Lifestyle
Celebrating movie icons: Meryl Streep
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Today, we continue our series Classic Films and Movie Icons and hear interviews from our archive with Meryl Streep and Sidney Poitier. I spoke with Streep in 2012 when she was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the film “The Iron Lady.” She won. She’d previously won for her performances in “Kramer Vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice.” She holds the record for the most Oscar nominations – a total of 21. One of the things she’s known for is her uncanny ability to do accents. Let’s start by hearing how she sounds as Margaret Thatcher. The film begins after Thatcher has lost her husband and is suffering from dementia. She’s imagining that her husband is still with her and talking to her. In this scene, Streep portrays Thatcher after she’s become the first woman to lead the Conservative Party. She’s speaking before the House of Commons.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE IRON LADY”)
MERYL STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) The right honorable gentleman knows very well that we had no choice but to close the school…
(JEERING)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …Because his union paymasters have called a strike deliberately to cripple our economy.
(JEERING)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) Teachers cannot teach when there is no heating, no lighting in their classrooms. And I ask the right honorable gentleman, whose fault is this?
(JEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Methinks the right honorable lady doth screech too much.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) And if she wants us to take her seriously, she must learn to calm down.
(JEERING)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) If the right honorable gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I am saying, rather than how I am saying it…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Here, here.
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …He may receive a valuable education in spite of himself.
GROSS: Margaret Thatcher later took voice lessons from a drama coach to help her sound more authoritative. Here’s Streep as Thatcher after those lessons, addressing Parliament about the war in the Falklands.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE IRON LADY”)
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) We were faced with an act of unprovoked aggression, and we responded…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Hear, hear.
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …As we have responded in times past, with unity, strength and courage…
UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Hear, hear.
STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) …Sure in the knowledge that though much is sacrificed, in the end, right will prevail over wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Meryl Streep, welcome to FRESH AIR. Thank you so much for being here. And congratulations…
STREEP: Thank you.
GROSS: …On your Golden Globe and your Oscar nomination.
STREEP: Thank you very much for having me, Terry. I’m a huge fan.
GROSS: Oh, wow. Thank you.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: So we just heard you before and after Margaret Thatcher has voice lessons – voice lessons to teach her authority and power – so that you can speak more powerfully to the Parliament. Did she really have that kind of vocal training?
STREEP: She did. My memory is a little cloudy, but I remember reading that Laurence Olivier had something to do with arranging for her to have – he demurred. He said he wouldn’t care to do it himself, but he steered her in the direction of a good vocal coach. And she did go. And it did help her. And it was part of the “Pygmalion” process that Gordon Reece put her through.
GROSS: So can you talk a little bit about what you think she learned with those vocal lessons and how you transformed your voice as her after she really learned her way around as a public figure and had the advantage of those voice lessons?
STREEP: Well, I think that voice lessons really just bring out a voice that you already possess. So she already had – whatever the sort of stentorian tones that she acquired over time. They were all lying in wait there and within her arsenal. And she’d also had elocution in her high school, the equivalent of high school, in Grantham. She had changed her way of speaking. Her accent from Grantham had disappeared by the time she went to Oxford to study chemistry, and she had decided on a sort of a plummy kind of aspirant, upper-middle-class, what we would call upper-middle-class, voice. And so what the voice coach did was enabled her to expand her breath, deepen her voice, bring it to a place where men could listen to it in its most emphatic tones.
GROSS: So how did you change your voice for the before and after, for the more confident and experienced Margaret Thatcher versus the early Margaret Thatcher?
STREEP: Well, I had evidence of both voices, you know, from the public record, so I could listen to them. And it’s sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people that are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking. I mean, I pick things up like that, so it’s not a thing that’s a struggle. It’s work, but it’s not a struggle. It’s fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point. And that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn’t normally think was the most important word in the sentence. Do you know what I mean?
GROSS: Yes.
STREEP: And she also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train of going – (inhaling) – (impersonating Margaret Thatcher) taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don’t really know that this point is going to be made through several examples, and there will not be a break in the speaking voice at any point. And you – if you think you’re going to interrupt, you’re really not going to have the opportunity because she’s just got capacity. It’s just really stunning as I looked at interviews.
GROSS: So you need a lot of breath to keep talking like that. Did you have it?
STREEP: I’ve just been talking like that.
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: Yeah. I did need a lot of breath. I had – I needed much more breath than I have. After all my expensive drama school training, I couldn’t keep up with her.
GROSS: I think it’s interesting when you’re doing the voice of a real person, or I suppose if you’re learning an accent, too, you think of it as singing along with a record. So is that what you do, like, you play Margaret Thatcher giving a speech, and you do the equivalent of singing along with it, you give the speech as you’re listening to it?
STREEP: I say that because that’s my way in in the very beginning…
GROSS: Yeah.
STREEP: …How to enter it. Very quickly in the process, I don’t think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you dress or your way you put on lipstick. It’s all a piece of a person, and it’s all driven by conviction. In other characters, it’s driven by insecurity, or it’s driven by fear, or – there’s always a driver, and the – all the physical manifestations – you need your way in. So, yeah.
When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I’d come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand’s records. And she was very young then. I think she was – she probably had three records out, and she was 21. And we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it, but it – for me, it was a way to get out the feeling of the song and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing. And, of course, now I’m rich and famous, and I met Barbra Streisand, and I told her that, and she was nonplussed.
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: She was just – oh, we can’t know what we mean to each other. You know, artists – you can’t know – you can’t know that, but she was really important.
GROSS: We’re listening to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep. We’ll hear more of it after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDRE DESPLAT’S “JULIA’S THEME”)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep as we continue our series Classic Films and Movie Icons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: I have another Margaret Thatcher question for you because you age several decades through the course of the film.
STREEP: Four.
GROSS: Yeah. So you had to wear, you know, like, a prosthetic older person’s neck, and your face has a lot of makeup or something because, you know, you age four decades. So is it harder to be expressive when you’re underneath something, you know, either a lot of makeup or a prosthetic or whatever?
STREEP: Well…
GROSS: I mean, you manage to be very expressive, but I’m wondering if it’s, you know, more difficult.
STREEP: It can be, but I didn’t want it to be. So I’ve worked for 35 years with a master artist – makeup artist and hairdresser. That’s Roy Helland, and he’s done everything – bleached my eyebrows for – and hair – for “Sophie’s Choice.” And he gave me a brown mullet in “Silkwood.” And…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …You know, he got me ready for the Golden Globes. And he understands the job and changing the outside to get at something inside. So in conjunction with this British prosthetics designer, Mark Coulier, he and Roy and I, we did tests. And it was all about taking away, taking away, taking away. You know, we start with what Mark would carve the – a sculpture of me. They took a life mask. And then he’d add on, with clay or whatever the material is, age. And then they’d cast it in sort of this silicon thing. And then I would wear it, and we’d test it. And then I would say, inevitably, less, less, less, less. So it’s kind of remarkable how little I really am wearing. And…
GROSS: And when you’re saying, less, less – I want less – is that partly so that you can move your face and…
STREEP: So I can be free.
GROSS: …And be expressive? Yeah.
STREEP: It’s all about being free and having – so I can look in the mirror and see me, not stuff. And it all has to do with – you know, it’s not about the audience. It’s all about fooling the other actors into believing that you are who you say you are because that’s hard when you walk on set, and it’s a big makeup job. And it’s – it makes it hard for them. And I take my entire performance from them. So if they don’t look at me and hate me appropriately…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …Or love me the way they’re supposed to or find, you know, an old face but see the young one underneath, which is Jim Broadbent’s task as Denis Thatcher, then I’m lost. I don’t have anything to go on ’cause I can read that immediately in their eyes, you know?
GROSS: Gee, I never thought of it that way – that you have to convince the other actors that you’re Margaret Thatcher.
STREEP: That’s the whole deal – the whole deal.
GROSS: You know, I hear a certain similarity between your voice in “The Iron Lady” as Margaret Thatcher and your voice in “Julie & Julia” as Julia Child. It almost strikes me as if – and I never thought about this till hearing you in both those films – that if Margaret Thatcher kind of drank too much…
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: …And started being, like, surprised and delighted about how her, like, food concoction was behaving, that she might sound like Julia Child. What do you think?
STREEP: Well, they had a similar flutiness in – especially in the younger – Julia Child had (impersonating Julia Child) a flutiness…
GROSS: Yeah (laughter).
STREEP: …You know? which, is – and it’s also part of her class, her – the way that there are women of that time and of that class. We don’t like to talk about that in America, but there are classes in America. And she was of a class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people and a few women, who were typing mostly, but also had something to do. And they had a way of speaking. I mean, the last person you would know – we would also recognize as having that way of speaking is Katharine Hepburn, probably.
When I was in – at Vassar – and I came from a public high school in New Jersey – there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from (laughter) New Jersey.
GROSS: Let me play a little bit of you as Julia Child in “Julie & Julia.” And this is a scene when you’re on TV early in your TV career, and you’re making some kind of, like, mashed-potato pancake concoction that you’re about to flip, and it’s not – it kind of…
STREEP: …Doesn’t go well.
GROSS: Doesn’t go well. It kind of splatters in the air, and half of it lands on the stove instead of in the pan. So…
STREEP: Yeah.
GROSS: …Let’s hear a little bit of that. And this scene alternates with you on TV and with Julie watching you on TV.
STREEP: Amy Adams, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah. Amy Adams is Julie.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “JULIE & JULIA”)
STREEP: (As Julia Child) I’m going to try to flip this thing over now, which is a rather daring thing to do.
AMY ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) She changed everything. Before her, it was frozen food and can openers and marshmallows.
CHRIS MESSINA: (As Eric Powell) Don’t knock marshmallows.
STREEP: (As Julia Child) Give it a try. When you flip anything, you’ve just got to have the courage of your convictions, especially if it’s a loose sort of mass like – oh, that didn’t go very well. But you see, when I flipped it, I didn’t have the courage…
ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) She’s so adorable.
STREEP: (As Julia Child) …I needed to – the way I should have. Oh, but you can always put it together. And you’re alone in the kitchen. Who’s to see?
ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) Pearls. The woman is wearing pearls in the kitchen.
STREEP: (As Julia Child) I’ve just got to practice the piano. I’m Julia Child. Bon appetit.
GROSS: You know, I love that, ’cause you talk about studying someone’s voice as if it’s music, and she has such a musical voice.
STREEP: She does.
GROSS: And, you know…
STREEP: And she has no breath.
GROSS: Yeah, I was going to say that.
STREEP: Absolutely none (laughter).
GROSS: Exactly. It sounds like she’s been running up a hill.
STREEP: She always sounds like that. I feel like that when I’m in the kitchen. Don’t you? Well, I’m not a very good cook, but…
GROSS: Me neither, honestly.
STREEP: (Laughter) I just…
GROSS: I believe that’s why…
STREEP: I find myself…
GROSS: …Delis exist, so that I don’t have to cook (laughter), but…
STREEP: Well, I got better after this, and my entire family really did appreciate it.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: Usually, they’re resentful of movies that I go off and make (laughter), but this one had a bonus attached. But, yeah…
GROSS: You know, I compared…
STREEP: …She had no breath.
GROSS: …I compared her voice and Thatcher’s voice before, but breath-wise, they’re the opposite, ’cause she’s almost, like, gasping for air.
STREEP: Yeah.
GROSS: And Thatcher has this, like, endlessly long breath.
STREEP: Well, she’s so alive, Julia Child, and Margaret is so designed. She’s so intent upon making her point. That’s the most important thing, is that she win the argument, and there is nothing that stands in the way of that train, you know? But Julia’s just alive in front of you. That’s part of why people loved her. They lived it with her. They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were all part of it. But she was adept, too, at what she was doing – incredibly adept.
GROSS: OK, so here’s a story I read, which I assume is true, but you can tell me if it actually happened (laughter), that in – for the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis remake of “King Kong,” you auditioned for Dino De Laurentiis and his son…
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: …Who were Italian.
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: And Dino De Laurentiis said in Italian – what did he say?
STREEP: (Speaking Italian). I don’t know. I can’t speak Italian anymore, ’cause I’m so old and forgetful, but he said something like, but this is so ugly. Why do you bring me this?
GROSS: This being you (laughter).
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: Yes.
STREEP: I’m sitting in front of him, opposite the desk. He’s smiling. He looks impeccable. He has everything beautiful. And his son is very kind. His son said – ’cause his son had seen me in something, and he said, no, you know, Dad, she’s a wonderful actress. And because I had just – I’d studied a year of Italian at Vassar, I could understand what they were saying, and I said, you know, (speaking Italian), I’m very sorry that I’m not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know (laughter), this is it. This is what you get, sort of. And I left. I mean, I was very upset, but I didn’t show it. Yes, it’s a true story.
GROSS: So a very interesting story (laughter), ’cause you were being told early in your career, basically, that you’re not beautiful.
STREEP: Yeah.
GROSS: You’re not qualified – your face is not qualified for this role. And you’re also…
STREEP: Face and body, I believe.
GROSS: And body.
STREEP: Yes.
GROSS: But then you’re also making the decision to let them know that you understand what they said. They were intentionally speaking in Italian so that you wouldn’t understand them.
STREEP: Right. Right, right.
GROSS: But you did understand them. You let them know you understood them, and…
STREEP: Because they did – they think actresses are stupid. That was the other thing that – I mean, not they, ’cause I don’t think his son was that way. His son was my champion. I mean, he was the reason I was in the office. But the dad – he wasn’t being mean to me. He was just speaking to his son in Italian, but he had no idea that I would understand, because they think Americans are stupid, too, so…
GROSS: Did you worry that you were basically – I mean, you hadn’t been in any movies yet (laughter), so did you worry that word would spread about you that you were…
STREEP: A pain in the a**?
GROSS: …That you spoke back to directors? Yeah, that you were a real pain…
STREEP: (Laughter).
GROSS: …And that you were – yeah, that you were a problem, so, like, avoid her.
STREEP: I am a pain in the a**.
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: How can I hide it?
(LAUGHTER)
STREEP: I mean (laughter), yeah, that is the package, you know, and…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: But I was not probably suited to that role either. I mean, that was the truth.
GROSS: How much did you want it?
STREEP: Not much. I mean, I did want a break, but I didn’t think I would be good in it. Honestly, I didn’t. It represented something that, I don’t know, I wasn’t drawn to. So I suppose it was easier to be obstreperous in the meeting because of that. If it was an audition for “Sophie’s Choice,” and Alan Pakula had said something like that, I maybe would have swallowed it because I wanted it so badly.
GROSS: We’re listening to the interview I recorded with Meryl Streep in 2012. We’ll hear more of that interview, and hear my 2000 interview with Sidney Poitier, after a break, as we continue our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOSTON CELLO QUARTET’S “RAPSODIA CUBANA”)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep, one of the movie icons we’re featuring this week on our end-of-summer series.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: You were engaged to the actor John Cazale, whom most people know as Fredo in “Godfather” one and two, and in…
STREEP: “Dog Day Afternoon.”
GROSS: In “Dog Day Afternoon.” Why am I blanking on the title? And he had a small part in “The Deer Hunter.” You were nominated for an Oscar for your part in your – in “The Deer Hunter.” It was, like, one of your first films. And so you were engaged, and he died of bone cancer shortly after, in 1978.
STREEP: Yes. We were not engaged, but we were a couple. We lived together and – yes, for, like, three years.
GROSS: So he probably died not knowing how famous his roles were going to be, how famous those movies were going to be.
STREEP: I know. I know. He had – well, he had a – the “Godfather” movies were unbelievably popular. And, you know, they were just – popular isn’t the word. They were…
GROSS: Well, they’ve entered into iconic. Yeah.
STREEP: Yeah, absolutely. And they did early. I mean, early, early on, they had that importance, certainly in New York, where we lived. And, you know, we would walk along the street, and people would roll down the window, and they’d go, hey, Fredo, you know? And we could never pay for a dinner if we went to Little Italy – never, which was great. We went all the time. But he – yeah, he made five movies, and all five of them were nominated for best picture.
GROSS: You gave a terrific commencement address at Barnard in 2010, and one of the things you talked about was how you think of your first character as being you in high school (laughter), when you wanted to be the pretty, popular girl. So what you did was you studied Vogue and Mademoiselle. And what were some of the things you taught yourself to do?
STREEP: Bleach my hair, A, and curl it. And there was an elaborate thing, ’cause there weren’t hot curlers in those days, so you had to go to bed on – sleeping on rollers, which is just a torture, like maybe sleeping on one of those Maasai…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …Wooden plugs that they put under your neck in the boma, you know, to go to sleep, which I also don’t understand.
GROSS: Did you ever use the tin-can thing, putting a tin can on top of your head?
STREEP: That was for the people with curly hair.
GROSS: All right. I get it.
STREEP: I was interested in curling…
GROSS: I get it.
STREEP: …My bone-straight hair…
GROSS: Right.
STREEP: …Which won’t bend, you know, under any circumstance. Yeah. But the girls with curly hair put it on cans so that it would straighten it out…
GROSS: Right.
STREEP: …During the night. Everybody was miserable.
GROSS: So you said that you adjusted your temperament to – in trying to be popular and appealing to boys.
STREEP: Yeah. Oh, sure.
GROSS: What did you change?
STREEP: I remember that, well, opinions took a back seat. Opinions were not, you know, attractive. I mean, this is stuff I remember thinking when I was quite young. You know, at my house, in order to be heard, you had to get your – no, you had to get your opinion out. No, no, no, don’t interrupt me. You know, Dad, he did that again. And you just…
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: …You got it out. You learned to rise above the contending voices, but I recognized early on that that wasn’t attractive on a date. Like, if he said something stupid, you go, no I don’t agree with that at all. That’s – how can you say that? It’s idiotic. And that would not get a second date, so I would learn to go, (laughter) wow. Yeah, cool.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STREEP: You know, and that that would be OK. So it’s a form of acting for a purpose which girls learn to do, and girls are good at it, if they care to be. Now I don’t think they – what do I know? I have three daughters, and they’re all – they’re all doing it on their own, in their own way – I mean, getting along in life on their own terms. And I don’t feel they make those accommodations quite in the way we did, but this was something people did. Yeah.
GROSS: One other thing actresses, I think, worry about – you can be the leading lady in your 20s and 30s. Once you’re in your 40s, it’s really harder to get roles. There’s character roles and, you know, the parent roles. I think things are starting to change, but have you been satisfied with the roles for women of your age as you’ve changed ages over the years, or have you been frustrated with what’s out there?
STREEP: Both. I remember when I turned 40, I was offered within one year three different witch roles to be in.
GROSS: Literally witch?
STREEP: Witches, to play three different witches in three different contexts. But it was almost like the world was saying – or the (laughter) studios were saying – we don’t know what to do with you. And I remember – I mean, I’ve repeated this before many times, but I remember being shocked to find out that Bette Davis was 40 or 41 when she did “All About Eve” and was playing an over-the-hill, done, out-of-it, you’re-finished actress and that she was only 50 when she did “Baby Jane” and “Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” and those grotesques of witches. You could call them witches. So, yeah, I think there was for a long time in the movie business, a period of when a woman was attractive and marriageable or something – not marriageable. [Expletive], I guess, is the word (laughter), which…
GROSS: You can’t really say that on the radio.
STREEP: …I probably can’t say that. OK. Well, you know what I’m saying, so you substitute something better, but…
GROSS: We could bleep it.
STREEP: OK.
GROSS: It will have been bleeped by the time listeners hear that.
STREEP: OK. So that’s – that was it. And then after that, they really didn’t know what to do with you until you were the lioness in winter – right? – until you were 70. And then it was OK to, you know – “Driving Miss Daisy” or “Trip To Bountiful,” or things like that. But that middle period, what we call the middle, the most vibrant years of a woman’s life, arguably, from 40 to 60, were completely – nobody knew what to do with them. And that really has changed – completely changed – not for everybody. But for me, it has changed, and part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that I wasn’t that word that I just said that you bleeped before. When I was a younger actress, that wasn’t the first thing about me.
GROSS: Sexuality was not the first thing, is what you’re saying.
STREEP: It was not the first thing.
GROSS: Sexiness.
STREEP: Yeah, because when that goes away – cute. I was never cute. So when cute goes away, ’cause that goes away with age…
GROSS: Well, Meryl Streep, I really regret that we’re out of time. It’s been great to talk with you.
STREEP: Me too. Great to talk…
GROSS: Thank you so much for being on our show.
STREEP: Thanks, Terry. I enjoyed it.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAURENCE ROSENTHAL’S “MAIN TITLE/THE CHAUFFEUR”)
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You want to see some real fashion ingenuity? Watch the N.F.L. draft.
I’m not saying it’s all good, but where else are you going to see someone in a double-breasted suit made by a company better known for making yoga pants? Or an Abercrombie & Fitch suit jacket so short that it exposes the belt loops on the pants beneath?
On the whole, the style on display at the N.F.L. draft last night was very overeager senior formal: a lot of suits in colors beyond basic blue. The quarterback Ty Simpson wore a custom suit by the athleisure label Alo, which, I have to say, looked better than I would have envisioned had you said the words “Alo Yoga suit” to me.
I thought it might have been from Suitsupply, but the conspicuous “Alo” pin on his right lapel put that idea to rest. Simpson, smartly, unfastened that beacon before appearing onstage as the 13th pick to the Los Angeles Rams. He had, perhaps, satisfied his contractual obligations by that point.
Earlier in the evening, as the wide receiver Carnell Tate threw up his arms in exaltation after being picked fourth by the Tennessee Titans, his cropped Abercrombie & Fitch jacket revealed a swatch of rib cage. He looked like a mâitre d’ who had just hit the Mega Millions.
During the N.B.A.’s extended fashion awakening, its draft has become a sandbox for luxury brands to cozy up to would-be endorsers. The Frenchman Victor Wembanyama broke a kind of cashmere ceiling when he wore Louis Vuitton to go first overall in the 2023 N.B.A. draft.
The N.F.L. draft has none of that. The brands you see are often not brands at all, but custom tailors that reach the league’s neophytes through a whisper network among players. The draft is also a platform to raise the curtain on longer-term brand deals that better suit these rookies. We may, for instance, never see Simpson in a suit again. Nearly every photo from his time at Alabama shows him in a T-shirt or hoodie. It makes sense for him to sign with Alo.
Football is the most mainstream of American cultural entities. And it’s one that still hasn’t, in spite of the league’s best efforts, taken off overseas. Few players, save some quarterbacks and a tight end who happens to be engaged to a pop star, feel bigger than the game itself. If you’re a new-to-the-league linebacker, you’ll most likely never harness the star power to grab the attention of Armani, but you might have just the right pull for Abercrombie.
The N.F.L. draft is therefore one of the few red carpets where the brands worn by the athletes may also be worn by those watching at home. How many people watching the Oscars will ever own clothes from Louis Vuitton or Chanel? People may comment online about Lady Gaga wearing Matières Fécales to the Grammys, but how many of those fans and viewers could afford to buy clothes from it?
The Japanese designers changing fashion
Yesterday, I published a deep dive into how a newish crop of Japanese designers are soaking up all the attention in men’s fashion right now. This was a piece I was writing in my head long before I sat down and finally started typing. I remember sitting at a fashion show in Paris over a year ago — I believe it was Dior — and being asked by my seatmate if I’d made it over to a showroom in the Marais to check out A.Presse. That Tokyo-based brand is now part of a vanguard of Japanese labels that, on many days, seems to be all anyone in fashion wants to talk about. I spent months talking with designers, store owners and big-time shoppers to make sense of why these brands have kicked up so much buzz and, more than that, what makes their clothes so great. You can read the story here.
Other things worth knowing about:
Thirty years ago, comedian and actor Tig Notaro didn’t have a clear direction in life, so she followed some childhood friends who wanted to get into entertainment to Los Angeles. Secretly wanting to do stand-up, Notaro decided to try her luck at various outlets in town, which became the start of her successful career.
“I stayed on my friends’ couch near the Hollywood Improv on Melrose, and a couple months later, got my own studio apartment in the Miracle Mile area,” Notaro says. “I love all the options for everything in L.A. — the entertainment, the restaurants. I like to stay active. So many people love the hiking options in Los Angeles, and I’m one of them.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Notaro appears in Season 3 of Apple TV’s “The Morning Show” and is a series regular on Paramount+’s “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” as she was on “Star Trek: Discovery.” She’s also a touring stand-up comic and hosts “Handsome,” a comedy podcast, with Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin. The trio will be taping a live show May 4 at the Wiltern with the cast of Netflix’s “The Hunting Wives.” The live shows include interviews, but also “incorporate some ridiculous things,” she says. For example, upon hearing that some of the hosts always wanted to learn to tap dance, Notaro “hired a tap instructor to come to our live show in Austin and teach us how to tap dance in front of the audience.”
Notaro lives near Hollywood with her wife, actor Stephanie Allynne, their 9-year-old fraternal twin boys, Max and Finn, and three cats, Fluff, Linus and Skip. When she’s not touring, her ideal Sundays include sampling vegan restaurants, wandering through bookstores or museums, and doing something physically active with the family.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
6 a.m.: Up with the kids
Because we have active children, we still wake up at 6 a.m. or 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, but there’s not as much of a rush to get going. Stephanie and I will often have coffee and chat in the living room together. I love that part of the day. Stephanie may cook breakfast, but Max and Finn are pretty self-sufficient and can make certain little meals for themselves. Max is really starting to take an interest in cooking, so he’d make breakfast for himself. Our family is vegan, but he eats eggs, so he makes himself an egg sandwich with avocado a lot of times.
9 a.m.: Daily morning walk
After breakfast, we usually have a morning walk around our neighborhood. That’s a daily thing I like to do, regardless of what’s going on. Now that I’m not touring as much, tennis is back on the schedule. So I’d go to Plummer Park in West Hollywood and play for a while, then join the family for lunch.
11:30 a.m.: Hike with a side of chickpea sandwich
I love Trails, a cafe in Griffith Park, where you can eat outdoors. It serves simple food, and has good vegan options. I usually get their chickpea salad sandwich. The food there is great. Afterward, we’d visit Griffith Observatory, where there’s lots to see. There are lots of great trails in the park, so we’d go for an hour hike before leaving.
3 p.m.: Browse the shelves for rock biographies
Bookstores are fun, so we’d head downtown for the Last Bookstore, which is in a historic building with lots of vintage books. I really love all things plant-based, and I’m a very big music fanatic. So I love to look for vegan books, nutrition books, rock biographies and autobiographies. It’s just fun to browse around the stacks.
If we didn’t go to the bookstore, we’d probably go to LACMA. Our sons are huge fans of art and want to go for each new exhibit. They love Hockney, Basquiat and Picasso, to name a few.
4 p.m.: Cuddle with cuties at a cat cafe
We’d then make a quick stop at [Crumbs & Whiskers], a kitten and cat cafe on Melrose for coffee, snacks and to pet the cats. It’s best to make reservations in advance. There’s cats all around the place that need to be adopted. You can visit and pet them, or find a new roommate. I’d love to take some home, but we already have three.
5:30 p.m. Italian or sushi, but make it vegan
We’re an early dinner family. One restaurant we like is Pura Vita in West Hollywood. It’s the greatest vegan Italian food, and for non-vegans, nobody ever knows the difference. It’s the first 100% plant-based Italian restaurant in the United States. They make an incredible kale salad and I love the San Gennaro pizza. It’s got cashew mozzarella, tomato sauce, Italian sausage crumble and more.
Then there’s Planta in Marina del Rey. It’s right on the harbor and you can sit outside and look at the boats coming in and out. They have sushi, salads and other plant-based entrees. They’ve got a really great spicy tuna roll that’s made out of watermelon. They are magicians.
Or there’s Crossroads Kitchen in West Hollywood. They play the best classic rock, and the atmosphere is upscale, fine dining. The appetizers that we always get are called Moroccan Cigars, which are vegan meat substitutes fried in a rolled batter. I really like the grilled lion’s mane steak, their mushroom steak with truffle potatoes, or the scallopini Milanese, that has a chicken or tofu option. I get the chicken with arugula on top. I always love to have a decaf espresso with dessert, which is either a brownie sundae or banana pudding.
7:30 p.m.: Comfort watch or word games
After dinner, the kids often like to watch an episode of “Friends,” a show that all ages enjoy, sports or “The Simpsons.” Or we’d play a game where each of us will add a word to a sentence and create a weird or funny long sentence until one of our sons says period. Then they’ll try and remember the whole sentence and repeat it back.
9:30 p.m.: Bubble bath then bed
The boys usually go to bed at 8:30 p.m. and bedtime for us is 9:30 p.m. Stephanie and I would read or chat. I like to take a bubble bath, if people must know. The best Sundays for me mean finding a good balance of relaxing and being active. I feel very lucky that my family and I can do those things together.
When Marian Sherry Lurio and Jonathan Buffington Nguyen met at a mutual friend’s wedding at Higgins Lake, Mich., in July 2022, both felt an immediate chemistry. As the evening progressed, they sat on the shore of the lake in Adirondack chairs under the stars, where they had their first kiss before joining others for a midnight plunge.
The two learned that the following weekend Ms. Lurio planned to attend a wedding in Philadelphia, where Mr. Nguyen lives, and before they had even exchanged numbers, they already had a first date on the books.
“I have a vivid memory of after we first met,” Mr. Nguyen said, “just feeling like I really better not screw this up.”
Before long, they were commuting between Philadelphia and New York City, where Ms. Lurio lives, spending weekends and the odd remote work days in one another’s apartments in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Within the first six months of dating, Mr. Nguyen joined Ms. Lurio’s family for Thanksgiving in Villanova, Pa., and, the following month, she met his family in Beavercreek, Ohio, at a surprise birthday party for Mr. Nguyen’s mother.
Ms. Lurio, 32, who grew up in Merion Station outside Philadelphia, works in investor relations administration at Flexpoint Ford, a private equity firm. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology.
Mr. Nguyen, also 32, was born in Knoxville, Tenn., and raised in Beavercreek, Ohio, from the age of 7. He graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and is now a director at Doyle Real Estate Advisors in Philadelphia.
Their long-distance relationship continued for the next few years. There were dates in Manhattan, vacations and beach trips to the Jersey Shore. They attended sporting events and discovered their shared appreciation of the 2003 film, “Love Actually.”
One evening, Mr. Nguyen recalled looking around Ms. Lurio’s small New York studio — strewed with clothes and the takeout meal they had ordered — and feeling “so comfortable and safe.” “I knew that this was something different than just sort of a fling,” he said.
It was an open question when they would move in together. In 2024, Ms. Lurio began the process of moving into Mr. Nguyen’s home in Philadelphia — even bringing her cat, Scott — but her plans changed midway when an opportunity arose to expand her role with her current employer.
Mr. Nguyen was on board with her decision. “It almost feels like stolen valor to call it ‘long distance,’ because it’s so easy from Philadelphia to New York,” Mr. Nguyen said. “The joke is, it’s easier to get to Philly from New York than to get to some parts of Brooklyn from Manhattan, right?”
In January 2025, Mr. Nguyen visited Ms. Lurio in New York with more up his sleeve than spending the weekend. Together they had discussed marriage and bespoke rings, but when Mr. Nguyen left Ms. Lurio and an unfinished cheese plate at the bar of the Chelsea Hotel that Friday evening, she had no idea what was coming next.
“I remember texting Jonathan,” Ms. Lurio said, bewildered: “‘You didn’t go toward the bathroom!’” When a Lobby Bar server came and asked her to come outside, Ms. Lurio still didn’t realize what was happening until she was standing in the hallway, where Mr. Nguyen stood recreating a key moment from the film “Love Actually,” in which one character silently professes his love for another in writing by flashing a series of cue cards. There, in the storied Chelsea Hotel hallway still festooned with Christmas decorations, Mr. Nguyen shared his last card that said, “Will you marry me?”
They wed on April 11 in front of 200 guests at the Pump House, a covered space on the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Mr. Nguyen’s sister, the Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, who is ordained through the Unitarian Universalist Association, officiated.
Although formal attire was suggested, Ms. Lurio said that the ceremony was “pretty casual.” She and Jonathan got ready together, and their families served as their wedding parties.
“I said I wanted a five-minute wedding,” Ms. Lurio recalled, though the ceremony ended up lasting a little longer than that. During the ceremony, Ms. Nguyen read a homily and jokingly added that guests should not ask the bride and groom about their living arrangements, which will remain separate for the foreseeable future.
While watching Ms. Lurio walk down the aisle, flanked by her parents, Mr. Nguyen said he remembered feeling at once grounded in the moment and also a sense of dazed joy: “Like, is this real? I felt very lucky in that moment — and also just excited for the party to start!”
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