If, hypothetically, you find yourself with an abundance of free time—say, between 2 and 4 a.m. each night, say because you happen to be feeding a newborn baby—I recommend getting really into Vanderpump Rules. The show was enormously trashy fun for a solid eight seasons (longer than these things usually stay good!), thanks entirely to its uncommonly messy cast: Stassi Schroeder, Jax Taylor, Kristen Doute, and especially Ariana Madix, who perfected the art of being a reality star while also seeming too cool to be a reality star. But all that was several lifetimes ago, as Madix tells VF’s Anna Peele—before the scandal that blew up her era of Vanderpump and allowed Madix to start doing the thing she always meant to do, which was act. These days, Madix is a sandwich entrepreneur, a Broadway regular, an Emmy nominee for hosting the American version of Love Island, and a distributor of harsh truths about Gen Z. “What I hear online is that they are afraid to be cringe, they’re afraid to dance,” she tells Anna. “On some level, I get why they don’t want to take in alcohol. I get it healthwise. But at the same time, live a little. Smoke a little weed.”
Elsewhere, VF’s awards obsessives predict who will win at the 2026 Emmys—they’re on Monday, September 14! Mark your calendars; Joy Press asks Elizabeth Meriwether to break down the season finale of her sleeper hit Furious; and Nate Freeman gets the State Department to admit that yes, they did remove a Kehinde Wiley painting from a US embassy…and they’d do it again if they could. More tomorrow!
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