What Up, Usha?
What Up, Usha?
The Alyssa Milano and Rose McGowan of newsletters is hot on Lena, bowing down to Danyel, and honoring a holy trinity (Westheimer, Simmons, Doherty).
We’re here to reclaim the “women’s magazine.” Every week, two veteran editors read it ALL to bring you everything we believe women’s media should be: juicy yarns, big ideas, deeply personal essays, hot goss, and the odd shopping tip—aka, the full Spread. Plus: original interviews, podcasts, and more. Come hungry!
Salty Spreadamame,
We had big plans to give you a big breather from thinking about the dire state of America today, but there’s a sound that keeps echoing in our heads, beginning in a whisper and then rising to a yell: Usha. Usha. Usha. We’re talking not about the rollerskating Superbowl halftime hero, but as you’ve no doubt guessed by now, about Usha (pronounced Oo-sha) Vance, wife of Trump veepstakes winner JD. So…can we process together a little, please?
Usha is 38. Usha is a woman. Usha is Indian American. Usha has three children. Usha went to Yale, Cambridge, and then Yale Law School. Usha was, as of 2014, a registered Democrat. Usha was, until Monday, a superstar litigator with one of the most progressive law firms in America. Usha has tasteful brown hair, typically opts for a crew neckline, and gravitates toward neutrals. Usha lives in Del Ray. Usha is like so many ultra-accomplished, uber-ambitious women we know, except….she’s also the second lady of MAGA? Now, after doing a lot of therapy and memorizing Amy Poehler’s memoir, your Spreaditors pride ourselves in living in the world of yes/and. But in the case of Usha, it’s more like OMG/WTF.
Yesterday, we could just hear editors at publications from the Washington Post to Cosmopolitan siccing writers on the Usha beat. Whoever can reconcile this one gets an immediate Spreadie Award. Meanwhile, you, Spreadlandia, are an ultra-connected bunch: Let us know what you’re hearing, about this woman!
How do you make sense of the world we’re living in now?
Rachel & Maggie
P.S. Because Maggie is on vaca in South Carolina—land of the Spicy Pimiento Cheese-flavored potato chip!—you’re receiving the SummerSpread. It’s like ClassicSpread, but made of a light cotton-linen blend. Breezier. Stay cool, y’all.
P.P.S. Please LIKE this newsletter! Please?
P.P.P.S. Did you know there’s a Natalie Portman book club? Neither did we. But then we spotted a line that indicated such when we went to purchase the memoir Swimming in Paris by Colombe Schneck—probably the best follow-up read to All Fours we’ve found—on Audible. And lo and behold. To which we say: “OK, Natalie!”
These bangs deserve an Emmy.
We’re seven episodes into Presumed Innocent, the David E. Kelley courtroom soap starring Jake Gyllenhaal and his brother-in-law, and it’s high time we discuss the show’s most undeniable scene stealer: second-chair-for-the-defense Mya Winslow’s epic befringed bob. (Runner up: Prosecutor Tommy Molto’s butterscotch kitty cat.) The Windy City-set series is so chockablock with Chicago references, from Gyllenhaal’s inexplicable three-piece suit to Molto’s actual finger snaps while grilling the witness, we half expect to see Christine Baranski on marionette strings whenever the camera pans to the enormous crowd of can’t-trust-’em press. But it’s Winslow’s perfect Velma Kelly-inspired haircut, which this week got its most screen time yet, that really razzle-dazzles us. In other Presumed news, Apple TV+ announced last week that they’re renewing the show for a second season, which will follow a new case. Jazz hands and hip rolls, everybody!
An invitation to the Danyel Smith fan club.
If you’re going to sit down and read one feature this week, make it Danyel Smith’s jaw-dropper of a story in the New York Times Magazine about her own decades-long professional relationship with Sean Combs. Hell, you may want to print it out. It’s a harrowing tale of the compromises we make as ambitious women; an insider look at the misogyny the magazine and music industries are built upon; and a meditation on the role that memory plays in identity and self-preservation. (At one point, Combs tells Smith he planned to see her “dead in the trunk of a car”; the above photo was taken almost a decade after that.) It’s also a stylistic feat, unleashing writerly pyrotechnics and narrative twists that will make you gasp when you’re least expecting it.
Read. This. One. Here.
Hannah who?
OK, so this isn’t usually our style, but if you’re going to sit down and read a second thing: Rachel Syme’s1 New Yorker interview with Lena Dunham is among the most satisfying back-and-forths we’ve consumed this year. We took about 14 screenshots throughout the chat, but because we are breezy we’ll just say that at 382 Dunham wears her new London-based life lightly, dispensing wise, fizzy, and disarmingly self-aware observations about her work past and present. Of the many projects she’s got in the hopper, two stand out: her new memoir, which she’s been working on for six years, and her new Netflix show, Too Much, which stars the excellent Megan Stalter (you know her as Jimmy’s flawless assistant Kayla in Hacks) as a Lena-like woman who moves to…London! (Dunham’s gushy description of Stalter is one of many highlights.3)
Read “Lena Dunham’s Change of Pace” here.
Ruth and Richard were game.
The Atlantic’s Gal Beckerman has written our favorite ode to the dearly departed Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Richard Simmons, capturing the joie de vivre and “total lack of self-consciousness” that made them each as singular as they were beloved: “They arrived at their authenticity by realizing that they could not be anyone other than themselves.” Lots of good lines in here, including an aside that reminded us why we’ve always been die-hard Letterman people.
Read “Dr. Ruth, Richard Simmons, and the Joys of Eccentricity” here.
Shannen’s death hits different.
Since learning that Shannen Doherty died of breast cancer last week, we’ve done the required reading—Fiorella Valdesolo’s tribute in Vogue is a great place to start (“Team Brenda Forever”). We’ve also been listening to Doherty’s podcast, Let’s Be Clear with Shannen Doherty, where her signature ferocity is on display as she discusses what it’s like to go through chemo again and again as well as the tabloids’ unrelenting attention. (In her last episode, she speaks about dreading her next round of treatment.) Perhaps the most repeated sentiment about Doherty has been that she was a strong and steadfast friend, unafraid to speak truth in Hollywood; you can feel all that in her show.
Listen here.
Winona, elder stateswoman.
Winona Ryder is reprising her role as Lydia Deetz in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice—which, you know, fun!—and is on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar to celebrate. The story, by Thessaly La Force, is a lovely hang with the delightful and wise Ryder, and includes an A-plus section on her decades-long creative partnership with Burton.4 We liked this career-forecast quote from her:
“I think, ‘What if I just hang it up?’ And then I think, ‘Well, if Jim [Jarmusch] wanted me to do something, I would do it,’ and then you start thinking of all the people that you would work with if they called, and that’s not really retiring. That’s just being available.”
Read “How Winona Ryder Made It to the Other Side” here.
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When seminal television series The Bold Type premiered in 2018, one of the leads uttered this line when she ascended the Hearst Tower-like lobby, to work at a Cosmo-like magazine: “This is totally different. Joan Didion walked through this lobby once. And Meghan Daum. And Rachel Syme. Nora Ephron just emailed that one freelance thing in, but still.” OK, so…Rachel Syme? We’d wondered silently and aloud for six years. A fine writer, sure, but, uh, Nora Ephron? Well, now we’d like to thank Rachel Syme for this great interview!
The same age as Usha! Coincidence?
This video, posted by Stalter yesterday, gets at her magic, we think.
All together now: Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Frankenweenie (what, you forgot Frankenwenie?), and now Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Usha, like Melania, doesn't really care, do U? She will smile graciously and give a single interview to a vetted GOP favorite writer. If she cared she would have divorced JD when he turned MAGA. She's resigned from her job, and as a Type A she'll make this work because she'll need something to do. She just needs to be careful not to step on Melania's toes.
Does THE SPREAD ever hold back??? NEVER!!!!!