dallas prison tour

Welcome to the Texas Prison Museum

The Texas Prison Museum offers an intriguing glimpse into the lives of the state's imprisoned citizens. The museum features numerous exhibits detailing the history of the Texas prison system, featuring a look inside the operations behind the fences and walls.

Adults - $7;

Seniors 60+/A ctive or Retired Military/First

Responders/TDCJ Employees/

SHSU Students - $5;

Ages 6/17 - $4;

5 years and under - No Charge.

Contact Information:

936-295-2155

491 Hwy 75 N

Huntsville, TX 77320

David L. Stacks - Director

[email protected]

Riley Tilley - Gift Shop Manager

[email protected]

Suzie Shaw - Office Manager

[email protected]

Joni White - Curator

[email protected]

Mission Statement The Texas Prison Museum shall collect, preserve and showcase the history and the culture of the Texas prison system and educate the people of Texas and of the world.  

If you've got questions, would like to place a gift shop order, or would simply like to know more about the texas prison system, we'd love to hear from you.

General Questions

David [email protected]

Conference Room Inquiries

Suzette.shaw @txprisonmuseum.org

Gift Shop Inquiries

Riley.tilley @txprisonmuseum.org

facebook.com/txprisonmuseum

Popular Exhibits

Capital Punishment

From the time of Independence from Mexico until 1924, hanging was the lawful method of execution in Texas. Hangings took place in the county where the condemned person was convicted.

In 1924 the State of Texas took control of all executions and prescribed electrocution as the method. One of the most chilling exhibits at the Texas Prison Museum is "Old Sparky," the decommissioned electric chair in which 361 prisoners were executed between 1924 and 1964. This legendary device, made by prison workers, was in storage at the Walls Unit Death House before being donated to the museum, and is our most controversial exhibit.

Prison Hardware

Various types of hardware have been used to contain inmates. This exhibit shows the different types of equipment used over the years, including the old ball and chain, pad locks, and modern handcuffs.

Ball & Chain

Bonnie & clyde.

Plan Your Visit

Whether you've got a quick 45 minutes to browse, or a few hours to soak in some history, we've got something for everyone!

HOURS OF OPERATION

Monday - S aturday

10 am - 5 pm

12 noon - 5pm

PLEASE NOTICE:

First Monday of Each Month  

Open at 12 Noon - 5 pm

In observance of holidays, the Texas Prison Museum is closed

New Years's Day  - January 1,  2024;

Easter - March 31, 2024;

Thanksgiving - November 28, 2024;

Two days during Christmas, December 24 & 25, 2024.

End of Watch Memorial

Many Texas Department of Criminal Justice public servants have lost their lives in the line of duty and from the COVID-19 pandemic.  In honor of these fine men and women a remembrance memorial is slated for construction at the Texas Prison Museum.  The memorial will be a symbol of their unwavering service and ultimate sacrifice.  All donations are welcome and can be made here. 

If you have any questions, feel free to email our Director, David Stacks, at david. [email protected] .

Thank you for your donation!

This Week in Texas Prison History

April 30: 1838  huntsville unit (walls) - john w. vaughn stood once more in front of the electric chair early saturday, and for the second time in eight days, made a speech to stave off death. the first time, the generator broke down. this time, it worked. vaughn spoke for 16 minutes, twice turning to warden w. w. waid to tell him the speech was not yet finished. at the finish, the warden held a match to the cigar which the doomed man had let die out while he talked. "all right," said the warden. "sit down." vaughn sat down. he was still talking, but in disjointed sentences, when the guards put the mask over his face. the last thing he said was, "you are choking me to death." he had been saved from death eight days earlier when the chair broke down while he talked. he had been saved one day earlier with a court order issued in groesbeck by judge fountain kirby. even on saturday morning, his march into the death cell was delayed 20 minutes past midnight while prison officials waited for another court order, issued in san antonio by judge w. w. mccrory. it set aside judge kirby's injunction and ordered them to proceed with the electrocution. governor james v. allred and the board of pardons had refused to intervene further. the governor had granted a 24-hour reprieve after the issuance of judge kirby's injunction at groesbeck. vaughn was listening to a radio program in death row friday night when an announcer broke in to say that governor allred had announced there would be no further clemency. vaughn called for rev. c. e. garrett, protestant chaplian at the prison. he asked that prison officials request governor allred to come to huntsville and talk with him face to face, in death row. governor allred said later that the message had not been delivered, indicating that he would have refused, in any case. vaughn asked for the governor when he walked into the execution chamber at 12:20 a.m. a few minutes after officers from san antonio had arrived with the order to proceed with the electrocution. he entered smoking his cigar. under his right arm he held a bible. clasped in his hands were three red roses. he called them his funeral bouquet." there was no answer from the attendants or from the dozen or so witnesses. (according to the article, vaughn went on to ask if any member of the board of pardons were present.) no answer. vaughn then recited the lord's prayer, correctly and complete. then he spoke at length about johnny banks, who was executed the previous night. "i am not a murderer," vaughn said. warden waid, standing  behind the chair next to o. j. s. ellington (ms) [should be ellingson],the prison system manager, leaned toward then and they whispered together. waid took a step forward as if to touch vaughn and the latter said, turning his head: please, sir, i am not through yet. give me a little more time, please." smiling, he continued: "i want to make a nice little talk for these gentlemen. i am facing death, right here behind me. {the article continued, saying that vaughn pleased with the christians who tried to help him to now give financial support to his wife and daughter. he expressed his gratitude to mack gates, huntsville attorney, who obtained the injunction delaying the execution.} warden waid leaned toward father hugh finnegan, catholic chaplain, and said softly but audibly: "we don't want him to talk all night this time." vaughn apparently heard but made no answer. he held up three roses for the witnesses to see. (the article says that vaughn went on to say that the roses were for his wife, one for his daughter and one for himself. that he was unafraid to meet his maker. he warned them to guard against their children falling into evil ways.) he spoke for several minutes more. finally, he turned to waid and said: "warden, i want two or three more pulls on this (showing the cigar, which had gone out) and then i will be ready to go with you." the warden stuck a match and held it for him. "all right," said  waid. "sit down,"  vaughn took his seat in the chair. he held the three red roses in his hands while the attendants took the cigar away and began to adjust the straps. [he spoke again of his wife and child and asked that something be placed over his face.] the guards had the mask ready.  .

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• 7 Prison Museums You Can...

Prison Museums You Can Visit Across The US

With over 100,000 prisons and jails around the globe, historic jail cells and prison museums have become a huge draw for tourists, and the US is no different – the states has over a dozen historic prisons to discover. From Alcatraz Island’s remote location off the shores of San Francisco to Eastern State Penitentiary’s famous haunted cells, learn about the histories and tales that characterize the past of these seven U.S. prisons.

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Alcatraz, California

Alcatraz is reputed to have housed some of the most dangerous prisoners of the 20th century, including mobster Al Capone and gangster Alvin Karpowicz ; referred to as ‘the prison system’s prison,’ Alcatraz received the most difficult inmates. Built on an island off the coast of San Francisco, ‘The Rock,’ as it was nicknamed, made for a challenging escape, although over a dozen attempts were made – none of which were successful. Alcatraz was originally built in the 1850s as a U.S. military fortress and housed military prisoners until 1933, when it was renovated as a maximum-security prison. Alcatraz could hold 260–275 prisoners during its time of operation, less than one percent of the entire federal inmate population, but officially closed its doors in 1963 due to its high operating costs.

Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) was part of a controversial movement in the early 1800s that advocated the use of solitary confinement and hard labor to alter the behavior of inmates. Designed in a ‘radial-style’ floor plan, ESP was one of the most costly buildings of its time, with vaulted ceilings, skylights, and 253 cells, each with its own toilet, running water, and heat. The layout and practices at ESP were so popular that they were replicated in over 300 other prisons worldwide; by the early 1930s, however, the prison abandoned the solitary confinement system, replacing it with other severe forms of punishment. Operating from 1829–1971, the prison held some of the nation’s most infamous criminals, including Al Capone (before his time at Alcatraz) and Willie Sutton ; today, it’s considered one of the most haunted buildings in the world.

Sing Sing Prison, New York

Home to the first electric chair (‘Old Sparky’), the famous Babe Ruth baseball game , and some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, like Albert Fish and David Berkowitz , Sing Sing is one of America’s most famous prisons. Built by 100 prisoners from another local prison, Sing Sing was one of the most impressive prisons of its kind upon its completion in 1828. Originally modeled after Captain Elam Lynds’ ‘silent system’ – the use of ‘hard work, community activity and silent reflection’ to alter inmate behavior – the prison eventually moved to a more modern approach that used sports to teach discipline, introduced by Warden Lewis Lawes . While the prison still holds more than 1,500 inmates today, plans for turning the prison’s 1939 power plant into a 22,000-square-foot museum are in the making. Visit the museum in the meantime, located in The Ossining Historical Society Museum .

Ohio State Reformatory, Ohio

The Ohio State Reformatory , also known as the Mansfield Reformatory, was constructed between 1886 and 1910 to act as an ‘intermediate penitentiary’, or the half-way point between the Boys Industrial School and the Ohio Penitentiary. In the mid-1800s, the land was originally used as Civil War training grounds; in 1884, plans for the new prison were approved by the state. Designed by Levi T. Scofield, the reformatory featured Victorian and Romanesque architectural styles, believed to encourage inmates to get in touch with their spiritual side. In 1990, the Boyd Consent Decree deemed the prison overcrowded and unsanitary – over 200 inmates had died during its operation – forcing it to close its doors. Today, the prison operates as a museum, and has been included in many famous films like The Shawshank Redemption ( 1994).

West Virginia State Penitentiary, West Virginia

After separating from Virginia at the height of the Civil War, West Virginia lacked many public institutions, including a prison. After repeated denials, the West Virginia Legislature finally purchased the land for the West Virginia State Penitentiary in 1886. Completed using prison labor in 1887, the prison’s design featured stone walls and Gothic architectural elements like turrets and battlements, modeled after a prison in Illinois , and included a hospital and chapel, adding a school and library later on. There were other services, like a carpentry shop and bakery, that provided jobs for inmates, making the prison self-sufficient. Despite its good conditions at the turn of the century, the prison went into a state of decline: there were over 36 homicides, a prison break in 1979, and a riot in 1986. The prison was ordered to shut down by the Supreme Court in 1986; it officially closed its doors in 1995. It was listed as one of the US Department of Justice’s Top Ten Most Violent Correctional Facilities and played host to 94 executions from 1899–1959: 85 by hanging and nine by electric chair. It is also considered one of America’s most haunted prisons.

Old Idaho Penitentiary, Idaho

Old Idaho Penitentiary , once known as the Territorial Prison, was constructed in 1872 as a single-cell house; over the years, the prison expanded to include several buildings, as well as a 17-foot-high wall surrounding the complex. Over 101 years, until it closed in 1973, the Old Idaho Penitentiary received over 13,000 inmates, 215 of them women, and housed infamous convicts like Harry Orchard and Lyda ‘Lady Bluebeard’ Southard . The prison, however, was known for having unsuitable living conditions, and many inmates responded to these conditions with riots in 1971 and 1973. After its closing in 1973, the prison was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Yuma Territorial Prison, Arizona

Yuma Territorial Prison , now a historic state park , opened its doors in 1876, and its first inmates were seven men who were responsible for constructing the prison. During its 33 years of operation, the prison housed 3,069 prisoners, 29 of them women, and despite its infamous reputation, it is said to have had humane conditions – prisoners made hand-crafted items that were sold at Sunday public markets and they received regular medical attention; the prison also had one of the first public libraries in the territory, where prisoners learned how to read and write. No executions took place here, but over 26 inmates escaped and over 100 died (most from tuberculosis). By the turn of the century, the prison was overcrowded, so a new facility was built in Florence, Arizona , and the prison officially ceased operations in 1909.

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Five of the Most Fascinating Prison Museums in America

From Alcatraz to Cell Block 7, these jails now hold tours instead of prisoners

Jennifer Billock

Travel Correspondent

Since the 1980s, mass incarceration has become a booming business in the United States, with 670 people out of every 100,000 becoming a prisoner. And it’s not because we have more criminals, either—research shows that this change is thanks to alterations of sentencing law and policy. The boom has led to prison overcrowding , which in the 1990s meant we needed to build bigger and better prisons. Many states simply didn’t have the capital to remodel or demolish the prisons. So instead, they turned to dark tourism.

Dark tourism is the travel industry surrounding places that are linked to suffering or death—think Chernobyl and the Sedlec Ossuary , a "church of bones" in the Czech Republic. Abandoned prisons easily fell in line with that ethos, and so in order to save the costs of drastically altering or removing a building, prison museums began to open inside the former facilities. With some dating back 180 years, these prison museums offer a fascinating look into the lives of some of our country's most notorious prisoners.

Squirrel Cage Jail; Council Bluffs, Iowa

Built in 1885, this Iowa jail was one of the most unique styles in prison history. It’s a rotary jail—meaning the facility has a cylinder of pie-shaped cells attached to a central pole. When the warden turned a hand crank, the entire jail shifted, locking prisoners away without access to a door. It was meant to be a simple way to control an entire jail at once. Many of these types of jails popped up in the Midwest in the late 1800s. Squirrel Cage was the only one with three stories. This unique style of jail fell out of fashion thanks to accidental amputations when the cells turned, poor lighting and ventilation, mechanical issues and fire hazards. Only three of the original 18 or so built remain, and they all operate as museums: Squirrel Cage, Gallatin and Montgomery County (which is the only one that can still rotate).

Alcatraz; San Francisco, California

Alcatraz may only have operated federally from 1934 to 1963, but it quickly took its place as one of the most infamous prisons in the world. Al Capone faced time here, as did killer Robert Stroud. Prior to "The Rock" as we know it today, though, Alcatraz Island served as a military prison in the 1800s. Inmates consistently worked to build new cellblocks, and when the work finished in 1912, it was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world. The prison finally shut down in 1963, when it became too expensive to operate as the salty sea wind was causing buildings to deteriorate. Now, several tour options of the facility are available, and it sees about a million tourists come through each year.

The Wyoming Frontier Prison; Rawlins, Wyoming

When construction on Wyoming’s first state prison began in 1888, it was meant to handle the criminals of the wild west—but thanks to weather and funding problems, it didn’t actually open until 1901, when the wild ways were on the decline. Still, the prison stayed open for about 80 years and housed around 13,500 prisoners. In the beginning, it had no electricity, minimal heating and no running water. The Wyoming Frontier Prison (named so in 1988) was more than just cellblocks, though. It also had a dungeon, a punishment pole that men were handcuffed to and then whipped, solitary confinement cells, and a building with six cells for death row inmates called the death house. The penitentiary closed for good in 1981. Today’s tours include the prison itself, a museum about peace officers, a gift shop and the old prison cemetery.

Cell Block 7; Jackson, Michigan

To get to Cell Block 7 , you’ll have to actually go into the real State Prison of Southern Michigan. Its first iteration was built in 1839, a small log building that could only hold 35 prisoners. By 1934, though, the prison had evolved into a massive fortress housing more than 5,000 inmates. With Cell Block 7 included, it became the world’s largest walled prison, though it no longer holds that distinction. Cell Block 7 closed in 2007, and it now exists as a museum within the walls of the still working state prison. The museum today runs tours and holds a variety of permanent and temporary exhibits, like one about the prison farm and another on prison-made furniture.

Museum of Colorado Prisons; Cañon City, Colorado

The Museum of Colorado Prisons isn’t exactly inside a working prison like Cell Block 7, but it is adjacent to one—the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility. This museum is in what used to be the women’s prison, and it shares a wall—and a tower with armed guards—with the current prison. The facility was built in 1871. Now, the former women’s prison houses 30 cells, all outfitted with unique exhibits related to incarceration in Colorado over the past 148 years. Visitors will also learn about famous past inmates, like convicted cannibal Alfred Packer , and see prison artifacts like a hangman’s noose and a gas chamber.

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Jennifer Billock | | READ MORE

Jennifer Billock is an award-winning writer, bestselling author, and editor. She is currently dreaming of an around-the-world trip with her Boston terrier. Check out her website at jenniferbillock.com .

(214) 400-9020

Book your tour now.

we will visiting dallas again in march and have been looking online for a prison open to the public.

might sound a bit wierd but we often visit castles and old prisons in england and have been to a few overseas. i realise texas wont have any victorian age ones but wondered if any had been closed and turned into educational centres?

ive drawn a blank with google so any help is appreciated

http://www.txprisonmuseum.org/

Here is an interesting article from the LA Times.:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/03/travel/la-tr-prison-20110703

There are many Texas jails that have been restored and can be visited:

http://www.texasescapes.com/Texas_architecture/TexasJails.htm

Good luck finding what you are looking for!

http://oldred.org/

This topic has been closed to new posts due to inactivity.

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Prison History

This tour presents the numerous prisons and prison-related sites in East Texas.

Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville

The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville opened in 1849, one year after the state legislature created the penitentiary system. As the first state prison in Texas, the Huntsville site soon became known as the "Walls Unit" for the 15-foot brick wall that surrounds the prison yard. The… View Story | Show on Map

The Wynne Unit

The Wynne Unit was the first prison farm established by the state of Texas in 1883. It was named after John Magruder Wynne who worked for the Texas prison system and served on its Board of Trustees from 1878 to 1881. Today, the farm spans approximately 1,415 acres and houses roughly 2,600… View Story | Show on Map

The Goree Unit

The Goree Unit is named after Edwin King Goree (1843-1914) who served as a bookkeeper in the office of the Texas Prison System’s Superintendent J.A. Herring. Originally called Camp Goree, the unit was established on 1,000 acres of land as a convict colony for fifty-five ill-behaved inmates from the… View Story | Show on Map

Captain Joe Byrd Prison Cemetery

Located on twenty-two acres behind Sam Houston State University, Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery serves as the final resting place for inmates who die in prison without funeral or family arrangements. The cemetery probably began in the 1850s, when the prison system performed burials on the land before… View Story | Show on Map

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America's Most Historic Prison

Eastern State Penitentiary was once the most famous and expensive prison in the world, but stands today in ruin, a haunting world of crumbling cellblocks and empty guard towers. Its vaulted, sky-lit cells held nearly 85,000 people over its long history, including bank robber "Slick Willie" Sutton and "Scarface" Al Capone.

May 13, 1:00 pm ET

Policing in america: the 4th amendment, stop and frisk, and civil rights.

Join us for this free, virtual program, part of Justice 101 , a series examining the history of the justice system in America & its impact on our society, citizens, & world.

Plan Your Visit

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site is currently open Wednesday through Monday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. We are closed on Tuesdays and on the following holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.

Revisit the past. Rethink the future.

Become a member.

Members support the work we do every day and receive exclusive benefits like free daytime admission, invitations to members-only experiences, special discounts, and more!

May 26, 2024, 11:00 am – 11:45 am

Asl guide-led tour and discussion, collaboratory for justice education.

The   Collaboratory for Justice Education at Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site   is a dynamic community of dedicated and enthusiastic people with a shared passion for justice education committed to generating innovative solutions for understanding intricate societal issues.

Make a Gift

Eastern State Penitentiary is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Help us preserve this National Historic Landmark and promote our mission to interpret the legacy of criminal justice reform in America through a diverse slate of programming and initiatives.

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Huntsville, Texas : Prison Driving Tour

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With a handy brochure and map you can visit (or at least drive by) the many prison sights in Huntsville, including the prisons themselves, the prison cemetery, and the store where just-freed prisoners buy their clothing and snacks.

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The tourist information part of the Chamber of Commerce has been moved to the Visitor Center at the Giant Sam Houston statue. The Visitor Center people are overhauling the Prison Tour brochure at the moment, so we couldn't get one there, either.

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10 Abandoned Prisons Hiding Throughout The U.S. – And They Could Be In Your Backyard

Massachusetts native. Freelance writer and strawberry eater.

More by this Author

The history of crime and punishment in America is a fascinating and complex narrative. As attitudes towards incarceration and criminality shifted over the years, many historic penitentiaries fell silent. These abandoned prisons in the US are equal parts eerie, heart-breaking, and hauntingly beautiful.

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Have you ever been to any of these abandoned prisons in the US? How about these 19 abandoned cities and towns in the US ? Terrifying!

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Abandoned places in the us.

What are some other abandoned places in the US?

What is it about abandoned places that captures our imaginations so? There’s something wholly unsettling about abandoned places. Ghost towns and old cemeteries, derelict buildings, and forgotten sites; these are places that have been buried in the past — both literally and figuratively. With each passing day, these forsaken locations continue their descent into oblivion, banished to obsolescence. However, there are some that remain relevant; ironically, these sites are now defined as being abandoned. And in the fall, when there’s a nip in the air and dwindling daylight, abandoned places can cause imaginations to run wild — in the very best possible way. Here are several of the most fascinating abandoned places in the US :

• Bombay Beach - Imperial County, California. Bombay Beach was a place of pure paradise; a SoCal mecca that boomed with luxurious hotels and yacht clubs in the early 1900s. The sea and its shores teemed with wildlife, and it truly was a slice of heaven. Then, seemingly overnight, this bustling resort town just up and vanished, leaving many to wonder if, in fact, Bombay Beach had been nothing but a desert mirage all along. By the ’70s, the fish had died, the birds had become ill, and the tourists had disappeared. Today, visitors will find vacant buildings, fish corpses, and an unpleasant smell that seems to permeate the town, making  Bombay Beach one of the most intriguing abandoned places in California... and the US!
• Santa Claus Land - Arizona. When Arizona's Santa Claus Land was founded in 1937, it was meant to be an enchanting year-round destination along Route 66. This unique park provided families a magical holiday experience all year long, with the Man in Red on standby to listen as kids rattled off their Christmas wish lists. But by the 1970s, America's love affair with Route 66 had begun to dwindle, and its roadside attractions closed like dominoes. Today, road trippers can see the remains of Santa Claus Land behind a barbed wire fence, making this one of the creepiest abandoned places in the United States .
• Joyland Amusement Park - Wichita, Kansas. With the exception of prisons (see above!), there is little more unsettling than an abandoned theme park - the crowds, rides, and laughter that once filled the park grounds seem to linger in the air. Joyland Amusement Park was once an epic Midwest destination; open from 1949 until 2004, this park was good, old-fashioned American fun, with wooden roller coasters, bumper cars, and a Ferris wheel. Today, the once-popular destination sits quiet and abandoned, kept company by graffiti-covered attractions, decaying coasters, and sun-bleached ticket booths. Over the years, auctions, fires, and nature disassembled Joyland piece by piece; however, this story has a happy ending. Today, visitors can take a whirl on the original Joyland Carousel, which has been renovated and relocated to the Wichita Botanica Gardens .

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Hutchins Unit is for State Prison offenders sentenced anywhere from one year to life by the State Court in the county where the charges were filed

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's basic information for you, and their direct contact number:, you can support your loved ones at hutchins unit on inmateaid , if you have any immediate questions contact the facility directly at 972-225-1304 ..

Located at 1500 E Langdon Rd in Dallas, TX, Hutchins Unit carefully assigns inmates based on their custody level, considering factors like criminal history. Hutchins Unit offers diverse educational and vocational programs aimed at equipping offenders for successful reintegration into society and reducing recidivism. Through these initiatives, inmates gain skills and confidence, fostering personal growth and resilience.

The Hutchins Unit, designated for male inmates, boasts a capacity of 2,276 individuals across various custody levels, including J1-J5, G1, G2, and Transient classifications. Situated on approximately 70 acres of land, the facility engages in agricultural initiatives such as the Unit Garden and participates in the Texas Fresh Approach Food Bank Program to contribute to community welfare.

While there are no manufacturing or logistics operations on-site, the facility prioritizes unit maintenance to ensure smooth operations. It also serves as a Regional Release Site, facilitating the discharge and transition processes for released inmates back into society.

Medical services at the Hutchins Unit are comprehensive, offering ambulatory medical, dental, and mental health care. All services are conveniently located on a single level for accessibility and efficiency, managed by UTMB to ensure quality care for inmates.

Special treatment programs like the State Jail Substance Abuse Treatment Program (SJSATP) provide targeted interventions to address substance abuse issues among inmates. Educational opportunities abound, including literacy programs, Title I initiatives, CHANGES/Pre-Release courses, and cognitive intervention sessions. Career and technology programs such as Business Computer Information Systems I and Introduction to Computer Aided Drafting equip inmates with valuable skills for their future endeavors.

Additional programs and services encompass a Faith-Based Dormitory, the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI), adult education programs (subject to availability), reentry planning support, chaplaincy services, community tours, Crime Stoppers initiatives, and the GO KIDS Initiative to promote personal growth and rehabilitation among inmates.

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July 19, 2018

CONTACT: Lola Vinson Director of Communications Faith in Texas 972-890-1113 [email protected]

Dallas District Attorney Candidates, Faith Leaders Tour Prison and Discuss Criminal Justice Reform

Faith in Texas led “God in Chains” visit to Sanders Estes, underscored the DA’s role in reducing prison populations

DALLAS – The candidates for Dallas District Attorney toured the Sanders Estes prison with local faith leaders and discussed the need to reduce Texas’ alarmingly high prison population and reform the county’s criminal justice system. The “God in Chains” tour was hosted by members of Faith in Texas , a multi-racial, multi-faith movement for economic and racial justice. The clergy called on DA candidates John Creuzot and Faith Johnson to support criminal justice reforms that would reduce Dallas’ prison population and move away from policies that disproportionately hurt black and brown communities.

“Too often, we forget about our brothers and sisters that are shipped off to be warehoused in prisons at alarmingly high rates,” said Faith in Texas Clergy Table Leader Jaime Kowlessar. “Our clergy decided to immerse ourselves in this culture in order to better educate ourselves and prepare to more relentlessly advocate for fairness, justice and equality for all.”

Dallas County’s over-reliance on incarceration and harsh punishment exacts enormous financial, emotional, and social costs on people of color while making communities less safe. Texas has the seventh highest incarceration rate in the country and incarcerates more people than any other state, according to an analysis by the Prison Policy Institute. Even worse, Dallas County incarcerates people at a rate that outstrips both the United States national average and Texas as a whole. Across the state, Black people are incarcerated at nearly four times the rate that white people are incarcerated. So, although they are only 12% of the population, Black people make up 32% of Texas’ incarcerated population.

On the tour, the Faith in Texas clergy underscored that District Attorneys hold immense power at each stage of criminal proceedings—from charging decisions to the sentences they seek—and wield profound influence as civic leaders and policymakers. The greatest power to confront police brutality and stop the cycle of mass incarceration does not lie with our attorneys general, governor, senators or even our mayors. The power lies with our local prosecutors. By electing reform-minded DAs, Dallas can transform its criminal justice system. The candidates agreed to come back together in August to debrief and have a more in-depth conversation about concrete reform plans.

Faith in Texas members on the tour included: Rev. Dr. Jaime Kowlessar, City Temple SDA Church Manda Adams, First Community United Church of Christ Rev. Dr. Kwesi Kamau, Impact Church Rev. Stephen Brown, Greater Bethlehem Baptist Church Rev. Dr. Mike Gregg, Royal Lane Baptist Church Rabbi Kimberly Herzog-Cohen, Temple Emanu-El

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St. Vincent Dives Headfirst Into the Darkness

Seven albums and 17 years into an acclaimed solo career, the musician Annie Clark said she craved “a pummeling” on her new LP: “I want something to feel dangerous.”

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By Lindsay Zoladz

Reporting from New York and Los Angeles

• April 18, 2024

On a recent Tuesday night in a dressing room of the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, Annie Clark, the 41-year-old musician who records as St. Vincent, thumbed through a shelf of secondhand records and sipped a glass of pink champagne. Clark, invited to D.J. the venue’s grand reopening party, was the room’s first inhabitant since a major renovation restored the former movie palace; a pristine, new-car smell lingered.

Holding court among a few members of her team and her 23-year-old sister, Clark was an attentive host in this antiseptic space, ready with a witty remark (the carefully curated LPs were probably “someone’s deceased grandma’s record collection”) or a topped-off beverage. She wore a cream-colored silk blouse, black kitten-heeled shoes and a gauzy black bow tied artfully around her neck.

Even in a moment of relative repose, Clark possessed a feline hyper-awareness of her surroundings. Dave Grohl, who plays drums on two tracks off St. Vincent’s blistering new album “All Born Screaming,” later told me in a phone interview, “When you’re talking to her and you’re looking in those eyes, you can only wonder what reels are whirring in her brain, every second.” He added, amused, “I’ve never seen her with her eyelids half closed.”

Clark is a gifted and nimble guitarist with a dexterously spiky playing style that contrasts with the moony smoothness of her voice. She is also known for the absolute commitment of her live performances. “What she does is so transformative,” said the musician Cate Le Bon, Clark’s close friend of over a decade, in a video interview. “When I see her play, it freaks me out sometimes. I can be even helping her get ready for a show, and it’s like I know nothing of the woman who’s onstage.”

Seven albums and 17 years into an acclaimed solo career, Clark has eked out a singular space in music, occasionally intersecting with the mainstream but for the most part staying uncompromisingly countercultural. She has collaborated with both David Byrne and Dua Lipa ; the riot grrrl pioneers Sleater-Kinney and the post-post-riot-grrrl pop star Olivia Rodrigo . She was one of four female musicians asked to front Nirvana for a night in 2014 when the band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “She’s obviously outrageously talented,” Grohl said. “For her to play a Nirvana song was, maybe, a lot less complicated than her own music.”

I first met up with Clark in March, when we drank iced coffee beneath the shady pergola outside her manager’s Hollywood office. She carried a black Loewe handbag and wore a white T-shirt bearing the name of the Swedish punk band Viagra Boys. Clark has, in the past, embodied various characters and donned costumes — a gray-haired cult leader on the cover of her 2014 self-titled album; a louche ’70s glamour girl on her 2021 release “Daddy’s Home” — but these days she’s more or less dressing as herself.

“I’ve certainly played with persona, because I’m queer,” Clark said from behind large sunglasses. “That’s how I play and make sense of my life. All of that just seems absolutely natural to me, to play with persona and identity and to put it in the work.”

But adopting an over-the-top persona, she said, is not something she finds particularly compelling right now. “I’m more interested in that which is raw and essential,” she said. “You’re alive or you’re dead. And if you’re alive, you’d better live it, because it’s short.”

In some sense, Clark is coming off the greatest commercial success of her career, and one that is decidedly more sunshiny than the work she’s known for: During a session with the ubiquitous producer Jack Antonoff, who collaborated on her two previous albums, Clark helped write “Cruel Summer,” the sugar-rush pop song that Taylor Swift released on her 2019 album “Lover.”

“It was something Jack and I worked on and made its way to Taylor and made it back, as those things go,” Clark said. Though it was not initially released as a single, Swift’s formidable fan base has, in the past year, willed it into becoming the unofficial anthem of her Eras Tour and a No. 1 hit four years after its initial release. Clark attended a show in Los Angeles last year and found it surreal to witness 90,000 people singing along. “I’ve never seen anything like it, much less been a part of anything like it,” she said.

And yet, she has no interest in replicating that formula in her own music. In fact, “All Born Screaming,” due April 26, contains some of the heaviest, darkest and weirdest St. Vincent music to date. “That’s what I want from music right now, personally,” Clark said, safe in the shade of the California sun. “I would like a pummeling. I want something to feel dangerous.”

CLARK HAS A reputation for being guarded with journalists, in part because she does not like talking about her personal life. Unsurprisingly, she did not want to specify why themes of grief and loss permeate her new album, because she does not think it would make much difference to the listener. In one of our later conversations, she said that she believed a performer’s duty is simply “to shock and console” ad infinitum. Explaining oneself is superfluous to that job description.

“Generally everyone is misunderstood, and you realize it’s not your job to make people understand you,” Le Bon said. “It’s your job to work and align yourself with your own integrity. I think that’s even harder to harness when you’re an artist as big as Annie. But she does.”

“She’s almost certainly wildly misunderstood by people,” she added, “but there’s a perverse joy in that.”

Le Bon, who is from Wales, met Clark when she was opening for a St. Vincent tour in 2011. She said that at first she found it difficult to get to know Clark: “She was very mysterious, doing yoga a lot of the time,” Le Bon said. Eventually, however, Le Bon found a way into a “really rewarding” friendship. “She’s so honest without agenda, and that’s a rare thing in the world we both exist in,” Le Bon said. “She asks the tough questions, she gives you the real answers.”

Clark was born in Tulsa, Okla., and raised mostly in the Dallas suburbs. She picked up the guitar at 12 and showed a precocious talent; in her early teens, she sat in with her music teacher’s band and chose a song with a high level of difficulty, Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary.” Her aunt and uncle play as the jazz duo Tuck and Patti, and they brought her on tour one summer as a roadie to show her the realities of touring life. She loved it. “Some of my fondest memories of touring are from those really early days,” she said.

Le Bon said she sees a stark demarcation between the somewhat severe and imperious musical figure “St. Vincent,” and, as she put it, “Annie Clark from Dallas.” Annie Clark from Dallas slowly emerged, in our conversations, as a funny, genial and lightly self-deprecating person who enjoys modern comedy (she quoted “30 Rock” from memory and referenced both “Veep” and “Waiting for Guffman”), is close with her many siblings, and on at least one occasion has drunk too much pink champagne at a party celebrating the reopening of an old Brooklyn theater to make it to Pilates the next morning.

But I witnessed something switch over in her when we met one afternoon at Electric Lady Studios in the West Village, where Clark worked on parts of her last several albums. “This is the room where I recorded the vocals for ‘Violent Times,’ ‘Broken Man’ and ‘Sweetest Fruit,’” she said, referring to songs on the new album. She jumped up from a couch to demonstrate how she’d sung into a particular microphone. Then she got distracted by the studio’s wall of consoles and patch bays.

“Where is this 67 patched at the moment?” she asked herself with sudden ease, like an expat shifting into her native tongue. “Oh yeah, through the 1073. But where’s the 1176?”

“All Born Screaming” began with a sonic puzzle: “How do I render the sound inside my head?” After “hours and hours and hours basically making postindustrial dance music in my studio by myself,” Clark said she realized that the sound in her head was something she would not be able to explain to anyone else. So, although she has been a very involved co-producer on each of her other albums, she decided “All Born Screaming” was something she would have to produce herself.

She approached the task with characteristic zeal. She asked her friend and collaborator Cian Riordan to give her engineering lessons, and he found her an impressively apt pupil. “She would show up, there would be coffee, she’d have a notepad ready,” Riordan said in a phone interview. “She’s extremely focused. There was so much intention with everything.”

She mastered compression, mic shootouts, signal flow. To his dismay, Riordan eventually found Clark starting down a path that he had seen trip up many musicians in the digital age: analog synthesizers.

“Any time someone brings modular synths into the studio, that’s usually my cue to be like, ‘I’m going to go somewhere else, because this is going to be a giant waste of time,’” Riordan said. “But with her, it was really incredible to watch. She would buy all these esoteric things that I didn’t even know about, and I’d come back and they were all synced up and she’d be making music on them. It was fun to see her take it so far.”

Clark said those synths allowed her to build a new sonic world. “You’re actually harnessing electricity,” she explained. Her enthusiasm was palpable; her speech kicked up its tempo. “It’s going through unique circuitry, and you are at the helm, so you’re like a god of lightning.”

CLARK HAS LONG been someone who gets a thrill out of testing her limits and rising to challenges, but around the time of her brightly barbed 2017 album “Masseduction” she was beginning to hit a wall. “It would be like, ‘Sure you can go from Memphis to Beijing to Champaign, Ill., in a weekend,” she said. “Sure you can. See if you can pull this off.” But suddenly, after years of “going, going, going,” she noted, “my body just kind of shut down. My stomach — everything about my stomach hurt.” She stopped drinking and went into what she calls “nun mode,” throwing herself headfirst into studio work.

It wasn’t until the pandemic, though, that she was truly forced to slow down and stay put. She got very good at D.I.Y. projects and installed a lot of light fixtures. She also finished building her home studio and worked on a record that had been gestating for a while. During the pandemic, “Some artists went very interior and quiet, understandably,” she said. “Then, you know,” she laughed. “Some people put on wigs.”

She was referring to “Daddy’s Home,” the heavily stylized ’70s-inspired album she made in response to her father’s release from prison, after he served eight years for conspiracy, fraud and money laundering. “Daddy’s Home” won a Grammy for best alternative album and featured some imaginative experiments, but it was a polarizing release that generated some criticism online.

Clark is aware of this and thinks the album was in part a casualty of bad timing. “The story sort of became, not that I made a record about a difficult familial time, but that, like, ‘OK, good, we have someone to blame for the prison-industrial complex,’” she said. “It’s like, oh wait — that’s not quite what I was going for. But those were the times. Everyone’s lives upturned and everyone was increasingly online and there was a lot of fervor in general.”

For “All Born Screaming,” Clark went back to basics and drew inspiration from “that sort of rock that is the first music that felt like it was mine, and not music from another generation.” She was talking about Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos and, yes, even that band she helped induct into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. While working on the bracing head banger “Flea,” she realized she needed some enormously forceful percussion. The only person she could imagine playing on it was Grohl. So she wrote to him saying as much, and a few days later he was in her home studio, laying down drum tracks for that and the back half of “Broken Man.”

“He’s a great drummer because he’s a great songwriter, right?” Clark said. “He adds so much power and electricity and vibrance, but he’s always supporting the song. He takes a song from a nine to, like, a hundred.”

“All Born Screaming” is sequenced like a journey from darkness into light; its brooding first track is titled, appropriately, “Hell Is Near.” The title-track finale ends up somewhere more comfortably earthbound, but while she was making the song, it was torturing Clark, who just “couldn’t crack the feel of it.” She called Le Bon and played her what she had. Le Bon told her, “Give me a beer, a bass and two hours.”

It worked. The song is bouncy and delightfully off-kilter, strange in St. Vincent’s inimitable, specific way. Clark said the song sprung from the realization that, as she put it, “Joy and suffering are equal, necessary parts of the whole thing. And the only reason to live is for love and the people we love and that’s kind of it.”

“It’s not easy," she added. “But it’s simple.”

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From Carrie Coon to Rocio Guerrero: Women Based in NY and Beyond Who Made a Big Impact on the Entertainment Industry the Past Year

The past year has been a challenging one for many in the entertainment biz, and the women on this year’s New York Women’s Impact Report were not immune to disruptions caused by labor strife and consolidation. But they also shone brightly, delivering standout performances, productions and deals, be they for the stage, screen or in the C-suite. We at Variety salute their achievement and grit. 

Edited by Diane Garrett

Danielle Aguirre 

Exec VP & general counsel , National Music Publishers’ Assn.  

Aguirre has been a lead on many negotiations on behalf of songwriters and publishers, including TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) in the past year. During her 13 years with NMPA, she has played legal Whack-a-Mole with many companies and emerging technologies, serving as a key player in the negotiation, drafting and passage of the Music Modernization Act to address licensing for streaming services, and paved the way for more than $2 billion in royalties being paid out since 2021. 

AI’s existential threat: “I think it’s OK to press pause and say, ‘Are we doing this in a way that’s ethical, that doesn’t hurt humans, including human creators?’ ” she says.

Raney Aronson-Rath 

Editor-in-chief & EP, “Frontline”;  producer, “20 Days in Mariupol”

The editor-in-chief and exec producer of “Frontline” teamed up with Associated Press journalist-filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov on “20 Days in Mariupol,” a first-hand look at the atrocities in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, securing a modest Oscar campaign budget after the film made the doc shortlist. Her efforts paid off in March when the film won the trophy. “I was so pleased that cinematic journalism was recognized by the Academy,” Aronson-Rath says. “It was one of the most gratifying moments of my career.”

So much more to tackle: “We have crises happening all across the world and the geopolitical situation is shifting and changing — that’s something that we really want to capture in our upcoming documentaries.”

Sara Bernstein 

President, Imagine Documentaries  

Sole head of Imagine’s doc division since early 2023, Bernstein has this past year shepherded a slew of documentaries including “Stormy” and “Frida,” with Ron Howard’s doc “Jim Henson Idea Man” to debut May 31 on Disney+. “I’m most proud of the breadth, scope and range of the projects that we have been able to produce over the last 12 months,” she says. “The question in my mind is always, ‘How can we continue to push the form?’”

Credit where it’s due: Bernstein salutes colleagues Kelsey Field, Meredith Kaulfers and Erica Fink, saying, “I couldn’t do this job without them, and we wouldn’t be Imagine Documentaries without them. They inspire me every day.”

Frances Berwick 

Chairman, NBCUniversal Entertainment  

Berwick got an even wider remit last July when she was elevated to NBCU Entertainment chair, now leading original content and acquisitions for Peacock as well as as overseeing original content, program strategy, marketing, communications and scheduling across the entertainment networks. NBC again led all networks in total viewers last year, with “The Voice” and “Saturday Night Live” among standout shows. At the strikes-delayed Emmy ceremony in January, Peacock took home a casting trophy for unscripted hit “The Traitors.” 

Creative outlook: “There’s certainly a reset happening post-COVID, strikes and the streaming explosion,” Berwick says, predicting “a surge in fresh, original ideas after some overreliance on the familiar of known IP, franchises and reboots.” 

Emily Blunt 

Actor, “Oppenheimer,” “The Fall Guy”

As a co-star of Christopher Nolan’s $970 million-grossing “Oppenheimer,” Blunt surfed a tidal wave of success in 2023 — even before her performance netted one of the film’s 13 Oscar nominations. She’ll follow that critical and commercial success with David Leitch’s action rom-com “The Fall Guy” and Benny Safdie’s mixed martial arts drama “The Smashing Machine.” “Schizophrenic flip-flopping between tones and genres” feeds Blunt’s creativity, even if it seems discordant career-wise. “I want to feel excited, and a shred of terror in me as well,” she says. “If you’ve got butterflies in your stomach, you’ve got to let them flutter forever, because they will see you through.”

Debora Cahn 

Showrunner, “The Diplomat”

Having previously worked on successful shows including “The West Wing” and “Homeland,” Cahn was convinced she would be able to avoid making mistakes as a first-time showrunner for Netflix’s “The Diplomat.” Not so. “Of course, I still made every mistake, but at least I knew that I was making it,” Cahn says. Her goal: to tackle international diplomacy much like “West Wing” feasted on domestic governance, with plenty of U.K. location porn and a spiky dynamic between Keri Russell’s ambassador and Rufus Sewell as her fellow diplomat husband to add frisson. 

Unsung heroes: “It’s been really fun to introduce an audience to some characters we don’t usually see,” says Cahn, who recently finished filming Season 2 after a long break during the SAG-AFTRA strike. “But they are, in fact, the frontlines of democracy.”

Global fashion partnerships, Meta  

During her eight years at Meta, Chen has seen Instagram evolve from a square-image format into a multi-cam media experience, with the launch of Instagram Stories, Reels and more. She has also strategized with representatives across the fashion industry on how to use Threads in an effective manner. Chen has also authored nine children’s books to date, including the New York Times bestseller “Juno Valentine and the Magical Shoes.”  

Lesson learned: “The biggest mistake that I’ve made in the past — and also others probably make — is measuring success by tasks done. The most important things to invest in are actually the intangible, such as relationships,” she says.

The Women of CNN: Amy Entelis and Alex MacCallum

Entelis: Exec VP, talent, CNN originals & creative development 

MacCallum : Exec VP, digital products & services, CNN Worldwide

Entelis helped CNN win its first Oscar for the documentary “Navalny,” “a once-in-a-career experience,” last year; she also developed and launched “The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper” and built CNN Studios as part of the company’s reinvestment in originals. “We are exploring some new formats, expanding the boundaries of what CNN can do in the news-adjacent space,” she says. MacCallum moved into her new role in January, overseeing digital products and developing a multimedia strategy to use data science including machine learning and AI. 

Unified front: MacCallum is helping CNN tackle the future by removing silos. “Previously, we had different divisions operating almost entirely independently,” she says. “We’re creating one CNN.”

Nicole Compas 

Partner, Ramo Law

Compas joined Ramo Law nearly five years ago to open its New York office and quickly established it as a go-to for scripted and unscripted television, film and new-media productions, working with companies such as Push It Prods. (“The Upshaws”), Imagine Documentaries (“Lucy and Desi,” “Frida”) and the Jim Henson Co. She served as production counsel on five 2023 Emmy nominees (including “Bono & the Edge: A Sort of Homecoming,” “Judy Blume Forever” and “Wanda Sykes: I’m an Entertainer”) and several films that debuted at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, including Concordia’s “Girl State.”

Balancing act: “I think brands want to defer to the filmmakers because they want [the documentary] to be accepted as something that’s not just a long-form commercial,” she says.

Carrie Coon 

Actor, “The Gilded Age,” “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire”

Coon starred in Season 2 of HBO’s “Gilded Age,” the latest “Ghostbusters” movie and two indies in addition to booking a role in Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” now filming in Thailand, while her actor-playwright husband, Tracy Letts, has tended to their two young children back home. For Coon, the appeal of her striving Bertha on “The Gilded Age” is clear: “She’s the bad guy, essentially,” the actor says. “Because of that she’s driving the action.” Fans of the show also enjoy Bertha’s strong marriage with Morgan Spector’s equally ambitious George. “They are on parallel tracks,” Coon says approvingly.

Abundance of riches: The actor revels in the diverse roles she has been able to play alongside women of her own age recently. “I didn’t even know if that was possible,” she says. “That’s the dream.” 

Samantha Cox 

VP, creative, New York, BMI  

At BMI, Cox has worked to further the careers of artists ranging from Lady Gaga (whom she knew in her pre-persona days as Stefani Germanotta) and Bebe Rexha to rising country/hip-hop star Tanner Adell, who sings on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” album. She effectively serves as an A&R rep for the venerable performance rights organization, scouting and signing talent and publishers, plus staging showcases, seminars such as “Speed Dating for Songwriters” and the annual BMI Brunch at SXSW.

Having their backs: “Everyone thinks this stuff happens overnight, and it doesn’t,” says Cox, who started at BMI as an intern. “When these writers and artists know that you don’t give up when a lot of people do, they’re extremely grateful.”

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen 

President, WGA East

Takeuchi Cullen led the WGA East during the guild’s 148-day strike last year, an experience she calls harrowing, but believes the months of negotiations resulted in safety and security for writers: significant gains include fairer compensation and protections against AI. “All of us in leadership felt the weight of responsibility resting on us — not just for our 12,500 members in streaming and television writing in both the guilds East and West — but also for the rest of the industry.” 

Outlook ahead?: “Slow and murky,” but she maintains legacy studios “need our content and at some point, they’re going to have to pull the trigger and get us back to work.”

Monica Herrera Damashek 

Head of label partnerships for North America, Spotify

When Damashek was elevated to her current post in September, it was a full-circle moment: She was previously head of U.S. Latin artist and label partnerships in 2022, where she shepherded Bad Bunny and Rosalia’s rise through the streamer’s machinery. Now, she’s looking to guide more up-and-comers like Tyla and veterans like Billie Eilish through the process. 

The importance of staying nimble:  “Coming back to this role, and reckoning with where things are, post-pandemic, has been challenging in the best way,” she says. “It’s important to take smarter risks, and not let my mistakes lead to decision paralysis.”

Jane Dystel

President, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret

The agent for bestselling novelist Colleen Hoover left Georgetown Law in 1986 for a job at Bantam Books, the mass-market publisher her father once ran, and hasn’t left the lit world since. In 1994, she established her own firm, now called Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. “It was partially my love of reading,” says Dystel of why she went into publishing. “And it was being in a world of ideas and the possibilities of what could happen with ideas.” 

Determined to win: A competitive figure skater in her teens, she believes her drive helps make her a great agent.

America Ferrera 

Actor, “Barbie,” “Dumb Money”

Ferrera has long been connected to pivotal female roles, from her breakout as Ana Garcia in “Real Women Have Curves” and Betty Suarez on “Ugly Betty,” to her Oscar-nominated turn in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie.” She’s gratified that “Barbie” had a cultural impact on a global level, and for the response to her character ’s monologue about the conflicting expectations women navigate every day. “I was so moved to see the reactions of people who really resonated with the monologue, and I was also glad to see the dialogue it created,” she tells Variety . “Ideally, the stories we tell are compelling us to see ourselves and each other in more complex ways.”

Rita Ferro 

President, global advertising, the Walt Disney Co.  

One year after Disney+ with ads debuted, more than half the streamer’s subscribers choose that option. But the streamer isn’t doing what broadcast used to, Ferro says, pointing to recent advancements like the TV ad experience Gateway Shop, and Disney’s Magic Words, which ties mood to a brand’s messaging with contextual advertising. “We’ve brought to market future-forward advertising innovation through our immersive platforms and experiences,” says the exec, who gained global oversight of the studio’s ad business last October. “We are seeing increasing interest from clients to tap into tools that provide simplicity, and seamless access to the most premium inventory.”

The N.Y. Women of “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans”: Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny and Molly Ringwald

Watts: Actor and exec producer 

Sevigny and Ringwald: Actors 

Just as Truman Capote had his coterie of elegant Gotham society ladies, “Feud” creator Ryan Murphy leaned on his stable of accomplished female actors to portray them in Season 2 of the FX anthology series: “The Watcher” alum Watts plays Babe Paley, wife of longtime CBS president Bill, while Sevigny, previously a star in “American Horror Story,” is C.Z. Guest and Ringwald, recently in “Dahmer,” a relative outlier as Johnny Carson’s ex, Joanne. For Sevigny, a longtime New Yorker who pored over images of Capote and his so-called swans growing up in Darien, Conn., it was a thrill to be filming at grand locations around Manhattan. “We wanted to celebrate old New York and a bit of that charm and glamour,” she says. “It was fun to be there doing it.” Ringwald was also aware of Capote, having performed in an adaptation of one of his novels when she was very young, and believes that, with Carson’s character, Murphy “really wanted somebody who was going to offer a contrast to all of those hangry women.” For all the veneer of perfection, “underneath there are major cracks and so many of them were in loveless marriages,” says Watts, who grew up outside the U.S. and wasn’t as familiar with moneyed 1970s society milieu as some of her castmates. “It’s sad, but it was a different era than it is now.” Adding to the melancholy: Treat Williams, who portrays Babe’s husband, unexpectedly died shortly after the production wrapped.  

Lessons in adulting: Ringwald credits late production designer and producer Polly Platt with boosting her spirit when she was trying to move on from teen roles in films such as “Pretty in Pink.” “She was like, ‘You’re going to have a really long career. And the only way that you are not is if you decide that you don’t want to. It’s really up to you. You just have to keep doing what you’re doing and stick with it.’” 

Maureen Ford 

President, national & festival sales, media & sponsorship, Live Nation

In 2023, Ford oversaw the biggest year in live music’s history as innumerable artists hit stages across the country and more fans attended concerts and festivals than ever before. With 30 years in the business, Ford is encouraging her team to be increasingly creative in crafting once-in-a-lifetime experiences for fans, brands like Citi and Hilton, and each other. “I’m fiercely committed to championing women,” she says. “I reflect on the time it took me to find equilibrium in my career and life, and I want others to foster their confidence sooner.”

The Women of Frankfurt Kurnit: Marcie Cleary and Lisa E. Davis  

Cleary and Davis work alongside each other in Frankfurt Kurnit’ s entertainment group, while maintaining their own areas of focus. Davis reps clients from the worlds of film, television, publishing, music and theater, including National Black Theatre’s Tony-nominated production of “Fat Ham” and writer Obehi Janice and her play “Nova,” which was staged at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Many of the playwrights on her roster also work in TV and film. “In theater, you control your copyright, and you own your work,” says Davis, “but unless you have a hit on the order of ‘Hamilton,’ the money is not nearly as lucrative as being a creator on a series.” In recent months, Cleary has negotiated deals for Marcel Spears to re-join the cast of CBS’ “The Neighborhood,” Rae Wynn-Grant to co-host the revival of NBC’s “The Wild Kingdom” and Kelley Carter’s expanded entertainment reporting deal at ABC as well as a numerous podcast pacts.

Why all those podcasts?: “The film and television industry has contracted, so you see more creators do go into podcasts as a new way to sell content,” says Cleary.

Shani Fuller-Tillman 

VP, marketing, RCA Records  

Fuller-Tillman played an instrumental role in promoting Bryson Tiller’s self-titled album and Davido’s Grammy-nominated album “Timeless,” and previously worked on Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” and Grammy-winning “Gemini Rights.” Her top ingredients for a successful marketing campaign: “Incredible music, sticky lyrics, cross-collaborative efforts across all mediums, an engaged artist, committed management team and a relentless fanbase.” The exec also played a role in the resurgence of Miguel’s “Sure Thing” last year. 

Promo goals: “I am looking forward to incorporating moments during campaigns that set my roster of artists apart from others as well as educate those who are interested in pushing the boundaries.”

Libby Geist 

President, Words + Pictures; exec producer, “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story”

Geist’s banner funded and produced the Sundance hit “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” which sold to Warner Bros. Discovery for $15 million after a bidding war, the largest doc sale out of the fest, proving that there is still a market, though small, for independently made nonfiction features. “The minute we heard about this project we knew it was special. We looked at some of the archival [footage], and saw how real and raw that footage was and were immediately drawn to it,” says Geist, who joined the banner in 2022 after a stint at ESPN. 

No guts, no glory: “Building a successful production company in this volatile market has not been easy,” she says. “It’s been challenging, but also really fun.”

Greta Gerwig 

Writer-director, “Barbie”

Gerwig’s “Barbie” conquered the worldwide box office last year, ending up No. 1, and earned eight Oscar nominations as well, achieving enough in 2023 to fill the eponymous fashion doll’s most expansive dream house. Even so, Gerwig has much on her plate, starting with a high-profile role as jury president at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival to be followed by writing and directing duties on two Netflix adaptations of books from C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” series. “I feel like with each movie, I’m still learning. I’m figuring out how to do things differently than I’ve done before,” she recently told Variety . 

Rachel Ghiazza 

Chief content officer, Audible

Upped to her new role last year, Ghiazza has helped shape the company’s global expansion everywhere from Germany to Brazil. “Leaping boundaries is exciting,” she says. “I am super passionate about growth in Latin America.” Ghiazza also finalized major deals with Higher Ground and Plan B and launched Dolby Atmos on Audible. Under the Dolby integration, subscribers “can sit together and listen with this crazy amazing sound. I like the idea of people listening communally.”

Mentor boost: “Thao Hoang at Viacom helped me find the confidence that I had the tools I needed and could trust my gut,” she says. “Working for her had a profound impact.” 

Rocío Guerrero 

Head of music for Latin-Iberia, Amazon Music

A conservatory-trained violinist from an extended family of musicians in Spain, Guerrero began her professional career as journalist working as a news editor in Madrid. Eventually, she made her way back to the family business, albeit as a non-performer, joining Spotify as a sales planner in 2011 and rising up the ranks to head of global music cultures, shows and editorial. For the past four years, she’s led Amazon Music’s Latin music efforts, which encompass a wide variety of media (playlists, podcasts, concert livestreams, music videos, the “Hip-Hop X Siempre” doc, etc.) and genres from reggaeton to regional Mexican music, as well artists’ merch.

Culinary comparison: “Latin music is like international food,” she says. “It’s embedded now in the culture, right in the mainstream.”

Erin Junkin 

Partner & co-head, scripted television, WME

A groundbreaker who became the only female department head of television at any of the major talent agencies when she was elevated, the longtime WME vet has represented a wide swath of the television and streaming spectrum, from Soo Hugh (“Pachinko”) to Quinn Shepherd (“Under the Bridge”) to Brie Larson and Rachel Weisz. Last year, she and her team had to navigate disruptive labor strife. “I’m really proud of our TV department,” she says, pointing out that despite the strikes, “we had one of our best awards seasons ever, and that was really a collective accomplishment as every single agent in our department touched some aspect of a nominated or winning series.”

Cynthia Katz 

Partner, Fox Rothschild

Katz has been a busy dealmaker to the tune of “about a billion dollars’ worth of acquisition deals,” including buying and selling music rights, assets and companies. She has represented HarbourView Equity Partners in about 50 music catalog acquisitions, including Wiz Khalifa and Christine McVie; represented Primary Wave Publishing in acquiring the Sarah McLaughlan and Eddie Rabbit catalogs; and negotiated a deal for producer Denzel “Conductor” Williams to craft Drake’s “8AM in Charlotte.” 

Money maker: “Investment in music has been growing,” she says. “In the next five years, it’s going to grow even more with increased interest and capital, which is really good for talent and the whole industry.”

The Women of Killer Films: Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon

Producers, “Past Lives,” “May December”

The indie stalwarts are no strangers to the awards circuit, but this year had two major contenders in Celine Song’s “Past Lives” and Todd Haynes’ “May December.” They were also individual nominees for the first time, thanks to the best pic nomination for “Past Lives.” “It was intense,” Vachon says of their time on the awards circuit, while Koffler called the personal recognition “a very lovely, gratifying experience after doing it for so long.” Yet for a wide swath of the year, Vachon and Koffler also had to contend with dual labor strikes that threatened their company’s livelihood and the industry itself. “Killer worked very, very hard to keep our employees on payroll,” says Vachon, calling it “a really dark time.” For Koffler, there was a strange duality of being “so busy and absorbed in the promoting and the ushering out of the movies, and yet so worried about, how are we ever going to really make them again?”

Indie prognosis: Both are sanguine about the latest pronouncements about the supposed death of indie film. “It’s really hard right now,” Koffler concedes. “But when has it not been?”

Erica Lancaster 

The Houston native parlayed her youthful obsession with “Saturday Night Live” into a career. After graduating from U. of Virginia, Lancaster moved to New York in 2007, when she went from a page post at “The Late Show With David Letterman” to a receptionist at “SNL” to associate producer on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and, finally, development exec at Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video. In 2017, she became a TV agent at CAA, where today her clients include “SNL” head writer Colin Jost and cast members Marcello Hernandez and Ego Nwodim, along with Ayo Edebiri (Emmy-winner for “The Bear”) and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Oscar-winner for “The Holdovers”).

Enduring ties: “I met Colin [Jost] on my first day of work at ‘SNL,’” she says. “I think he offered me frozen grapes.”

Christine Lepera 

Partner, Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp  

Lepera has been a major force in the music world, protecting artists from accusations of plagiarism. In recent months, the veteran attorney won copyright infringement cases for Dua Lipa and Warner Music Group for the song “Levitating,” and Timbaland and other defendants for the songs “Paper Chase” and “Toe2Toe” She also successfully resolved producer Dr. Luke’s nine-year legal battle with singer Kesha and won a preliminary injunction for Daryl Hall, preventing his longtime musical partner John Oates from selling his half of their jointly held assets without Hall’s consent.

You can’t copyright AI art … or can you?: “The wrinkle is going to be whether a person or some persons are involved in it, adding creative input such that their creative expression is part of what the content is,” she says.

Wendy Lidell 

Senior VP theatrical, distribution and acquisitions, Kino Lorber  

Lidell knew she wanted distribution rights for Kaouther Ben Hania’s hybrid documentary “Four Daughters” from the moment she saw it at Cannes last year. The film about a Tunisian mother whose two elder daughters joined ISIS won that festival’s documentary award and would go on to earn an Oscar nom, but “I was not thinking about an Academy Award nomination — I was thinking theatrical success and a film that I was passionate about and needed a wider audience,” says Lidell. She has since snagged North American distribution rights  to Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” and Bruno Dumont’s “The Empire,” as is committed “expanding the boundaries of what cinema can be.” 

The Women of Lifetime: Elaine Frontain Bryant and Brie Miranda Bryant 

Elaine Frontain Bryant: Exec VP & head of programming A&E, Lifetime & LMN, A+E Networks 

Brie Miranda Bryant: Senior VP, original programming, Lifetime, A+E Networks

These two Bryants might not be related, but they form a formidable team. Last year, Frontain Bryant gained programming oversight of Lifetime, a female-centric destination for nonfiction and true-crime programming that had a hit with the explosive “The Prison Confession of Gypsy Rose Blanchard” series when it launched in January. Both women served as exec producers on the three-night series, which drew nearly 10 million viewers in its first month; the network, now celebrating its 40th anniversary, is working on a follow-up focusing on Blanchard’s release from prison. Bryant spearheaded Lifetime’s “Where Is Wendy Williams?,” which dominated social media when it premiered. Coming soon: The pair are expanding the Biography brand with five new docs tracking the careers of some of hard rock’s biggest stars and unveiling a second season of Lifetime’s 2022 “Janet Jackson” miniseries.

Mentors always matter: “I still look to my longtime mentor Fred Berner,” Frontain Bryant says. “He developed the film ‘Maestro’ for many years and seeing him attend the Oscars was inspiring.” 

Cindy Mabe 

CEO & chair, Universal Music Group Nashville

The first woman to run a major country music label, Mabe oversees an ambitious slate of projects that includes new and upcoming releases from veteran hitmakers (Keith Urban, Reba McEntire, George Strait) and exciting newcomers (22-year-old Christian music singer Anne Wilson), as well as a growing film and TV division, Sing Me Back Home Prods., which recently released the documentary “Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive,” and is developing a reality series about Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, the husband-and-wife music duo known as the War and Treaty.

Fond intern memory: “They were paying me in free CDs, and I thought, ‘This is the most incredible thing of all time,’” recalls the North Carolina native, who assumed her current post in April 2023. “I never had dreams of running a label.”

Natalie Madaj 

Exec VP, global digital, Warner Music Group/Warner Chappell Music

Madaj recently negotiated deals with Canva and TikTok while working to expand existing partnerships with companies like YouTube, and stresses the need to understand cultural differences around the world. “We want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of regional expertise that acknowledges the nuances in what music consumers in those different regions look like,” she says, calling herself “cautiously optimistic” about AI collaborations. 

Exec mindset: “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received was to treat your career almost like a company with a board of advisors who all bring different experiences, and it’s something I’ve taken to heart,” she says. 

Lauren Marcello 

Senior VP, late night current programs, CBS  

Between the pandemic and last year’s labor strife, it’s been a challenging four years for late-night programs for reasons well beyond the control of executives overseeing them: the network’s marquee late-night program, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” was dark from May to October due to the writers strike. For all that, and amid all the changes wrought by streaming, Marcello remains bullish on traditional TV. “I think that late night, like sports, is a format that’s still very much thriving on broadcast,” says Marcello. “There’s not a streaming-only version of late night that has proved to be a substitution for broadcast.”

Audra McDonald 

Actor, “The Gilded Age,” “Rustin,” “Origin” 

The acclaimed actor effortlessly swapped periods in a trifecta of indelible performances the past year. In Netflix’s “Rustin,” she portrayed civil-rights activist Ella Baker, while she embodied a more contemporary character in “Origin,” Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste,” delivering a powerful performance opposite Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. For HBO’s turn-of-the-last-century drama “The Gilded Age,” McDonald’s Dorothy Scott resides in a middle-class Black community, often neglected in other period projects depicting this era. Next up for the Broadway aficionado, who recently performed in “Ohio State Murders”: an Australian concert tour that launches May 4.

Monica McNutt 

NBA, WNBA and college basketball analyst, ESPN  

Former Georgetown basketball player McNutt caught the journalism bug as an undergrad, working her way up to a post at sports broadcasting giant ESPN in 2019. As a basketball analyst for the New York Knicks, as well as the WNBA and women’s college basketball, which are both surging in popularity, she’s one of the few women — and women of color — to work on such a big platform. McNutt, who also contributes to “SportsCenter,” “Around the Horn,” “First Take” and “NBA Today,” is thankful for the “sisterhood” of her TV colleagues although there’s more work to be done for parity. She also works with the nonprofit Grow Our Game, a free program for girls ages 4-12 that teaches basketball and personal empowerment through sports.

The Women of MOME: Pat Swinney Kaufman and Shira Gans 

Kaufman: Commissioner 

Gans: Senior executive director, policy + programs

When Kaufman joined the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in June 2023, she came with nearly 20 years of experience as the state film commissioner, shepherding its rich incentive program, which had transformed the local film and TV production landscape. She joined Gans, who’s been with the office since 2016, serving as the driving force behind partnerships and programs supporting the music industry, such as New York Music Month, Sound Thinking NYC and the Office of Nightlife, while leading its film and TV sustainability initiatives. “Having been in the public sector for a really long time, I understand the city government and how you can make things that seem like they’re not possible, possible,” says Gans. For her part, Kaufman is determined to show producers that the Big Apple is “the city of ‘yes,’” eager and able to host their shoots.

You can make it there: “New York City is where dreams really do come true,” says Kaufman. “People see it on movie screens and TV and everything else, and then they want to be here and taste and live the magic.”

Courteney Monroe 

President, National Geographic  

Monroe was behind this year’s Oscar-nominated “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” which scored the IDA award for best doc. It was Nat Geo’s fourth Oscar nomination in six years. “Even though we didn’t take home the Oscar, I still feel like we won with this film,” Monroe says, noting that Wine’s fight for democracy in Uganda has “inspired audiences all across the globe.” “Queens,” a series about matriarchies in the animal kingdom, was narrated and exec produced by Angela Bassett, part of an all-female production team. In the works: “Tucci — The Heart of Italy,” which aims to pick up where his CNN cooking show left off. 

The Allies (Women) of “The Notebook”: Maryann Plunkett, Joy Woods and Jordan Tyson 

 Actors

The new Broadway adaptation of “The Notebook” reimagines the lead role of Allie, originally portrayed by Rachel McAdams in the film, across three life stages: Tyson embodies the young, naive Allie, swept up in a summer romance. Woods portrays a middle-aged Allie, still quietly longing for her past love a decade later. Plunkett, nominated for a Tony Award, completes the trio as an older Allie, grappling with Alzheimer’s and the erosion of her memories. Together, they share ownership of the character, fostering collaboration and moving audiences to tears with Ingrid Michaelson’s score each night. “It was actually a relief to share the role,” Tyson notes. “Not everything falls on one person’s shoulders; we get to coordinate but also bring our unique [takes] to these parts of her life.” Both Tyson and Woods credit theater veteran Plunkett for guiding the development of Allie. “Each night, we take from each other, we give to each other,” Woods says. “We learn new things about Allie from each other. It’s been this constant shifting and growing.”

Tyson’s biggest challenge?: “Reclaiming my energy and putting boundaries up. It’s not the work itself but maintaining my own wellness to be able to show up for the work,” she says. 

Debra OConnell 

President, news group & networks, Disney Entertainment  

In February, OConnell gained oversight of ABC News, aligning the news division with the station group, as well as responsibilities across the company’s multiplatform linear enter2tainment networks. The expanded duties for the 27-year veteran of Disney are meant to facilitate collaboration, and OConnell intends to do that while reacting to the rapidly changing entertainment landscape. “We will continue experimenting with windowing and scheduling,” she says, pointing out that the conglom aired Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building” on ABC, “which is an excellent example of windowing a streaming phenom to linear and watching it continue to find new audiences as it travels through the ecosystem.” 

Kelli O’Hara 

Actor, “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Gilded Age”

The eight-time Tony nominee returned to Broadway this season to star as a mother grappling with alcoholism in “Days of Wine and Roses.” “I’m sort of an artist that goes towards the pain and towards human condition and learning. This is a team that really wants to dig into things and make art out of confusion, which, I think, is the purpose of art in the first place.” Additionally, O’Hara stars as Aurora Fane in “The Gilded Age,” renewed for Season 3.

O’Hara’s biggest challenge?: “I think it happens more for women but balancing the children and my career. There are sacrifices on both ends, you can’t deny it.” 

Sasha Passero 

VP, talent agent, IAG  

Passero signed Lily Gladstone after seeing her in “Certain Women” at its Sundance debut eight years ago and has lobbied for her ever since — persistence that paid off with Gladstone’s Academy Award-nominated and SAG Award-winning performance in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the first for a Native American woman. Passero comes from a show business family — her parents began as actors and then went into casting, and her sister and grandmother were actors as well. 

Born for it: “I think that my respect and empathy for what actors do, and being able to kind of put myself on their side of things has really been for me my secret weapon.” 

Rita Marie Pelosi 

Senior VP and senior relationship manager, entertainment banking, City National Bank  

Pelosi fell in love with the theater as a kid going to Broadway shows with her opera singer aunt, but realized early on that performing was not her forte. Instead, she found her way into showbiz via banking, focusing on music and film production, before segueing to the legit stage. During the pandemic, she facilitated more than $13 million in PPP loans for theater clients, and today her team provides banking services for 90% of the shows on the Great White Way.

Advice for someone working on their first big show: “There’s going to be a lot of people saying a lot of things,” she says. “If it’s a success, don’t let it go to your head. If it’s a failure, start over again.”

Krista Phillips 

Exec VP, head of consumer credit cards and consumer lending marketing, Wells Fargo  

Phillips spearheaded a loyalty program called Autograph Card Exclusives that allows credit card holders to connect with popular musicians, including at live concerts featuring Mumford and Sons in Los Angeles and Imagine Dragons in Dallas. “We wanted to deliver a once-in-a-lifetime experience for our customers where they can experience their favorite artists in smaller venues, so that they can feel like they’re having an intimate experience,” the Wells Fargo exec says. “And they’re almost there with their friends and family.” 

Mission critical: “We do a lot of research and we’re constantly listening to our customers,” Phillips says. 

Carrie Preston 

Actor, “Elsbeth,” “The Holdovers” 

Preston turned Elsbeth Tascioni — a character she played just 19 times over 14 years on “The Good Wife” and “The Good Fight” combined — into her first lead role on a series; the CBS spinoff series from Robert and Michelle King was just picked up for a second season. Preston, who won an Emmy for performing the role in 2013, also drew praise for her turn in Oscar-nominated “The Holdovers.” 

Beyond ingenues: “There’s a hunger from audiences to see mature women represented on screen in a way that highlights their intellect, their compassion, their strength, their humanity and their uniqueness rather than their sexuality or their relationship to men,” Preston notes.  

Danielle Price Sanders 

Exec VP, Republic Records 

Price Sanders spearheaded Republic’s deal with 4Fargo, who had a viral hit with “She’ll Be OK,” and executive produced the 2023 YouTube K-pop competition series “A2K” for the label’s Federal Films division, working alongside Monte Lipman and J.Y. Park. VCHA, the winners of that competition, have released a couple of singles and booked a slot at Lollapalooza. “We were able to successfully implement the K-pop model in the USA for the first time, and it was incredible to be on the ground floor of that,” she says. “I’m excited to be a part of their launch and impending domination.” 

Coming up: The debut album from Grammy Award-winning producer ATL Jacob.

Pilar Queen 

Publishing agent, UTA

Queen thinks two years ahead to help luminaries from entertainment, journalism, tech and other professions — such as ABC News’ Deborah Roberts and actor Elliot Page — get their stories out. She worked on Kara Swisher’s latest release, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” sold Brooke Shields’ highly anticipated nonfiction book to Flatiron Books and handled book deals for Mary Trump and Brian Tyler Cohen.

In-house mentor: The agent found her first mentor in UTA partner and board member Blair Kohan at age 40. “I didn’t even know I needed a mentor until I found one,” she says, praising Kohan’s “confidence, kindness and ability to cut through the BS — and do it in a way that doesn’t hurt people’s feelings.”

The Women of “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV”: Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz 

Robertson: Exec producer-director and founder of Maxine Prods. 

Schwartz: Co-executive producer and director

Robertson and Schwartz’s explosive ID docuseries “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” uncovered disturbing allegations of inappropriate behavior on various Dan Schneider-produced Nickelodeon series in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Drake Bell, one of the stars of “Drake & Josh,” comes forward in the series for the first time as the child star sexually assaulted by dialogue coach Brian Peck. When the pair, who previously collaborated on “The New York Times Presents” FX docuseries, saw online clips of Schneider’s series that appeared to sexualize young child stars like Ariana Grande, they decided the subject matter was worthy of a docuseries. “We thought it was of real value to dig in because it concerns working environments for children and because the content that was created on these sets was then distributed to children around the world,” Robertson says. While others have tried to tell this story, Schwartz explains that “we had an environment, the space and the support where we could take the time to build relationships with subjects and they could trust us to tell their stories.” As showrunner on “The New York Times Presents,” Robertson oversaw its similarly explosive installment, “Framing Britney Spears,” and has since launched her Maxine Prods. banner, part of Sony Pictures Television. 

Inspirational women: “I started my career working at Maysles Films, which was run by some incredible women, including Susan Froemke and Deborah Dickson, who remain idols of mine,” Robertson says.

Actor, “True Detective: Night Country”

Reis knocked the socks off HBO audiences tuning into “True Detective: Night Country,” more than holding her own opposite co-star Jodie Foster with only two prior screen credits under her belt. “I was excited and terrified simultaneously,” says Reis, who portrays Evangeline Navarro, a state trooper of Indigenous descent in a remote Alaska town. A boxer until 2017, the Rhode Island native who now lives in South Philly with her manager husband is a big believer in preparation; Indigenous on her mother’s side, she took great care in learning about the native community in Alaska before undertaking the role.

Biggest surprise? “How much fun we had doing intense dark stories, no pun intended,” says Reis, who just began production on “Mercy,” co-starring Chris Pratt.

Meredith Scardino 

Showrunner, “Girls5eva”

Season 3 of Scardino’s “Girls5eva” moved to Netflix in March, giving new life to the Peacock series about a female band that reunites in middle age. Scardino, who was nominated for a writing Emmy the show’s first season, previously won four Emmys for her work on “The Colbert Report,” and collaborates with fellow executive producers from “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” including Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Scardino considers herself very fortunate to write for all three. “So much of it is being able to be around them and try to absorb the runoff and learn how to do it yourself.”

Sarah Sherman 

Performer, “Saturday Night Live”

Promoted in 2023 to repertory player, Sherman’s rise from sketch breakout to “SNL” mainstay has in many ways mirrored her adaptation to the show’s famously punishing schedule. “Every week is just throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and sometimes you don’t find out until 4 o’clock in the morning whether or not an idea is good,” she says. But with recent turns in Adam Sandler’s “You Are So Not Invited to My Bar Mitzvah” and animated “Nimona” under her belt, Sherman has realized that it’s not the bells and whistles of her oddball comedy bits that have made her an in-demand talent, but what’s underneath. “As a performer, you do have to remember to be yourself — you’re good.”

Celine Song 

Writer-director, “Past Lives”  

Song’s “Past Lives,” her theatrical debut, earned an Oscar best pic nom and another nomination for her elegiac screenplay, along with trophies from the DGA, Gothams and Indie Spirits. The multihyphenate, who worked in theater before directing her first film, drew upon her own experiences as a Korean immigrant while writing the story about the price of female ambition, and leaned heavily on veterans including producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, while making it. “It’s just always so hard to walk into something without the experience of having done it before,” says Song, now prepping “Materialists.” “They’ve made so many films before that you’re able to borrow their experience.”   

Anjali Sud 

Since joining Tubi from Vimeo in August 2023, Sud has given the Fox-owned ad-supported streamer a major makeover. The most obvious change is cosmetic (redesigned logo and user interface), but the bigger transformation is the adoption of a guiding philosophy Sud describes as “free entertainment for the cordless generation,” reflected in new youth-oriented original series such as “Boarders,” “Dead Hot” and “Big Mood.” So far, it appears to be working. 

Proper C-suite ’tude: “It’s so important to question, learn and understand versus act, initially, but you also need to have a mission and conviction and be a little fearless and willing to take risks and not give up,” she says.

Jessica Tarlov 

Co-host , “The Five,” Fox News  

The lone liberal on Fox News’ live panel show, “The Five,” Tarlov isn’t shy about voicing a dissenting opinion. Arguably the reason “The Five” has such a politically diverse audience, Tarlov hopes she might influence some viewers about the day’s news, how they consume information and maybe even how they view politics — especially since she’s involved in Fox News’ 2024 election coverage.

Lessons from a reformed people pleaser: “You really don’t want to ruffle feathers and always want to be on everyone’s good side,” she says. “But then you end up de-prioritizing things you actually need for yourself to stay healthy.” 

Danya Taymor 

Director, “The Outsiders”

Taymor, a woman leading a musical centered on boyhood, returns to Broadway with “The Outsiders” after an acclaimed run in San Diego. She’s reimagined the novel and the 1983 film for the stage, and it received 12 Tony nominations, including one for her direction. “The thing that struck me the most about the story was the rawness and the realness of the book. … It was important to keep it feeling really authentic and not put a varnish on the experience of these young people’s lives.” 

Rallying the troupers:  “The biggest challenge but also the most wonderful part is harnessing the hundreds of people who are working on this so they feel like it’s their baby, too. … Everybody has skin in the game.”

Melissa Thomas 

Exec VP, international marketing, U.S. repertoire, Sony Music Entertainment  

In the past year, Thomas has contributed to the global success of Grammy-winning hits including Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” and Tyla’s “Water.” “It behooves us to really listen to the fans and pay attention to the conversation around the world,” Thomas says. “Really being open and reactive and moving in real time as we see these connections and stories building around the globe.” 

Mom knows best: “She was always someone in my life that came from humble means and told me that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t achieve. And it’s a philosophy that I’ve maintained and held on to,” Thomas says. 

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi 

Producer, director and co-founder, Little Monster Films  

Oscar-winner Vasarhelyi made the leap to narrative filmmaking with “Nyad,” which she co-directed with her husband, Jimmy Chin. The film about Diana Nyad’s multiple attempts and eventual successful swim from Cuba to Florida earned Oscar nominations for the film’s stars Annette Bening and Jodie Foster. The filmmaking pair followed that up with the Nat Geo docuseries “Photographer.” “I look at fiction and nonfiction films as quite similar in terms of craft, and in terms of it all being about a good story,” Vasarhelyi says. “The idea that we were able to bring Diana Nyad and Bonnie Stoll’s stories to life and be recognized for it felt really, really good.”

Tough outlook: “We are experiencing a pretty serious contraction in the nonfiction market,” she says. “I don’t know if ‘Cutie and the Boxer’ could be made today and that is one of my favorite films.” 

Alex Wagner 

Host, “Alex Wagner Tonight”  

The host of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight” approaches every story with intellectual curiosity and rigor. “Our job as journalists is to drink from the fire hose and enjoy it,” Wagner says of the unrelenting news cycle. Surveying Donald Trump’s criminal trials and an impending election she characterizes as “one of the most consequential moments in American political history,” Wagner emphasizes the importance of transparency with viewers about the facts of every story — especially if they aren’t correct. “The only way you’re going to get people to trust you is first by showing that you’re not infallible — and when you are wrong, you acknowledge it.”

Up Next: Avantika 

Actor, “Mean Girls” 

Avantika, an Indian actor that goes by her first name, booked roles in “Diary of a Future President” and “Sex Lives of College Girls” before landing the role of Karen in Paramount’s remake of “Mean Girls.” She learned that she would play her favorite character from the original film in an email after one audition. Avantika wants to explore more genres that women of color aren’t represented in and is interested in “paving the way so that more women of color can take up those opportunities.” Next up: the horror film “Tarot,” which will be released May 3.  

Up Next: Nabiyah Be 

Musician, Actor, “Daisy Jones & the Six”

The Brazilian-born daughter of reggae star Jimmy Cliff sang backup for him as a child and performed in the original Off Broadway production of “Hadestown” before tackling the role of disco queen Simone Jackson in Hulu’s “Daisy Jones & the Six.” Be isn’t too far off from her musically inclined counterpart: She has two singles coming out this May and album set for second quarter of the year, which she describes as pop and Brazilian with “some other flavors.” Of the show, she says: “I learned so much about the women that pioneered disco music,” she says. “And maybe one day I’ll get to really give them the shout out I want to.”

Up Next: Nichelle Lewis 

Actor, “The Wiz”

Lewis was singing on TikTok when she caught the attention of the creative team for the Broadway-bound revival of “The Wiz.” Her rendition of “Home,” the show’s pivotal 11 o’clock number, landed her an audition, and ultimately, the role of Dorothy. After a six-month national tour, the Virginia native and the cast landed in New York last month, where she now leads the ensemble in her Broadway debut.

Up Next: Francesca Scorsese 

Actor, director, awards season chronicler  

An emerging actor and director in her own right, Scorsese provided a series of disarming behind-the-scenes glimpses of the awards campaign trail, accompanying her filmmaker father to the Cannes premiere of “Killers of the Flower Moon” through the Oscars, posting video of the renowned director enjoying Ryan Gosling’s elaborate rendition of “I’m Just Ken” on social media. Her short, “Fish Out of Water,” dedicated to her ailing mom, screened at Cannes last year and in competition at Tribeca, and she has a role in Cannes-bound “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” alongside Michael Cera. Which creative endeavor does she prefer? “That’s kind of the dilemma of my life right now,” says Scorsese, an NYU grad who grew up thinking she was just going to direct but finds herself drawn to acting as well. As for fatherly advice: “He’s really nosy, but not in a bad way,” she says. “He’s always bugging me about what my next thing is.”

Up Next: Demi Singleton 

Actor, “Lawmen: Bass Reeves”

After playing young Serena Williams in “King Richard,” Singleton joined the Western series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” as Sally, the daughter of David Oyelowo’s title character, the first Black U.S. deputy marshal to serve west of the Mississippi. “She’s a writer, and I feel like her poetry is a way for her to escape her reality,” says Singleton, who is glad to share Bass Reeves’ story with the world: “He and his family are finally getting the credit that they deserve for what they did for their people, for other people, for everyone during their time.” 

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• Normani, On Her Own Time

Five years after releasing her first solo single, the pop star’s debut album is imminent. Normani explains the wait.

On an April afternoon in West Adams, a historically Black neighborhood in South Los Angeles, Normani emerges from a dressing room after several hours of fittings, swathed in cream and white. Andrea, her camo-clad mother, flits about the day’s photo-shoot set like a self-appointed creative director, checking screens to offer sporadic affirmations — “Oh, that’s good , Mani” — or candid styling suggestions — “Push her undies down so they aren’t showing!” The air is thick with banjos and Beyoncé shrieks. Lately, Normani has been listening to just two things: Cowboy Carter , presently playing in full for the second time this afternoon, and Dopamine, her long-delayed debut album set to release on June 14. Despite the throng of people assembled behind the monitor, Normani seems relatively at ease. She’s used to being looked at, after a decade in the spotlight, but is hyperconscious of the ways in which she is perceived. When unsure about a particular look or pose, she might ask, a few times, to see the image. When she feels good, she parts her lips, softens her expression, and tips her head toward the light.

In motion, Normani is uninhibited. She hangs from a chain-link fence and twerks in the video for “Motivation,” her 2019 debut solo single; twists from a handstand split into a concrete split in the pouring rain; pirouettes like a Beyblade, bounces a basketball off her knee, and glances it off her butt, then launches into two backflips and a front handspring, flashing a cheer captain’s smile. At the MTV Video Music Awards that year, she descended from a basketball hoop and executed Sean Bankhead’s slick, high-octane choreography with surgical precision, then started getting riffs off two minutes into the routine; when her outfit snagged in her stage partner’s hand, she tore it from her body herself and twirled into a jaw-dropping dance break.

The music had been glitching in her ear, and she couldn’t discern whether she was even on beat. “I remember getting off the stage and feeling devastated because I wasn’t able to lose myself in the performance,” she tells me over lunch the day before the shoot, picking absently at a bowl of fruit. “I don’t even recognize when I’m being really self-critical anymore,” she says. “It takes other people outside of me to point out what I’m doing well.”

This was her first true performance as a solo artist and marked a clean break from the girl she was when marooned in the 2010s best-selling girl group Fifth Harmony: often relegated to the background, rarely singing lead. It was also, by all accounts, a star-making turn — a genre of athletic, elaborate showmanship that belongs to a vanished era of firebrand entertainers, like Tina and Janet and Prince and Michael, faithfully emulated today by just a handful of ambitious performers (almost none of them men or white).

“Motivation” was dripping with self-assuredness; the music video signaled an aughts R&B revival with its airbrushed tees, low-rise jeans, and balmy 106 & Park allusions to Ciara, Beyoncé, Britney, and Ashanti (by way of J.Lo). The song hung around on the charts for ten weeks, was certified platinum by the RIAA, and was beloved by fans and critics; one Rolling Stone writer likened its buoyant, triumphant horns to the sound of a “pop superstar be[ing] born.” At the time, Normani was on tour with Ariana Grande, who co-wrote the song, and it seemed an optimal time to announce a first album. In September 2019, she went on the Zach Sang Show and suggested that the project was halfway done; a December cover story in The Fader said she was “just months out from the release.” Then: nothing.

Five years later, Normani’s truancy has ossified into an online meme. It was like she’d taken to heart that line from Yukio Mishima’s Star, when a jaded actor plays hooky on his own 24th birthday: “A star is more of a star if he never arrives.” The sentiment that coalesced online was that she was letting her moment pass her by, that she didn’t care about her fans, that, soon enough, everyone would get bored and move on. “No idea where Normani’s motivation (no pun intended) has gone, but I just don’t see the same passion from her as I used to,” one fan wrote on Twitter back in 2022 in a since-deleted post. “Before y’all start, it’s not depression so don’t even go THERE!” “What happens when you’ve gotten comfortable and you’re not HUNGRY anymore,” said another in a quote tweet. Normani’s abbreviated reply, which still remains on her X account: “Just shut the fuck up.”

It’s not that she wasn’t working on music — she has revised Dopamine four or five times, injecting it with more of the southern hip-hop and smooth-R&B flavor she grew up on. (She held songwriting camps in New Orleans.) “I could’ve put three albums out by now in that duration. I’m not oblivious to that,” she says. “But I felt like I owed it to myself to be able to take my time, and reinvent, and be experimental.” Fifth Harmony had no artistic control over their own music, she says. They were simply given records, then told to sing them. In the aftermath, Normani resolved only to release music that she could stand behind. She initially hated “Motivation” and all its pop refulgence. “I didn’t feel like it represented me,” she says, “and I’d already known how that felt. But the label was like, ‘Sorry, it’s coming out.’” (RCA declined to comment.) She remembers compromising with the music video, of which there are 50 edits: “This needs to be Black as fuck. ”

Dopamine is named for the emotional roller coaster of her last several years, the peaks and valleys of a life she has mostly kept private. In 2020, Normani’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time after being in remission for 19 years. The following year, just when Andrea had completed chemotherapy, doctors found a lump in her father, Derrick’s, prostate: He had cancer, too. Normani considers herself closer with her family than any of her friends. Suddenly, both her parents were fighting for their lives, while the public breathlessly demanded more pop songs. “You don’t even know the half of it. I was just like, ‘Fuck all of this,’” she says through tears. How does an artist craft shiny, escapist songs that make others feel sexy and invincible when their own life feels totally disconsolate? “I needed to be at home, with my family,” she says. She was living in L.A. at the time, far from her parents in Houston, but they both urged her to keep working on her album and not to defer a dream they’d all participated in since Normani was 3 years old.

“My mom was like, ‘I’m still going to be here the day you put that body of work out. I’ll be here at the end,’” she says. “And I held onto that.”

Normani Kordei Hamilton was born in 1996 to a mother who was a flight attendant and a father who was a union official. The family moved from Atlanta to New Orleans in 1999, and whenever her parents were away for work, her grandmother, Barbara, would take care of her. She was 3 when she fell in love with musicals. She remembers watching John Huston’s 1982 film, Annie , and turning to look at her mother, saying, “Mom, I want to do that, I want to be in the TV.” Her parents took her seriously and enrolled her in dance classes; it was Barbara who paid for them and sewed all of her costumes. By the time she was 8, she’d grown fond of the dance-focused music videos she’d see on BET’s 106 & Park and would do the choreography for Destiny’s Child tracks with her friends at birthday parties. (They were partial to “Soldier” and “Cater 2 U.”) Ordinarily, Normani was shy and quiet. But when she performed, she would become someone else.

She was 9 when the newscasters started warning of a hurricane. Her father was in Tennessee for work. Her mom had just returned from a long trip. At first, the reports seemed extravagantly cautious. To live in the coastal South was to be terminally braced for disaster with those warm, tropical winds rolling endlessly off the Gulf of Mexico like a pleasant threat. “Nobody thought it was going to be that bad,” Andrea remembers. On August 29, 2005, under the star-studded tarp of the 3 a.m. sky, Normani said good-bye to a friend who was sleeping over, dropped her off at home without knowing when they’d see each other again, and left with her mother, great-uncle, and grandmother for a family friend’s home in another part of Louisiana. In the morning, decades of federal hubris and neglectful policy were thrown into sharp relief. They awoke to the news that the unfinished storm-protection system in New Orleans had failed; that the levees had broken; that the city was flooded with waist-high dirty water. News footage showed bodies floating down the street. The Hamiltons had purchased their home just three months prior.

When they snuck back into the city to recover some of their belongings, her parents found the neighbor’s shed in their pool. Their family photos were all destroyed. There wasn’t much to take, but they took whatever they could, left behind the pet turtles, and decided to start over in Texas. “We were in the car,” recalls Normani, “and my mom asked, ‘Do you want to go to Dallas to see your godmother? Or to Houston with your cousin? I hear Beyoncé is from there.’” She laughs. “That was the deciding factor.” In Houston, they stayed in a motel for four months, depleting their savings and stretching their food. Normani, who was entering the sixth grade, struggled to adjust in school and tried four before deciding to be homeschooled. The arrangement, though socially isolating for an already introverted girl, gave her the space to commit more fully to dance, gymnastics, and singing. Her mother would crisscross the States every weekend to bring her to dance competitions and shuttle her to Los Angeles for various auditions. (At 13, she briefly appeared on HBO’s Treme, as a child caught in a post-Katrina New Orleans.) She didn’t get into Kinder HSPVA, the performing-arts high school that Beyoncé attended, but she did get on X Factor , Simon Cowell’s music-competition series, in 2012 at age 15. The judges (Britney Spears, L.A. Reid, Demi Lovato, and Cowell) didn’t think she was ready for a solo career, but Cowell and Reid thought she had potential in a five-piece outfit. They merged her with four other young women, Dinah Jane, Lauren Jauregui, Camila Cabello, and Ally Brooke, who had also auditioned as solo artists, and had them sign a joint record deal under Reid’s label Epic Records via Syco Music, the same Cowell-owned label that backed Little Mix, CNCO, and One Direction.

Fifth Harmony became one of the most commercially successful girl groups of all time over a span of six years, selling 33 million records. For Normani, the group was a blessing that also traumatized her. She refers to her “time in the group” like a prison sentence ordered and duly served. She didn’t mind that her solo audition — she sang Aretha Franklin’s bluesy “Chain of Fools” — didn’t translate to an immediate solo career because she came of age as an acolyte of TLC and Destiny’s Child; it hardly felt like a rejection to be pitched as the 21st-century Spice Girls. “I didn’t want to be at the forefront,” she says, because she was grateful for the ability to hide. “It wasn’t until later that I started feeling like a token.”

One morning in the summer of 2016, Normani awoke to images circulating online of her face superimposed onto gorillas and lynched Black people, messages from strangers referring to her as “Normonkey,” and death threats in her inbox. “I remember going on social media and seeing my daughter’s face Photoshopped on bodies of people being whipped,” says Andrea. A few days before, Normani had casually described Cabello as “quirky” and “cute” in an interview , and a swathe of fans, who sensed tension between the girls, interpreted it as a dig. They responded with vitriol, singling out Normani, the only Black girl in the group. (Cabello’s social-media footprint later revealed racist posts of her own from the early days of the group; in 2020, Normani said, “It was devastating that this came from a place that was supposed to be a safe haven and a sisterhood.”) Fifth Harmony was on tour at the time, and nobody from Epic or Syco reached out to her. “We just continued to do shows, and I was fearing for my life,” Normani says. “But they continued to put me out there on the stage. It was pretty much like, ‘The show goes on.’” On one occasion, a fan who had threatened to kill her had to be ejected from a show. (Then shortly after Cabello’s sudden departure in December 2016, audio leaked of Jauregui complaining tearfully that the girls were overworked, “doing fucking labor every day and [seeing] nothing,” and being treated like “literal slaves.” In the summer of 2017, the four remaining members  told an L.A. Times reporter they felt burned out and that the label was controlling them like “puppets.”)

The experience disfigured her relationship with the label, with journalists, with the other girls in the group, and with people calling themselves fans. “It was probably the lowest point for me,” she says of that summer. She was only 20. She and Andrea remember how people would come to meet-and-greets and walk straight past Normani, as if she didn’t exist. It rattled her sense of self and exacerbated her anxieties about being a Black woman in the public eye: She says she felt alienated and unprotected while also deeply exposed. “I have given so much of myself to you by choice,” she wrote on Twitter in August 2016. “I choose to let you in.” From then on, she chose not to and limited her online presence both on X and on Instagram.

Even today, she says, she prefers to leave social media to her management. Her posts have a cool, measured remove to them and rarely reveal too much about her personal life. “I’m not on social media,” she tells me, “but I do see a lot, and I’m very tapped into what y’all are saying.” Recently, one of her more popular fan pages, @NormaniNation , tweeted a screenshot of her Instagram, where Normani had just deleted all of her posts. “WHAT IS HAPPENING,” they wrote. People quickly noticed the screenshot showed the user was signed into Normani’s own account, suggesting that the artist or her team might be running her own fan page. “No, I mean, I’m definitely heavily involved,” she says calmly when I ask about her relationship to her fan accounts. But does she run any of them? Does her team at RCA? “Yeah, I think we can skip this question,” her publicist says.

Dopamine didn’t really start coming together until 2021. It was the thrumming bass, silky vocals, and loose, “One in a Million”–inspired drums of “Wild Side” that confirmed for Normani she’d finally arrived at a sound she felt she could own. It was the first song she made in the aftermath of her parents’ cancer diagnoses and the direct result of her mother urging her not to let her hiatus continue for too long. (Her parents are both now in good health.) “That time shifted the way I view and navigate life,” she says. “I don’t fear things the way that I used to.” In her previous tracks early into going solo, it sometimes felt as though she was trying on secondhand outfits, adopting the musical styles of the artists she split the songs with: The warm guitar licks and finger snaps on “Love Lies” belonged more to Khalid’s universe; those ambient synths and bass whomps on “Waves” had long been part of 6lack’s chilly, twilight language; and the summery, reggae-tinted club jams with Calvin Harris could have fit snugly on his Funk Wav Bounces Vol 1 .

“Wild Side,” though, was nocturnal and assertive and grown and sexy but not so mature that it was above a playful line like “Fuckin’ it up like oopsie-daisy / Ain’t no ifs, and, buts, or maybes.” Normani believed in the song enough to fund the music video herself, which cost upwards of $1 million; it’s a psychedelic, gravity-defying montage of leopard print, crushed velvet, and acres of glistening skin that sees the singer phasing through ceilings, doing the splits in full leather, and dancing with a doppelgänger like the closing scene from Annihilation . In a standout moment, Normani and Cardi B embrace, nude, on a platform suspended by chains.

Her album telegraphs this same sultry, bossy energy. Lead single “1:59,” featuring Gunna, is an understated, downtempo R&B track built on a fuzzy, aughts-esque guitar loop and gorgeous vocal stacking; her delivery of “Turn me up” in the intro is reminiscent of how Aaliyah opens “4 Page Letter.” The song even gets a bridge, a distant relic in our era of music. “Candy Paint” is a braggadocio of a pop song with loose, bouncy idiophone percussion: “If you let me take him you may never get him back / I’m a baddie and I don’t know how to act,” Normani sings sweetly, like it isn’t really her fault. One track scans like a love letter to the South with its cool bass line, leaping horns, and nods to Pimp C; another, one of her favorites, is spacious and atmospheric with a feature from an unexpected guest. “I feel like a lot of people who’ve heard it are really surprised,” she says of the assist, “but that’s the point — I wanted to be able to flex my taste.”

When we speak again a couple weeks later, she has just spent the morning celebrating her mother’s birthday. “We’re just having a girl’s day,” she says, which in this case means brunch, an appointment with the lash tech, a manicure, and a massage. “She says she wants a tattoo,” she tells me with a flutter of laughter. “It’s funny because growing up, she was always like, ‘It’s not worth it to get your bellybutton pierced or to have tattoos. Your body is a temple.’” Normani has two: the bootlike outline of Louisiana on her right ankle, and the phrase “God’s Daughter” in script on her clavicle. Both were impulsive decisions. “Because I think so much and I’m so intentional when it comes to music-related things, or anything to do with my career, when it’s something outside of that, I allow myself to move before I can second-guess myself,” she says.

Normani has lived by herself for the last two years. “I really spend a lot of time alone,” she says. “And I’m happy with that.” She likes to go on solo dates: dinner at Nobu, the theater for a scary movie. When it comes to romance, though, she values the ability to surrender, to have someone else decide where to go to dinner. “I think it can be controversial when you say you like to be submissive, especially in this day and age of feminism,” she says. “But especially for me, being an alpha female — specifically in my work environment, where I’m having to lead and wear so many different hats — it’s nice to be able to come home and feel protected in my relationship. And to find stability in knowing that, there, I’m going to be led well.” Is that kind of man rare? “There ain’t nothing out here, chile,” she says. “I’m very blessed, but it’s scary times for sure.”

As for the album, Normani would be lying, she says, if she pretended not to feel the weight of so much anticipation. “For so long, I allowed music, numbers, and how successful I am define me,” she says. That’s another reason why Dopamine has taken so long: She needed time to actually live for herself. She was sheltered in her childhood by homeschooling, and it made her feel as if she were removed from other people. “I’ve always felt like I can hold a conversation, but, like, I’d rather not,” she tells me, laughing. “I have this anxiety when it comes to being seen too much or people seeing through me.” When she was about 14, just before she got on X Factor , she told her mom that she wanted to go back to school. It frustrated her that there was nothing she could relate to with kids her own age; most of her socialization happened in gyms and dance classes, where the lingua franca was judgment and criticism. “I never experienced my own prom, and I never went to football games. I don’t know anything about that,” she says. “I felt like I needed to experience things to actually be able to talk about them on a record, whether it’s my parents, or heartbreak, or even just being in tune with myself as a 27-year-old woman. There’s so much life I’ve lived in the span of creating this body of work.”

Correction: A previous version of this story stated that Normani was heading into music-video rehearsals.

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