‘Anna Wintour? I found her efforts to seem intimidating almost comical'
Lacking the discernment of previous editors of my freelance offerings, Anna kept me on contract when she took over. I found Anna in those days to be cosy, conspiratorial and completely enticing. My feelings toward her ran in opposition to the tagline 'Nuclear Wintour', which was then at the beginning of its long run. She was a great and loyal friend, and as a result, she had a lot of close friends. Also, she had gone out with Christopher Hitchens, a big validation in my book.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
27 minutes ago
- The Sun
Millie Bobby Brown, 21, reveals she has adopted a baby girl with celeb husband
MILLIE Bobby Brown and her husband Jake Bongiovi have adopted a daughter. The pair announced the news in an Instagram post. 1 Millie wrote: "This summer, we welcomed our sweet baby girl through adoption. "We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy." She signed off the post, writing: "And then there were 3, love Millie and Jake Bongiovi." The Stranger Things star married the son of Jon Bon Jovi in 2024.
Telegraph
27 minutes ago
- Telegraph
‘The sisterhood of ill repute': Inside Amanda Knox and Monica Lewinsky's friendship
It's the scandal-survivor equivalent of the superhero team-up. Monica Lewinsky, whose affair with President Bill Clinton in the 1990s placed her at the centre of a media firestorm, has partnered with Amanda Knox on a new TV drama. The series recounts Knox's hellish experience of being wrongfully convicted of the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher, and becoming a tabloid sensation under the moniker 'Foxy Knoxy'. Lewinsky, 52, was instrumental in bringing the eight-part Disney+ series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox to the screen. As she explained to The Hollywood Reporter in a joint interview with Knox, 38, this week, she read about Knox's desire to make a film version of her 2013 memoir, Waiting to Be Heard, and pitched the idea to her contact at 20th Television. It's indicative of Knox and Lewinsky's deep bond. While their appalling experiences of unwanted notoriety occurred in different times, places and under very different circumstances, there are numerous parallels between their traumatic pasts and how they have both fought to reclaim their stories. Their close friendship dates back to 2017, two years after the overturning of Knox's conviction by Italy's Court of Cassation. Knox had spent four years in prison following her wrongful conviction for the 2007 murder of her Perugia flatmate, and fellow exchange student, Kercher. As Knox recounts in her 2025 book Free: My Search for Meaning, she was preparing for her first-ever public speaking engagement in Seattle in 2017, and she was 'terrified'. Lewinsky, also a speaker at the event, invited her up to her hotel room to chat. 'I expected to be starstruck,' Knox writes. 'Instead, what I found, almost immediately, was a big sister.' Lewinsky made her tea and offered valuable advice, Knox writes. But most importantly, she didn't ask crass questions such as 'What was prison like? What's it like to be famous?', which Knox regularly endured from strangers who felt they knew her after reading a decade's worth of press coverage. Instead of expecting Foxy Knoxy, 'it was Amanda she'd invited for a cup of tea'. Knox adds: 'It's a lot easier to make such connections when the other person has been in your shoes.' Although Knox's ordeal began with the horrific murder of an innocent young woman, while Lewinsky's stemmed from the sexual infidelity of the Leader of the Free World, both women were unwilling inductees into a certain club. Their infamy transcended crime and politics, respectively, and turned them into pop culture punch-lines, referenced in Hallowe'en costumes and rap songs. 'I call us the sisterhood of ill repute,' writes Knox. 'I didn't even realise I belonged to this club until I met another member: Monica Lewinsky.' In both cases, the reporting of their stories was gendered, judgmental and rabidly salacious – what we now recognise, with the benefit of hindsight, as an extreme form of 'slut-shaming'. The Italian police and prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, who painted Knox as a wanton ' luciferina ' (she-devil), argued that Kercher's death had occurred during a satanic threesome perpetrated by Knox. Lurid newspaper stories were run about a supposedly heartless Knox buying lingerie (with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito) in the days following Kercher's murder. In fact, as she told ABC News in 2013, Knox needed to buy underwear because she didn't have access to her clothes. When a prison doctor falsely informed Knox that she was HIV-positive and she subsequently listed her sexual partners in her diary, that information was leaked to the media, as was the fact that police had found a vibrator in her washbag. But the crowning tabloid glory was the discovery of Knox's MySpace page and her nickname 'Foxy Knoxy' – which actually referred to her skills on the football pitch, but became a titillating femme fatale shorthand. She was portrayed in stark contrast to the virtuous Kercher, the victim in this supposed vicious act of girl-on-girl violence. Prosecutor Mignini claimed that Kercher was shocked by Knox's promiscuity, and that the latter decided to involve her 'in a violent sex game' which then led to murder. He theorised: 'For Amanda, the time had come to take revenge on that 'simpering goody two-shoes.'' Knox, he summed up, was 'dirty on the inside'. Lewinsky also faced rabid misogyny in the reporting of her affair with President Clinton, with the tabloid press and gleeful male comedians salivating over the sordid details. Knox even admits that she absorbed that image of Lewinsky. In her 2025 book, she writes: 'If you'd asked me about it in high school, I probably would have said, 'Oh yeah, Monica. The blowjob lady.'' Appearing on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in 2019, Lewinsky described the response as 'a s---storm,' adding: 'It was an avalanche of pain and humiliation.' Oliver revisited some of the nastiest coverage, including a cartoon featuring phallic microphones pointed at Lewinsky's face, and the relentless barrage of jokes from late-night host Jay Leno. Those ranged from a snide quip about it being so humid people's clothes were 'stickier than Monica Lewinsky' to holding up a mock-Dr Seuss book titled The Slut in the Hat. It's no wonder that Lewinsky identified with Knox. Speaking to ABC's Good Morning America this week, Lewinsky described her as 'another young woman who had […] been feasted on, on the world stage', while Knox said: 'We were both interrogated. We've both been viciously turned into caricatures of ourselves in the media.' Lewinsky noted that it had been devastating for their families, too. What's fascinating, though, and somewhat counter-intuitive, is that both women have actively chosen to become public figures once again. In 2014, Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair that she was sticking her head 'above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative'. She became an anti-bullying campaigner and tweeted the MeToo hashtag, explaining in 2018, again in Vanity Fair, that she now understood her relationship with Clinton was an 'abuse of power'. She also gave a Ted talk in 2015 on the price of shame. Lewinsky acted as a co-producer on a 2021 TV drama about her ordeal, not unlike Knox's current series. Impeachment: American Crime Story starred Beanie Feldstein as Lewinsky and Clive Owen as Clinton. Lewinsky now has own her podcast, Reclaiming, with high-profile guests including Miley Cyrus, Brooke Shields and, this week, Knox. Knox, meanwhile, has authored two memoirs, receiving an estimated £3m advance for the first one – although reportedly that money was urgently needed to cover her legal fees. She's also a public speaker, including for the Innocence Project, and she took part in a self-titled 2016 Netflix documentary. She and her husband, the author Christopher Robinson, share details about their lives on their podcast Hard Knox, even documenting Knox's first pregnancy (the couple have two children). Yet she told the New York Times in 2021 that she initially kept her daughter's birth secret, explaining 'I'm still nervous about the paparazzi bounty on her head'. This new Disney+ drama will surely garner even more attention. When challenged about this seeming contradiction, especially the irony that they have essentially joined the very media industry that was once their enemy, Lewinsky told The Hollywood Reporter it was 'complicated', while Knox said: 'Media isn't bad by definition; it's a tool that can be used for good or evil. Having been on the wrong side, you appreciate the power of sharing information.' Both Knox and Lewinsky are now taking back that power – and they are doing it together.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Tim Henman hits out at $1m US Open mixed doubles revamp calling the event 'DISRESPECTFUL' - after big-name singles stars were beaten by specialists
Tim Henman has poured scorn on the new-look US Open mixed doubles, calling the tournament 'disrespectful' and disagreeing with its status as a Grand Slam event in an incendiary new interview. The reshaped competition was designed to tempt top singles stars into the draw, with top players including Carlos Alcaraz, Jack Draper, Iga Swiatek, and Emma Raducanu partnered up with their high-ranked peers. The tournament saw a shortened match format, with 'fast four' rules - first to four sets, no deuce point, and a match tie-break third set - in play in Flushing Meadows. Further allowances to tempt singles players, including an eye-popping $1million prize and scheduling during US Open Fan Week ahead of the start of the Grand Slam, were also made. Despite the raft of singles talent in the draw however, it was the defending champion partnership Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori who claimed the top prize, scything through their competition before beating Swiatek and Casper Ruud in Wednesday night's final. Errani and Vavassori had critcised the competition for its lack of mixed doubles stars, and said they were competing on behalf of all the doubles players kept out from competing for a Grand Slam title. The US Open's revamped mixed doubles event brought together stars like Emma Raducanu and Carlos Alcaraz - but it has its critics But Henman has taken his opposition to the revamped competition one step further, calling it out as a glorified exhibition. 'Am I excited to watch those players on court? Absolutely,' Henman, who is on the board of directors for Wimbledon, told Telegraph Sport. 'However I disagree that, a: it's a grand slam event, and b; with taking it outside of the two weeks (of the tournament) because I think that is disrespectful for the tour events that are taking place on the WTA and ATP Tour in the week before the US Open. 'We're trying to get the sport to collaborate better. In my opinion, it's not helpful. I would make it an exhibition.' Henman is not alone in calling the tournament an exhibition, with Draper called out by his partner Jessica Pegula for doing so accidentally after their quarter-final victory on Tuesday evening. Draper attempted to cover his tracks by comparing the vibe of the event to an exhibition, and the energy he drew from playing against interesting partnerships, but the organisers have gone to great pains to ensure their star-studded project is taken seriously. Henman however disputed that this was possible, due to the change in format. 'This tournament very much devalues the title when it changes the scoring system, and it completely changes the entry system,' the former British No 1 continued. 'But I understand that in mixed and regular doubles, the product is significantly elevated if singles players play. They're not normally going to do that at the majors because of physical demands.' The US Open nearly saw their shiny new product sabotaged at the 11th hour after a slew of late drop-outs from stars looking to conserve their energy ahead of the main tournament. Emma Navarro, Tommy Paul, and Jannik Sinner were among those to withdraw from the event over the preceding weekend or later, with Sinner's withdrawal after the Cincinnati Open final on Monday evening meaning Danielle Collins and her partner Christian Harrison were confirmed to play just hours before the first match at 11am.
