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CAMILLA’S MOMENT From blending Prince Charles’s family with her own—children Tom and Laura from her first marriage, to Andrew Parker Bowles—to forming a lasting personal bond with her mother-in-law, the queen, the duchess has secured a beloved place in the bosom of the royal family. M AY 2 0 2 2 43

THERE WAS A time not so long ago when “There was no inevitability about the to Harry and Meghan at various points. Q U E E N E L I Z A B E T H I I A N D C A M I L L A , D U C H E S S O F C O R N WA L L : PAU L E L L I S . C A M I L L A , TO M , A N D L AU R A PA R K E R B O W L E S : T I M G R A H A M P H O TO L I B R A RY. C A M I L L A W I T H A N D R E W PA R K E R B O W L E S : F R A N K B A R R AT T/ K E Y S TO N E . the greatest threat to King Charles was duchess becoming queen consort,” says When Meghan was going through a dif- P R I N CE C HARL E S AN D CAM I L L A : P E T E R N I C H O L L S . C HARL E S AN D CAM I L L A I N CAR R IAG E : DAN I E L BE RE H U L AK . YO U N G C HARL E S AN D CAM I L L A : T I M G R AHAM . C HARL E S AN D CAM I L L A AT H I G H L AN D GAM E S : J U L IAN PAR K E R / U K P RE S S . Camilla Parker Bowles. Patrick Harrison, who worked in the press ficult time with her own father, Camilla C HARL E S AN D CAM I L L A W I T H B O U Q U E T : H U G O BU R NAN D. CAM I L L A I N T IAR A : DAN K I T WO O D. AL L F RO M G E T T Y I MAG E S . P R I N CE S S D IANA AN D CAM I L L A : E X P RE S S N E W S PAP E R S /ARC H I V E P H O TO S . office at Clarence House for 14 years and helped navigate things. It was Camilla who Yet with Her Majesty’s blessing for coordinated media plans for Charles told Charles that walking Meghan up the Camilla to become queen consort when and Camilla’s wedding. “I’m personally aisle was the right thing to do. She’s a very Charles is crowned king, you could now thrilled for her because she has worked so family-oriented woman, and she really say that the Duchess of Cornwall is one of hard and really hasn’t put a foot wrong. wanted to help.” the monarchy’s greatest success stories— She would say, ‘I do it because I love the and a vital pillar of strength for its future. boss, it’s my job to be there by his side,’ Camilla’s close friend and Gloucester- The monarchy looks very different from but she has done so much more than that. shire neighbor Jilly Cooper, an author, how it did just 10 years ago at the diamond She is absolutely devoted to the Prince says the duchess has an “incredible” jubilee. Following the death of Prince Phil- of Wales and to the institution and takes capacity to take on duties. “She always ip, the Sussexes standing down, and the her royal role and duties incredibly seri- did a lot for charity, but now people are spectacular fall of the Duke of York, the ously. She understands the benefits and appreciating just how much she does. I royal lineup is somewhat depleted. the challenges that go with that.” think Camilla has climbed Everest in the way she has turned things around. People Yet here’s Camilla, whose metamor- ---------- are now seeing her for who she is. A kind, phosis from mistress to “my darling wife,” caring, and fun person.” as Charles calls her, has been remarkable— O VER THE YEARS there have been a triumph matched perhaps only by Queen many challenges. Charles and And then there is the support of the Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, who Camilla’s love affair—which Prin- queen. At the diamond jubilee celebra- transformed himself from mistrusted cess Diana blamed for the breakdown of tions in 2012, the two women rode side by German outsider to revered royal. her marriage—seemed doomed. Despite side in a royal carriage procession, which a palace spin campaign to pave the way reflected both Camilla’s seniority and her Today, Camilla is the second most for Charles and Camilla, there was resis- closeness to the monarch. The two have senior woman in the royal family after the tance to their union, and the campaign only grown closer. queen, who once referred to Camilla as took a long time to claim success. To that “wicked woman.” Now the monarch many Britons, Camilla would long be the “I think the queen has always been enjoys a warm and close relationship with “third person” in the Waleses’ marriage, very fond of Camilla,” says Penny Junor, her daughter-in-law and a bond forged as Diana called her in the infamous BBC author of The Duchess. “There was a over their mutual love of dogs and horses. interview. Meanwhile, Camilla was also great misconception before Charles and Her Majesty’s announcement that it was a mother trying to shelter two teenage Camilla married that the queen didn’t like her “sincere wish” for Camilla to become children from ruinous tabloid headlines. her and wanted her out of sight and out queen laid to rest years of endless specu- of the prince’s life. She did want Camilla lation about Camilla’s title when Charles Her family is her nucleus—she is out of the prince’s life—not because she accedes. It was the queen’s way of not extremely close to her son, Tom, daughter, didn’t like her personally but because only securing a smooth transition for her Laura, and five grandchildren. She remains she could see huge damage being done son’s reign but of showing her support for on good terms with her ex-husband, to the monarchy. But they have, on a per- Camilla, who has been a devoted family Andrew Parker Bowles, and counts her sonal level, always liked one another and member since her wedding to the Prince sister, Annabel, as her best friend. “She have a great deal in common. Now she of Wales in 2005. has a very close and supportive family sees that Camilla has been a loyal and and a close group of old friends,” says her faithful support to Charles, and she’s very Back then, the question of Camilla’s nephew Ben Elliot. “She adores her hus- grateful to her for that.” title was more inflammatory. Through band, children, and grandchildren.” marriage she was technically the Prin- Publicly, the queen has bestowed cess of Wales, but amid fears of a public Her “family first” motto has rubbed every honor on Camilla, from the Royal backlash, Clarence House announced off on Charles, who speaks to Prince Wil- Family Order, given at the queen’s dis- she would be known as the Duchess of liam almost every day on the phone and cretion as a reward for service, to the Cornwall and, once Charles became king, is closer than ever to his mother. Behind Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victo- princess consort. palace doors, sources say, the duchess rian Order. The Duchess of Cornwall is has also been instrumental in trying to also now a member of the Privy Coun- heal the fractured relationship between cil, the Queen’s most senior advisory Charles and Prince Harry. body and which plays an important part in the accession ceremonies of a new “The situation with Harry was upset- sovereign. In 2021 it was announced ting for all the family, and we mustn’t that Camilla was to be invested into the forget that they are a family,” says a friend. Order of the Garter, the greatest accolade “I know that Camilla did her best and was of all. According to another friend of the a tremendous sounding post and support duchess, the garter was “the one thing for Charles, who was deeply troubled.” she really wanted, because it is such an enormous privilege. Camilla was abso- This friend points out what a difficult lutely thrilled about it.” Says historian road Camilla has had with the press, Hugo Vickers: “Everybody wants the and how she was ostracized by the fam- ily. “She threw a hand of friendship out 44 VA N I T Y FA I R

garter. It was the Princess of Wales’s executive of the cancer charity Maggie’s, Camilla has decided she will keep Ray secret wish too.” of which Camilla is patron. Mill, her Wiltshire home, when she is According to her friend Jude Kelly, ---------- queen, so that she has a bolt-hole to escape who founded the women empower- S INCE COVID RESTRICTIONS were the rigidity and scrutiny of palace life. At ment organization Women of the World, lifted, the duchess has been keen to her home she can potter around in a dress- Camilla “is not someone trying to push resume royal duties. She and Charles ing gown, cook for her family, and relax. herself forward, but it has become clear- were the first senior royals to go overseas, She makes a point of factoring in time for er and clearer that because she sits in a on an official tour to Jordan and Egypt. herselfinordertomaintainahealthywork- place of power where the limelight is on Hairdresser Geraldine Mancini gave the lifebalance—walking,reading,holidaying her, she is using that to speak about other duchess a feathery new cut, and alongside inScotland,andbeingwithherfamily.She people’s situations.” the Queen of Jordan, she dazzled in pretty loves swimming, especially in the sea in “She’s great at putting people at ease, day dresses and tailored coats. Cornwall, where she and Charles vacation. particularly when they think, Well, who “The duchess has really found her And she loves to cook and makes a mean am I to meet HRH? They’re the people style,” says Fiona Clare, Camilla’s dresser, roast chicken, according to Tom. she seeks out and asks them about them- who has been designing for her nearly 10 A 70-something queen consort talking selves,” says Kelly. “She’s very inclusive years. “I wouldn’t say she is into clothes, about difficult issues like domestic vio- in that way. Of course, she’s not an ‘ordi- but she has found her niche. She is very lence, rape, and female genital mutilation nary’ woman, in the sense that she is going elegant and she knows what works. Her is, some might say, a queen for the mod- to be the queen consort, but she is totally staples are dresses, frock coats, and great ern world. And while Charles and Camilla in touch with the ordinary.” hats. She’s got a wonderful core team may not represent youth and glamour like Amid the dire straits of the pandemic, around her with people she trusts and the Cambridges, together with William some of Camilla’s most important work knows will make her look good.” and Kate, they’ve formed a new sort of Fab came to light, including her commitment While she makes the job look fun and Four. At an age where retirement should to improving literacy and helping the breezy, Camilla finds the overseas travel beonthehorizon,Camillaisinforthelong elderly through her work with the charity hard work. She is low-maintenance, trav- haul, something her family say she is fully Silver Stories. She also put the spotlight eling with a small entourage that includes willing to embrace. “She is very strong, on domestic violence as patron of the a private secretary, personal assistant, resilient, and patient,” says Elliot. “She charity SafeLives, which supports wom- dresser, and hairdresser. She often does is also very committed to supporting her en who have been abused. Elisabeth her own makeup and travels lighter than husband in all he does and very forthright Carney-Haworth, cofounder of Silver her husband, but she doesn’t enjoy flying in supporting the causes she believes in.” Stories and Operation Encompass, which and can’t bear the heat. She sometimes When I meet the duchess at a busy advocates for children who experience struggles to keep up with the workaholic reception at Clarence House on Interna- domestic abuse, says the future queen prince, who doesn’t break for lunch. tional Women’s Day, she is in sparkling consort has made sure not to be silent “From very early on she clearly said, form in an emerald Bruce Oldfield coat- around the stigma. ‘I am not going to go at the same pace as dress and sensible black suede boots. “I can only imagine that being asked the boss,’ ” says Harrison. “ ‘I’m not going “She’s practical and very determined,” to stay there could feel very isolating and to do five engagements a day without any says Kelly. “I think as queen that will be frightening for you and your family. It may lunch and then do two engagements in very important. And she’s clearly a great mean spending more time with the person Charles and Camilla may not represent YOUTH and who is harming you,” GLAMOUR like the Cambridges, but together with Camilla wrote in one Instagram message William and Kate, they’ve formed a that shared resources and a help line for vic- NEW SORT OF FAB FOUR. tims. “If this is your situation, or you are worried about someone else, I want you the evening. It’s just…you know, the boss supporter of Charles. They are a great to know that you are not alone.” can do that. I can’t.’ ” couple, and I think together they will She also shared reading lists with Charles is keen to make sure that his build a platform for getting society to care the nation (The Remains of the Day and wife doesn’t burn out. Their marriage is about vulnerability.” A Gentleman in Moscow ranked) and set very much an equal partnership founded Perhaps Camilla’s greatest success up a book club on Instagram called the on a deep love and a mutual understand- is that she has never tried to upstage Reading Room. Camilla wanted to actu- ing. “They love and respect each other Charles, nor has she tried to shape the role ally help people. “She knew that people and laugh at the same things,” says Elliot. to her advantage. “I think that she proves living with cancer were really being “She will always see the absurd in many the power of silence,” says Clare. “She’s affected during that first lockdown. She things and does not take herself too seri- found her place, and I think that’s partly wanted to understand how we were able ously and is very witty.” As she approaches down to knowing she has been accepted. to help them and how we as a charity her 75th birthday and ever more respon- It’s like a ship sailing across the ocean, were coping,” says Dame Laura Lee, chief sibility, the future surely seems daunting. she’s finally got to her destination.” ■ M AY 2 0 2 2 45

DIANA’S LAST DANCE In this excerpt from her new book, The Palace Papers, about the describes the impact the PRINCESS’S press strategy had on her sons FFROM THEIR EARLIEST childhood, Wil- Mirror editor Piers Morgan describes in his liam and Harry were collateral damage diary a startlingly revealing background in a cold war between their parents, one lunch with Diana and the 13-year-old that could turn hot in front of them in William at Kensington Palace in 1996 at alarming ways. The two-year age gap which,he says, the princessallowed himto between them was critical in forging their ask “literally anything.” William insisted distinctive worldviews and, equally so, in on a glass of wine even when Diana said shaping their perceptions of their mother. no, and he seemed thoroughly up-to-date Prince Harry idolized Diana more and on all the tabloid rumors about her lovers. understood her less. He would always be “He is clearly in the loop on most of her her baby, a scamp who was “thick” at his bizarre world and, in particular, the vari- lessons and “naughty, just like me.” His ous men who come into it from time to emotions, like hers, were always simmer- time,” the astonished Morgan noted. ing near the surface. William understood Diana more but Diana’s most recent romantic adven- idealized her less. He was privy to her ture at that time was with the sturdy hunk volatile love life. He knew the tabloids Will Carling, captain of the England made her life hell, but he also knew she rugby team, whom she had met in 1995 colluded with them. By his early teens, working out at the Chelsea Harbor Club he was his mother’s most trusted confi- gym. William hero-worshipped Carling dant. She used to describe him as “my and met him several times with Diana. little wise old man.” When Carling visited Kensington Palace Like many women whose relationships for a romantic rendezvous, he gave both with their husbands have become dysfunc- the boys a rugby shirt. It is unclear when tional, Diana used her elder son as both a William came to realize that his idol was stand-in and a buffer, toting him along a sporting visitor in more ways than one. for meetings with journalists. Then Daily Carling’s wife, the television personality Julia Carling, conclusively enlightened 46 VA N I T Y FA I R

THE MONARCHY AT A CROSSROADS Diana was livid about Julia Carling’s The exchange reveals much about Time and again, Diana chose to invade chested Dodi Fayed, her play- Nicholas Coleridge, former president M AY 2 0 2 2 47

“Nicholas, can I ask you something? More unsettling was the origin story In May 2021, Lord Dyson, one of Please be truthful. Did you see the pho- of the infamous tell-all book Princess in England’s most senior retired judges, tograph of me in the Daily Mirror? The Love. Diana claimed to be outraged in issued a searing report unmasking topless one.” “Um, Your Royal High- 1994 when Daily Express journalist Anna the full extent of the BBC cover-up of ness, yes, we get all the newspapers in Pasternak spilled the beans of her affair Bashir’s trickery in securing the notori- my office. I think I did glance at it…not with former army officer James Hewitt— a ous interview with Diana. He confirmed that it was very clear.” “William rang me dimmer, buffer version of Prince Charles that Bashir successfully manipulated from Eton. Poor boy, he’s only 14. with the diction of a man who seemed to Diana’s paranoia by showing her broth- He was upset. He said some of the have swallowed a mothball—in a pal- er, Earl Spencer, forged documents other boys were teasing him, saying my pitating account based on his cache of that “proved” her closest advisers had tits are too small.” She held on to my Diana’s love letters. “He’s sold me out!” betrayed her to the palace, inflaming her elbow. “Nicholas, please be frank, I want she sobbed to her psychic, Simone Sim- desire to speak out for herself. Bashir lied to know your real view. Are my breasts mons. “Men aren’t supposed to do that his way to the biggest TV scoop of the too small, do you think?” to women. I hope his cock shrivels up!” 20th century. Dyson’s censure at least I became breathless, I needed oxy- Hewitt paid dearly and so did the author. gave her two sons some rationale for why gen. I went as red as a guardsman’s tunic. The tabloids branded him forevermore as Diana did something so destructive to I stuttered, “Er, Your Royal Highness, the “love rat,” and Pasternak was excori- their happiness. in as much as I can see under your suit, ated for peddling mawkish fantasy. William, who had watched the inter- they seem, um…perfect to me. I wouldn’t In 2019, however, Pasternak made a view in his Eton housemaster’s study, worry.” startling disclosure in the Daily Mail that told a classmate that as soon as he saw “Thank you, Nicholas. I knew you’d Diana had encouraged, indeed urged, his mother’s face appear on the screen tell me the truth. Thank you, I feel bet- Hewitt to cooperate with the writing of the for the interview, he was overcome with a ter now.” book to get ahead of a more salacious ver- feeling of dread. Harry, still at Ludgrove, sion of their affair coming in another book declined to watch the broadcast but later At the end of the lunch, Coleridge byAndrewMorton.Pasternaktoldmethat was angry with Bashir for his invasive walkedhertohercaroutsideVogueHouse, she and Hewitt “met halfway between questions, not with his mother’s decision where she was besieged by paparazzi. Devon and London in a field, and he said, to answer them. Afterward, Coleridge rang a newspa- ‘Diana wants the story told but with two By the time the housemaster, Andrew per friend to see if he could find out who’d conditions. One, it has to come out before Gailey,returnedtohisstudytocollectWil- leaked Diana’s visit. The friend rang back Morton’s second book, and two, it has to liam, he found him, Robert Lacey records, in five minutes. Coleridge writes that his be a love story.’ ” To oblige her, Pasternak “slumped on the sofa, his eyes red with source told him, “ ‘I just spoke to our pic- says she crashed it out in five weeks. tears.” He pulled himself together to rush ture desk. Diana rang herself from her Once Princess in Love was published, back to his room. But when, an hour later, car, on her way to lunch. She often tips Diana threw both Hewitt and Pasternak Diana telephoned on the house phone, them off about where she’ll be.’ ” under the bus. Besotted to the end, her William refused to take the call. Diana This is classic, authentic Diana—tricky, cashiered toy soldier never revealed was convinced he would never forgive seductive, playing a double game. Gulu whether or not he had done her bidding. her. She kept asking Simone Simmons, Lalvani, the wealthy Pakistani-born Brit- It’s hard to understand how a mother “What have I done to my children?” ish entrepreneur who briefly dated Diana in For Diana to include the FUTURE HEIR to the throne P R I N CE S S D IANA I N B LU E J AC K E T : TO M WARGAC K I . D IANA W I T H AR M R AI S E D : AN WAR H U S S E I N . the last year of her life, at a meeting with one of the royal family’s most RECKLESS B O T H : W I R E I M AG E . D I A N A H O L D I N G C LU TC H : DAV E H O GA N . A L L O T H E R S : G E T T Y I M AG E S . told me that in the four months of their rela- TABLOID TORMENTORS and freely refer to tionship, they always dined discreetly at a casual affair was, on its face, AMAZING. his house or at Kens- ington Palace. One evening she suggested they instead dine as devoted as Diana would choose, in After Lord Dyson’s report about the at Harry’s Bar and have a dance or two 1995, to drag up her affair with Hewitt BBC’s Bashir cover-up, William chose afterward at Annabel’s. Even though no again in her explosive interview with the to make a grave address on camera that one had known about the plan in advance, BBC’s Martin Bashir on Panorama. She could not quite hide the fury of a still- the paparazzi were waiting at the door as knew how devastated her boys had been haunted son. “It is my view that the they left the nightclub. Lalvani told me, by their father’s on-camera confession deceitful way the interview was obtained “Whether Harry’s Bar called them or she of infidelity with Camilla Parker Bowles substantially influenced what my mother tipped them off, I don’t know.” (I think we in Jonathan Dimbleby’s 1994 ITV docu- said,” he told the world. “The interview do.) He realizes now that she was using mentary, and how truly mortified they was a major contribution to making my him to inflame the true object of her felt when Princess in Love came out. I am parents’ relationship worse and has since affections, Hasnat Khan. The pictures of told Diana chose to speak about Hewitt to hurt countless others. It brings indescrib- Lalvani and Diana that appeared the next Bashir because he was the only one of her able sadness to know that the BBC’s day were the whole point. ex-lovers who wasn’t married. failures contributed significantly to her 48 VA N I T Y FA I R

fear, paranoia, and isolation that I remem- That Diana was hounded is undeni- an eerie incident as the princess sped ber from those final years with her.” able. But in her last spiral in Paris, there ahead of him down the highway out of were many fatal factors. Dodi Fayed, London. His prey knew Saunders’s car The words “indescribable sadness” unused to being in the eye of the celeb- well, and he could see her looking at him can only hint at her sons’ private ordeal, rity storm, was overexcited by the thrill in the rearview mirror: but they also occlude the full picture. I of the chase. It was Diana’s choice—not am told by Lalvani that Diana said she the palace’s—to dispense with round-the- She indicated left and pulled across to had no regrets about the interview and clock Scotland Yard protection. In the the middle lane, slowing down consid- made clear that she had said exactly 2008 inquest into Diana’s death, former erably and forcing me to pass and then, what she wanted to say on camera. (She police commissioner Lord Condon tes- in a moment of insanity…she suddenly even co-opted lines such as “There tified that Diana was adamant that she increased her speed and lurched back were three of us in this marriage” from did not want protection. She believed into the fast lane, coming up directly her writer friend Clive James.) “She was that officers spied on her and hampered behind me. We were traveling at 90 pleased about it [the interview],” Lalvani her love life. But they also often acted mph when I felt Diana’s bumper touch confirmed to me. “She didn’t have a bad as informal go-betweens with photog- the rear of my car. If I had slowed down word to say about Martin Bashir. She raphers to negotiate safer coverage of or put on the brakes at that point, the realized it served her purpose.” She was their famous charge. “It’s very tragic to world would no longer have had a Prin- right. Her “purpose” was to frame herself say this,” paparazzo Mark Saunders spec- cess of Wales. to the British public as a betrayed woman ulated: “Had [her protection officer] Ken before the increasingly inevitable divorce Wharfe or [her regular chauffeur] Colin Writing these words in 1995, Saunders from Charles. Opinion polls in the wake Tebbutt been with Diana on the night she could have no idea what they foreshad- of the interview showed support for the died, it wouldn’t have happened. They owed. What was flashing through Diana’s princess at 92 percent. She had the public would have spoken to the press, and they mind as the car entered that last tragic in the palm of her hand. would have given the brief outline of what chase into the Alma tunnel? Today, it was going to happen, which would have would be unreasonable to ask that Wil- I don’t subscribe to the now pervasive prevented the chasing.” liam and Harry forgive the paparazzi who narrative that Diana was a vulnerable trained their cameras on their beloved victim of media manipulation, a mere Saunders continued, “Diana was walk- mother’s dying moments in the Paris tun- marionette tossed about by malign forc- ing a tightrope with her relationships with nel, the hungry clicking of their shutters es beyond her control. While strongly the press. It wasn’t the press that had an the last sound she would ever hear. Or to sympathetic to her sons’ pain, I find it affair with James Hewitt. It wasn’t the forget how often in their presence one or offensive to present the canny, resource- press that had an affair with [the married] another of that ruffian gang had made ful Diana as a woman of no agency, as art dealer Oliver Hoare and sat outside his her cry. Or to admit that, even though either a foolish, duped child or the hap- house in the middle of the night. She was her own sons were among the “count- less casualty of malevolent muckrakers. a normal person with feelings and emo- less others” the Bashir broadcast hurt, tions. But she was also the most famous she had shrewd, pragmatic reasons for When Vogue’s Anna Wintour and I, as woman in the world, and she was doing undertaking the interview. The camera editor of The New Yorker, had lunch with things that made the other side want to was Diana’s fatal attraction and her most Diana in Manhattan in July 1997—six photograph her.” potent weapon—the source of so much weeks before her death—I was bowled power at the price of so much pain. She over by the confident, skillful way she On the 10th anniversary of Diana’s was always gambling with those odds. wooed us. Diana was always more beau- death, in 2007, William asked his private tiful in person than in photographs—the secretary Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton— Her sons express their lasting contempt huge, limpid blue eyes, the soft peach without success—to do everything he for the press in different ways: William skin, the supermodel height. She told could do to stop a Channel Four docu- with a grim, steely obsession with control; us her story of loneliness and hurt at mentary showing graphic pictures of Harry with tortured, vocal, frequently ill- Charles’s hands with an irresistible the Paris crash site. Quoting the boys, -judged condemnation, a never-ending soulful intimacy that sucked us in, then Lowther-Pinkerton wrote, “We feel flurry of lawsuits, and, finally, a burn-it- switched to a startlingly sophisticated that, as her sons, we would be failing in all-down gesture that his mother—who, vision of how she planned to leverage her our duty to her now if we did not protect despite her yearning to be free, held tight celebrity for the causes she cared about her—as she once did us.” Did Diana pro- to her diadem—might have well under- with a series of TV specials, 24 years tect them? It’s not a debate that William stood. But neither of them has yet been before Harry and Meghan’s incoherent and Harry want to have. heard to reflect on how much Diana loved multimedia plans. to dance with danger. n All their mother’s questionable deci- It’s understandable that her sons have a sions made sense to her at the time. In Adapted from the book The Palace Papers: less nuanced view of Diana. If your beau- her wounded fury she lost all sense of Inside the House of Windsor—the Truth and tiful 36-year-old mother dies in a car crash the impact of her actions. Weeks after the Turmoil by Tina Brown. Copyright © and is mourned—canonized, even—by the Bashir interview, as the conflagration 2022 by Tina Brown. To be published by the whole world, an unblemished picture consumed everyone she loved and hated, Crown in the U.S. and Century in the U.K. is frozen that erases everything else. Wil- the dogged Mark Saunders described in All rights reserved. liam, 15, and Harry, 12, believed—and still his 1996 book, Dicing With Di: The Amaz- believe—that their mother was martyred ing Adventures of Britain’s Royal Chasers, by the paparazzi. M AY 2 0 2 2 49

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING HOUSE OF WINDSOR A quiet, decades-long effort to PARE DOWN the official Windsor dramatis personae has UPENDED THE MILLENNIAL ROYALS— with irreversible consequences By ERIN VANDERHOOF IIN FEBRUARY 2003, an outstanding In hindsight, Zara Tindall’s career 21-year-old junior equestrian named Zara can be seen as the rumbling that pre- Phillips announced that spread-betting dicted the seismic identity shift she company Cantor Index would sponsor and her millennial cousins—including her first senior season on the riding cir- Prince William and Prince Harry—have cuit. The arrangement wasn’t unusual navigated throughout their young adult- for her peers, but it made national news hoods. For the queen and Prince Philip, outside of the trades. At the time, Phillips, the greatest generation incarnate, being Princess Anne’s second child, happened royal meant foregrounding duty, tra- to be 10th in line to the throne. By signing dition, and sacrifice, while their four the deal, she became the first British royal children, the royal baby boomers, have ever with a corporate sponsorship for a doggedly pursued individuality under sport. Eventually, Phillips would marry the dual pressures of the crown and tab- rugby star Mike Tindall, compete in the loid scrutiny. The state of the monarchy 2012 London Olympics, and become a that the elders are leaving behind—as sports influencer, securing many more popular and well resourced as ever, yet sponsorships along the way. still so scandal-prone—ensured that the 50 VA N I T Y FA I R

THE MONARCHY AT A CROSSROADS COUSINS CLUB The royal grands, from Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie to lesser-known littles like James, Viscount Severn, and Lady Louise Windsor, are an important aspect of the future family façade.

next generation of Windsors would have said. “Harry and Meghan are out of the their heir through private wealth, but no choice but to improvise. picture.” (She added that Charles will in the extended family has received fund- Though they differ in title, formal rela- fact rely on Anne, Prince Edward, and ing at the discretion of the government tionship to the palace, and proximity to Countess Sophie more than he had origi- since the 18th century. For generations, the throne, the millennial royals—five nally intended as the older generation of the minor royals did play an important cousins born between 1981 and 1991—all minor royals retires from public life.) purpose in the family and the country’s grew up in the shadows of their parents’ Though the plans for a slimmed- future, because an heir’s siblings func- very public divorces. Tindall, William, down monarchy are often discussed in tioned a bit like diplomatic bargaining Harry, Princess Beatrice, and Princess the context of what we can expect when chips when they were married off to fel- Eugenie all bear the scars of the era but Charles becomes king, these ideas have low royal families across the Continent. have responded with their age cohort’s already had an effect on the family’s day- They were essentially made redun- quintessential can-do attitude and hus- to-day life. Of the eight grandchildren, dant as the dynasties of Europe fell in the tle. (The three cousins in their generation only William and Harry have ever been 20th century. By the 1920s, the royal chil- who are not technically millennials, Peter working royals, a far cry from the years dren were encouraged to marry British Phillips, born 1977, Lady Louise Wind- when the future monarch’s cousins could aristocrats instead of foreign royalty. The sor, born 2003, and James, Viscount secure a plum position and a grace-and- minor royals, like the queen’s cousins the Severn, born 2007, aren’t too far away favor living space. Duke of Kent and Princess Alexandra of in age or approach.) With a bit of social During the queen’s reign, the monar- Kent, instead became charity patrons media savvy, the royal millennials have chy transformed from an auxiliary unit and people who could appear at inde- sought to balance financial stability, melding the aristocracy and the gov- pendence days or church ceremonies respect for the queen, and desire to wield ernment into a business with annual on behalf of the queen. In fact, history their influence. reporting requirements and a mandate had already done such a good job of Their ranks are also, officially at least, to be self-sufficient. Royal commentators eliminating the purpose of the minor growing smaller. Thanks in part to social have predicted that Charles will be a tran- royal that Charles’s enthusiasm might change and the queen’s and Prince sitional king. Part of that means clearing have been unnecessary. The millennials Charles’s own shifting interpretations of liabilities from the balance sheet in order might be the first royal generation who the institution, the monarchy has spent a to leave his own successor with as few are not only encouraged but demanded generation contracting in ways that prob- potential headaches as possible. to work real jobs—of course, their gold- ably will be irreversible. With the mindset With his taxpayer-funded office, plated education and instruction in the of a neoliberal CEO, Charles has long William, the millennial future king, is ways of the Windsors have given them a been sensitive to the fact that govern- the only grandchild left in the palace distinct advantage. ment support for his extended family is establishment. From a purely structural Even in the face of such historical an unpopular proposition. “Would it not perspective, Harry’s 2020 departure for trends, a cold war has raged inside the be better to sit down and examine how Los Angeles might have been inevitable. family for decades. For the queen’s grand- many members of the family you need to For years, Harry had been living in lim- children, the most visible side of this has D UK E AN D D U C H E S S O F S US S E X : K E V IN MA Z U R . T IN DAL L AN D P H I L L I PS , AN D P R I N CE S S BE AT R I CE : I N DIG O. P R IN CE SS E U GE N I E : A L A S TA I R G R A N T. Z A R A T I N DA L L : J O N B R O M L E Y/ M I N E W S / N U R P H O T O . J A M E S , V I S C O U N T S E V E R N , A N D L A DY LO U I S E W I N D S O R : fulfill the monarchy’s objectives?” he rhe- bo. He wasn’t quite important enough been through the dissemination of titles. C H R I S J AC K S O N . A L L : G E T T Y I M A G E S . D U K E A N D D U C H E S S O F C A M B R I D G E W I T H FA M I LY : S A M I R H U S S E I N / W I R E I M AG E . torically asked in 1992, according to his to become a core decision maker in the When Anne married her first husband, biographer Jonathan Dimbleby, before family or even take part in William’s Captain Mark Phillips, he declined to suggesting they bring in a team of consul- childhood lessons in kingship at Wind- take a courtesy title, and when their first tants to think strategically about the issue. sor Castle. Still, until his wedding, he child, Peter, was born, he became the first legitimate commoner With the mindset of a NEOLIBERAL CEO, Charles has grandson of a mon- long been sensitive to the fact that GOVERNMENT arch in more than 500 years. In 2003, Edward SUPPORT for his extended family is an and Sophie had their first child, Louise, and UNPOPULAR proposition. announced that she should be styled as the daughter of an earl As veteran royal expert Sally Bedell shared an office with his older brother though she was entitled to be a princess. Smith recently told me, Charles has and kept a schedule similar to his. When When James was born, he became Vis- already drafted the royal team for his Meghan Markle married into the family, count Severn, one of Edward’s subsidiary reign, and none of the royal cousins is on she shared her husband’s lofty chari- titles, instead of Prince James. In a 2020 it. “He said some years ago that he really table ambitions, but they chafed against interview with The Sunday Times, Sophie wanted it to be himself and Camilla, the limits the palace places on the minor said she has always told her children that William and Kate, and Harry, and that royals—especially the financial ones. they would need to find careers and life was it. I think of the balcony appearance For the rest of the grandchildren, exit paths of their own. after the diamond jubilee. Prince Philip planning began much earlier. The British For years, Prince Andrew was Charles’s was in the hospital, but his siblings were system was designed to give automatic main adversary in the debate over titles annoyed that they weren’t included,” she financial support to a monarch and and the size of the royal family. He and 52 VA N I T Y F A I R

ex-wife Sarah Ferguson decided to give Last spring, there was an anomalous Beatrice are affiliated with a limited their daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, result from the youngest respondents: A number of charities that reflect their own HRH titles upon their birth, and pal- plurality said they would prefer an elected experiences. Beatrice was diagnosed with ace courtiers have said that their status headofstate—andtheyratedHarryhigher dyslexia as a seven-year-old, and she has as “blood princesses” is important for inpopularitythanWilliamandKate.“That since become a patron of the Helen Arkell him. In 2011, Andrew was reportedly shift was quite a new thing compared to Dyslexia charity, speaking openly about upset when the palace cut off the secu- recent years, but it’s something that we’ll the support the charity gave her while rity afforded to his daughters. Later that need to keep asking,” Abraham said. she was in high school. Eugenie had sco- year, Andrew was criticized for bringing ---------- liosis, which was corrected by surgery at Eugenie on an official visit even though T HE ROYAL MILLENNIALS are deal- the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospi- she isn’t a working royal. (When Andrew ing with the transition at least tal when she was 12. As an adult, she has lost his royal role over his connections to somewhat gracefully, if only become a patron for the NHS hospital’s Jeffrey Epstein in 2021, the prince himself because the world is much more comfort- auxiliary foundation, and the charity might have really ensured that his daugh- able with people who are semifamous for says it has raised 3 million pounds in the ters wouldn’t have one either.) their proximity to fame than ever before. decade she has been in the position. Indeed, the 21st century’s royal scan- The 21st century’s ROYAL SCANDALS have dals have come dis- come DISPROPORTIONATELY from the proportionately from the family members family members who have PUBLIC titles and who have public titles and private business private BUSINESS INTERESTS. interests. From Prince Michael of Kent’s in- creasingly problematic ties with Russian Beatrice and Eugenie might be the most Meghan and Harry reportedly had oligarchs to Andrew’s time on Epstein’s successful at maintaining the air of roy- Beatrice and Eugenie in mind when they plane, it’s been trouble at times to have alty while also snagging some of the mentionedadesiretohaveahybrid“work- too many family members floating freedoms that the working members ing model” like “other current members around with a history of drawing taxpayer of the family have given up. Eugenie’s of the Royal Family” in one of the state- support or even an HRH. So the next gen- Instagram handle is @princesseugenie, ments explaining their royal exit. But the eration of royals who de-emphasize their but neither royal uses her title in profes- queen has rules on these sorts of things— titles to pursue careers and celebrity sional contexts. Beatrice is on LinkedIn you’re either in or you’re out. From the could be thought of as a clever bit of as “Beatrice York,” which lists her role at Chinese commercials where Peter Phil- rebranding. The minor royals are increas- the Boston-based tech company Afiniti as lips talks up the milk from Jersey cows to ingly able to contribute to the Windsor vice president for partnerships and strate- the details about Zara you can pick up in brand’s salience while giving the palace gy. On the website of art gallery Hauser & Mike Tindall’s podcast, the royals seem license to call any misbehaviors a “private Wirth, you’ll note that the name of one of to have a lot more fun when they’re not matter.” It’s also a hedge. If the public the directors is given as “Eugenie York.” living under palace supervision. And so wants more royal appearances, there is a Still, they’ve been able to take advan- Harry and Meghan went the way of their whole roster of 30- and 40-somethings tageofthatroyalaffiliationinotherarenas. generation, becoming, in their singular who might come off the bench. Both princesses’ weddings were paid for way, content creators in the gig economy. The shrinking rolls might beg an obvi- privately, but because Eugenie’s had a Yet there is still something royal about ous question about the necessity of any publiccomponent,theBritishgovernment them. In 2013, Harry, Beatrice, and Eug- monarchy at all. But current data suggests contributed 2 million pounds for security. enie all signed on as ambassadors for no great rush in Britain to flush all the By the time Beatrice was married two GREAT Britain, a tourism campaign pro- Windsor brand equity—in 2017, a consul- years later, Andrew had already stepped moting the country as a destination and tancy estimated the intangibles are worth backfrompubliclifeduetohisassociation trade partner. For the launch event, Harry about 42 billion pounds—down the drain with Epstein and no public component traveled to New York City with then prime by becoming a republic. was planned. However, she did borrow minister David Cameron before touring “Those who are 65 plus...they’re really a dress from her grandmother—along New Jersey with Chris Christie. Beatrice strong on their attitudes when they say with the Queen Mary fringe tiara that and Eugenie, on the other hand, toured that the monarchy is a good thing for the queen wore at her own wedding— Berlin in a Mini Cooper. As Harry travels Britain, compared to the 18- to 24-year- and announcements about both women’s the United States in the 2020s, commem- olds, where opinion is slightly more weddings and pregnancies have been orating 9/11 with Bill de Blasio, riding a divided,” said Tanya Abraham, research routed through the palace offices. double-decker bus with James Corden, or director of polling agency YouGov UK. They both give public support to chari- popping up in unexpected places like the “Current polling is showing that around ties using their HRH titles, but unlike Stockyards Championship Rodeo in Fort a third of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t really the royal patronages that are distributed Worth, it’s easy enough to see him as a have an opinion of whether it’s good or among working family members with new type of goodwill ambassador for the bad for the country.” direction from the queen, Eugenie and motherland—at no cost to the taxpayer. n M AY 2 0 2 2 53

ALL IN THE FAMILY 54 VA N I T Y FA I R

JAMES REGINATO CHECKS IN ON THE FOURTH GENERATION OF GETTYS— A LIVELY BATCH OF GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN FROM AMERICA’S MOST INFAMOUS OIL DYNASTY—IN THIS SNEAK PREVIEW OF GROWING UP GETTY M AY 2 0 2 2 55

“STAND school, he landed a lead role in a film BACK—IT’S adaptation of Lord of the Flies. Return- ABOUT TO ing to L.A. from the shoot in Jamaica, GET WACK!” Balthazar had money in his pocket. He was unabashed about enjoying the bling. “Single droppin’ in a couple hours. embodying both sides, both of which I He dated Drew Barrymore and went club- Wack—Balt Getty—wack.” think are important.” bing all night with the Beastie Boys. Yet even with continued success in films, Behind a turntable set up in the parking Balthazar, wearing an oversized Monk family sorrows took their toll. His father’s lot of a strip mall on Fairfax Avenue in Los Punk white T-shirt, a large gold chain, and misfortune wasn’t just a private family Angeles, on an evening in June 2019, Paul a pink knit cap, showed off the line’s look matter; it was yet another manifestation Balthazar Getty—J. Paul Getty’s eldest book, which featured former members of of the “Getty curse,” as the press repeated great-grandchild—was whipping up the the Rollin 60s Neighborhood Crips, the time and again. “That’s a lot to cope with crowd. At his invitation, a couple hundred fearsome street gang. “Instead of models, and you’re growing up and I didn’t handle local hipsters and characters—including I said, ‘Let’s do something authentic. No it well,” Balthazar said. He became, in the Tommy the Clown, the hip-hop-dancing styling…. You guys, just rock it how you 1990s, a third-generation heroin addict. L.A. legend—had gathered for a block would rock it.’ ” party. At 44, Balthazar had much to cel- “Without Mom’s guidance, I’d be ebrate: Monk Punk, his luxe streetwear As he has pointed out, this Getty dead. In fact, I did die, several times. I line, was debuting; his retail store (housed wasn’t born with a silver spoon: “I grew was just lucky,” a recovered Balthazar in a former RadioShack outlet) was open- up scrappy…the money wasn’t there.” later told the London Times (“Member ing; and his latest hip-hop track—entitled of a Troubled Dynasty” read the head- “Wack,” if you hadn’t guessed—was Balthazar’s spigot to the Getty fortune line). “Normally, these things don’t have a about to drop. had been (temporarily) turned off in utero. happy ending, but my family are together It was September 1974—when his father, J. and made me want to be a better person.” A father of four, Balthazar was Paul Getty III, married his mother, Gise- now one of Hollywood’s most multi la Schmidt Zacher, in Tuscany. She was J UST DAYS AFTER Balthazar set multihyphenates: actor–producer– about five months pregnant, and he, at 18, up his turntable in the strip-mall director–DJ–musician–artist–fashion was four years below the age at which he parking lot, his second cousin, designer–shopkeeper. and his siblings were permitted to marry, according to the terms of the trust his par- Isabel, could be found inside the Royal His trajectory into fashion began when ents set up when they divorced. he started customizing items of clothing Enclosure at Royal Ascot, under the gaze with his own sketches as well as with vari- Patriarch J. Paul Getty (“JPG”) did ations of the old Getty Oil logo. Then he agree to give his grandson a small allow- of the queen, the Prince of Wales, and the took his designs to the next level, with a ance. It was also decided that Rome line of accessories and clothing, which he (where he’d been abducted the year Duchess of Cornwall, who were seated P RE V I O U S SP RE AD: BALT HA Z AR AN D ROS E T TA GE T T Y : F R AN CO IS D IS C H I N GE R / TRU N K ARC H IVE . IV Y GE T T Y : TAG H I NADE R Z AD/ GE T T Y I MAGE S . christened Monk Punk. before) wasn’t a safe home for the new- lyweds. Weeks after the couple moved to above in the Royal Box. “It came to me one night,” he Los Angeles, Balthazar was born. explained. “It makes you think of Isabel, a budding artist and musician, spirituality, being in touch with your In Balthazar’s toddler years, the elec- emotional side, let’s say. But then, you’re tricity at the family’s bungalow in Laurel had been asked to paint one of the bench- still a punk. So—I’m not a pussy, you’re Canyon was sometimes turned off due not going to push me around. It’s about to unpaid bills. In a small apartment in es beside the track; she transformed it San Francisco, where his mother took Previous spread: Balthazar Getty and his wife, him after she and Paul separated, he with crosshatching inspired by the forms Rosetta, at their former home in the Hollywood slept on a futon. Hills, 2017; Ivy Getty in San Francisco, 2021. and colors of the Viennese Secessionists Then, one afternoon in 1988, after a casting agent spotted the 13-year-old at Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Looking on proudly were her par- ents, Christopher (son of JPG’s second son, Ronald) and Pia (one of the three daughters of “duty-free” billionaire Rob- ert Miller). Per the strict rules of Royal Ascot, the Gettys were in regulation attire—top hat and morning coat for him; dresses “of modest length with straps of one inch or greater” and fanciful hats for the ladies. A mass of violet-hued feathers extended from Isabel’s bonnet. Born in New York City, where she spent her early childhood in her parents’ six-story town house, Isabel is a pic- ture of transatlantic poise. At eight, she moved with her mother to London; she later boarded in Switzerland at Le Rosey, where she was a member of the choir. She graduated from New York Univer- sity’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded 56 VA N I T Y FA I R

Music. Yet she was still scared of perform- O THER YOUNG GETTYS—some and Joseph number three in its “Social ing. Of all people, it was Diana Ross who by way of marriage—have Power Index,” just behind the Duke and helped Isabel get over her stage fright. been cutting glamorous figures Duchess of Cambridge. While many Get- It was May 2013, at Farmington Lodge, tys today lead surprisingly unglamorous an 18th-century manor house in Eng- through Europe. Sabine (née Ghanem) was lives, Sabine lives up to the expectations. land’s Cotswolds belonging to her aunt “She’s the most Getty of them all!” one and uncle, Marie-Chantal and Pavlos of born in Geneva to a Lebanese father and social observer remarked. Greece, where 400 guests had gathered to celebrate her maternal grandfather’s Egyptian mother, but her introduction to I N THE NONGLAM category, there 80th birthday. At one point, Ross, the is Beau Perry, who labors in the gala’s entertainer, pulled Isabel onstage. the family happened one weekend in New remote reaches of Alaska. A mari- “It’s Diana Ross passing you the mic— culturist, Beau is the largest grower of you better bloody sing,” she remembers York, where she was enrolled in the Gem- seaweed on the Pacific Coast, and at the thinking to herself in panic. Isabel deftly forefront of sustainable marine aquacul- belted out some classic Supremes lines. ological Institute of America. At a dinner ture. Beau’s mother, Claire Perry, is one “It was pretty epic,” she recalls. of the three daughters born to JPG’s first party, she met Brown University under- son, George. “The Georgettes,” as the After NYU, she moved back to Lon- women have been called, are all dedi- don. Within a few months, she landed graduate Joseph Getty, the British-raised cated environmentalists and intensely on the cover of Tatler as well as on Dolce private; their offspring share their aver- & Gabbana’s runway in Milan. son of Italian aristocrat Domitilla Harding sion to the press. With two friends, she formed a band, and Getty Images cofounder Mark Getty Raised in Southern California and Jean Marlow. Isabel identified herself— educated at Georgetown University, Beau the group’s singer-songwriter—as Izzy (a son of JPG’s third born, Paul Jr.). founded his seaweed-propagating com- Getty. Her voice is soft, slightly raspy; pany, Blue Evolution, in 2013; the next the band has a soulful grunge soft-rock Joseph was smitten with Sabine. Long- year he headed north to Kodiak Island. sound. “We’re die-hard acoustic musi- He was among the first entrepreneurs cians,” Isabel said. On Spotify and iTunes, limbed, brown-eyed, with a bob of flaxen who saw the potential to cultivate sea- Jean Marlow has released several EPs, for weed in Alaskan waters. which she drew the album art. hair, she has a commanding personality “I have loved seaweed all my life,” he In 2020, following a lockdown stay in and a cosmopolitan air. Fashion-mad, she once explained on Instagram. “As a surfer Los Angeles, the group released “San- tana Winds,” a hypnotic ballad inspired describes her style as Bob Mackie meets by Southern California’s fierce and some- times evil winds. Catherine Deneuve. “There was so much destruction After the couple settled in London, she going on,” Isabel recalled a year later, from Gstaad, Switzerland. By this time, launched her line of fine jewelry, Sabine things were considerably brighter. She had just returned from Mykonos, where G. Her fanciful pieces were soon adorning she and her South African–reared cousin Vanessa Waibel staged a high-spirited the likes of Celine Dion, Rihanna, Nicole bachelorette weekend for their San Fran- cisco relation Ivy Getty. Photos of the Kidman—and Deneuve. girls—at one point in matching pink hot pants, dancing stageside at Jackie O’, the On a brilliant morning in May 2015, fashionable beach club—splashed across Instagram and the Daily Mail. a pack of paparazzi swarmed outside “They are like sisters—we grew up Basilica dei Santi XII Apostoli in Rome together,” Isabel said of Vanessa and Ivy. “I’m very close to a lot of my cousins.” as a parade of young royals, including (Despite living across four continents today, most of JPG’s approximately 40 Princess Beatrice and Monaco’s Pierre great-grandchildren are surprisingly close-knit.) Casiraghi, filed in. Thirty-three years Her extended family has had its trou- “EVERYONE HAS TRAGEDIES IN THEIR bles, she acknowledged. “[But] everyone FAMILIES. IT’S JUST THAT OURS HAVE BEEN has tragedies in their families. It’s just that ours have been more public. There has MORE PUBLIC.” been a lot of suffering, but that’s why it’s important to stay grounded and together.” after Mark and Domitilla were wed inside I’ve spent an eternity bobbing up and the ancient basilica, Joseph and Sabine down amidst California’s kelp forests…. chose to exchange their vows here. Traveling the coast you can find…giant kelp, bull kelp, sea palm, the list goes on But where was the bride and her and on—and they feel as different to me hooded cape? Since the latter stretched as beech, redwood or oak forest.” 23 feet and featured 500,000 sequins (hand-embroidered by Maison Lesage) Blue Evolution provides Alaskan fisher- shaped into an image of a radiating sun, men with seed stock, which it makes by it required its own minder and car, which extracting spores from wild kelp; the seed- threaded its way through Rome’s tortu- lings are grown on pieces of string known ous traffic. At last, the garment arrived as seed pipes, which the fishermen thread and was fastened to the bride, who was along ropes that are suspended from a already clad in a figure-hugging, long- floating frame. After the “planting” is done sleeve duchesse silk dress, the handiwork in November, the ribbons of kelp grow up of Schiaparelli Haute Couture. to a foot a day. Weaving and protecting the lines is arduous. In May, Beau and his Tatler subsequently ranked Sabine M AY 2 0 2 2 57

cohorts haul up the fruit of their labor— grandfather, William Newsom II, was a Until one day when Gordon, Ann, and tons of nutritious, slimy green bunches. beloved father figure to Gordon and his the four boys were all aloft at 30,000 feet brother Paul Jr. during their boyhoods in aboard their much-used, two-bedroom, I N THE AMERICAN branch of this the 1940s.) gold-leafed 727 (“the Jetty”). As a family dynasty, the epicenter is San discussion grew heated, John blurted it Francisco—a palatial mansion in Two months after the wedding, Ann out: “Dad has another family.” Accord- Pacific Heights, to be exact. Here, Ann and Gordon were floating somewhere ing to the source, Ann sat in her seat and Gordon Getty (now 88, he is JPG’s on the Mediterranean aboard a friend’s “stone-faced.” only surviving son) raised their four sons. 200-foot yacht when Gordon received a call, one he knew would come one day. “She was upset when she found out, At Christmastime 1998, Billy, the At some point, the media was bound to but they came to an understanding,” said youngest, became engaged to Vanessa expose the existence of his other family another friend. Jarman. Ann, one of the era’s most formi- in Los Angeles. For some time, a small dable grandes dames, took a considerable circle of San Franciscans, including Ann By most accounts, Gordon, a well- interest in the bride’s gown. She called and their sons, had been aware of the situ- respected composer of classical music, her friend Oscar de la Renta in New York. ation, but it remained a secret. ended the affair with Cynthia; he intro- duced his Los Angeles family to his San IVY’S SPECTACULAR GOWN, RUMORED TO Francisco family in hopes of establish- I S A B E L G E T T Y : DAV I D M . B E N E T T/ DAV E B E N E T T. B A LT H A Z A R G E T T Y : M I C H A E L B E Z J I A N . J . PAU L G E T T Y I I I A N D B A LT H A Z A R : N A N C Y M O R A N / C O R B I S P R E M I U M H I S TO R I C A L . A L L F R O M G E T T Y I M AG E S . COST $500,000, FEATURED FOUR LAYERS, ing cordial relations, which by and large S A B I N E A N D J O S E P H G E T T Y : S I M O N WAT S O N . A N N G E T T Y : H O R S T P. H O R S T/ VO G U E . G I G I G O R G E O U S A N D N AT S G E T T Y : A L E X W E L S H / T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S / R E D U X . happened. Two months after the news BEHIND WHICH TRAILED exploded, the San Francisco Chronicle’s A 16-FOOT EMBROIDERED VEIL. Social Scene column reported that “Ann and Gordon Getty have been giv- “I want you to dress Vanessa,” she told On August 20, 1999, the San Jose Mer- ing some simply MAHvelous dinner him, according to Boaz Mazor, a longtime cury News broke the story: parties lately.” de la Renta executive. “I want her to be the most beautiful bride ever. I want her Billionaire Gordon Getty’s secret family Over the years, prominent San Fran- to look unbelievable.” of 4 revealed ciscans saw Gordon’s daughters at the gala holiday parties he and Ann hosted. “Oscar dropped everything. He called S.F. socialite has 3 daughters; inheritance Yet as the girls matured, their creative and in all his assistants, the office was turned being negotiated political endeavors remained relatively upside down,” Mazor continued. “Then unknown, perhaps because none of the we got a call to cancel everything.” Anticipating this day, Gordon had pre- young women, until recently, chose to use pared a statement: “Nicolette, Kendalle, the Getty name. Vanessa had decided to go with Nar- and Alexandra are my children. Their ciso Rodriguez. For her, the new star mother, Cynthia Beck, and I love them O N HER INSTAGRAM account, designer agreed to make his first wedding very much….” @Freudian.slit, Kendalle dress since the one that had launched him identified herself as Kendalle to stardom—Carolyn Bessette’s, for her Nicolette, then 14, Kendalle, age 10, wedding to John Kennedy Jr. in 1996. and Alexandra, who was 8, had been Aubra, a name she used with various proj- brought up with the surname Beck. In “Ann was livid! Furious!” says Mazor. April 1999, a lawyer working on their ects too. In 2018, she founded the Angry Yet when Vanessa made her entrance behalf had filed documents requesting to the Renaissance-themed ceremony at their names be changed to Getty. Feminist Pin-Up Calendar to aid survi- a ranch in Napa Valley, riding sidesaddle on a speckled horse at sunset, pretty much According to a Getty family friend, vors of abuse and violence. Net proceeds everybody had to agree she chose right. Gordon had revealed his secret first to Her formfitting matte satin gown with his third-born son: “Gordon drove over were donated to organizations including crystal-embroidered layers glistened. to see John in Berkeley. ‘You know, I Gavin Newsom was the best man, and have three daughters,’ ” he said. Under- the Battered Women’s Justice Project. the 165 guests included a new assistant standably stunned, John kept the news district attorney in town, a 34-year-old to himself initially. In the calendar, she upends traditional up-and-comer named Kamala Harris, Vanessa’s new friend. (The future gover- From Growing Up Getty: The Story of America’s pinup tropes “to empower femme-iden- nor’s father, William “Bill” Newsom III, Most Unconventional Dynasty by James Regi- was Gordon’s lifelong best friend; his nato. Copyright © 2022 by James Reginato. tified people of all shapes, colors, sizes Reprinted by permission of Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. and backgrounds,” as she wrote. For her own turn as Miss March, she drew inspi- ration from some strong characters: “We paid homage to one of my all-time favorite films, #Barbarella (of course) from that fierce scene where #Talitha Getty, uncredited, offers Barbarella a hit of ‘Essence of Man.’ ” One of Kendalle’s tattoos, on her right arm, is a depiction of Barbarella. A nose ring and changing hair coloring (green sometimes) are among her other features. In 2020, after long being intrigued by talk of the so-called gay agenda, she pub- lished The Gay Agenda—a weekly planner meant to be, in C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 2 58 VA N I T Y FA I R

Clockwise from top left: Isabel Getty at the Royal Ascot in 2019; Sabine and Joseph Getty with their daughter at home in London, 2019; Ann Getty in her Pacific Heights living room, 1997; Gigi Gorgeous and Nats Getty’s 2019 nuptials in Montecito; Balthazar Getty at work, 2019; J. Paul Getty III and Balthazar, 1975. M AY 2 0 2 2 59

Illustration by BRIAN STAUFFER 60 VA N I T Y FA I R

By JAMES POGUE M AY 2 0 2 2 61

IT WAS HALLOWEEN “neo-reactionaries,” “post-leftists,” or IN ORLANDO, the “heterodox” fringe—though they’re all often grouped for convenience under and we had piled into a car to make a pitifully quiet, lit in strip-club red, and the heading of America’s New Right. They short trip from the Hilton to an after-party the sparse crowd was almost entirely have a wildly diverse set of political back- down the road, to wind up the first night male, with a cash bar off in the corner grounds, with influences ranging from of the latest edition of a gathering called that seemed unable to produce drinks 17th-century Jacobite royalists to Marx- the National Conservatism Conference. fast enough to buoy the mood. “We have ist cultural critics to so-called reactionary For at least many of the young people, a thing we say,” she said. “ ‘This is what feminists to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczyn- the actual business of conference going the people at The Washington Post think ski, whom they sometimes refer to with seemed to be beside the point, a gesture we’re doing.’ Well, this is exactly what semi-ironic affection as Uncle Ted. Which at how we used to conduct politics back the people at The Washington Post think is to say that this New Right is not a part before life in America spun out of control. we’re doing.” of the conservative movement as most There were jokes, or maybe they were people in America would understand it. serious questions, about whether one of A portly guy running for Congress in It’s better described as a tangled set of the guys tagging along with us was a fed. I Georgia made his way to the front of the frameworks for critiquing the systems of surreptitiously made a few searches of the room to give a speech heavy on MAGA power and propaganda that most people name he’d given me and was surprised buzzwords and florid expressions of reading this probably think of as “the way when I couldn’t find a single plausible fealty to Donald Trump. the world is.” And one point shapes all of hit—though that could have been because it: It is a project to overthrow the thrust of he was a hyper-secret crypto type; there “This is sad,” Milius said. No one progress, at least such as liberals under- were some of those floating around. Not cheered or even seemed interested. But stand the word. that anyone cared. These were people this was not Trumpworld, even if many who were used to guarding their words. of the people in the room saw Trump as This worldview, these worldviews, run a useful tool. And these parties aren’t counter to the American narrative of the “Don’t fuck me here,” a dark-haired always so lame. NatCon, as this confer- last century—that economic growth and woman named Amanda Milius said to ence is known, has grown into a big-tent technological innovation are inevitably me—as she somewhat imperiously dealt gathering for a whole range of people who leading us toward a better future. It’s a with a guy at the door who was skeptical want to push the American right in a more position that has become quietly edgy about letting a reporter into the party— economically populist, culturally conser- and cool in new tech outposts like Miami “and say we’re all in here sacrificing kids vative, assertively nationalist direction. and Austin, and in downtown Manhattan, to Moloch. We’re just the last normal peo- It draws everyone from Israel hawks to where New Right–ish politics are in, and ple, hanging out at the end of the world.” fusty paleocon professors to mainstream signifiers like a demure cross necklace figures like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. have become markers of a transgressive I had met Milius outside the Hilton But most of the media attention that the chic. No one is leading this movement, when I asked for a cigarette, and she conference attracts focuses on a cohort of but it does have key figures. began to chaperone me around, telling rosy young blazer-wearing activists and people who eyed my press pass that I writers—a crop of people representing the One is Peter Thiel, the billionaire who was there to profile her as an up-and- American right’s “radical young intellec- helped fund NatCon and who had just giv- coming female director who, she said, tuals,” as a headline in The New Republic en the conference’s opening address. Thiel had attracted more Amazon streams than would soon put it, or conservatism’s “ter- has also funded things like the edgelordy any woman ever with her first documen- rifying future,” as David Brooks called and post-left–inflected New People’s Cine- tary, a counternarrative about Russiagate. them in The Atlantic. ma film festival, which ended its weeklong “Annie Leibovitz is still scheduling the run of parties and screenings in Manhat- photo shoot,” she kept saying. In this But the people these pieces describe, tan just a few days before NatCon began. world, almost every word is layered in who made up most of the partygoers He’s long been a big donor to Republican so much irony that you can never be sure around me, were only the most buttoned- political candidates, but in recent years what to take seriously or not, perhaps a up seam of a much larger and stranger Thiel has grown increasingly involved in semiconscious defense mechanism for political ferment, burbling up mainly with- the politics of this younger and weirder people convinced that almost everyone in America’s young and well-educated world—becoming something like a is out to get them. elite, part of an intra-media class info-war. nefarious godfather or a genial rich uncle, The podcasters, bro-ish anonymous Twit- depending on your perspective. Podcast- “Oh, fuck,” she said as we walked ter posters, online philosophers, artists, ers and art-world figures now joke about into a small ballroom where the party and amorphous scenesters in this world their hope to get so-called Thielbucks. His was already underway. The room was are variously known as “dissidents,” most significant recent outlays have been to two young Senate candidates who are deeply enmeshed in this scene and influ- enced by its intellectual currents: Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance, running for the Republican nomination in Ohio, and Blake Masters in Arizona. 62 VA N I T Y F A I R

Thiel has given more than $10 million a libertine left and a libertarian right.” It influenced by the intellectual currents and political critiques of the New Right to super PACs supporting the men’s can- is a very of-the-moment project. that he’s now helping to support. Many of these people are friendly with Thiel, or didacies, and both are personally close to Political reporters, at least the ones admire him, but are by no means behold- en to him. And many of them hold views him. Vance is a former employee of Thiel’s who have bothered to write about that would seem to make Thiel, a tech oligarch currently worth around $8 bil- MithrilCapital,andMasters,untilrecently Yarvin, have often dismissed him as a lion who recently resigned from the Meta—née Facebook—board of directors, the COO of Thiel’s so-called “family kook with a readership made up mostly their natural enemy. office,” also ran the Thiel Foundation, of lonely internet weirdos, fascists, or This New Right is heavily populated by people with graduate degrees, so there’s a which has become increasingly inter- both. But to ignore him is to underesti- lot of debate about who is in it and whether or not it even exists. At one end are the twined with this New Right ecosystem. mate how Yarvin’s ideas, or at least ideas NatCons, post-liberals, and traditionalist figures like Benedict Option author Rod These three—Thiel, Vance, Masters—are in conversation with his, have become Dreher, who envision a conservatism rein- vigorated by an embrace of localist values, all friends with Curtis Yarvin, a 48-year- foundational to a whole political and religious identity, and an active role for the state in promoting everything from mar- old ex-programmer and blogger who has cultural scene that goes much deeper riage to environmental conservation. But there’s also a highly online set of Substack done more than anyone to articulate the than anything you’d learn from the pan- writers, podcasters, and anonymous Twit- ter posters—“our true intellectual elite,” world historical critique and popularize els and speeches at an event like NatCon. as one podcaster describes them. This group encompasses everyone from rich the key terms of the New Right. You’ll Or how those ideas are going to shape the crypto bros and tech executives to back- to-the-landers to disaffected members often hear people in this world—again future of the American right, whether or of the American intellectual class, like Up in the Air author Walter Kirn, whose under many layers of irony—call him not Vance and Masters win their Sen- fulminations against groupthink and things like Lord Yarvin, or Our Prophet. ate primaries. I introduced myself, and I was looking around the party for soon Milius and I were outside smoking Vance, who hadn’t arrived yet, when as Yarvin and I chatted about whether Milius nudged me and pointed to a he’d be willing to talk to me on the record. table off to our left. “Why is it that whenever I see Curtis, he’s P EOPLE OFTEN STRUGGLE with surrounded by a big table of what to make of Thiel’s involve- incels?” she asked with appar- ment in this ecosystem. Last ent fondness. I spotted Yarvin, year the journalist Max Chafkin a slight, bespectacled man with published a biography of Thiel, long dark hair, drinking a glass of wine titled The Contrarian, in which he with a crowd that included Josh Ham- described Yarvin as the “house political mer, the national conservatism–minded philosopher” for a network often called young opinion editor of Newsweek, and the Thielverse. The book focuses heav- Michael Anton, a Machiavelli scholar ily on Thiel’s political maneuverings, “Most of the girls downtown ARE NORMAL, but they’ll wear a Trump hat as an accessory.” The ones deep into the online scene, she said, “ want to be like LENI RIEFENSTAHL–EDIE SEDGWICK.” and former spokesman for Trump’s describing how he evolved from being a techno-authoritarianism have made him National Security Council—and a hyper-libertarian to someone who now an unlikely champion to the dissident right prominent public intellectualizer of the makes common cause with nationalists and heterodox fringe. But they share a the Trump movement. Other luminaries and populists. And it explains how Thiel basic worldview: that individualist liberal afoot for the conference included Dig- helped both Cruz and Josh Hawley on ideology, increasingly bureaucratic gov- nity author Chris Arnade, who seemed their paths to the Senate. The Contrarian ernments, and big tech are all combining slightly unsure about the whole NatCon ends with a dark picture of the billionaire into a world that is at once tyrannical, cha- thing, and Sohrab Ahmari, the former trying to extend his political reach ever otic, and devoid of the systems of value opinion editor of the New York Post, now more overtly by funding and shepherd- and morality that give human life richness a cofounder and editor at the new maga- ing the campaigns of Masters and Vance. and meaning—as Blake Masters recently zine Compact, whose vision is, according “Masters and Vance are different from put it, a “dystopian hell-world.” to its mission statement, “shaped by our Hawley and Cruz,” Chafkin writes; the desire for a strong social-democratic former two are “extensions” of Thiel. Kirn didn’t want to put a label on this state that defends community—local and movement, describing it as a “fractious national, familial and religious—against This is only partly true. It would be just family of dissenters” when I called him as accurate to say that Thiel has been at his home in Montana—“a somewhat M AY 2 0 2 2 63

new, loose coalition of people whose of experiment—I was going to be in town much deeper than this. Vance believes major concern is that we not end up in a top-down controlled state.” He told me anyway, and because my uncle was sick, that the regime has sold an illusive story he didn’t consider himself right wing and found some of the antidemocratic ideas I was thinking a lot about the place and that consumer gadgets and social media he heard expressed in this sphere to be “personally chilling.” But he described what it meant to me. On a whim, I asked are constantly making our lives better, it as a zone of experimentation and free expression of a kind that was now closed an editor at a conservative magazine if I even as wages stagnate and technology off in America’s liberal mainstream. “They seem to want a war,” he said. “The could write something from the perspec- feeds an epidemic of depression. last thing I want is some kind of definitive ideological war which leaves out the het- tive of a skeptical leftist. Vance suggested I wrote a piece that came across as erodox, complicated, and almost naively open spirit of American politics.” that we meet at a diner where my dad had critical of him. It expressed my deep And the ferment is starting to get often taken me as a kid. He was barely reg- hopelessness about the future of Amer- noticed. “I think that’s a really good sign,” one of the hosts of the dissident- istering in the polls at the time. ica. I figured he’d want nothing more to right podcast The Fedpost said recently, discussing how Tucker Carlson had just Vance believes that a well-educated do with me. But the morning it was pub- quoted a tweet from one of their guests. “This is a kind of burgeoning sect of and culturally liberal American elite has lished he sent me a short, heartfelt email. thought,” he went on, “and it’s causing people who are in positions of larger influ- greatly benefited from globalization, He said that he’d been a bit “pained” to ence and relative power to actually have to start looking into it.” the financialization of our economy, read in the piece that my parents dis- Vance sits somewhere in between and the growing power of big tech. This liked him but said he’d like to talk more. these two tendencies—at 37, he’s a ven- ture capitalist who is young enough to be has led an Ivy League intellectual and “I don’t see you as a member of the elite exposed to the dissident online currents. But he’s also shaped by the most deeply management class—a quasi-aristocracy because I see you as independent of their traditionalist thinking of the American he calls “the regime”—to adopt a set ideological strictures and incentives,” he of economic and cultural interests that wrote. “But maybe I’m just saying that directly oppose those of people in places because I like you.” like Middletown, Ohio, where he grew “Despair,” he signed off, “serves up. In the Vancian view, this class has the regime.” no stake in what people on the New Right often call the “real P ART OF WHY people have trouble economy”—the farm and factory describing this New Right is jobs that once sustained middle- because it’s a bunch of people class life in Middle America. This who believe that the system that is a fundamental difference organizes our society and govern- between New Right figures like Vance ment,whichmostofusthinkofasnormal, and the Reaganite right-wingers of their is actually bizarre and insane. Which parents’ generation. To Vance—and he’s naturally makes them look bizarre and said this—culture war is class warfare. insane to people who think this system One man raised his hand to ask how Masters planned to DRAIN THE SWAMP. He gave me a sly look. “Well, one of my friends has this acronym he calls RAGE,” he said. “Retire All Government Employees.” right. He is friends with Yarvin, whom he Vance recently told an interviewer, “I is normal. You’ll hear these people talk openly cites as a political influence, and gotta be honest with you, I don’t really about our globalized consumerist soci- with Dreher, who was there when Vance care what happens to Ukraine,” a flick at ety as “clown world.” You’ll often hear was baptized into the Catholic Church the fact that he thinks the American-led the worldview expressed by our media in 2019. I’d been writing about militias global order is as much about enriching and intellectual class described as “the and right-wing stirrings in the rural West defense contractors and think-tank types matrix” or the “Ministry of Truth,” as for years, but I didn’t really understand as it is about defending America’s inter- Thiel described it in his opening keynote how this alchemy worked until I first met ests. “I do care about the fact that in my speech to NatCon. It can be confusing him last July. I’d gone back to Ohio to community right now the leading cause to turn on something like the influen- see my uncle, who was dying of cancer. of death among 18- to 45-year-olds is tial underground podcast Good Ol Boyz Vance and I both grew up around Cincin- Mexican fentanyl.” His criticisms of big and hear a figure like Anton talk to two nati, immersed in a culture of white rural tech as “enemies of Western civilization” autodidact Southern gamers about the migrants who had come from coalfields often get lost in the run of Republican makeup of the regime, if only because and farm towns to look for work in the cit- outrage over Trump being kicked off most people reading this probably don’t ies of the Midwest. We had met as a kind Twitter and Facebook, though they go think of America as the kind of place that 64 VA N I T Y FA I R

has a regime at all. But that’s because, as parts” by the corporate-minded Repub- might have “a mother you’d like to fuck.” many people in this world would argue, lican establishment. He’s tempered himself in middle we’ve been so effectively propagandized that we can’t see how the system of power But the winds are shifting. He told age—he now says he has a rule never to around us really works. me about how he’d gone to read poetry “say anything unnecessarily controver- in New York recently, at the Thiel-fund- sial, or go out of my way to be provocative This is not a conspiracy theory like ed NPC fest. “A bunch of lit kids showed for no reason.” Many liberals who hear QAnon, which presupposes that there up,” he said, grinning. I had grown into him talk would probably question how are systems of power at work that nor- adulthood in the New York lit-kid world; strictly he follows this rule, but even in mal people don’t see. This is an idea that even a few years ago, there was no ques- his Moldbug days, most of his controver- the people who work in our systems of tion that anything like this could have sial writings were couched in thickets of power are so obtuse that they can’t even happened. But now Yarvin is a cult hero irony and metaphor, a mode of speech see that they’re part of a conspiracy. to many in the ultrahip crowd that you’ll that younger podcasters and Twitter per- often hear referred to as the “downtown sonalities on the highly online right have “The fundamental premise of liber- scene.” “I don’t even think antifa both- adopted—a way to avoid getting kicked alism,” Yarvin told me, “is that there is ered showing up,” Yarvin said. “What off tech platforms or having their words this inexorable march toward progress. I would they do? It was an art party.” quoted by liberal journalists. disagree with that premise.” He believes that this premise underpins a massive Yarvin had asked his new girlfriend, He considers himself a reactionary, framework of power. “My job,” as he Lydia Laurenson, a 37-year-old founder not just a conservative—he thinks it is puts it, “is to wake people up from the of a progressive magazine, to vet me. impossible for an Ivy League–educated Truman Show.” The radical right turn her life had taken person to really be a conservative. He has created complications. consistently argued that conservatives We spoke sharing a bench outside in waste their time and political energy the dark one evening, a few days into the “One of my housemates was like—‘I on fights over issues like gay marriage conference. Yarvin is friendly and solici- don’t know if I want Curtis in our house,’ ” or critical race theory, because liberal tous in person, despite the fact that he she told me. “And I’m like, ‘Okay, that ideology holds sway in the important tends to think and talk so fast that he makes sense. I understand why you’re institutions of prestige media and aca- can start unspooling, reworking baroque saying that.’ ” demia—an intertwined nexus he calls metaphors to explain ideas to listeners “the Cathedral.” He developed a theory who have heard them many times before. Laurenson had been a well-known to explain the fact that America has lost blogger and activist in the BDSM scene its so-called state capacity, his explana- Strange things can happen when you back when Yarvin was the central early tion for why it so often seems that it is not meet him. I’d gotten in touch with him figure in a world of “neo-reactionary” actually capable of governing anymore: through a mutual friend, a journalist I writers, publishing his poetry and politi- The power of the executive branch has knew from New York who once had a big cal theory on the Blogger site under the slowly devolved to an oligarchy of the magazine assignment to write about him. name Mencius Moldbug. educated who care more about compet- The piece never came out. “They wanted ing for status within the system than they him to say I was really evil and all that,” As Moldbug, Yarvin wrote about race- do about America’s national interest. Yarvin told me. “He wouldn’t do it and based IQ differences, and in an early post, pulled the piece. And I thought, Okay, titled “Why I Am Not a White National- No one directs this system, and hardly that’s a cool guy.” This friend has now ist,” he defended reading and linking to anyone who participates in it believes made a bunch of money in crypto, works white nationalist writing. He told me he’d that it’s a system at all. Someone like me on a project Yarvin helped launch to build a pursued those early writings in a spirit of who has made a career of writing about decentralized internet, and lives hours out “open inquiry,” though Yarvin also openly militias and extremist groups might go into the desert in Utah, where he’ll occa- acknowledged in the post that some of his about my work thinking that all I do is sionally call in to New Right–ish podcasts. readers seemed to be white nationalists. try to tell important stories and honestly He recently had dinner with Thiel and Some of Yarvin’s writing from then is so describe political upheaval. But within Masters—both Masters and Vance have radically right wing that it almost has the Cathedral, the best way for me to raised money by offering donors a chance to be read to be believed, like the time get big assignments and win attention to dine with Thiel and the candidate. he critiqued the attacks by the Norwe- is to identify and attack what seem like gian far-right terrorist Anders Behring threats against the established order, Yarvin has a pretty condescending Breivik—who killed 77 people, including which includes nationalists, antigov- view of the mainstream media: “They’re dozens of children at a youth camp—not ernment types, or people who refuse just predators,” he has said, who have to on the grounds that terrorism is wrong but to obey the opinions of the Cathedral’s make a living attacking people like him. because the killings wouldn’t do anything experts on issues like vaccine mandates, “They just need to eat.” He doesn’t usu- effective to overthrow what Yarvin called in as alarming a way as I possibly can. ally deal with mainstream magazines Norway’s “communist” government. This cycle becomes self-reinforcing and and wrote that he’d been “ambushed” He argued that Nelson Mandela, once has been sent into hyperdrive by Twit- at the last NatCon, in 2019, by a reporter head of the military wing of the African ter and Facebook, because the stuff that for Harper’s—where I also write—who National Congress, had endorsed terror compels people to click on articles or made him out to be a bit of a loon and tactics and political murder against oppo- share clips of C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 6 predicted that the NatCons’ populist nents, and said anyone who claimed “St. program would soon be “stripped of its Mandela” was more innocent than Breivik M AY 2 0 2 2 65

MODERN FOLKLORE ADIA VICTORIA album A Southern Gothic | liner notes As the title of her latest album suggests, the South Carolina native’s sonic creations are imbued with the deep hues of gothic indie blues—tales of life that both unsettle and intrigue listeners. 66 VA N I T Y FA I R

COUNTRY MUSIC’s new stars are not aw-shucks, down-on-their-luck cowboys but YOUNG BLACK WOMEN carving a HALLOWED SPACE in opry’s pantheon—and THEY’VE GOT the lyrics, the SOUND, and the looks to last By TRESSIE McMILLAN COTTOM Photographs by MIRANDA BARNES Sittings editor, NICOLE CHAPOTEAU AMYTHYST KIAH album Wary + Strange | liner notes An alum of East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Roots Music Studies program, Kiah already has a Grammy nomination for penning “Black Myself ” in 2020. M AY 2 0 2 2 67

Previous spread: TEN YEARS AGO, you could not name more than three Black Critically for a writer, Joy, Allison, Adia, jacket by Gucci; country music artists, if you could name any country artists at all. Amythyst, and Brittney are in the part of earrings by Lisa In 2022, there are so many Black artists making contemporary the celebrity cycle where they are still Eisner Jewelry; country music, you would have to book a festival to get even interesting, still talk like humans. When hair products half of them on one show bill. And if you did book that festival, I sat down with them over the course of a by R+Co; makeup it would feature a lot of Black women. Respect to the brothers, week in Nashville—which I essayed about products by MAC. like classic man Darius Rucker and youngblood Jimmie Allen, elsewhere at the time—they were open, Suit and tie by but the Black country women are serving. real, and above all, ready. Now, they Elise Fife; tuxedo are gracing the pages of Vanity Fair as blouse by Giorgio What you want, they got it: love songs, girl-power anthems, emerging icons of country soul’s musical Armani; hair grooves, protest music. And they do not just serve bops. They dynasty. It is 2022, and mainstream coun- products by Mizani; also serve looks. They are sexy, cool, and irreverent. Grounded try music has not yet figured out how to fit makeup products in multiple musical traditions, each has a unique sound, but all these singer-songwriters into traditional by Inglot. of them pay homage to the Black music dynasty. platforms. Like independent and minor- ity artists before them, they have much Earrings by In the 1940s, Sister Rosetta Tharpe strutted onto stages with a better success with live shows, satellite Jennifer Fisher; guitar strapped around her neck and helped invent rock and roll. radio, and streaming platforms. And their hair products by Starting in the late 1960s, soul-funk-psychedelic pioneer Betty ride is far from over. They are touring, Unite; makeup Davis (may she rest in funk) survived Miles Davis and made releasing new music, getting corporate products by Ilia. anthems for weird Black girls who didn’t want to marry a genre. sponsorships, and being name-checked Rock, gospel, blues, roots, folk. A little Stax, a little Motown, a by musical heroes like Brandi Carlile, little Philly, and a little Mississippi Delta. Joy Oladokun, Allison Jason Isbell, Maren Morris, and Rhiannon Russell, Adia Victoria, Amythyst Kiah, and Brittney Spencer Giddens. Individually and collectively, have bits of it all in their songwriting and stagecraft. Their secret these artists are poised to write a new sauce is as old as human migration. These women have soul. chapter in Black music’s enduring legacy. Black female artists reimagining country music is a revival W ELL-MEANING PEOPLE have of sorts, and it is not happening in a vacuum. R&B music is also asked them a million times finding its footing in pop music again after being reduced to hip- about race and equity and hop hooks and adult contemporary radio. The R&B revival also diversity in country music. I don’t want owes a lot to women artists—H.E.R., Ella Mai, Summer Walker, to be well-meaning. I want to mean them and Ari Lennox have successfully cut through the hip-hop/dance well. These are artists, with perspec- music domination. Social media platforms like TikTok play a tives on the world. As artists who have significant role in getting the jams out to the people. But that only the entire legacy of Black music at their works because the music has, as H.E.R. described it in a 2018 disposal, I want to talk about how they interview with Gerrick D. Kennedy, “real, genuine emotions” choose to make their art and what it means that people want. And need, especially now. to be making it in surprising ways. Their answers varied, but all spoke of a musical tapestry that saved them in some way. As good keepers of the legacy they inherited, they are simply paying it forward. The sense of coming into one’s own is especially true for Allison Russell, who made one of the best albums of 2021. Fight with somebody else about this. Outside Child is otherworldly. Variety called it “beautiful, harrowing.” It was nominated for best Americana album at the 2022 Grammys. The album’s standout track is “Nightflyer,” which lives inside of you, moving between traditional roots instrumentation—at one point in the live version, she plays the clarinet—and the kind of jazz vocalization that scandal- ized audiences in the early 20th century. Her delivery reminds you that jazz was not always easy listening—it used to be dangerous. Jazz was once considered a sexual vice, bound to lead to race-mixing 68 VA N I T Y FA I R

and civil rot. Henry Ford was so incensed from Russell, 42, I know a survivor when I see one. Hers is a by jazz’s popularity that he spent money story of slightly different flavor than those who usually make to train America’s youth to square-dance Black music. She is Canadian, for one. “I didn’t grow up in Black instead. Biracial, sexy, and jazzy, I like to culture at all,” she says plainly. That her journey brought her to imagine Russell’s music playing as Ford the same place as generations of soul women before her speaks drove himself over a metaphorical cliff. volumes about the universality of Black creative genius. If Russell’s fierceness is not evident, Far from the clay dirt roads that made Black music, Russell it is because people often underestimate was part of a white Canadian family that rejected her Blackness. beautiful women. Sitting across a screen Her mother married an adoptive father that Russell describes ALLISON RUSSELL album Outside Child | liner notes Ever the collaborator, Russell’s debut solo project delves into her long-held fascination with fables, historic myths, and lullabies, many of which she was exposed to by her Scottish Canadian grandmother. M AY 2 0 2 2 69

JOY OLADOKUN album In Defense of My Own Happiness | liner notes Inspired to first pick up a guitar after seeing a video of Tracy Chapman, the songwriter and self-proclaimed “sensitive stoner” writes music focused squarely on life as she learns to live it. as a white supremacist. “You know, I was in the belly of this musical dynasty that matched the depth horrific colonial beast,” she told me. Scarred but unbowed, by of the trauma that growing up in an abu- the time she owned the 2021 Newport Folk Festival stage, it was sive household visited upon her. It was clear that Russell had found her way home. To get there, she the legacy of Black joy and pain—that had to go south. melding of the sacred and the profane so integral to the Black diasporic expe- Russell’s journey to roots music through racial geography rience—that helped her find her voice. was, she says, part of what saved her life. “Coming to the South has been like, holy shit, I’m not alone. There’s mixed-heritage Joy Oladokun does not care what you Black folks like me everywhere.” In roots music, Russell found a call her music, just don’t come calling 70 VA N I T Y F A I R

her all the time. She is busy up on her mountain, playing with It takes a lot of courage and discern- chickens, blazing for a little relaxation, and making music in ment to be one’s self. Amythyst Kiah’s her home studio. Smooth as triple-distilled whiskey, everything path to breakout star is a case in point. about Oladokun is a vibe. Her 2020 album, In Defense of My Own Kiah, 35, grew up in Chattanooga as a Happiness (the Beginnings), has earned her a lot of love—in 2021, Black girl who really liked rock music. when she was nominated for the Americana Music Honors & The louder and harder, the better. There Awards’ emerging act of the year, and this year, as she’s up for was a Scandinavian symphonic metal the GLAAD Media Awards’ outstanding breakthrough music phase: “I’m very much melody first, artist. Her music has been featured on some of the biggest tele- even when I’m listening to metal—it has vision series of the last few years, most recently the Sex and the to be like melodic metal, like this band City reboot And Just Like That…. Nightwish…. The lead vocalist was an Oladokun, 30, is the youngest of this cohort. Her name is operatic soprano.” And there was a pop both prescient and redundant. She oozes energy that shifts a punk and alternative rock phase. She room’s center of gravity and makes you happy for it. It is cha- wonders out loud about the optics of risma and she has it in spades. It’s the way she approaches her craft too. “The story and the emotion are first,” she tells me. “I want Their claim to contemporary country music people to feel like they’re sitting across the REACHES BACK before genres sliced culture into table from me, talking about the past few months, or talking about that breakup. The commodities, back to “THE ROOT OF emotion, the thought, the conclusion. Not THE THING,” as Angela Davis might say. a lot of fuss.” Last fall, as COVID was roar- ing back, I posted Oladokun’s “Look Up’’ on social media. People went nuts. There is something about her delivery, for sure. Her voice is honeyed, lilting like teacups at Dis- neyland. It is a New Age gospel song. No big riffs or exhaustive runs. No drum machines. But the heart of soul is there. Someone tweets at me that they her taste. “As a Black kid growing up in have been in tears listening to it. “It could be a Negro spiritual white suburbia, why is it weird that I like for how I am crying,” they say. Blink-182 or Green Day? A huge majority Like Russell, Oladokun came by her musical inheritance of rock and roll is inspired by Black art- through a circuitous route. Her family is Nigerian Ameri- ists.” Inspired and created. That creation can. She grew up in Casa Grande, Arizona, which is midway legacy is what ultimately brings Kiah to between Tucson and Phoenix. But like generations of Black country music. American musicians, Oladokun’s musical training happened By 2018, Kiah had become a member in church. The evangelical church, to be exact. She worked at of Our Native Daughters, a young group the church and led music worship, until she could not sing the playing traditional music so antithetical songs that did not recognize who she fully was. Today she is to metal’s raging energy that it is colloqui- an out queer Black woman and can joke about that time in her ally called “old-time music.” Our Native life. “For a while, [my audience] was a lot of white Christian Daughters should be remembered like college girls. [My music] sounds like worship. I could play it the Trio albums by icons Dolly Parton, at a coffee shop at Liberty [University].” I bend over laughing Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt. at the image of Oladokun laying down a deep soul-inflected It is a Black supergroup that includes groove for a bunch of conservative Christian, mostly white Giddens, Russell, and classically trained coeds at a university where they agree to a moral purity code. cellist Leyla McCalla. They put out their Still, it is not hard to imagine that it was difficult for her to leave. first album, Songs of Our Native Daughters, “If I strip away all the political and the motivations that some- in 2019. “Up until working with Rhiannon times come with religion, especially in this country, and just go and Leyla and Allison, I’d kind of adopted back to the basics of what attracted me to it, I love the idea of a ‘shut up and sing’ policy,” says Kiah. “I treating people well and being treated well,” says Oladokun. “I just kept [my opinions] to myself because love the idea of taking care of the planet and taking my work I didn’t feel safe…. Having the opportu- just seriously enough that I can be proud of what I made at the nity to work with four other Black women end of the day, but not so seriously that I have no time to be with who have all had very similar experiences, family or people that I care about.” Her love ethic also infuses it was the first time I was able to discuss her political critiques. On “I See America,” love supplants ego, how I was feeling and somebody really making a concept song less preachy and imminently more enjoy- understand what it feels to be there.” able, and making hers unique. Even when she does a cover, like Jacket by Bode; hair Kiah’s solo debut, Wary + Strange, fea- her ebullient take on the Beatles’ “Blackbird,” Oladokun never products by R+Co; tures as full-throated an identity anthem sounds like anyone but herself. makeup products by as one can imagine: “Black Myself.” Face Atelier. M AY 2 0 2 2 71

Making that song signified Kiah’s growth as a person as much “we are asking for what we want!” She as an artist. “Our Native Daughters really gave me the cour- comes by her boldness honestly. Raised age to write ‘Black Myself,’ the most confrontational song and in the Bible Belt, Victoria had her share specific song I’d ever written,” Kiah tells me. It was not just the of church hurt and good old-fashioned song itself or even the very personal lyrics. It was merging her Southern racism. To survive, she learned private self with her public image. As is often the case, it took a to listen first to herself. Setting her own sisterhood for Kiah to own all the parts of herself. course has made her path rockier than it might have been, but she would not have Kiah is growing alongside her audience, owning her role had it any other way. “When I released leading her own band. “I’m going from doing mostly solo singer- my first record [Beyond the Bloodhounds] songwriter stuff, maybe telling a few stories in between songs, to in 2016, I felt that the Americana Associa- now, I’m playing with a really dynamic and exciting band that is tion was trying to co-opt me. So I wrote absolutely rock and roll,” she says. It is a big deal for a young art- an open letter to the Americana Asso- ist to take the helm creatively and onstage. Being in charge is part ciation. I mean, big old mouth from the of the bigger story each of these artists is writing. Ultimately, South that I am. I basically told them, I’m only you can make your art. That requires radical authenticity. not your Negro!” Authentic storytelling is also at the heart of what Brittney Victoria had a sketchy path through Spencer creates. “I’m always telling a story, or I’m talking school, choosing to instead enroll her- about something that I learned or observed or experienced self in a Black girl’s school of hard knocks. down South,” Spencer says. “I think the art of storytelling is just beautiful.” A gifted writer and vocal pow- A little STAX, a little MOTOWN, a erhouse, Spencer, 33, is recording her first full little PHILLY, and a little MISSISSIPPI album. But her singles “Sober & Skinny” and “Sorrys Don’t Work No More” already put her DELTA. Their SECRET SAUCE in enviable company—she joined Russell and is as old as HUMAN MIGRATION. Carlile on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2021. Like Russell, Spencer finds creative freedom in Dress by Eloquii; Some questionable relationships, rou- this genre. “That’s why I love country music,” earrings by Jennifer tinely hotboxing the car with her friend she says. “You literally can write about any- Fisher; bracelet by Eric, traipsing up and down the interstate thing. You can write about anything and you Lisa Eisner Jewelry; that connects Atlanta to Greenville. When can make anything a story, because really hair products by Ronnie Spector died early this year, I real- everything has a story.” Paul Mitchell; ized who Victoria reminds me of. She is makeup products by tough, yes. But it is scar tissue. As a teen- Vulnerability weeps from all of Spencer’s Charlotte Tilbury. ager she nursed her pain with the blues performances. Even when the song is up- after a friend left her a guitar. “Learning tempo, like “Damn Right You’re Wrong,” her vocal stylings do the blues was the first time that I did not not rely more on emotion than acrobatics. It is like old-school feel stupid or crazy—because I knew I soul in her careful attention to phrasing to evoke a feeling. Think wasn’t dumb,” she said. “But I knew the about the way Lionel Richie enunciates “purpose” or Gladys intelligence that I had was not recognized Knight delivers the lyrics “I’d never no, no stop loving you.” But by the Southern Christian world that I to be clear: Spencer isn’t a throwback artist. Her sound is modern grew up in. So the blues allowed me, for and fresh. “Sober & Skinny” catapults a come-to-Jesus talk with the first time, autonomy.” a man into a delightful little earworm. “In a perfect world, you get sober, I get skinny / We live off of more than pennies,” she At its core, Victoria says her music is sings to an underwhelming boyfriend. Spencer’s willingness blues. “The blues for me, they were the to puncture her own delusions as easily as she does those of a original punk rock. They were able to puffed-up partner is on full display. It is refreshing, especially stand outside of the system of mainstream amid all the empty bravado sucking up all the air in pop music. mores and morals, and be comfortable One hopes her bold honesty is contagious. there. That was my first, Oh, so I don’t have to change…. I don’t have to give up Adia Victoria does not have to hope for shit. Victoria, 35, who these parts of myself. I just got to figure came out with her critically acclaimed third album, A Southern out a way to be the orchestra leader of Gothic, last year, makes music on her own terms and asks for them.” She doesn’t mean the blues that what she wants of the universe. Rolling Stone said the album caters to white audiences by offering them “reclaims the Southern experience.” She also started her own podcast, Call & Response. (I have been a guest. Victoria is a nim- ble interviewer who might be gunning for more than Stephen Colbert’s musical guest slot.) And this year, she is touring North America and Europe. In January 2022, Victoria tweeted Colbert, saying that as two South Carolinians (she from Spartanburg, outside Greenville, and he of James Island), they should get together on his late- night talk show: No more beating around the magnolia tree, 72 VA N I T Y FA I R

their singular approved version of a Black say of country music’s glaring erasure of Black artistry. The artist. She means music that troubles your root of the thing is the drum and the guitar that traveled with spirit by reminding you that you have one. enslaved people across choppy waters, some to islands and oth- ers to colonized indigenous nations. It is a rhythm, yes. And All of them—Joy, Allison, Amythyst, a vocalization. It is a legacy of storytelling and survival. It is Adia, Brittney—are asking for all of it. what soul music is at its very core. Whatever genre these artists Their claim to contemporary country choose, they are making music for the soul. It may have taken music reaches back before genres sliced them some hard knocks to find it and a global crisis for me to culture into commodities, back to “the find them. But theirs is clearly music for who we could be. n root of the thing,” as Angela Davis might HAIR, MARZ COLLINS (OLADOKUN, VICTORIA), AUBREY HELLER (KIAH, RUSSELL), JADESTYLEZ (SPENCER); MAKEUP, AUBREY HELLER (KIAH, RUSSELL); MAR Z CO L L IN S ( AL L O T H E R S ) . P RO D U CE D O N LO CATI O N BY V I RG IN IA R I DGE R S . F O R D E TAI L S , G O TO V F. CO M / C RE D I T S. BRITTNEY SPENCER ep Compassion | liner notes The Baltimore native received the internet’s approval when her cover of The Highwomen’s “Crowded Table” led not only to viral notoriety but an invitation from the group to tour with them. M AY 2 0 2 2 73

THIN ICE Once a coal-mining town, Qullissat, in Greenland, now stands emptied of residents. 74 V A N I T Y F A I R

GREEN GOLD COBALT MINING H A S L O N G H A D A D I R T Y R A P, WITH COMMODITIES KINGPINS WRINGING RICHES FROM THE CONGO. YET THE WORLD DEMANDS EVER MORE OF THE METAL, SO A BILLIONAIRE ALLIANCE—FEATURING JEFF BEZOS, BILL GATES, AND MICHAEL BLOOMBERG— IS STRIKING OUT FOR THE ARCTIC, WHERE PROFITEERS A R E T H E N E W PRESERVATIONISTS By WILLEM MARX Photographs by RICHARD MOSSE M AY 2 0 2 2 75

AS THE BANKERS FROM J.P. MORGAN’S than $39 billion. The metal has become a critical component in LONDON OFFICES STEPPED the global transition to a greener future, a reality reflected in its OFF THE TWO-HOUR soaring price: $29,000 per metric ton in July 2020; by the time PRIVATE FLIGHT this story went to print in late March, $82,000 per ton. Most lithium-ion batteries depend on cobalt, and everything from FROM JOHANNESBURG iPhones to Teslas depends on those batteries. One analytics ONTO THE HOT RUNWAY, firm estimates the worldwide market for electric vehicles and consumer electronics will drive cobalt demand at least three times higher by the end of this decade. soldiers sporting sunglasses and semiautomatics watched them But the green gold has become a dirty business—bad closely. The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s brutal civil enough that Elon Musk has vowed to engineer cobalt out of war had ended several years earlier, but peace remained tenu- his vehicles—with a small coterie of individuals and compa- ous, and the Lubumbashi airstrip was still heavily militarized. nies growing immensely wealthy from the DRC’s resources It was the summer of 2006, the height of a period that at scant benefit to ordinary Congolese people. In 2019, a U.S. became known as the commodities “Super Cycle,” in which a human rights organization filed suit against Tesla, Apple, Dell, hardy vanguard of investors sought to sate industrializing Chi- and other tech giants on behalf of the families of 14 children na’s seemingly endless appetite for raw materials, particularly killed or injured mining in the DRC; the lawsuit was dismissed metals. Relying on low-cost financing, dealmakers at Credit in November. Meanwhile, Gertler and dozens of companies Suisse, First Boston, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stan- linked to him are under U.S. sanctions for allegedly corrupt ley scoured the world for once state-owned mining assets in deals, while Glencore, the Swiss-based commodities giant need of fresh funds or those primed for privatization. But the and current majority owner and opera- capital markets group at J.P. Morgan had proved more adept than its peers at this tor of KOV, faces ongoing investigations international treasure hunt, earning tens of millions in fees thanks to a series of mining- from the U.S. Department of Justice and company flotations that grew ever more exotic, remote, and risky. And the sortie into the Commodities and Futures Trading the DRC—one of the world’s wealthiest nations in terms of natural resources but Commission, as well as Britain’s Serious among the poorest by gross domestic product—sat at the riskiest end of that spectrum. Fraud Office, Switzerland’s Office of the Once their customs paperwork was handled, the bankers reboarded the Challenger Attorney General, and the Netherlands for a 45-minute flight northwest, to a dust-choked mining settlement called Kolwezi. Public Prosecution Service. The U.S. Before they landed, the pilot circled the prize: Kamoto Oliveira Virgule, known simply Treasury used an NGO’s calculations by its initials KOV, a rain-flooded mining pit named for its big- that indicated Gertler was responsible gest three ore bodies, as geologists call deposits, each one the for stiffing the DRC on more than $1.3 billion in lost revenue size of an underground Manhattan skyscraper. The bankers’ between 2010 and 2012 alone. Although Gertler found brief invitation had come from a handful of foreign businessmen reprieve in the final days of the Trump administration, cour- who’d secured the rights to resume digging at KOV more than tesy of Steven Mnuchin, Biden administration officials swiftly a decade after the DRC’s state mining company essentially reimposed sanctions. As a result, Gertler, who is Israeli, is pro- abandoned it. The specific draw had been what the owners hibited from using U.S. financial institutions and is largely were claiming was the planet’s largest barred from the international banking system. One of his high-grade copper mine, metallic ore so lobbyists, Trump impeachment lawyer Alan Dershowitz, has insisted that Gertler concentrated as to be visible to the naked has complied with U.S. and international law. But Vanity Fair interviews with banking eye. From the air in the bright June sun- officials and experts in enforcing U.S. sanctions, alongside reviews of multiple financial shine, though, as one mining executive and corporate documents, indicate Gertler has continued to try to circumvent restric- put it, KOV looked like little more than “a tions, even as he receives royalties from the company that operates KOV. fucking big hole in the ground…you might Mines are finite, though. And as cobalt’s value skyrockets, so does the significance as well go scuba diving or waterskiing.” of its role in the economic contest between Beijing and Washington. In an effort to Beneath 5 million or so gallons of simultaneously save the planet and turn a profit, an enterprise funded by—among floodwater, in addition to all that copper, others—a swashbuckling half-trillionaire group that includes Bill surveys suggested a spectacular trove of another metal, cobalt. Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg has set its sights as To the bankers peering down from the jet, the cobalt was inci- far afield as Greenland, whose citizens may eventually embrace dental, an ingredient in aircraft turbines and, so it happened, such lucrative pursuits too. part of the mine. “Nobody ever thought it was at all strategic or important,” remembers one of those bankers, Michael Rawl- inson, who now holds top positions at several mining firms. T HE SEARCH OCCUPIES the minds of a growing But Daniel Gertler, 32 at the time and the youngest of the busi- army of geologists, software engineers, and data nessmen involved, saw raw opportunity. This deal would help scientists at KoBold Metals, a U.S. technology firm him move beyond his family’s trade in diamonds to become a focused on accelerating and expanding the explora- player in the commodities world, cementing him as a dominant tion process for cobalt and other so-called battery force in the DRC’s economic engine and the country as the metals, including nickel. The lack of alternatives to Congolese source of some 70 percent of the world’s cobalt supply. cobalt is “a major motivator” for KoBold’s workforce, accord- The cobalt that today remains unmined at KOV—one of ing to cofounder and CEO Kurt House, a Harvard PhD who Gertler’s largest remaining interests in the DRC—is worth more wrote his thesis on carbon dioxide capture. “We can’t solve 76 VA N I T Y F A I R

all governance problems of the world, to discover beneath Disko’s stark, frigid, and remote surface will differ greatly in its we can’t solve corruption and labor, at geology from that found in the lush, heavily populated mining belt of southeastern DRC least on our own—but what we can cer- and northern Zambia. And the cobalt will likely coexist with much larger quantities tainly do is diversify supply,” he told me of not just copper but nickel as well. These kinds of ore bodies, known as magmatic on a video call from Northern Califor- sulfide deposits, can be relatively deep underground and difficult to locate, but once nia. One location where his firm hopes to identified and extracted, their metal can be easier to process. find cobalt and nickel is Disko, an island Millions of years ago heat from the earth’s core rose up to the mantle, forming slightly larger than Delaware and Rhode magma. If that magma reacted with enough sulfur from the surrounding rock layer, Island combined. It lies off the remote the products—nickel or cobalt sulfides—might separate out as west coast of Greenland, the ice-riven North Atlantic landmass a more stable form and sink into the keel—the underside—of with 57,000 residents that President Trump considered trying a larger tube of magma. Ideally, that keel is what House calls to buy from Denmark, its former colonial power. “chock-full of the really good stuff.” The absence of those met- “If we diversify supply, if we find a major cobalt discovery als in higher layers of the magma is often a good indication of in Greenland, we can guarantee that cobalt is going to be pro- a keel’s presence. Disko seemed to show an exciting absence. duced under extremely high labor standards, and extremely “This is the best Norilsk analog in the world,” House had high environmental standards, and then you have a choice,” said before the trip, referring to a Siberian deposit site that House posits. “Apple can then buy its cobalt from us, where it’ll was originally mined by Gulag prisoners under Stalin. Today, have a really reliable chain of custody, and no corruption issues, a company called Nornickel is the world’s largest producer of and no child labor issues, and minimal environmental impact.” refined nickel, and its mines in the Norilsk region produced In 2019 KoBold received backing from one of Silicon Valley’s more than 4 percent of global cobalt in 2021. Over the past top venture capital funds, Andreessen Horowitz, and further decade, the deposit has helped generate more than $120 billion firepower from Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a multibillion- in revenue. The two largest stakes in it are controlled by promi- dollar funding vehicle created by Microsoft cofounder Gates nent Russian oligarchs. (One, Oleg Deripaska, was sanctioned and seeded by a boldface group that includes Bezos, Bloom- by the U.S. in 2018 for his links to the Russian government berg, Ray Dalio, David Rubenstein, Jack Ma, Reid Hoffman, following Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. The U.K. and Sir Richard Branson. The fundraising ran into the tens of sanctioned Deripaska in March. The other, Vladimir Potanin, millions of dollars and gave KoBold a four-year financial run- saw around $3 billion of his net worth temporarily wiped the way for preliminary exploration efforts at more than a dozen day Russia invaded Ukraine in February.) sites, including in Greenland. A more recent round brought in Among the earliest Western geologists a further $192.5 million. And the high demand forecasts should help attract future to visit Norilsk, then part of the USSR, loans and bigger projects, even in one of the world’s most inhospitable locations. was a man named Peter Lightfoot. His By the time our Air Greenland charter helicopter tilts northwestward at dawn, there’s knowledge is “encyclopedic,” according only a dusting of the previous day’s seasonal snowstorm, which grounded all flights. to House, who sought him out as one of Disko Island’s desolate jumble of ridges, valleys, and glacial ice forms a ragged base- KoBold’s earliest hires. A Canadian min- ball glove facing west to Baffin Bay and the Canadian Arctic beyond. Beside me, Hans ing firm, Falconbridge (subsequently Jensen points out where a new, longer runway will be blasted from a headland’s small and coincidentally acquired by Glen- hillock, at the edge of Greenland’s third largest town, Ilulissat. “Useful for bringing core), had asked Lightfoot to evaluate miners and equipment in,” he explains through his headset. Jen- Disko’s deposits back in the 1990s. At an sen is the chief operations officer for Bluejay Mining, KoBold’s early KoBold staff meeting, he had wowed his new colleagues by exploration partner in the far North Atlantic, and has been wait- recalling the Falconbridge data with unfathomable precision— ing to revisit an abandoned town on Disko called Qullissat that “It was almost like a parlor trick,” House says. But by the time will serve as a geological exploration camp this summer. A Dane Gertler was beginning his DRC copper-cobalt acquisitions in ear- with a shaved head and blond-gray goatee, he has spent his adult nest, the then independent Falconbridge had abandoned further life working in Greenland, first landing on Disko in 1987. exploration on Disko after several drill holes turned up zip. It was Below us as we cross the channel from the mainland, deep an all too common cost-related decision in the boom-and-bust anthracite-colored inlets and fjords are occasionally marked mining industry, but it left behind some tantalizing breadcrumbs. by lighter currents. Steep cliffs of black stratified rock hug the “It has all of these signals, it has all of the right rocks, and it’s shoreline near Qullissat, their staggered elevation accentuated still not tested,” Lightfoot told me of the territory that is now by thin lines of packed snow. The abandoned settlement was the center of his focus. once a prosperous town, pretty enough to feature on a Green- Despite pressure to phase out hydrocarbons from global landic postage stamp. Now from above it resembles a series of energy supplies, the exploration budgets of oil and gas giants ragged matchboxes, variously red, yellow, blue, and pewter; continue to dwarf those of even the largest mining firms look- Jensen identifies a large rust-colored building on a knoll as the ing for battery metals. Consequently, “big mining companies possible home of a future site manager. The air is bitingly cold, tend to spend more money where they already know something painful punishment for any exposed skin. A solitary iceberg exists—the chances of success are higher,” explains Lightfoot. loiters offshore, a stone’s throw from where the old main street With help from Jensen and Bluejay, KoBold’s exploration on peters out at the beach. Disko this summer will start with airborne surveys employing In its quest for quality and quantity, the global commodities various technologies to measure the density, magnetism, and market has rarely cared for its climactic surroundings or distinc- conductivity of larger tracts of land, along with electrical read- tive color palettes. But the cobalt that KoBold and Bluejay hope ings and geochemical analysis of sledgehammered rocks. What M AY 2 0 2 2 77

“IF GOD GAVE US A D I F F E R E N T PERIODIC TABLE, THEN THINGS WOU LD B E D I FFEREN T. BUT IT JUST IS WHAT IT IS.” HARBOR’S BAZAAR A view from the Bluejay offices overlooking the growing town of Ilulissat, Greenland. 78 VA N I T Y F A I R

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HOMELAND makes KoBold unusual are its proprietary machine-learning algorithms that can process data on a daily basis, mapping As settlement results into pixelated, predicative atlases that can help geolo- inhabitants move on to gists on the ground determine the next day’s exploration and sampling targets. It’s not hard to see the trimmed costs, both more economically financially and environmentally. viable areas, the The technique should solve a “sequential planning problem” still-standing homes that has long bedeviled mining exploration efforts, according to are all that remain. Jef Caers, a Belgium-born director of Stanford University’s Cen- ter for Earth Resources Forecasting, who examines KoBold’s data as part of his academic research while advising the compa- ny. “You want to drill with the idea to confirm or to walk away,” he explains, something House describes as the “speed to kill.” If there’s no “there” there, KoBold can redeploy quickly with less impact on the land—and its financial outlays. “A lot of what we’re doing is trying to create both the culture and the DNA in the company that will fail fast and fail proudly,” says House. KoBold’s almost instantaneous feedback loop represents a start-up approach the mining industry has never fully consid- ered. The first several dozen employees—“curious, technically capable people who want to understand the cosmos around them”—were the cofounders’ top choices for each position, House says. The Stanford connection also helped attract Andreessen Horowitz, where general partner Connie Chan says KoBold’s ability to hire “world-class talent” encouraged her to invest in a sector that was outside her usual consumer tech wheelhouse. As part of her due diligence, Chan and her team examined the broader battery industry, since the challenges around cobalt supply have encouraged researchers to experiment with replac- ing cobalt. But Chan says the literature and experts gave her reassurance about future demand for cobalt, at least in the medium term. “A lot of the other experiments around differ- ent kinds of batteries, I think, have a far, far, far lower chance of working and for sure not in a time frame that could be com- mercialized in the next decade,” she says on a call from Los Angeles, where she lives. House admits cobalt supply shortages—and price spikes— could make the metal less affordable, but its properties ensure it remains the best-performing option. “If God gave us a dif- ferent periodic table,” he quipped, “then things would be different. But it just is what it is.” At Apple, cobalt remains a cathode constituent. But auto manufacturers may see it dif- ferently. A vehicle battery requires several thousand dollars of cobalt; a phone handset just a few cents. To electrify the world’s automotive fleet at current market prices, we need a “tremen- dous amount” of metals, House acknowledges. According to KoBold’s calculations, using International Energy Agency esti- mates, the necessary discoveries of new cobalt, nickel, lithium, copper, and rare earth elements will be worth around $10 tril- lion at current prices. But, says House, “we’re staring down the barrel of catastrophe,” referring to the challenges in the context of climate change. “Otherwise, you fry.” “We’re supposed to be going after the biggest, hairiest prob- lems that are around,” says Eric Toone, the technical lead on the investment committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $2 billion–plus fund established by Gates that has backed KoBold. “There is almost no way to wrap your head around what scale means when we get talking about energy,” he says. “A billion dollars is certainly a significant amount of money, M AY 2 0 2 2 81

right? But compared to the amount that’s required to do what POWDER ROOM we’re trying to do, it’s a drop in the bucket.” Beneath the ridges “There’s no other opportunity like the one that’s provided by of Disko Island is a people like Mr. Gates,” Toone concludes—which is why “you potential wealth of really don’t want to fuck this up.” battery metal deposits. With a staff that’s roughly 70 percent PhDs, Breakthrough aims to back businesses it thinks will more quickly reduce carbon emissions. In 2019 it began vetting KoBold, first by gauging its potential to reduce emissions—the minimum is “at least half a gigaton per year of CO2,” says Toone—then by scrutinizing its technical feasibility, leadership, and business plan. Breakthrough invested in the same early funding round as Andreessen Horowitz, while Norwegian state-owned oil and gas giant Equinor subsequently purchased a stake. More recently, KoBold’s “machine prospector” has intrigued one of the mining world’s traditional behemoths, BHP, and the two are now partnering to explore a swath of Australia equivalent to roughly 6 percent of the country’s entire landmass. But rath- er than just lease out its software like a contracted supplier, KoBold’s famous backers have helped it financially to coinvest with other mining businesses, as it has done with Bluejay in Greenland. “I don’t want to get paid a few million dollars in service fees,” says House, hypothesizing. “I want to own half of the $10 billion asset we discovered together.” “ T H E R E’ S NO OTHER OPPORTUNITY LIKE THE ONE THAT’S PROVIDED BY PEOPLE LIKE MR . GATES . YOU RE ALLY DON’T WANT TO FUCK THIS UP.” T HE HISTORY OF the KOV pit near Kolwezi is crucial to an understanding of the current stakes. After touring the site back in 2006, Rawlinson and his J.P. Mor- gan colleagues were whisked in battered SUVs to the Pink Palace, the only guesthouse in town. Run by a Belgian couple, it offered mattresses resting on concrete slabs. During Belgium’s colonial rule that ended in 1960 and for some time after, KOV and the nearby town had helped drive the DRC’s export economy. But after decades of underinvest- ment by a state-owned company, most of the region’s pits and underground mines had flooded or fallen apart, equipment had rusted, workers had gone unpaid. Rawlinson had only just taken the reins at J.P. Morgan’s European mining team when one of Gertler’s business partners approached the bank for help financing the KOV pit. Rawlinson was astounded by the “indus- trial archaeology site” they encountered, “a forgotten hellhole” without even a reliable power grid. As for Gertler, the bankers knew few details about the ori- gins of his ownership stake, just that it represented his first substantial foray into mining metals. Much of his prior expe- rience lay in the diamond sector, and they had heard he was close to the country’s youthful president, Joseph Kabila. Gertler and his partners had chosen the Isle of Man, off the English coast, to register KOV’s new holding company. They named it Nikanor, for a semi-mythic figure who miraculously trans- ported a pair of copper-alloy doors from Africa to Jerusalem for its Holy Temple. During the mine C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 9 3 82 VA N I T Y F A I R

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CONFESSIONSIn the 1980s and 1990s DAVID RUGGERIO was a rising star of French cooking in New York and a proto–celebrity chef with cookbooks and TV shows to his name. But all that success in the kitchen belied the double life he was leading as a rank-and-file member of the Mob. Decades after his fall from grace and mysterious disappearance from the food world, Ruggerio is coming clean BY GABRIEL SHERMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY GILLIAN LAUB OPEN KITCHEN David Ruggerio in his Long Island home last winter. 84 VA N I T Y FA I R

OF A MOB CHEF M AY 2 0 2 2 85

B Mob. Ruggerio’s operatic rise and fall sounded like one of the most improbable career arcs I’d heard about—one part Goodfel- BY THE TIME he was 30, David Ruggerio had helmed kitchens las, another Kitchen Confidential. at the finest French restaurants of 1990s New York: La Cara- velle, Maxim’s, and Le Chantilly. A Brooklyn-born boxer turned Over the summer and fall, I interviewed Ruggerio about his life chef, Ruggerio cooked for presidents past and future (Richard of cooking and crime—the first time he’s spoken about his time in Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump); the underworld to a journalist. The name David Ruggerio is itself Wall Street titans (Stephen Schwarzman, Lloyd Blankfein, and an invention. According to his baptismal certificate, he was born Jamie Dimon); media moguls (Michael Bloomberg and Martha Sabatino Antonino Gambino on June 26, 1962. Ruggerio’s Sicilian Stewart); Hollywood royalty (Sophia Loren); and actual royalty father, Saverio Erasmo Gambino, was a cousin of Carlo Gambino, (Prince Albert of Monaco). The New York Times food critic Bryan the infamous “boss of bosses,” who ruled New York’s five Mafia Miller twice awarded Ruggerio’s restaurants three stars. New families in the 1960s and ’70s. In the 1980s, Ruggerio joined a York magazine’s Gael Greene hailed his cooking at Le Chantilly Brooklyn crew run by Gambino capo Daniel Marino. Ruggerio as a “miracle on 57th Street.” PBS aired his series Little Italy With said his own Mob résumé includes heroin dealing, truck hijack- David Ruggerio, and Food Network gave him a prime-time show, ings, loan-sharking, bookmaking, extortion, and participating in Ruggerio to Go. With his fuhgeddaboudit persona and wiseguy several notorious gangland murders. He said he steered lucra- quips—“Ya know what I mean?”—Ruggerio was rocketing toward tive restaurant supply contracts to Mob-connected vendors and Emeril Lagasse–level stardom. bribed union officials to keep his kitchens nonunion. But it all blew up on the afternoon of Thursday, July 2, 1998, In recent years, though, he said he was motivated by feelings when police entered Le Chantilly with a search warrant. The of guilt and betrayal to violate his sacred vow to uphold omertà. Manhattan district attorney charged Ruggerio with defrauding a In 2014, Ruggerio’s 27-year-old son, an aspiring gangster, died credit card company out of $190,000 by inflating diners’ tips—in from an apparent drug overdose. Ruggerio felt responsible. He one instance by as much as $30,000. Ruggerio initially denied was deeply wounded and enraged that Marino didn’t show up the allegations, but facing 15 years in prison, he pleaded guilty to at the funeral: “When Danny didn’t come, that’s when I said, attempted grand larceny in exchange for five years’ probation and ‘Fuck this. I’m done,’ ” Ruggerio told me. (Though his old capo an agreement to pay $100,000 in restitution. Within months, Food was under house arrest at the time, Ruggerio insisted such con- Network canceled his show, his restaurants closed, and he filed for ditions weren’t exactly encumbrances for the guys he knew. “A personal bankruptcy. Then he disappeared from the food world. wake was a reason that his parole officer would have okayed in “Overnight it was gone,” Ruggerio recalled one afternoon last fall a split second,” Ruggerio said.) as he sautéed onions in the cluttered kitchen of his modest home at the end of a Long Island cul-de-sac. Now 59, his refrigerator- During our conversations, Ruggerio toggled between the size body and T-bone thick hands made him appear too big for the rarefied backdrop of gourmet cuisine and unspeakable street cramped room. He was preparing an ambitious lunch menu: goat violence—some of which he was committing himself. His stories cheese terrine, mignon of lobster, wood-fired roast chicken, and provided a singular glimpse of late-20th-century New York, the crème brûlée. An open laptop rested on a small desk next to the twilight years of both French cuisine and the Mob in the city, dining table. It’s where Ruggerio has been writing his memoirs, when The New York Times credibly described La Caravelle as which recount his rise to the highest echelon of the New York res- an “elegant Midtown temple to French gastronomy” and fed- taurant world but also reveal the secret he kept along the way: He eral authorities were systematically dismantling the New York was for decades—including the entirety of his cooking career—a families, case by case. It was also a time before everyone carried working member of the Gambino Mafia family. a camera in their pocket. Rich and famous New Yorkers could be their unvarnished selves in public, and no one outside the “I was living two lives,” Ruggerio told me. dining room would know about it. Ruggerio’s restaurants were I was introduced to Ruggerio in the spring of 2021 by friends stages for some truly outrageous episodes. who said he was ready to go on the record about his years in the In the author’s note of his unpublished memoir, Ruggerio writes: “Everything within these pages is accurate…. There was no need to embellish; the truths were horrific enough.” At times, though, I questioned if he was exaggerating for dramatic effect, as wiseguys have been known to do. I cross-checked names and dates he cited with contemporaneous newspaper accounts, public records, court filings, and personal photographs. I also spoke to former FBI agents and Ruggerio’s former employees, who confirmed mobsters were frequently hanging around his restaurants. Bruce Mouw, who ran the FBI’s Gambino squad in the 1980s and ’90s, confirmed Le Chantilly was one of Danny Marino’s haunts. “We knew it was a hangout,” he said. Mouw’s successor on the Gambino squad, Phil Scala, confirmed that Ruggerio was a member of Marino’s crew. “Danny would tout Ruggerio and invite all his friends to his restaurants,” Scala said. “When you called about David, my first thought was, is this the FBI calling?” said Dawn DuBois, a former corporate attorney who worked at Le Chantilly. “I remember we once owed money to a meat company. A guy walked into the restaurant with a baseball 86 VA N I T Y FA I R

bat and said, ‘You better pay, or I’m coming back and using this.’ Ruggerio recalled. (According to public records, his grandfather I’m this nice girl from Brooklyn thinking, What in the hell?” had been an administrator for the New York City Department of Corrections.) But by the 1960s, East Flatbush had become one Ruggerio was candid during our conversations, sometimes of the city’s roughest neighborhoods. “It was a different time in shockingly so. But members of organized crime are, not surpris- Brooklyn. There were so many murders,” Ruggerio recalled. Rug- ingly, just as organized about what they admit to—and what gerio said his grandmother made the kitchen an oasis. “To watch they don’t. As he detailed the shadow life he led while rising her hand-make pasta, knead bread, or simply jar vegetables was a through the city’s finest kitchens, Ruggerio openly discussed joy. Everything she did was with such care and precision,” he said. brutal crimes he committed with mobsters who are dead. He was circumspect, though, when I asked about more recent activities. Grim reality soon intruded. Not long after the move, Rugge- Ruggerio was adamant that while he quit the Mob, he didn’t rio’s grandfather had a heart attack. Ruggerio said he found him want to get any current Gambino members in trouble. “I will collapsed in the bathtub. Ruggerio believes his early experiences not cooperate against anyone. That isn’t why I did this,” he told with death stripped him of his ability to feel empathy. “I learned me. Over lunch, I asked if he was worried that he could implicate early that I had a very cold side to me,” he said. The toughness himself or become a target of the Mob for going public. “I’ll let was also a survival tactic. By elementary school Ruggerio had the chips fall where they may. After I lost my son, I knew that started his first hustles. He ran a three-card monte game and this has to end with me,” he said. soon graduated to selling stolen Christmas trees, fireworks, and Jordache jeans for local wiseguys. He honed his fighting skills R UGGERIO DESCRIBED HIS Brooklyn childhood as a at a local gym owned by the famous Jewish boxer Izzy Zerling. series of Dickensian tragedies. Before he was born out Around this time, Ruggerio recorded his first of multiple arrests of wedlock, his father, Saverio, a prolific heroin traf- for gambling and fighting. “Did I want to be a gangster? Never ficker, was deported from Brooklyn to Sicily and jailed one day did I say to myself, Yeah, I want to be a gangster when I grow in Palermo’s infamous Ucciardone prison. When up,” he recalled. “All I wanted to do was survive the next day.” Ruggerio was about four, he says he found his infant sister dead in her crib. “Her coffin was so tiny, we didn’t need a hearse,” Rug- Ruggerio fell in with one of his father’s trusted lieutenants gerio recalled. A year later he watched his pregnant mother die named Egidio “Ernie Boy” Onorato. “Ernie was younger than in bed during an asthma attack: “The last memory of my mother my father and weighed about 155 pounds, but he was the most was watching them carry her lifeless body out of the house.” ruthless gangster I ever saw,” Ruggerio said. Onorato died in After Ruggerio’s father went to jail, Ruggerio’s mother married 1998, which liberated Ruggerio to talk about his mentor. Accord- one of his friends, who agreed to adopt her son but demanded he ing to Ruggerio, wiseguys nicknamed Ernie “M&M,” short for change his first and last names. “He beat me every chance he had,” “murder and mayhem.” Ruggerio recalled one night when he Ruggerio said of the man. Ruggerio took David after his mother’s was 11 years old that he accompanied Onorato, then 23, to the favorite movie, the 1962 psych-ward love story David and Lisa. Alley Cat bar on the Lower East Side and waited on the street (His sister took Lisa.) Ruggerio hated his adoptive father’s last while Onorato went in and lured a federal informant named name and later took Ruggerio, the Americanized spelling of his Anthony Finn to an alley. Ruggerio said he watched Onorato grandmother’s maiden name, Ruggiero. (Her nephew, Angelo beat Finn to death and then shoot him and stuff a packet of coke Ruggiero, would become Gambino boss John Gotti’s confidant.) in his mouth. “We loaded the body into a car and drove it over The adoptive father could not be reached for comment. to Avenue A and Ninth Street,” Ruggerio said. (On March 4, When his mother died, Ruggerio’s adoptive father sent David 1974, The New York Times reported: “A 33-year-old Bronx man and Lisa to live with their maternal grandparents in Park Slope was found dead in his car on the Lower East Side with a bullet and, later, the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, a middle-class wound in the back of the head shortly before 11 a.m. in what the enclave where Barbra Streisand and Rudy Giuliani grew up a gen- police said was a gangland-style slaying. The police identified eration prior. “My mother’s family was as straight as an arrow,” him as Anthony Finn…”) Onorato and Ruggerio were never pub- licly linked to the crime. Two men, Louis Santos and Salvatore Scudiero, were later convicted for conspiracy to commit murder. In 1976, when Ruggerio was 13, his father was released from prison and returned to Brooklyn. Ruggerio was on edge having RUGGERIO WAS CANDID DURING OUR CONVERSATIONS, SOMETIMES SHOCKINGLY SO. BUT MEMBERS OF ORGANIZED CRIME ARE, NOT SURPRISINGLY, JUST AS ORGANIZED ABOUT WHAT THEY ADMIT TO—AND WHAT THEY DON’T. M AY 2 0 2 2 87

“I DID THINGS WHEN I WAS PUSHED THAT I’M NOT PROUD OF. BUT TO REALLY, TRULY BE IN THE STREETS, YOU GOTTA HAVE A BLACK HEART…” to explain that he gave up the Gambino name. “When I told him family received an anonymous phone call telling them where C O U R T E S Y O F DAV I D R U G G E R I O. about my name, he just said, ‘We’ll take care of that.’ He never to look. He had been missing for three weeks.”) called me David. It was always Sabatino,” Ruggerio recalled. Saverio opened a fish market and a car service in nearby Mill Onorato rewarded teenage Ruggerio handsomely. “Ernie had Basin, Brooklyn, and put Ruggerio to work. “He did loan-sharking a house down in Fort Lauderdale. It had a sunken living room out of the car service and brought in heroin to the fish market,” and in the middle was a big coffee table. There was always a Ruggerio recalled as he showed me the storefronts on a hazy July quarter or half kilo of coke piled up on it. Ernie used to have girls afternoon. “They were bringing in sardines, squid, and octopus over and everybody was naked. For me, sex at 14 and 15 wasn’t a frozen in 2.2-pound boxes,” he said. “In the center [of the fish] big deal,” Ruggerio said. (Public records show Onorato’s name was pure heroin. When it landed here, the dogs couldn’t smell it.” associated with an address on Sea Island Drive in Fort Lauder- dale.) Ruggerio said during his teenage years he earned $50,000 Ruggerio worked out of another one of his father’s front from drug dealing—about $230,000 in today’s dollars—which companies: a dog grooming store. To make some extra money, he hid in the attic of his grandmother’s home. “When I was 16, Ruggerio said he started dealing exotic animals in the back. I sent my grandmother and my sister on a monthlong tour of One Christmas, Ruggerio said Gambino capo Frank Piccolo Italy,” he recalled. (also known as Frank Lanza), who was famously indicted in 1980 for conspiring to extort singer Wayne Newton, bought a The thrills didn’t last, however. In the summer of 1980, Rug- monkey named Bongo for his grandchildren. Soon after, Pic- gerio’s friends started dying. Ruggerio said the first to go was colo demanded Ruggerio take him back. “I let that cocksucker a 22-year-old aspiring stand-up comic named Joey “Skeetch” out of the cage, and now all he does is sit in the corner, shit, and Cannizzaro. “Skeetch was a wannabe. He was fucking crazy to throw it at me!” Ruggerio remembered Piccolo screaming over be a gangster,” Ruggerio said. On the way to meet Onorato one the phone. Ruggerio said he and a friend took the monkey back night, Ruggerio noticed that Cannizzaro was limping. “He tells and let him loose into the Prospect Park Zoo late one night. me he had fallen in love with a Jewish girl, and she made him get circumcised. He showed me a gold chain around his neck. As Ruggerio prepared to start high school in the summer of On it there looked like there was a dried-up piece of chicken. It 1977, his father took him to Sicily to be made. Ruggerio said was foreskin. I said, ‘Get rid of that fucking thing! And whatever Santo Inzerillo, the brother of Palermo boss Totuccio Inzerillo, you do, don’t tell Ernie.’ ” presided over the ceremony in the basement of a café in Castel- lammare del Golfo, his family’s ancestral village. A man used a They drove to a burned-out building in East New York, where dirty needle to tattoo Ruggerio’s right shoulder with a fiery cross Onorato sent Cannizzaro out for Chinese food. “Everybody’s image. The tattoo includes the words Uomo de Fiducia (Italian grabbing cartons off the table. Skeetch leans over and his fucking for “man of trust”). gold chain falls out. And Ernie goes, ‘Oh! What the fuck is that?’ I put my hands over my head because Skeetch starts telling the S HORTLY AFTER FATHER and son returned to Brooklyn, story of getting circumcised! I’m looking at Ernie and there was Saverio was arrested again and deported to an Italian no expression on his face, nothing. Against the chair there was a jail. Before going away, Saverio assigned Onorato lead pipe. Ernie picked up the lead pipe and he went berserk. He to look after Ruggerio. By this point, Ruggerio was beat this kid to the point where you couldn’t recognize him any- participating in Ernie’s brutality. Ruggerio said that more. Ernie whirled around and I thought, I’m getting killed in March 1978, he helped Onorato torture and kill a 56-year- next. He put the pipe an inch from my face. It was dripping blood. old Genovese and Colombo associate named Pasquale “Paddy He says, ‘You brought this fucking guy around! He’s your fuck- Mac” Macchirole at a tire repair garage in Yonkers, New York. ing problem. So we started wrapping Skeetch’s body in an old Ruggerio said they left Macchirole’s corpse in a car trunk in rug. That’s when I heard Skeetch moaning. Turns out he was Brooklyn. (On March 24, 1978, The New York Times reported: alive.” Ruggerio said he weighed Skeetch’s body down with lead “The police found Mr. Macchirole’s body yesterday after his window sashes and dumped him in the water near Sheepshead Bay. (According to Social Security Administration death records, Cannizzaro was 22 when he died in June 1980.) In July 1981, Ruggerio’s best friend, a 21-year-old bodybuilder named Caesar Juliani, was found dead, shot in the head, behind 88 VA N I T Y FA I R

PRESSURE the steering wheel of a car parked in Brooklyn. Ruggerio believed COOKER Onorato killed Juliani on the orders of a Bronx wiseguy whose girlfriend Juliani was sleeping with. (According to public records, Ruggerio in his Juliani was buried on July 16, 1981, in Suffolk County, New York.) teenage boxing days; in the kitchen Not long after Juliani’s murder, Ruggerio said his girlfriend at Maxim’s while overdosed and drowned at Jones Beach on Long Island. Her hosting the “meal friends told Ruggerio she took pills Onorato had given her. Rug- of the century” with gerio believed Onorato had given her pure heroin because he chefs Gray Kunz, was angry about how much time Ruggerio was spending with Michel Richard, and her. “That’s when I decided I was going to kill him,” Ruggerio Jean Louis-Palladin; said. Ruggerio said he planned to kidnap his mentor and murder with Jacques Pépin him in the back of a stolen Good Humor ice cream truck. at the James Beard House; on a PBS But before he executed the plot, a Gambino soldier named cooking show set. Peter “Little Pete” Tambone intervened. “Little Pete was prob- ably about four foot six. He goes, ‘I know this guy Ernie is with your father, but let’s be honest, he’s U gira diment,’ a Sicilian term for ‘going crazy.’ He then says, ‘You’re going to kill him and go to jail, or he’s going to kill you, or you’re both going to die. On Friday you come to Grotta D’Oro.’ ” Grotta D’Oro was a popular Italian restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. On Friday nights, Gambino capo Carmine Lombardozzi conducted business there out of his Rolls-Royce parked out front. Lombardozzi was possibly the Gambino family’s big- gest earner. He specialized in “pump and dump” stock market fraud and loan-sharking. (His nickname was “The King of Wall Street.”) When Ruggerio showed up, Little Pete waved him over. Lombardozzi whispered to Ruggerio that he would be working for him. The message was clear: Ruggerio couldn’t touch Ernie Onorato, but Onorato couldn’t touch him either. “Carmine was the 900-pound gorilla that Ernie wasn’t going to fuck with. And from that day on, I was one of Carmine’s guys,” Ruggerio said. The new affiliation came with a requirement. Lombardozzi expected that members of his crew would find legitimate jobs to deflect law enforcement attention. Ruggerio had dim prospects. He was recently expelled from high school and had a criminal record. He did, though, have a secret passion: cooking. If he had to get a job, then he wanted to be a chef. DESPITE HIS HERITAGE, Ruggerio had no desire to work in an Italian kitchen. “Italian restaurants were junk in those days. They were red-sauce places. You know, glorified pizzerias,” he said. In the early 1980s, French cuisine dominated the New York dining scene, and that’s the food Ruggerio aspired to cook. “I went to the Kings Plaza mall where there was a B. Dalton bookstore,” he recalled. “I bought all the French cookbooks by Julia Child, Auguste Escoffier, and Jacques Pépin,” he recalled. “I started memorizing French terms. I consumed the New York Times food section and Jay Jacobs’s restaurant reviews in back issues of Gourmet magazine. After all that reading, I knew what the top restaurants were.” One of them was La Caravelle. The menu had barely changed since the restaurant opened in 1960. It featured classics such as quenelles de brochet, striped bass Dugléré, and oeufs à la neige. “I walked in, and it was like something out of a movie,” Ruggerio recalled. “The kitchen was in the basement of the Shoreham Hotel. There were all these Frenchmen in pristine white toques M AY 2 0 2 2 89

and big hats running around. There was no English being spo- CLEARING THE TABLE ken.” After lunch service one day, Ruggerio approached the chef, Ruggerio said his son’s death led him to leave organized crime: Roger Fessaguet. “Before I could get three words out, though, he goes, ‘Non! I’m not hiring. Leave!’ Right then, I decided this “I knew that this has to end with me.” is where I was going to work.” where he grew up in Brooklyn and his past being a boxer,” said In the spring of 1981, La Caravelle hired Ruggerio as an entrem- former La Caravelle cook Fabrizzio Salerni, who now works etier, a junior cook who mainly works with vegetables and soups. for Daniel Boulud. There was a mind-numbing amount of information to absorb at a breakneck pace in a language he barely understood. Chefs Violence, though, wasn’t something Ruggerio could switch would yell out an order for consommé Tosca and another for on and off—it nearly ended his nascent cooking career. consommé vert-pré, and he’d have to immediately know the dif- One night a few months after landing the job at La Caravelle, ference between one (chicken consommé thickened with tapioca Ruggerio said he was mugged on the subway in Brooklyn. In and garnished with julienned carrot and quenelles of chicken, the ensuing fight, Ruggerio grabbed the attacker’s knife truffles, and foie gras) and the other (chicken consommé gar- and stabbed him in the arm and stomach. “I was out of con- nished with finely cut vegetables and fresh sorrel). He kept the trol. I got on top of the guy and assaulted him,” Ruggerio book Le Répertoire de la Cuisine at his station and feverishly flipped recalled. Ruggerio claimed self-defense, but the Brooklyn D.A., through it when he got lost, which was often. “Those first couple of seeing Ruggerio’s arrest record, charged him with attempted services were pure hell,” he recalled. “They screamed at me all the murder. Ruggerio remembered spending 10 days in jail on time. But the more they screamed, the more I wanted it. I knew Rikers Island until, he says, Lombardozzi’s 40-year-old nephew, that if I stayed in the street, I was going to get killed or go to jail.” Danny Marino, bailed him out. Ruggerio said Marino instructed him to get out of town. Ruggerio quickly understood that a French kitchen was not dissimilar to La Cosa Nostra. Both were governed by rigid Ruggerio returned to La Caravelle and begged Fessaguet hierarchies and Old World codes. Transgressors were punished to find him a cooking job in France. “He must have seen the harshly. “At La Caravelle they would inspect your drawer twice emotion in my eyes,” Ruggerio said. Fessaguet sent Ruggerio a day, and if your knives weren’t clean and sharp, they threw to the Riviera to train under famed chef Jacques Maximin at everything on the floor,” Ruggerio said. He respected how the the Michelin two-star restaurant Le Chantecler in Nice’s famed imperious owner, Robert Meyzen, enforced the dining room’s Hotel Negresco. The French press dubbed the five-foot-five dress code like a hardened don. “He once didn’t let Jackie Ken- Maximin the “Bonaparte of the Ovens.” Ruggerio found that his nedy in because she was wearing pants,” Ruggerio recalled. new boss lived up to the moniker. Maximin disdained American “Another time, Ralph Lauren showed up wearing one of those cooks (and Americans in general). “He said American prod- Western leather bolo ties. Meyzen told him he had to wear a tie. ucts were shit, there was no American cuisine, and American Ralph said, ‘I am wearing one.’ Meyzen pointed at it and said, chefs were all shit,” Ruggerio recalled. But Ruggerio’s outer- ‘No, you tie horses up with that!’ He threw him out.” (Lauren borough background amused Maximin. “You are not American, did not respond to a request for comment.) you’re from Brookleeen!” Maximin once joked. (Maximin did not respond to a request for comment.) After a year, Maximin sent W HEN RUGGERIO WASN’T in the kitchen, Ruggerio to complete his apprenticeship with some of France’s he was knocking heads in the street. “I top chefs. First stop was Roger Vergé, who had mentored Max- would often go with guys to small stock imin, Boulud, and Alain Ducasse at his Michelin three-star brokerages that Carmine had and lean on restaurant Le Moulin de Mougins, near Cannes. From there it brokers,” Ruggerio said. Ruggerio intend- was on to Michel Guérard, who pioneered nouvelle cuisine at ed to compartmentalize his two lives, and he never told anyone his spa restaurant in the Pyrenees. Ruggerio’s final destination at La Caravelle who he ran with. “He would just tell me about was Paul Bocuse’s legendary restaurant L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges, on the outskirts of Lyon. Meanwhile, Lombardozzi’s crew cleaned up Ruggerio’s legal RUGGERIO QUICKLY UNDERSTOOD THAT A FRENCH KITCHEN WAS NOT DISSIMILAR TO LA COSA NOSTRA. BOTH WERE GOVERNED BY RIGID HIERARCHIES AND OLD WORLD CODES. TRANSGRESSORS WERE PUNISHED HARSHLY. 90 VA N I T Y FA I R

problems. “Guys visited my attacker at his mother’s Brooklyn into unfriendly hands!!! Good luck!!!” One time, Ruggerio said, home and convinced him to not cooperate with the investigation,” after infamous Gambino capo John Gotti criticized Marino’s Ruggerio said. When I asked what they did, Ruggerio responded, meatballs, Marino didn’t speak to Gotti for months. “Let’s just say they spoke the English this guy understood.” W HEN RUGGERIO RETURNED to La Caravelle, In the fall of 1983, Ruggerio returned to New York. La Cara- the nouvelle cuisine revolution was sweep- velle hired him back as a saucier, which was one step below ing New York’s French restaurants. The sous-chef. He was 21. I asked Ruggerio why he didn’t walk away trend toward lighter, inventive cooking from the Mob when his food career was taking off. “I had a ter- created previously unfathomable opportu- rible need to be wanted and respected. And I never felt like I nities for young American chefs. In 1984, 32-year-old Michael belonged in the legitimate food world. In the street was where Romano took over La Caravelle from Fessaguet. Romano I felt respected,” he said. “I can’t tell you the points I earned named Ruggerio his sous-chef. A few years later, Danny Meyer when I got [then Gambino boss] Paul Castellano a table at La poached Romano to oversee the kitchen at Union Square Café. Caravelle by telling them he was my uncle.” At 26, Ruggerio became La Caravelle’s executive chef. Ruggerio’s straight job gained the attention of Marino, an The Gambino family was also in the midst of a revolution. ascendant figure in the Gambinos. “Danny loved food. You Nine days before Christmas in 1985, Castellano was gunned never saw him in a jogging suit. He didn’t wear jewelry. His down in front of Sparks Steak House in midtown Manhattan. thing was beautiful suits and high-end restaurants. He was a The unsanctioned hit on the family’s boss was ordered by different kind of gangster,” Ruggerio said. Marino took over Gotti. “I’ll never forget. I was at La Caravelle. I got the call Lombardozzi’s crew and began inviting Ruggerio to join his and ran over [to Sparks]. There were cops and photographers inner circle for a weekly Sunday meal of meatballs Marino everywhere,” Ruggerio recalled. C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 0 0 hosted at his house in Brooklyn. “Danny was so damn proud of his meatballs,” Ruggerio said. Ruggerio recalled Marino giv- ing him a printed copy of his recipe. At the bottom of the page was a warning: “This paper will self-destruct if this recipe falls M AY 2 0 2 2 91

All in the Family Capping three days of epic celebrations The extravagant custom creations of that began with a ball at the Palace of Fine August Getty Atelier have been worn by the h e rC O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 5 8 w o r d s , Arts, where Earth, Wind & Fire performed, likes of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, “fabulous,” as well as “radical and fierce… the couple was joined in holy matrimony and others. “I just want to make the world a something to reinforce and reunite the under the stately dome of San Francisco City shinier place—one sequin at a time,” he says. LGBTQ+ with my kind of feminism—inter- Hall. When the ceremony began at 6 p.m. on sectional feminism, of course….” Saturday, November 6, Nancy Pelosi, the With his online company, Strike Oil, Nats officiant, was resplendent in a gold Giorgio produces hoodies, trucker hats, and other Kendalle is also a member of the Poetry Armani pantsuit. Just before midnight the staples of streetwear to which he gives an Brothel, a roving risqué literary burlesque, previous evening, the Speaker of the House, arty, luxe spin. In choosing the name, Nats where she has recited her poetry under the under the rotunda of the Capitol, had signed paid homage to his great-grandfather, who name Ophelia Up. According to its web- the hard-fought, historic $1.8 trillion Biparti- stated that the key to success was “Rise early, site, the Poetry Brothel “strives to promote san Infrastructure Framework. “I hightailed work hard, and strike oil.” “It’s one of my empowered sexuality practices and radically it out of there for Ivy, who I’ve known since favorite rules to live by. I have it tattooed on open artistic expression.” she was a baby,” Pelosi told guests. my right ankle,” Nats says. On December 12, 2018, @Freudian.slit/ Ivy’s spectacular gown, rumored to Gigi—growing up as Gregory Lazzarato Kendalle Aubra posted a portrait she had cost $500,000, featured four layers—the near Toronto—found her path forward in painted in oil of Gordon (though she didn’t outermost one resembling fragments of high school when she discovered the power identify him). “Today, my father…lost his a mirror—behind which trailed a 16-foot of cosmetics, which led her to make video very best friend in the world,” she wrote. embroidered veil. It was the handiwork of one makeup tutorials and post them on YouTube. “They’d known each other since they were of her grandmother’s favorite designers, John about 12…. I loved Bill, and I still do. Today Galliano, who also dressed the bridal party, When she moved to L.A. in 2014, she hurts so badly and I’m so tired of having including maid of honor Anya Taylor-Joy. was already a tall, striking blond with full feelings.” (Bill Newsom had passed away breasts but still in the transition process, at age 84.) At the gala dinner that followed at the which involved years of hormone treatments Getty mansion, Pelosi stayed past midnight, and surgeries, all of which she documented Two years later, the sudden death of John mixing with hundreds of Ivy and Tobias’s on social media. In the process, she gained shook the family. Earlier in his life he had young friends and relatives. “It was all so some 8 million followers across YouTube struggled with drug addiction, but, at 52, he inclusive—you could let your freak flag fly,” and other platforms, and a reputation as a was leading a full life and had become an said one of them. trans role model. attentive parent to his daughter, Ivy, then 25. After his body was found in a neat hotel room Ivy’s relatives who had flown up from Los Despite wealth and privilege, Nats had in San Antonio, the coroner determined that Angeles have certainly done their part to sup- struggled. “I never realized how ill I truly he died accidentally, due to “cardiomyopathy port inclusivity. was,” he reflected in 2020. “Between drugs, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease eating disorders, and mental health issues, [COPD] complicated by fentanyl toxicity.” Siblings August Getty and Natalia “Nats” I honestly felt I was knocking on death’s Getty, and Nats’s spouse, Gigi Gorgeous, door…. I returned to a life of drugs, darkness Just after his loss, Kendalle again have become high-profile advocates for gay and self-hate….” expressed her emotions on Instagram: and transgender rights. But it was August and “Two days ago…one of my brothers died…I Nats’s mother, Ariadne (a daughter of Paul When he met Gigi in Paris in 2016, where find myself very affected by this loss…. It’s Jr.), who led the way. While she had rejoiced both were walking in one of August’s fashion been scary being the bastard daughter of our in her children’s identities when they each shows, he saw “this amazing bright light.” father and his mistress in a family that’s so came out to her as gay, she grew fearful as she notorious. I hid my truth, but never because saw an increase in discrimination and vio- Two years later, Nats proposed, once I hated you guys. I’m sorry. I promise to take lence against LGBTQ+ people after Donald again in France. As their helicopter landed care of your daughter from here on out….” Trump got elected. Previously a shy philan- at Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, which Nats thropist, Ariadne journeyed to the World had rented for the occasion, WILL YOU Within days, she updated the name on her Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, MARRY ME? appeared in large lights. Cue profile. She was now Kendalle Getty. in January 2018—accompanied by August, the fireworks. The following year, 200 for- Nats, and Gigi—to announce her response: mally clad guests attended their wedding A YEAR FILLED with considerable grief a $15 million gift to GLAAD, the LGBTQ+ in Montecito. ensued for the entire family. (Ann died of a media-monitoring organization. heart attack in September 2020.) But 2021 The pandemic was a contemplative time concluded with joyful events: On a vacation In her children’s early years, Ariadne felt for Nats; in January 2021, he posted a photo in Greece, Kendalle’s boyfriend, Johnny Latu, a need to protect them from the weight that of himself bare-chested. His breasts had a musician, proposed to her at the Acropolis, came with the Getty name. Brought up using been removed. “I am transgender, nonbi- and John’s daughter, Ivy Love Getty, married their father’s surname, Williams, they were nary,” he wrote. All his life, he explained, he her fiancé, Tobias Engel, a photographer, in not told anything about their mother’s family. had felt “not in synch with the body I was spectacular style. Even on school field trips to the J. Paul Getty born with….” Museum, they were unaware they had any connection to it. It was only around 2000, “I didn’t fall in love with Nats because of when the family relocated for a decade to his gender, I fell in love with the person he England, where August and Nats would be is,” said Gigi shortly afterward, when, at the attending schools with their cousins, that their same time, she announced her new status mother told them about their Getty blood. as pansexual. As young adults, both siblings chose to Then Nats got back to business. With its use the Getty surname, and each launched new “Oil Spill tee,” Strike Oil continued to a fashion line. (In 2021, Nats adopted the attract buzz (Machine Gun Kelly was spotted male pronoun when he announced his gen- wearing one). der transition.) “Pretty much since we came out the womb, we’ve been who we are,” Nats summed up about his family. “And no one was going to tell us otherwise.” n 92 VA N I T Y F A I R