Amy Chozick and Jessica Yellin Celebrate WITH FRIENDS LIKE YOU
[0:00]Congratulations. Thank you. Cool. Thanks for everyone for coming out. I don't think she needs the introduction, but Amy is a
[0:07]long-time political reporter. We first met in that world when we were both political reporters on the East Coast, and like all
[0:14]smart political reporters, we both decided that chapter should close after a period of time and
[0:21]live the good life out here in California. If you follow politics, there's no question that you have
[0:27]ready Amy's work. She has been writing about complicated women as a journalist for many years,
[0:32]and now she has decided to make up some of her own. Her debut novel with Friends Like You is a
[0:38]darkly funny psychological thriller. It has earned rave reviews, and it's already being adapted
[0:45]for a film, which is the main thing in LA, right? I'm going to ask Amy to read a little bit from the
[0:55]book, and then we'll talk about it a little bit, but yeah. Take it from here. Well, thank you, also.
[0:59]Thank you for that introduction. You're so sweet. And thank you all for being here. I just feel like
[1:03]very warm, happy vibes in this bookstore, so I'm so grateful. But yes, I've been admiring Jessica's
[1:09]political journalism career for ages, and now she is still in the trenches trying to get us actual
[1:15]facts. So if you subscribe to her news, not noise, it's really brilliant. And then like at a
[1:20]difficult time for the media. It's a bright spot. Yes, I was, so the book is a novel. It's about
[1:29]a new mother, Emily in New York, and she's lost and lonely and kind of postpartum haze. And she
[1:34]decides that the answer to all of her problems is finding her former best friend slash college roommate
[1:40]Daisy. So Daisy became a stripper and dropped out of college, and then she fell into a world of
[1:46]sex work, and they disappeared. They haven't heard from each other in 15 years. So right when Emily
[1:50]is like in new mom message boards and new mom, you know, mommy groups, she falls into like some
[1:56]deep rabbit holes to try to find Daisy. And this is not a spoiler, but she finds her. And for a while,
[2:03]it seems like Daisy's the answer to all of her problems until she starts to wonder, is Daisy
[2:07]solving all my problems? Or is she unraveling my whole world? So this is the novel. And I was going
[2:13]to read to you from the first chapter when she's very deep in her search for Daisy and just this
[2:20]obsession. Elena pretended not to notice the stack of smut. And I'm not talking about penthouse
[2:26]or Playboy. I was 12 weeks postpartum interviewing nannies over a stack of beaver hunt.
[2:32]Jugs, swank, Lolita, gente, a German publication titled inexplicably purple people.
[2:40]The last candidate who came highly recommended took one look at the porno mags, smiled,
[2:45]touched the crucifix around her neck and got the hell out. I'd placed post it notes in the
[2:51]magazine, spent months of sleepless nights cataloging, searching. I didn't want to lose all of my
[2:57]hard work just to keep up appearances. I only worked on this project when Holden, that's the baby.
[3:02]We have some babies here to be on fame when Holden was asleep, which was most days and hardly
[3:08]any nights. When he started to stir cracking his eyes or letting out his little cooling sound,
[3:13]I tuck the titles under good night, good night construction site and Richard Scary's cars and
[3:18]trucks and things that go. Roman was too tired when he came home from work to pay much attention.
[3:24]If my pouring over skin flicks and porno rags kept me content and stopped me from nagging him,
[3:30]purple people it was. I'd ignore that he got home after eight, smelling like a sports bar,
[3:35]carrying a bodega bag of over right, over right grapes and a six pack of IPA without ever
[3:40]asking me if I needed anything. He'd ignore that I had my head buried in a stack of hardcore
[3:46]every time our babies left. It was an obsessive missing person research project, but how was I
[3:53]supposed to explain that to anyone else? No one would understand that at the same time I had a baby,
[3:59]I also developed an obsession with finding Daisy. An aching burn that I should have been with
[4:04]Daisy this whole time, that I should have never let her vanish. I want to tell her all of this,
[4:10]but it has been 15 years. 15 years since we occupied the same world, the same soul.
[4:16]Today, according to the last reference I found on Daisy's MySpace page on way back before she
[4:21]took it down, she goes by Jackie with an eye. She didn't appear to have an only fans account,
[4:26]but at work in Enigma posted a hazy screenshot of Jackie in what looked like a peep show,
[4:31]or was it a circus, hard to tell. There was an elegance to Daisy, a reflection of the landed Texas
[4:38]gentry that she was born into. A river oaks girl, the granddaughter of one of Houston's
[4:43]upstanding families, Junior League, the cattle barons ball, denim and diamonds, not Jackie with an eye.
[4:50]Even though my research suggested that she went by a different stage name now,
[4:54]I couldn't think of her as anything but Daisy. I hadn't wanted to tell her that I moved to
[5:00]York, or that I met in Australia at a party in Brooklyn, and we got married at the New York City
[5:04]Marriage Bureau, and I loved him more than I loved myself.
[5:07]But when I was pregnant, just enough to wonder what I'd gotten myself into, I wanted
[5:11]so badly to tell her.
[5:13]I emailed an old Yahoo account, but it bounced back.
[5:16]I tried daisies 2-8-1 phone number, but it now belonged to a guy who managed coin laundromats
[5:21]and mantros.
[5:22]In addition to the adult magazines I bought on eBay, I am also organizing an epic collection
[5:27]of excavators and second-hand magnetiles in our two-bedroom apartment in Stuyveson
[5:32]Town.
[5:33]A Bolshevik-style collection of hulking red brick towers largely populated with other people
[5:37]who moved to New York in their 20s to be broke and happy and get nose rings and who stayed
[5:42]entirely too long.
[5:45]I had a baby in all of the sudden I started to think about Daisy.
[5:49]I had a baby and I wondered if Daisy had babies.
[5:53]I had a baby and I realized that she had been someone's baby when she stepped on stage
[5:57]in Lucite stilettos and called me wanting heroin and showed up at my 20th birthday
[6:02]in Wet Seal begging to be saved.
[6:05]I had a baby and I needed desperately in my bones to find out what happened to Daisy.
[6:19]So before we get into it, is purple people really a thing?
[6:22]I made that out.
[6:23]Oh, okay.
[6:24]It felt very well-reported.
[6:25]But it felt German.
[6:26]Yeah, yeah, definitely.
[6:28]It survived.
[6:29]Yeah.
[6:30]Before we get into the actual book, I want to understand what made you write a novel.
[6:34]You've done journalism.
[6:35]You have the best-selling memoir, your screenwriter.
[6:38]What made you decide to do fiction?
[6:40]I always wanted to write a novel like even when I was a young journalist at the Wall Street
[6:44]Journal.
[6:45]I had like a novel under my bed that never got published and but you know, I love journalism
[6:49]and you got to go into all of these great worlds.
[6:51]And as you mentioned, I was I was a foreign correspondent.
[6:53]I covered all these political campaigns.
[6:55]So I sort of pushed it, pushed away the creative writing.
[6:58]And then I took a book lead to write my first book, which is a memoir about covering Hillary
[7:02]Clinton.
[7:03]And it's even though it's a political book, it's much more like a Julie and Julia but politics
[7:07]instead of cooking.
[7:08]Like it's very much a memoir in my voice and how she took over my life and lost a Donald
[7:12]Trump.
[7:13]And so the book, the book, it gave me like a glimpse of like, oh, writing in my not
[7:18]newspaper voice.
[7:19]And then I adapted that into an HBO Max series called The Girls on the Bus.
[7:23]And some of the writers are here.
[7:28]And that experience was the first time I was like, oh, I could just make things up.
[7:31]Like there's there's free snacks and let me get just make things up.
[7:34]And so it was the first job that wasn't journalism.
[7:36]And I was like, this is like a job I would love to do.
[7:40]And then that started just like, well, maybe I want to then you get used to writing scripts.
[7:44]And when you're writing a script, there's a lot of math involved like, you know, the
[7:47]midpoint has to land here and the acts have to do this.
[7:50]And you also have to think, is this car chase produceable?
[7:53]How are we cast that?
[7:54]There's a lot of things in your head that aren't just like creative, you know, the production
[7:58]of it.
[7:59]So I thought, you know, it was kind of a vacation for my brain to just open a document
[8:02]and write a novel.
[8:03]It really felt, I mean, it felt like it was time and it was a really nice writing experience.
[8:09]Very productive vacation.
[8:10]You don't know.
[8:11]So with this story, as you started to form it, it's very much about female friendships.
[8:17]Is there a friendship for you that ignited it?
[8:19]Or this is also about a young mom?
[8:21]Was there some personal hidden anxiety when you were first a young mom?
[8:26]My anxiety is not even that hidden, but it's not.
[8:31]Yes.
[8:32]But also like what's interesting is this is like a new mom, but I've heard from a lot
[8:37]more readers who have said, I had a daisy in my life.
[8:39]Like I think it's even more so than the postcard of it all as tapped into this female
[8:44]friendship that I think is a particular time in a girl's life.
[8:48]You know, they were like 18 when they met.
[8:50]And I think a lot about complicated female friendships or sisters like complicated female
[8:56]relationships.
[8:57]I love writing, but also that that friend that like you lost touch with, you know, if you're
[9:02]in a romantic relationship, he ends it, you end it.
[9:04]There's closure.
[9:05]I feel like everyone has that girlfriend who like you were soulmates and then she just
[9:09]disappeared or you grew a part and you want, and so I really wanted to kind of pull
[9:13]at that feeling.
[9:14]And I did have a roommate in college who under really different circumstances became a stripper
[9:21]to support herself and then she got into drugs and she passed away when we were young.
[9:25]Wow.
[9:26]And she's always been in my head as like to me, Daisy, we'll talk more about it, but
[9:30]Daisy's very empowered.
[9:32]Like Daisy did great in this line of work.
[9:34]She's living in one of these luxury towers with an oligarch client.
[9:37]Like I wanted to rewrite my roommates' ending in a way.
[9:41]And so that was another thing that sort of motivated me, these characters.
[9:48]As you've been describing, she becomes consumed with Daisy, right?
[9:50]This long-lost best friend.
[9:52]And as the story continues, we both see the intimacy and how sustaining female friendship
[9:57]can be and then how shall we say complicated?
[10:00]Yes.
[10:01]It can be, why is that what you felt like exploring?
[10:03]Attention.
[10:04]Yeah, it becomes codependent, toxic.
[10:08]I just wanted to get into that messy stew of female emotions and you're already so hormonal
[10:13]and a little off when you have to do baby, but then you get kind of fallen platonic love
[10:17]with this friend and Emily becomes really kind of codependent on her in different ways
[10:22]because Daisy doesn't have a baby or a family, so she kind of bonds with the baby.
[10:26]They're both kind of giving each other something, but at the same time there's this
[10:29]kind of underlying fear of it could be taken away, you know.
[10:34]But in terms of like the inspiration, so I was three weeks postpartum when Vogue asked me
[10:41]to profile Stormy Daniels.
[10:43]Oh wow.
[10:44]Yeah.
[10:45]So you'll remember this was when Stormy first became a household name and so my baby was
[10:51]three weeks old and they're like, and any leave-a-wits was going to shoot it.
[10:54]This was going to be her first big interview, so of course you don't say no to that.
[10:58]You could have a career covering complicated women.
[11:01]So I went to the first time I left my baby was to go to strip clubs in Milwaukee.
[11:05]Is that where she was working?
[11:07]She was working.
[11:08]They were not.
[11:09]They were not in the strip.
[11:10]Oh, this was like 2018.
[11:11]She was just on the tour stripping, like she was still doing her thing.
[11:15]And she was a 40 year old stripper, so it's not like, it was like, not glam.
[11:19]It's not glamorous.
[11:20]It was a midwestern tour, it was Stormy.
[11:22]She started to, at the time like liberal women would show up and give her really big tips
[11:26]because she was taking a drop, but it was still like a gritty strip club tour.
[11:30]So I was like shadowing her and I would talk to all these strippers and sex workers
[11:35]right when I had a baby and it was such a weird and congruous world that I thought this
[11:40]would be really interesting to set a novel when like these two weird and actually that
[11:44]scene of the, she Stormy had been very famous in the adult world and done a lot of interviews
[11:49]and penthouse and playboy and I ordered all of those old magazines on eBay and my husband
[11:53]was like, you are interviewing nannies over a stack of foreign people.
[11:58]It's research.
[11:59]What are you talking about?
[12:01]So that scene, even more so than the like friendship motherhood, I was like very inspired
[12:08]by that weird collision of new motherhood and pornography.
[12:14]So you're very exposed.
[12:17]Everyone's commenting on your body.
[12:18]There's like a lot of boobs.
[12:19]Like there were a lot of things that were weirdly more similar than you think.
[12:24]You're very invested in your body at that time.
[12:26]Yeah.
[12:27]It's all very weird.
[12:28]Give us one beat on what was Stormy like.
[12:32]Stormy was very empowered, I would say, like Stormy like, oh, you know, directed.
[12:37]There is this idea and she really disliked a certain type of liberal woman who felt sorry
[12:43]for her or was like, it's so sad that you have to do this.
[12:46]She was directing this way before only fans.
[12:48]She was the first one to direct her own movies.
[12:51]She was really well known as a good director like she hired other women and they were controlling
[12:56]their own scenes.
[12:57]So like she felt very empowered and was very kind of offended when anyone would think
[13:03]of her as a victim.
[13:04]And that was something I, Daisy's completely made up.
[13:07]But that was something I wanted to weave in because Emily's like poor Daisy, what she've
[13:11]been doing all these years and Daisy's like, I'm fine.
[13:14]I've been traveling.
[13:15]I've been on yachts.
[13:17]I really wanted to capture that duality of how we sometimes view sex workers and how,
[13:22]you know, the reality of a lot of these women were like, she was sort of stormy in that
[13:26]way and that she's like, had a great life.
[13:28]What are you talking about?
[13:29]I don't feel sorry for that yet.
[13:32]Tell us a little bit about where the mother's group ends up.
[13:35]They end up developing this mother's group and there's some very fun environments.
[13:41]There's like a luxury high-rises matcha on tap.
[13:45]What's that environment like explain a little bit and how much fun did you have inventing
[13:48]that?
[13:49]That was really fun.
[13:50]That was like wish fulfillment for Emily and for me, you know, I feel like if I'm not having
[13:53]fun writing the scene, like no one wants to read the scene and I had a lot of fun in
[13:57]those scenes.
[13:58]So, but one of the things that kind of fascinated and infuriated me about New York when
[14:03]I was, I lived there for over 20 years before I moved here, is these, if you've been there
[14:08]lately, there's all these luxury billionaires, rural, these luxury condo towers and they're
[14:13]empty.
[14:14]So, you know, one of them I was reading has a Michelin restaurant that no one eats
[14:18]in because it's only for residents, but they're all owned by oligarchs and foreign money
[14:22]up building.
[14:23]You know that building.
[14:24]They're all owned by foreign money, just parks, they just park their money in New York
[14:28]real estate and there are like all of these giant luxury condos that are just empty.
[14:33]And to me, it was like such a middle finger to the rest of the city that can't even afford
[14:37]to pay their rent.
[14:38]You know, and you're just thinking about like what kind of a city has homeless shelters
[14:41]that are full and luxury condo towers that are empty.
[14:44]You know, this like, to me, it was such a symbol of inequality.
[14:46]This is like way before mom Donnie or any of this, I wrote this years ago, but to me,
[14:51]the affordability that is, Emily's not Emily and Roman both have jobs, but they feel
[14:55]like they can't make it work and childcare so expensive.
[14:58]So to me, the most.
[15:00]emblematic, you know, example of that was the, were these luxury buildings and Daisy lives
[15:04]in one of those. And so like she says to him, like to Emily and by all your mom friends
[15:08]over, like no one's ever here. So the moms find like refuge, they take over and there's,
[15:13]there's, and there's literally at these buildings, free childcare, there's like the
[15:17]platonic ideal of the soft play center, you know, it's like, you know, and they're like
[15:21]the contrast of like a gritty gritty playground in New York, the kids picking up a cigarette
[15:25]bud accident, you know, the sandbox. And then they're in this like, oh, this beautiful
[15:29]empty luxury tower. And it's like kind of perfect until it's not, you know, but yes, that was
[15:35]definitely wish fulfillment. And also to me deepened the dependency on Daisy, right, because
[15:40]Emily and all her mom friends were like, this is how we're making it work. It is true that New York City
[15:46]almost feels like its own character. And then not for sure. Why did you decide to set it there?
[15:51]Well, that's where I was a new mom, but also I felt like when I moved to LA, I had kind of the
[15:56]mental space to write, but I also really miss New York. So I did feel like every day I could kind
[16:01]of go back to New York and in my, in my brain. But also, I think, you know, we're reading
[16:07]all the time about the decline in birth rate and nowhere is it more evident than in New York,
[16:14]how difficult it is to just like be a normal person and have kids in a four child care in a
[16:18]four school and all of these things. So kind of all of the things that I wanted to explore were
[16:22]just heightened in New York. But I also really wanted 527 Park, which is the fictional tower. I
[16:28]wanted it to be sort of its own character the way the Dakota is in Rosemary's baby, you know, just
[16:34]kind of like this looming character, which is very New York. Where you live defines you. Yeah,
[16:40]that's the same as Skytown. Like, I don't know, you know, it's no, Skytown in lower Manhattan. It's
[16:46]also is like, you know, as soon as you hear that, you know, what it evokes, you know, it describes
[16:52]the character. I always when I talk to authors of fiction, they come in two flavors, wrote the book
[16:59]having no idea how it was going to end. It was anxiety inducing the entire time. Other people,
[17:05]like, I knew the ending before I even started without telling up the ending, which are you?
[17:09]Or oh, I definitely had this was a three act play always in my head. I knew beginning middle
[17:13]that said, I didn't know what would happen within those. Like, when you write for TV and film,
[17:19]you have to write really detailed outlines before you ever write the script. Like, every detail
[17:24]has to be kind of signed off. And so I just wanted to go in and let my mind go where it went. But
[17:29]I definitely knew beginning middle end so much so that there's some big twists in the book. And
[17:33]so much so that my agent was like, we can't, she liked the pages I was sending her, but like, you
[17:37]have to land this plane. Like, if you have the twist, this twist, these twists in your head, like,
[17:41]so the landing act three was really important to me. Yeah, you speak an act.
[17:46]But no, robbery is to my husband come by at the end of the day and be like, how the writing
[17:50]going? I was like, shit got real dark for a million days. Real dark. Like, so I didn't know,
[17:55]I didn't sometimes I just wouldn't know, you know, I mean, it just happens. It comes out.
[17:59]You're like, okay, to be clear with this process, sometimes it was like that the next day,
[18:03]I'd be like, okay, that was not good. Like, there's some discovery and some throwing out pages that
[18:07]don't work. But to me, it was like that was the fun of letting myself wander. As we've said a few
[18:13]times, you have this career covering complicated women. There's been Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth
[18:18]Holmes, Stormy Daniels, there are others. How much did those real women inform the characters
[18:25]in this novel? And if so, was it deliberate? Like, have you ever been trailing Hillary? And you're
[18:30]like, oh, that's a moment. I've got to use that sometime. I put most of those in my first book,
[18:36]okay, maybe I should have said that. No, no, no, no. It's perfect. It's a great question because I do
[18:40]feel like a lot of journalists like become screenwriters and become famous screenwriters. I mean,
[18:44]my hero, Nora Efron, but there's a lot of them. And I do think journalists are, it's less about
[18:49]like, I want to go write the Hillary Clinton movie and more like, you are in this, we're a
[18:53]stute observers of human behavior, right? And you're, you're always looking for the perfect scene.
[18:58]Of course, it like has to happen. You can't make it up. But for instance, when I interviewed Elizabeth
[19:02]Holmes, before she, I got the only interview with her before she went to prison,
[19:05]she was in her home nursing her baby talking about there. It's like, you want to,
[19:09]that's a scene. Like, you know, so I think you're always looking for scenes. You're always
[19:13]looking for great dialogue and you're always really studying like pathology. Like, like,
[19:19]Daisy is nothing like Elizabeth Holmes. But like, what did I learn from being around someone who's
[19:24]that kind of, because Daisy does, there is a cult aspect to this mom's group. She starts to come
[19:29]a bit of a cult leader. And to me, that was like, kind of a Holmes, you know, I have a friend
[19:34]who met her briefly when she was still at there and I was a big producer and he, and he left
[19:39]the dinner and was like, is she the Messiah? Like, she's just so like engrossing. And I feel like
[19:44]that's certainly like behaviors like that in form. Not just Daisy, but like other fiction I do.
[19:49]I'm always drawing on. I mean, Hillary had a whole, that's a whole other set of
[19:54]pathologies. That's another night. Or like Lauren, I just did a big story in the Times on
[19:59]Lauren Sanchez.
[20:00]Bezos that got a lot of attention.
[20:02]And like, for instance, that was a privilege
[20:05]to be in that world because I'm writing
[20:06]about this extreme wealth disparities in this book.
[20:09]So it's like, you just pick, I think, things you observe,
[20:12]less like a specific thing and more like an ambiance.
[20:18]Do you have a, like, a notes app
[20:20]where you jot down crazy things you're observing or moments
[20:23]or I got to use this sometime?
[20:26]Yeah, I have a notebook.
[20:27]And actually, I have something by my bed
[20:29]because in the middle of the night, I'll wake up
[20:31]and just be like, think of something.
[20:32]But it's not like you're interviewing these famous women
[20:34]and you're like, I got to stick that in a screenplay.
[20:37]No.
[20:37]And actually, people have at, like, Hollywood has been
[20:40]interested in like, do you want to adapt that into the,
[20:42]and I'm like, I don't really want to write,
[20:44]like, the Lauren Sanchez biopic movie,
[20:46]but I wouldn't mind writing about like an interesting second
[20:49]wife who's having a really good time.
[20:51]And then, you know, like, there's things, you know,
[20:55]that you can just file it.
[20:56]If it's only failed, we really want you to write that
[20:59]fast.
[21:00]A broader topic, fiction lets you go places that journalism
[21:06]doesn't really.
[21:08]Is there something you wanted to say
[21:10]that you're able to say through this book
[21:12]that you didn't feel either safe or ready to say
[21:16]through journalism?
[21:17]Yeah, for sure.
[21:18]I don't know if you had this experience in journalism,
[21:20]but for me, certainly in the past, like, in the Trump years,
[21:24]I think nuance is really dead.
[21:25]Like, I think someone is either a total villain
[21:29]and a God forbid you ever, like, present any facts
[21:32]that make our head, you know, realize that everyone's both.
[21:36]And so I think fiction allows you to really explore
[21:40]the gray areas.
[21:41]Like, I think we love Tony Soprano
[21:42]because he was a sociopath
[21:44]and he was like a put upon suburban dad.
[21:46]And he'd come home and his kids would look awesome around.
[21:48]And the most interesting characters in fiction
[21:51]are always like both.
[21:52]And I think that we're all shades of both.
[21:56]And that's very hard now.
[21:57]I think everything is reduced to a tweet,
[21:59]reduced to a headline, reduced to Alexa.
[22:02]She's heart, especially when it comes to women.
[22:04]It's like you have your idea that this person's a monster
[22:06]or saying and you kind of ignore.
[22:08]I mean, one of the journalism stories
[22:09]that I always get back to is you guys all know the name
[22:13]Lorraine Ababa, right?
[22:14]Oh, she was a punchline on late night.
[22:17]She cut off her husband's member.
[22:19]That's all we know, right?
[22:20]I got to know her probably 10 years ago.
[22:22]I spent a lot of time with her.
[22:24]And why?
[22:25]For a story.
[22:27]So she was just hanging out, just hanging out.
[22:32]Her husband had been raping her for years.
[22:35]And marital rape was not a crime in Virginia.
[22:37]She would call the police.
[22:38]And they were like, he's your husband.
[22:39]Can't nothing we can do.
[22:40]And she was from Ecuador.
[22:42]And she threatened to leave him.
[22:43]He said he was going to have her deported.
[22:44]She's a tiny little woman sweetheart.
[22:47]Like she was tortured.
[22:48]So it's not that she didn't do the thing
[22:50]that we all know her for.
[22:51]It's just that there were a lot of things
[22:53]that were left out of those headlines.
[22:55]And so getting to know her, to me,
[22:57]was like the starkest example of like, oh, the story
[22:59]we run with, it's like the sexy headline.
[23:01]Also, John Wayne bothered her ex went on to serve time
[23:06]for brutal assault.
[23:07]Like he locked a woman in a motel room
[23:09]and raped her repeatedly for like really bad.
[23:12]And so I just thought that was so interesting.
[23:15]Because I just grew up knowing her as a punchline,
[23:17]knowing the headline.
[23:18]And so it's different with homes
[23:20]because she is in prison and was convicted of the butt.
[23:23]But she was raped at Stanford.
[23:24]I did read that police report.
[23:26]She did have a 39-year-old boyfriend who
[23:28]told her to drop out of school and start her comp.
[23:30]It's going to be OK.
[23:31]She's 19.
[23:32]And he did leave.
[23:33]This was all in court record that he left her sticking
[23:35]out saying, your voice sounds like a little girl.
[23:37]No one's going to listen to you.
[23:38]You need to wear black.
[23:40]I'm not saying it's his fault.
[23:41]She should take responsibility.
[23:43]I'm just saying there's always more, as you know,
[23:46]than the kind of thing that we think we know.
[23:48]So I think fiction really lets you explore those great areas.
[23:54]Like the characters would be so boring if they were just,
[23:57]I would get the note from some executive.
[23:59]This is a trope.
[23:59]He's just a villain, you know, mustache twirling villain.
[24:02]So to play with these characters that are kind of all the things
[24:06]is something I love.
[24:07]Do you think that in the world of publishing,
[24:11]women who are truly complex like that
[24:13]and not always empathetic can succeed more?
[24:16]You can succeed more in telling those stories
[24:18]than you can in journalism.
[24:20]Because we have to make choices as a journalist.
[24:22]When you're crafting a story, there's
[24:24]a narrative, even though it's all facts,
[24:25]you decide how to shape it.
[24:27]And there are certain characters that audiences expect
[24:30]and management expects.
[24:32]Do you think women are allowed to be different
[24:34]and succeed within the books?
[24:37]Oh, like in fiction?
[24:38]Yeah, in fiction.
[24:39]Like, we'll audience as a subset.
[24:39]Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting.
[24:41]I don't know if you guys read yesteryear,
[24:42]but I thought, what a great job she did
[24:45]because that was a totally dislicable protagonist.
[24:48]And yet I wanted to stay with her and keep reading.
[24:50]And she kept, so I definitely think you do get the note
[24:53]the unlikable female character note.
[24:55]Although that's always like couched in some other way.
[24:57]They're like, could we make her just a little more?
[24:59]And you know, like...
[25:00]I have a dog or a dog.
[25:01]Yeah, the note is that the unlikeable female.
[25:05]But I do think we're seeing more in fiction
[25:08]that explores like complicated women.
[25:12]You still have to like toe the line of likability,
[25:15]which is every woman in the public eye.
[25:17]My favorite question is you're going to turn this into
[25:20]a screenplay.
[25:21]Yeah, ideal world.
[25:22]Who do you want to cast?
[25:23]I always get asked this last time.
[25:25]So, no, no, no, I love the question,
[25:26]but I'm super, I'm superstitious.
[25:28]You don't want to say producers are here,
[25:30]but I feel like as soon as I say the name of my dream person,
[25:34]I don't know.
[25:35]So I love to, like after you read the books
[25:36]and me your thoughts.
[25:37]I love to share other people's thoughts,
[25:39]but I'm scared to throw out my favorite names
[25:41]because I feel superstitious of, okay, I understand.
[25:45]You have a couple other projects you're working on right now.
[25:47]Tell us what else is coming next for you.
[25:49]Yeah, I'm adapting the nanny diaries.
[25:51]Remember that book and it was a Scarlett Johansson movie
[25:53]and Scarlett Johansson's executive producer
[25:55]and Greg Berlanti for Netflix into a Netflix series
[25:59]with Jenny Bix, who was a long time.
[26:01]I think she didn't event here recently.
[26:02]She was a long time writer and sex in the city.
[26:04]So we're getting to explore in New York, Nanny world.
[26:07]It was so funny.
[26:08]She would send me a picture recently
[26:09]that she was outside the 92nd Street Y,
[26:11]which is like the prestigious preschool in New York.
[26:13]And it was like the valet line of strollers.
[26:17]So we're having a lot, we're having a lot.
[26:19]That is much more like devil worst product,
[26:22]sort of like Dishy.
[26:24]Emily and Paris, but exploring the world of a nanny
[26:28]who starts working for this uppery side family.
[26:30]So that's super fun.
[26:31]And I've got a couple of things, couple shows
[26:34]in development at Apple.
[26:35]And I'm on staff at it on their Greg Berlanti show
[26:40]that's HBO drama that's going to be on,
[26:43]I don't know when it's going to be on,
[26:44]but it's starring Ray Romano and Kayleigh Cuoco
[26:46]and Josh Jackson.
[26:47]And it's an LA, a big LA family show.
[26:50]Oh, Haley Cuoco's a West Side mom.
[26:51]She's amazing on the show.
[26:53]And Rita Wilson's the mother, the Haley Cuoco's mother.
[26:56]And it's like, I'm so, the comedy said in the West Side
[26:58]of LA.
[26:59]It's actually fun.
[27:00]It actually happens here.
[27:01]It's actually what we say is it's the funniest show
[27:03]about grief on TV.
[27:05]Oh, it is actually like a very, it's a tear jerker.
[27:08]I won't say more, but it's I'm really lucky
[27:11]to be on the staff of this show
[27:13]because it's, I think it's a beautiful show.
[27:15]Well, it seems like this leaving journalism thing
[27:17]has worked out for you.
[27:18]I, you know, I keep pulling me back in though, you know,
[27:21]every, every like two years I'll get a desire
[27:23]to write like a little as with homes
[27:25]or the Lawrence Sanchez look like it has to be,
[27:27]but because I still, I still love it,
[27:29]but I am glad I'm not like in the day to day, I think.
[27:32]I have one more question for you and be,
[27:34]and then I'm gonna turn to the audience
[27:35]to get ready with your questions.
[27:37]Is there a dream person you have not interviewed
[27:39]and would like to profile?
[27:42]I'm still kind of thinking about that.
[27:44]I do have a couple, I have someone,
[27:46]but you're also too superstitious to tell us.
[27:49]No, I'm not super just there in prison, so.
[27:51]Oh!
[27:52]Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[27:55]Yeah, I feel like I'm, you know, it takes,
[27:58]it takes a lot to get me to,
[27:59]because those stories, as you know,
[28:00]take so much work and time and so it's has to be,
[28:04]it has to like, I have a busy day job right now,
[28:07]but every once in a while, there's someone I really wanna.
[28:09]Well, we look forward to your next profile too.
[28:12]Thank you.
[28:12]Thank you.
[28:13]Congratulations, it's really wonderful.
[28:15]Thank you so much.
[28:16]Thank you so much.
[28:17]Yes.
[28:18]Thank you.
[28:19]Thank you.
[28:20]Thank you.
[28:21]Who has questions about the novel, about her career
[28:27]and writing, covering politics, fabulous women?
[28:34]Yes.
[28:35]My question, so a lot of the people you named were not
[28:38]your friends.
[28:40]What is there ever, like as a writer,
[28:41]you're inspired by your friends and family,
[28:44]and like do you have to tell them
[28:45]if you're including them or how does that go?
[28:48]I know.
[28:49]I think of the suddenly acknowledgements,
[28:51]like pity the man married to the writer
[28:53]and thanked the man who keeps buying her notebooks.
[28:55]So, because, you know, everything is coffee.
[28:58]I forgot, I forget, I literally had a very good friend
[29:01]who like is reading the book
[29:02]and there was a joke in the book that is her joke.
[29:04]And she was like, I'm so glad my joke is immortalized
[29:06]and I was like, ooh, I did still that joke for me.
[29:08]So, you know, I do, I like,
[29:10]nothing like directly from my life,
[29:12]but definitely like, in the words of Nora Ephron,
[29:16]everything is coffee.
[29:17]So, you do like, you know.
[29:18]Well, the porno magazines, while you're doing it.
[29:20]That was true.
[29:21]And also, a lot of people in LA were like,
[29:23]didn't believe these towers existed
[29:25]and then I would send them all of these links
[29:26]from investigations in New York times
[29:28]in the Wall Street Journal about how the real estate stuff
[29:31]was real, yeah, but yeah, definitely.
[29:34]I like, over here things and use that.
[29:40]I wouldn't really, unless like the memoir
[29:41]was like thoroughly fact check.
[29:43]So everybody in it knew that they were gonna be in it
[29:45]and what the quote was, but not so much in fiction
[29:48]to be its fair game.
[29:50]Yeah.
[29:51]Can you tell us about your great process, right?
[29:53]What's like pretty quick view, does it take a while?
[29:56]Are you one of those people who accept
[29:57]that this hour of the morning and what's your problem?
[30:00]Um, yeah, I treated like a job.
[30:02]So like I would just, um, I would write from nine to five.
[30:06]Maybe I would burn out around two or three,
[30:08]but I would then the rest of the day I would use to like either revise what I've
[30:11]written or I'd read like a novel that helps my process or like something like
[30:16]that, but I really just feel like I think it's the journalism training.
[30:20]Like it's a, I'm like, I don't wait for inspiration.
[30:22]I'm just, and oh, yeah.
[30:23]And I also my, my mentor, he passed away.
[30:26]But David Carr was a columnist the Times for many years.
[30:28]used to say, um, keep typing until it turns into writing.
[30:32]So, you know, I just feel like a lot of times just like keep, keep doing the job.
[30:37]Um, and, uh, yeah, I wish I had some beautiful morning pages process.
[30:42]Anyone else?
[30:45]Yes.
[30:47]Yes.
[30:48]Sounds like you've had a lot of fun writing this,
[30:51]because that like how different process wise or like you're inspired with this
[30:56]for new person tomorrow.
[30:59]Yeah, I think that's a great question.
[31:03]To me, I was, I felt there, this is another thing that David Carr told me.
[31:06]When I went to write the memoir, he said you have to put that newspaper voice away
[31:10]and go to a magical place where writers live.
[31:12]So it was my first time going to the magical place where writers live,
[31:15]and I just enjoyed that.
[31:16]I think the idea of like to be totally candid with you guys,
[31:19]because a lot, there's a lot of water under the bridge.
[31:21]I did not want to write the book after Hillary lost.
[31:23]I had sold the book, I sold the book when she first started running like 2015.
[31:27]I was like, how about I do a, you know, I'd cover her 2008 campaign.
[31:31]And then when she lost, I was just like, I don't want to write this book.
[31:34]This is so depressing.
[31:35]And I got to get to write this book.
[31:36]And so I was ready to like give the advance back.
[31:39]And then I went, I went on a trip with my husband and kind of like process,
[31:44]it was hard to process in the moment when you're on deadline.
[31:47]And there's a news like that.
[31:49]And then I decided like it's actually a better book,
[31:53]because there's a beginning, middle end.
[31:55]I think if she had won the book, what had so many open questions about
[31:58]what kind of president is she going to be like all of these things.
[32:01]And like it wasn't the ending we thought, but it was to me a better book.
[32:05]But sorry, I'm rambling. I forgot your question.
[32:07]Oh, whether I enjoyed it.
[32:08]Oh, yeah. So at first I was like not looking forward to writing this book
[32:11]because it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.
[32:13]But then I then I did then I then I accepted like it as a complete story,
[32:18]like a three act, a three act story.
[32:20]And and I had a lot of fun writing it except that it is like there it was,
[32:24]there was a very arduous fact checking process.
[32:26]And even though they weren't in power,
[32:28]there's a lot of people like, I are sure I said, and you know,
[32:30]there's the journalism like even though I was using my own kind of voice.
[32:35]And so this book was was super fun.
[32:38]Like I because I also my brain had been in script mode for so long.
[32:42]And it's like you're thinking like the executives didn't want this.
[32:45]And I'm putting it in and you're kind of paralyzed by,
[32:47]oh, this is going to be too, that five 27 parks going to be way too expensive
[32:51]to do this condo.
[32:52]Like you're thinking about all these other things so that the novel was really fun.
[32:55]And I do have a rule that if I am like board writing, no one wants to read.
[32:59]I'm someone's going to be bored reading it.
[33:02]But yeah, the novel was particularly fun.
[33:05]I love to write another one.
[33:08]I have this day job, you know,
[33:10]and it's really hard.
[33:12]The other hard thing about a novel, this is like a process behind the scenes.
[33:15]But it's you have to, you usually have to write the whole novel until you,
[33:19]before you sell it.
[33:20]So I didn't know if anyone would even want to buy this.
[33:23]So it's like, you know,
[33:25]it's kind of stressful to sit down every day and write and not know if you're with the nonfiction.
[33:30]I wrote a proposal and then I knew someone was going to publish it.
[33:33]So kind of wrote the whole thing without knowing.
[33:35]It's like imagine writing 300 pages and then no one wants it.
[33:38]But no, I do want to write another one eventually.
[33:40]Thank you.
[33:41]I went in the back.
[33:43]Yeah.
[33:52]20.
[33:54]I know,
[33:55]because girls in the bus was so like detached from like,
[33:58]we really tried to make it,
[33:59]even though we ended up very pressing about a lot of things,
[34:02]we were like, I'm like,
[34:04]I won't even get into it.
[34:05]But there was something where like,
[34:06]I was like,
[34:07]the, you know,
[34:08]Sadie has a little flirtation.
[34:09]She wasn't doing the flirtation with the candidate.
[34:11]And it was like, that never happens.
[34:12]And then it was like the Olivia news.
[34:14]He's getting anyway.
[34:15]It was like everything we wrote sort of like came to true.
[34:18]But we didn't,
[34:19]we did want to keep it like really rooted in fiction.
[34:21]So like,
[34:22]there's really no Hillary.
[34:23]Of course,
[34:24]there's a female candidate.
[34:25]And we,
[34:26]we think it's Hillary because she's the only,
[34:28]you know, that was before Kamala.
[34:30]But no,
[34:31]I really wanted to root it.
[34:32]And we wanted,
[34:33]yeah,
[34:34]we definitely had more stories to tell for our girls.
[34:35]Um,
[34:37]yeah.
[34:38]I don't know,
[34:40]dear,
[34:41]dear.
[34:42]Well,
[34:43]I think people would probably,
[34:44]yes.
[34:45]I have a question.
[34:46]Okay.
[34:47]I have one for each of you.
[34:48]Yeah.
[34:49]Amy,
[34:50]is what was,
[34:51]I want to say your favorite piece to report
[34:54]of her career in journalism.
[34:56]Yeah.
[34:57]What would you say was most exciting or
[35:00]like this is a major moment for you. And then that's the guy, because you're here.
[35:06]I wanted to know what you have on the right. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you.
[35:12]I was, as Jessica knows, when the entire press core cannot fit on an event,
[35:18]you had a pool, right? So it's like one print reporter, one wires reporter.
[35:22]I happened to be the poor reporter with Obama in 2008 on election night.
[35:25]On the, I was in the room when the results were coming in. We rode in the motorcade to grant
[35:30]like that was kind of like a, oh my god, like this is a crazy, like like this is why you become
[35:37]a journalist, right? Like a crazy history. And I feel like I had the bookends, because then I was
[35:41]also with Hillary and Jeff, a clot to vote in 2016 and at the Javits Center. So I was like,
[35:46]I have the bookends of my political coverage with those two nights. But yeah, certainly that,
[35:51]like that night being in the motorcade and riding over and like that was pretty crazy.
[35:57]That was a crazy night. I was in Grant Park. Yeah. I was a hologram that night on CNN.
[36:02]Oh, yeah, for better and for worse. I remember that. We were not a hologram. It was technically
[36:09]a tautogram as many scientists in the audience pointed out. Okay, hold it a hologram. Wow.
[36:15]Yeah. It was such a night. That's very nice of you to ask. I run a news brand called
[36:19]News Not Noise. We're growing. We're launching a show soon. And a lot of people, it seems like
[36:26]everything's happening on YouTube these days. So that's what's next. We're doing so good. And it's
[36:31]so entrepreneurial. And like I just feel like bombarded by news and not knowing what angle everything
[36:37]has. And I feel like your sub stack and your Instagram have been like a godsend of like
[36:42]Jeff. Very sweet. Well, I have to say that when I first left legacy media and started doing news on
[36:46]Instagram, not any, nobody was doing it yet. I was the first to do it there. And you were one of
[36:52]my first regular people watching me and saying like thumbs up all the time. And I was like, okay,
[36:57]okay. So thank you. It's so good. Oh, good. But I think you all would probably like to have a moment
[37:04]to chat with Amy and get the book. So should we do it? Assign it? Yeah. Great. I want to say thank you
[37:10]you again to both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really early. Like before I stop.