Olivia Nuzzi’s future at Condé Nast is up in the air. The New York Times reports that Vanity Fair is looking into allegations that the journalist, who made headlines last year for having an affair with RFK Jr. while reporting on him for New York magazine, may have also had a relationship with another subject.
Nuzzi’s ex, fellow journalist Ryan Lizza, made waves earlier this week after publishing a Substack essay in which he revealed that Nuzzi, 32, had another affair with a subject years before her dalliance with Kennedy: former Republican Rep. and South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, who is 32 years her senior.
While news of her fling with Kennedy, 71, cost her a job at New York magazine, Vanity Fair was undeterred, hiring her earlier this year for a newly-created position as the magazine’s West Coast Editor.
Now, even that role appears to be at risk, with a spokesperson for the magazine telling the Times, “We were taken by surprise, and we are looking at all the facts.”
During her year in the wilderness, Nuzzi worked on and published American Canto, an excerpt from which was published in Vanity Fair on Monday. More details from the book were shared as part of a New York Times profile of Nuzzi published last Friday.
Some of the revelations from Nuzzi’s book include details of Kennedy’s “secret drug habit,” which contradict his public claims of sobriety, including that as recently as last year, he was taking psychedelics. He also confided in Nuzzi that he “liked uppers.” Kennedy previously used heroin, but claims he kicked the habit in 1983, a year before his brother David died of a drug overdose.
Another anecdote from Nuzzi’s book revolves around the parasitic brain worm that had allegedly burrowed into Kennedy’s brain, with Nuzzi writing that she “winced” when Kennedy would joke about the worm.
“I did not like to think about it, just as later I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny,” Nuzzi wrote. “I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein.”
Allegedly, Kennedy assured her that the idea of his having a brain worm was a fiction, despite him referencing it both in interviews and sworn testimony.
Nuzzi also claimed that Kennedy had told her he wanted her to have his baby. Nuzzi was engaged to Lizza at the time of her affair with Kennedy, with the pair breaking up after news of the relationship became public. Kennedy was, and still is, married to Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines.
In his profile of Nuzzi for the New York Times, Jacob Bernstein wrote of the journalist’s relationship with Kennedy, “She loved his eyes, ‘blue as the flame.’ She loved that ‘the sight of something as trivial as a rose’ could move him to tears. She loved his insatiable appetites and his ‘particular complications and particular darkness.’”
“But she said ‘I love you’ only after he said it first. He called her ‘Livvy’ and wrote her poems. He said he wanted her to have his baby. He promised to take a bullet for her,” Bernstein continued.
Kennedy has denied ever engaging in a relationship with Nuzzi. At the time of her firing from New York magazine, Nuzzi said in a statement that her relationship with Kennedy had “never turned physical” but that the pair had exchanged intimate photos.
“During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source,” she said. “The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”
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