The inimitable Marie Brenner has been writing profiles and investigative stories for Vanity Fair since the 1980s, and her interview in this issue with Elissa Slotkin is an instant classic. Marie started spending time with the junior senator from Michigan back in early December, before Slotkin made headlines pushing back at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and OMB director Russell Vought during their Senate confirmation hearings, before she gave the Democratic response to Trump’s joint address to Congress, but just in time to present this sharp portrait as a party searches for its new standard-bearers. Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, has all the ingredients for political success: a compelling personal story, a backbone, and a voice (and in her case, principles to boot). Above all, she radiates authenticity, the quality that by definition you can’t fake. “The thing I pride myself on the most is that I am independently minded,” she tells Marie. “I’m hard to put in a box. But on social issues, I don’t try to tell other people how to live. I don’t always agree with my party on fiscal issues, national security issues. But on who gets to be in the club? I have a pretty expansive view of who gets to see themselves as equal citizens. And I never liked the bullying that went on in certain Republican circles. It really bothers me.”
Another instant classic: Anthony Breznican’s cover story on Sebastian Stan, who is fascinating as a leading man. His range is tremendous; who else could pivot from Gossip Girl to Captain America’s sidekick Bucky Barnes to a young Donald Trump?
Stan comes to acting with an immigrant’s history, a kid who threw himself into stage roles because they offered him different ways to envision himself in his new world. His mother, Georgeta Orlovschi, a pianist, fled political upheaval in Romania, first for Vienna, where she established herself before sending for Sebastian to join her, then to the States. This winter, she accompanied her son to the Oscars, where he was nominated for best actor for his role in The Apprentice, the film written by VF’s Gabriel Sherman, about Trump’s rise to power under the tutelage of Roy Cohn. Stan’s father had left Romania even earlier, going into exile after having worked to help other Romanians escape government persecution. “I have always made the argument that immigrants to some extent are more patriotic than even the people that are born here because they don’t take things for granted,” Sebastian tells Anthony in reference to his father—words that resonate deeply at this particular moment, when our own government is denying even legal immigrants their rights.
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