The Media
Everything About Olivia Nuzzi’s New Memoir Is Hopelessly Messy
From revelations of affairs with big-name politicians to the unearthing of a MySpace-era pop song, the journalist’s comeback attempt is hitting a few bumps along the way.
By
Nitish Pahwa
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Nov 19, 20252:34 PM
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images.
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It’s been a wild few weeks for Vanity Fair’s West Coast editor. If you aren’t plugged in to the incestuous world of glossy coastal media but nevertheless recognize the name Olivia Nuzzi, that’s likely because of her election-era tryst with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Nuzzi had profiled for New York magazine during the early days of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Once a Washington correspondent for the heralded publication, the 32-year-old Nuzzi left NYMag last year after her “personal” affair with the married politician was publicized, and for a while, she laid low.
Then, just a year after the scandal broke, Nuzzi began making her comeback. This September, she was hired at Vanity Fair. About a month after, news leaked that the journalist had written a tea-spilling memoir titled American Canto, about her career and the Kennedy affair, set for publication on Dec. 2. Promotion for the book kicked off in earnest this month, with an exclusive and widely mocked excerpt in Vanity Fair that included sensational claims that Nuzzi and RFK Jr. had fallen in love and much more. But whatever professional rehabilitation Nuzzi might have expected was soon derailed by her aggrieved ex-fiancé, veteran political journalist Ryan Lizza, who posted a newsletter Monday night accusing her of also having slept with Mark Sanford, the former South Carolina governor and long-shot GOP presidential candidate who’d likewise been profiled by Nuzzi in 2019.
After that, every bit of Nuzzi’s internet presence was up for grabs, from an old tweet that appeared to lust after Rick Perry, to a now-deleted MySpace profile for a pop singer named “Livvy” who released a single titled “Jailbait” and sure appears to be Nuzzi herself. (She has not confirmed this publicly.) And all this has landed in the same month that RFK Jr.’s longtime wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, released a memoir of her own. (The cheating is mentioned there, but Nuzzi isn’t called out specifically.) All completely nuts—and there’s more.
Why do I know who Olivia Nuzzi is, and why should I care about any of this?
You may remember her dishy stories as a former intern for Anthony Weiner’s 2013 mayoral campaign.