her up perfectly for the job. After graduating from Antwerp’s Royal Academy, Vanhée- Cybulski did stints at a holy trinity of minimalist fashion: at Maison Martin Margiela in the mid aughts, at Céline under Phoebe Philo, and, most recently, in New York as design director for the Row. She is the first woman to serve as Hermès’s womenswear artistic director in decades. (Catherine Karolyi designed Hermès’s first women’s ready-to-wear collection in 1967, and Lola Prusac designed for the house in the 1920s and ’30s.) The role was held by Gaultier and Margiela before Lemaire. And unlike Lemaire, Gaultier, and Margiela, Vanhée-Cybulski is not also working on her own separate namesake collection. Vanhée-Cybulski continues to fly under the radar on social media (“It’s just too much performance”), but she has a private account where she follows people and entities she considers “genuine,” like East Village Shoe Repair (@eastvillageshoerepair_bk), which posts photos of its custom upcycled platform shoes, and the Zurich vintage shop the Pink Sheep. Her tastes and inspirations are specific. For the Fall 2022 collection, she says she referenced the work of Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri, known for his softly saturated colors, and created a story around loden, the moss-green wool. Vanhée-Cybulski believes that her gender, or the fact that she is a newish mother, should have no bearing on her career. “I don’t know why we always have to justify how women are dealing with their private life and passion,” she says when I ask how mother- hood during lockdown affected her work. (She does admit that “the motherhood was new, the lockdown was new, and so it was about trying to keep it together.”) Fair enough; our society rarely expects successful men to expound on how they “have it all”— mostly because they already do. She is, however, willing to concede that her designs are more personal and that her femininity is wrapped up in them. “I’m fed up with (Continued on page 142) 04/22

A CUT Above The new take on TAILORING is all about the MIX: pieces with different LENGTHS, LINES, SHAPES, and TEXTURES worn together and LAYERED with an artful ease Photographs by DEIRDRE LEWIS Styling by TONY IRVINE Shirt, RAF SIMONS. Skirt, OUR LEGACY. Shoes, VINTAGE MAISON MARGIELA.

Coat and trousers, CHLOÉ. Shirt, THE ROW. 129 04/22

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MOMMIES Who MUSHROOM

Inside the GROWING—and, to some, CONTROVERSIAL—MOVEMENT in which PARENTS are using PSYCHEDELICS to TAKE the edge off MODERN PARENTHOOD Story by ANDREA STANLEY Photographs by THOMAS ALBDORF W hen I arrive at Vanessa Panzella-Velez’s fifth-floor apart- friend suggested psychedelics. At first, Vanessa was unsure. She ment in Brooklyn on a blue-sky morning in January, had never smoked weed, not even one time. Danny was more open, she’s already taken drugs: one third of a gram of magic but his exposure to drugs was also limited. He remembers the mushrooms. A pouch of tan capsules sits on the table—like vitamins, public-service campaigns showing an egg frying in a pan: “This except powdered psychedelics. is your brain on drugs.” No, they decided, they wouldn’t do it. Not that you’d know. There are none of the stereotypical Except Vanessa could see how psychedelics had benefited signs: no trippy hallucinations or bodies writhing around like their friend. She saw it in the easy joy the friend carried, the way you’re looking in a fun-house mirror. Instead, there’s Vanessa, grief didn’t consume her, the gratitude that seemed to guide her. 38, a freelance social-media manager, welcoming me inside with “Actually, maybe this could help us,” Vanessa remembers thinking. the offer of a warm drink, cacao with almond milk in a bowl-size mug. She’s used maple syrup to sweeten it, not honey. “Is that That was January 2019. As explanations go, Vanessa’s experience okay?” It’s been a busy morning, between trying to fix the internet with psychedelics sounds like both a cheesy trope and a profound and schlepping her puppy, Cookie, to the dog park in near-zero experience every parent would want to have. Suddenly, she could temperatures. Later, she tells me, she has plans to help her 11-year- see and be receptive to more. “The mushrooms allowed me to old stepson with his schoolwork, which includes finishing up a feel vulnerable,” she says. “All the things I was afraid to say poured woodworking project and studying mixed fractions for math. out of me. I was in this place of peace and love and real clarity. That night, she’s going to a birthday party for her niece. That experience helped Danny and I become more compassionate people, more understanding people, for love to flow through us. To put it another way: Vanessa is not high. Getting high is How could that not affect my stepson in a positive way?” not the point. Vanessa and her husband, Danny, 45—her stepson’s father, who is present during my visit and also on one third of a B eginning in the late 1990s but exploding only in the past gram of magic mushrooms—have recently begun to microdose few years, a steady thrum of studies has illuminated the with psychedelics two or three times a week every few months. potential benefits of psychedelics in helping with myriad In the past, they’ve taken higher doses when they’ve needed to mental-health disorders, including depression, anxiety, and work through something bigger, like a communication issue. It’s post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). a practice they say has completely transformed their relationship while radically improving their parenting. To name just a few: A study published in JAMA Psychiatry in 2020 found that psilocybin-assisted therapy significantly reduced This is a time of psychedelic renaissance, of mushroom mania. or eliminated the symptoms of major depressive disorder in It’s a time when people are increasingly turning to psychedelics 71 percent of participants within four weeks. An earlier study not for recreation but for healing—and many of them are parents. published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease reported that when LSD was used in psychotherapy sessions, people who It makes sense; perhaps no one is more in need of a mental- had been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness experienced health salve. Because while parenthood is often billed as the decreased feelings of anxiety. The FDA is expected to approve ultimate blissed-out euphoria, for many it is where the hemorrhaging the use of the psychoactive substance MDMA (a.k.a. ecstasy, of happiness happens. It’s a sleep-deprived, tedious, anxiety- a.k.a. Molly) in conjunction with talk therapy to treat PTSD as riddled road, recently made all the more difficult by the pandemic. soon as next year. Worn down by the malaise of modern parenting, burdened by the traumas they’ve inherited from their own parents, or disillusioned Adding to the increase in awareness and interest is the recent with a mental-health-care system they feel has failed them, some proliferation of psychedelics in pop culture and everywhere. There parents have found an answer in psychedelic substances. are the plant-medicine influencers on Instagram and Nicole Kidman’s psychedelic utopia in Nine Perfect Strangers on Hulu A few years ago, Vanessa and Danny were in a rut. Their and Gwyneth Paltrow taking Goop employees on healing psyche- relationship was up and down. As a stepparent, Vanessa says, delic retreats on Netflix and Michael Pollan’s book How to Change she had a lot of insecurities, especially as she struggled to get Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About pregnant herself. Parenthood made her feel resentful, frustrated, Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence on depressed—none of the things she thought it would. She began the New York Times best-seller list. It’s estimated that more than to put up walls between herself and her stepson. 30 million people in the United States have used psychedelics, ➤ Vanessa and Danny had already tried counseling when a 04/22 137

according to Matthew W. Johnson, the Susan Hill Ward professor P sychedelics is a broad term, but what it means is this: in psychedelics and consciousness at the Johns Hopkins University a group of substances, sometimes called hallucinogens, School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for referring to psilocybin (the active ingredient that puts the Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. Various studies show magic in mushrooms), LSD, DMT, and MDMA, among others. a spike in numbers over the past few years. There is also ketamine, which is technically not a psychedelic but has similar properties when administered in higher doses. The “There appears to be a clear trend of parents using psyche- word psychedelic was introduced in 1956 by the British psychiatrist delics more intentionally to resolve specific life and relationship Humphry Osmond and means “mind manifesting.” But psychedelics issues,” says Eric Sienknecht, a ketamine-assisted psychotherapist derived from plants and fungi—also known as entheogens—have and cofounder of the Polaris Insight Center in San Francisco. been used by Indigenous healers for thousands of years for both Sienknecht is also working on the clinical trials involving the use spiritual and medicinal purposes. of MDMA to help with PTSD sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Studies (MAPS), a nonprofit research You can take a little or a lot. The amount and regimen are organization. While he has observed an uptick in patients seeking unique to each person but are typically determined by tolerance out the benefits of psychedelics relating to parenthood, there isn’t and body weight. As Veronika Gold, a ketamine-assisted psycho- hard data or research on exactly how many parents are partaking. therapist and cofounder of the Polaris Insight Center, explains, microdosing involves taking smaller subperceptual amounts, The movement has spawned its own catchy monikers, like meaning you won’t feel altered (that is, no visual hallucinations “plant parenthood” and “psychedelic parenting,” and there has been or nonordinary sensations). But you may notice an improve- an increase in support groups—both online and in person—for ment in your mood, shifts in your way of thinking, or greater parents looking to connect in a safe space. creativity and openness to new perspectives. Macrodosing is when you take a higher dosage and experience an expanded “Look around the playground,” a 30-something mom friend state of consciousness, which may include hallucinations. This texted me. “At least one of those moms in Lululemon leggings can lead to catalytic shifts in one’s identity and reflections on has benefited from psychedelics.” one’s mode of living. According to Sienknecht, parents have reported numerous Psychedelics are also largely illegal in the United States. The positives following psychedelic-assisted therapy, including “having federal government still classifies most of them as Schedule 1 gained a wider-angle-lens perspective on their behavior and reac- drugs (the same category as cannabis), meaning they “have a tions to their children, access to greater self-compassion in their high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use roles as parents, and expanded capacity to understand the dilem- in treatment”—even as researchers at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, mas and vulnerabilities of their children with more empathy and UCLA, and some of the other biggest institutions in medical patience,” he says. “What was also quite noteworthy was parents’ research have found otherwise. (According to Johnson, evidence increased ability to be responsive rather than reactive to their “strongly suggests” there is no addiction potential with classic children, especially when they were able to understand the source psychedelics, and they’re even being studied for their potential of their reactions in their own childhood experiences.” in helping people addicted to other substances.) In practice, that means that to get psychedelic substances, people have to rely on Which is why moms like Mikaela, 27, see psychedelics not as an underground network. drugs drugs but as medicines. Mikaela, a plant-medicine educa- tor from Southern California who runs the Instagram account The exception is ketamine, which is FDA approved as an @mamadelamyco, asked that we use only her first name to protect anesthetic and is also prescribed off label to help with certain her family’s privacy. “When we talk about psychedelics, this is mental-health disorders. (There is a potential risk for ketamine really just a mental-health movement, and a lot of people who addiction when used as a recreational drug, says Rebecca Kronman, need mental-health help are parents,” she says. a licensed clinical social worker who does ketamine-assisted psychotherapy at her private practice in Brooklyn.) Right now, After the birth of her son, Mikaela found that psychedelics there are estimated to be hundreds of clinics across the coun- eased the frustration, loneliness, and anxiety she was experienc- try that offer IV ketamine infusions, as well as start-ups like ➤ ing. “There are these big, transitory states that you encounter in parenthood that can be overwhelming or traumatic, but we “Look around the can lean into plant medicines for that healing. We don’t have to playground. At least separate our identities. We can be parents who use psychedelics.” one of those moms in Lululemon leggings While Johnson contends there can be positives to using psychoactive substances (including no withdrawal symptoms has benefited when used in medical-treatment models), he also cautions that from psychedelics.” there are risks. He tells me that while taking psychedelics is “largely safe” in terms of physical side effects (there are a few exceptions, like for those with heart disease), the greater risk is a psycholog- ical one. “Those vulnerable to disorders like schizophrenia may see a worsening of their disorders, and any healthy person could have a ‘bad trip,’ which is an anxiety reaction that can lead to panic and potentially dangerous behavior,” says Johnson, which is why he doesn’t recommend that people use psychedelics on their own. 138 B A Z A A R



SET DESIGN: TINA HAUSMANN