Discover more from ENTHUSIASM with Kate Leaver
"I read people smarter than me and I know when to shut up"
Hunter Harris on being the internet's best pop culture writer
Do not underestimate women who write about pop culture.
It is a gift and a public service, to write about dumb stuff well. In my opinion, nobody’s doing it like Hunter Harris.
Hunter writes the legendary newsletter Hung Up. She’s worked for New York magazine, the New York Times, GQ, and on the HBO Max show Gossip Girl.
She is funny! She is talented! She is almost always correct about famous people!
I love her, I read everything she writes. So it is with great honour that I present to you, A CHAT WITH HUNTER HARRIS!!!! Here ya go xx
KATE: Hunter Harris is such a good name. Just how proud are your parents for choosing it?
HUNTER: My name was my mom's choice. She has always loved it. My dad wanted me to be Jessica or Heather. My mom wanted a unisex name that you couldn't quite place. Many times people expect me to be a 6'2" lacrosse player who went to Dartmouth and listens to finance podcasts. So basically my exact opposite.
Did you always wanna be a writer?
Yes since I was in third grade, except for a brief period in seventh grade when I wanted to be a fashion buyer for, like, Saks.
You are, in my opinion, the most frequently correct pop culture writer on the internet. Your analysis of celebrity, gossip, movies and TV is unparalleled. How’d you get so wise?
I read people smarter than me, and know when to shut up.
What is your strongest held opinion about pop culture?
Every opinion I have is my strongest held opinion because I'm hard-headed. Probably that some of the most shocking or controversial happenings — Bennifer getting back together, The Slap, Madame Web bombing, Selena Gomez announcing and breaking every one of her social media hiatuses — are genuinely not managed or publicist manipulation. Celebrities go rogue all the time.
Your favourite celebrity conspiracy theory?
Drake definitely got his body done.
I love hearing about other people quitting. I want everyone to have at least one sensational quitting experience and walk out like Nicole Kidman into the sunshine after her divorce was settled. You quit your job at New York Magazine in 2020-ish to write your newsletter… what can you tell me about this decision process?
I wish I loved to quit. Lately, I've been feeling extremely guilting for even the most I-have-a-good-reason bail. When I left New York mag, it took maybe six weeks of therapy and still a lot of conversations with my boss where I would half-say I wanted to leave and half-say I wanted to stay. I was truly ambivalent: working at Vulture was the greatest job I ever had, and in a lot of ways the only job I ever wanted. But I felt the pull to try something new, and try it on my own. In the end I think it was a five minute zoom. Very much "I'm gonna take my talents to South Beach," in the most embarrassing sense, almost down to the slow zoom: it seemed obvious and kind of inevitable, yet I'd created all this drama for myself.
You love Love is Blind. During the depths of lockdown, I binged the first season and wrote a deranged article about how it could be genuinely romantic to go on it. Would you ever go on it? What would your strategy be?
I do not have a future on reality TV because I am destined for the bitchy-irritable-hangry edit almost every reality TV dating show gives black women. But what does success look like on a dating show, really? Finding a man to divorce in 18 months? As much as I aspire to being a divorced woman one day, I think the best case scenario is that you have a really good arc as someone's second strongest connection in the pods, he ultimately chooses someone else, but gets dumped at the altar in a way where no one can be mad at me but I still come away with 50,000 new followers on Instagram and pay my rent with spon for sports bras, or something. (I wouldn't take the period tracker app money — too bleak!)
Why do you find Sharon Stone so funny?
She's just one of my favorite actresses. I love Casino — I think about her in that movie all the time. Everyone talks about the costuming, which is great, but she has a kind of sexy impatience in that movie that I find really alluring. Sharon Stone herself is just as good: I profiled her a couple years ago for Town and Country, and it was everything I could've wanted. She's very frank, and a true Hollywood character. I love how on her Instagram she'll constantly post photos of her travels with "Sharon Stone reporting from [whatever city]." She did a very memorable spoken word poem in support of Maxine Waters US rep where she said "Say it loud, she's black and we're proud."
How many hours a week would you say you’re watching tv? Do you watch some things just for fun, and others for having opinions on?
Generally I'm watching something every night. Sometimes it's a new episode of Shogun and like three episodes of Veep. Sometimes I watch an episode of Girls and then a 50s film noir on Criterion. Sometimes I don't have time to watch anything because I'm writing, and then watch three movies the next day. I love a 10 am movie. Sometimes I'll turn something on around 8am on the weekends, and that's the best. I am very diligent that I have to be at my desk working by 830 on weekdays because the mornings are when I can get some of my best newsletter writing done, so an 8 am movie on a weekend feels like a real indulgence. And then I can watch another and still have the rest of the day! There are definitely some things that are just for work (Elvis, which very much turned into a movie for me), but some things I watch for me, and decide I have something to write about it.
I ask this important question on behalf of my Taylor Swift themed WhatsApp group, who now edit a newsletter called Swiftian Theory. How long do you believe Taylor and Travis will be together? Related: Would her divorce album slap?
I said this on a podcast earlier this week and people laughed, but I still mostly believe it: Is it not kind of hilarious-slash-radical that at the height of Taylor Swift's career, when she and her boyfriend have won back to back Grammys and the Super Bowl, she has released some of the most unpopular music of her career? There are some songs on "Tortured Poets" that I like, but it's remarkably defensive and somber for a woman who is quite literally on top of the world. I am writing some of these answers from a wedding of my boyfriends friends in Kansas City (the team for which Travis Kelce plays), and they are all convinced they will get married. I'm not so sure. I don't think they'll have a messy breakup, but we are talking about a man who previously only dated black women (purr) and a woman who mostly dates British men.
I did not enjoy Ariana Grande's divorce album as much as I enjoyed her broken engagement album (hands down her best work).
One of your best takes, in my opinion, is that Amy Adams will win an Oscar for the Tree Paine biopic and not a moment before [editor’s note: Tree Paine is Taylor Swift’s publicist, a celebrity in her own right, the biopic doesn’t exist yet but trust me when I say it will and when it does, Amy Adams will be cast and put in a career-defining performance]. Who will play Taylor?
I think the first question is how much should Taylor factor into the movie at all? I think she's a side character, like not a big player in this movie at all. But the audition room would be stacked: Kathryn Newton, Chloe Grace Moretz, Olivia De Jonge, Maya Hawke. Julia Garner has two Emmys and I think she'd still have to read for it. Florence Pugh is too big for it. Sydney Sweeney would get the script sent to her first, obviously, but the role would need to be more significant than I'd imagine she'd take on. I think Emily Alyn Lind would be very good, she was great on Gossip Girl (though maybe I'm biased).
I believe you once had coffee at a cat cafe with Jason Derulo. I also interviewed Jason Derulo years ago and he was…. How shall I say this? Rude, but on the gentle side of the rudeness spectrum. I seemed to upset him when I asked if he could start the (video) interview by singing his own name, like he does in whatever song of his he does that in. How did you find Jason and did the cats like him?
He was fine in my experience! Soft-spoken but not shy. We went to a cat cafe to discuss Cats, a movie I still can't believe was real. I told him that I couldn't imagine seeing myself as a cat, if it was weird when he was the first renderings. He said he could see me as a cat, and I just immediately instinctually said "No" very flatly and straightforwardly. He was very game, considering neither of us like being around cats.
Speaking of animals. You have a perfect dog called Remy. Could you tell me about the day you got her? And (I love dogs) what is her favourite thing to do? Where does she sleep at night? What’s her best character trait? What’s the dumbest funniest thing she does?
This all went down last May: my editor at New York mag asked if I'd be down to go to Stockholm for night one of the Renaissance tour. She wanted a half-review, half-scene report (many American fans had gone abroad because tickets were so much cheaper). It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, obviously, and I'd do anything not to deal with trying to get tickets through Ticketmaster. I flew from NYC to Stockholm, was in Stockholm for three days. I went back from the venue to my hotel where I promptly caught a cold, sobbed because I was so sick and still had to file on time, and flew from Stockholm to Kansas City where I met my puppy the next day. It was a whirlwind! (After one night of staying way too much Tylenol, I recovered enough to be stupidly thrilled at my perfect girl.) Remy's favorite thing is to chew, sit up under me while we're watching movies, and to chew her chew bones.
She sleeps in her crate. I am very strict about crate training. She has many, many friends at her daycare; the attendants are obsessed with her. She has a big personality. She never barks at home, but she struts into daycare and starts running her mouth. A very good Remy story is that she has pretty privilege. When I walk her, she loves to pause and wag her tail for whoever is passing us, because she knows she's cute enough for them to stop and admire her. Usually they do! You can tell she has a Leo mom.
And finally. I am writing a novel, which I describe as “a cautionary tale about fame”. The main character is a celebrity publicist who accidentally falls for her biggest client. Would you care to choose what outfit she wears to the premiere of his breakout film?
Publicists always wear black, and they always have the hugest iPhone imaginable. If they're senior publicists at the premiere, they're almost always wearing Louboutins. She's trying to catch his eye, she's wearing a lacy bra, big high waisted pants, a blazer. Big earrings, no necklaces. Anyone else would wear a red lip, but she opts for brown.
PERFECT FLAWLESS YES.
You can read more of Hunter’s pop cultural analysis on Hung Up.
ENTHUSIASM is a newsletter for people who feel strongly about things. Like, for example, potatoes, human rights and former members of the boy band One Direction. Here, we contain multitudes.
Kate Leaver is an editor, author, and former professional fairy. She’s currently writing her first novel, a cautionary tale about fame. She’s represented by Jemima Forrester at David Higham Associates and she really really loves her dog.
“I seemed to upset him when I asked if he could start the (video) interview by singing his own name, like he does in whatever song of his he does that in”
All of them. He does it in every single one. Gotta get deeper in the DeRulo lore!
Hunter! Thank the Lord you didn’t become a buyer for Saks. The deadest of the dead end jobs.
The reading public is lucky to have you!