Photographs by Morgan Maher, Styling by Natasha Wray
Emily Ratajkowski might be your fourite woman's fourite woman. You just know a night out with her would be a blast. She can toggle from Joan Didion and political discourse to reality TV and TikTok memes, high fashion and handbags – you’re going to he a good time.
Indeed, women are at the centre of Ratajowski’s universe right now. ‘Not centring men is really wonderful,’ she tells me. ‘In general, in our world, men he somehow filed this space, but what I found instead of it is community.’ The 34-year-old model, actor and author of the bestselling essay collection My Body – is sitting in front of a beautifully curated bookshelf in the New York apartment she shares with her four-year-old son Sly. On her T-shirt is an R Crumb illustration of a hairy, naked woman with large breasts doing a handstand.
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‘I still like men,’ she adds. ‘I just he zero straight men in my life, unless they’re a romantic interest. In the hierarchy of needs, that’s at the top of the pyramid, which is nice. [Men are] pleasure and fun, but not a part of my core. The rest of my life is community with other women and queer people, and being a mom.’ Hing dinner and drinks with these women – one of them being the model and actor Adwoa Aboah – is among her fourite things to do. ‘It’s so fun to talk sh*t with my friends,’ she says, laughing. The pair are going on holiday together this summer and, yes, ‘it’ll be brat’ (Charli xcx is another good friend).
Morgan MaherEmily Ratajkowski wears top, £1,100 and shorts, £1,980, both PRADAAboah and Ratajkowski also appear in this summer’s most- anticipated TV show, Lena Dunham’s new Netflix series Too Much.Ratajkowski plays Wendy, the model/influencer rebound girlfriend of the lead’s ex-boyfriend. It’s the first series Dunham has writtenand directed since the iconic Girls ended in 2017, and stars Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe as made-for-each-other lovers nigating the various pressures of their thirties. The hilarious script, brilliant performances from a cast that includes Andrew Rannels, Richard E Grant and Naomi Watts and Dunham’s zeitgeisty grip on the neuroses of a generation are sure to make it a huge summer hit.
‘Lena leans in to some of the more “feminine” ways of directing – over communication, consideration of everyone on set. Instead of being this domineering presence, her power lies in grace and in the ability to make everyone feel comfortable,’ explains Ratajkowski, who has been friends with Dunham for more than a decade. They met when Ratajkowski first shot to fame after appearing in a Robin Thicke music video, which she later described as a pretty horrific experience: ‘I didn’t he any real power as the naked girl dancing around,’ she wrote in the essay ‘Blurred Lines’, which was part of her book. ‘I was nothing more than the hired mannequin.’ Dunham, she tells me, was a welcoming and understanding ally, ‘when no one really was, to be honest’. They went on to share drafts of their books and give each other notes. Now, ‘it’s a really beautiful friendship’.
Dunham wrote the part especially for her friend, so Ratajkowski really couldn’t turn it down, which is something she often does these days. ‘I don’t agree to a lot of offers,’ she says. It’s because she’s busy writing and parenting. But also, she adds: ‘I really value control. In my twenties, I didn’t he a lot of it in my career. Now, I like making things and I like not being an addition to them. With Lena, I got to shape the character so much, which was really fun. It ge me a bigger role than just an actor for hire.’
Morgan MaherTop, £1,380, and shorts, £1,010, both PRADAThe show resonated for Ratajkowski as it explores the tension between the growing confidence and perennial sense of WTF that is so prevalent in one’s thirties. ‘I’m fascinated with this decade of my life,’ she tells me. ‘My mom had me at 39, and I remember she always romanticised her thirties as a time of self-exploration and power as a woman. I’m in the midst of it and really feel that way too.’
We discuss how, in your twenties, you might think, ‘Yeah, I want this’, but he no concept of time, because you hen’t lived enough. But now, being 34, she can remember what 24 was like. ‘I know exactly what 10 years feels like, and what consequences are.’
Now, she says, she understands how she can shape the next period. ‘You can’t control everything, but you can move towards something to give yourself the life you want, which really excites me, because when I think about 34 to 44, I’m like, “Oh man, there’s so much opportunity.” I can be so much more intentional than I was in my twenties and there won’t be, like, accidents.’
Morgan MaherDress, £4,300, PRADA Ratajkowski might be a successful polymath today (starring in films such as Gone Girl, being the face of Marc Jacobs’ new handbags and writing feminist polemics), but when she was younger she was ‘ashamed of being a jack of all trades, and really wanted to be the person who was really excellent at one thing’.
Her parents were intellectuals, and after they moved from London, where she was born, to California, she recalls her artist father hing a studio that was as big as their house, and her mother, a writer and professor, creating an entire reading curriculum for her from the age of five.
‘I don’t think my parents ever pushed me in a certain direction. We’re not religious people, so what we talked about was our stories, and politics. My dad would bring his paintings in when he was done, and we’d look at them and discuss them. And I was included in that.’
Morgan MaherHat, £1,100, PRADA. Earrings, Ratajkowski’s ownTalking to me about her own son, whom she had with her former husband, the producer Sebastian Bear-McClard, she says all she wants is for him to be good at critical thinking. ‘I don’t he any idea what he should do with his life. I think it’s great when you’re interested in making things and working with creative people. I want to give him that gift, but if he decides that there’s something that’s more fulfilling to him, that’s wonderful.’
It’s incredible to think that Ratajkowski was only 10 years older than her son is now when she was scouted and signed to Ford Models. Her parents were supportive, eventually, enjoying the financial security and the glamour it offered, but they were no doubt thrilled their only daughter later pivoted into acting and, later, writing.
She’s at a good point with her writing, she says, a year and a half on from ‘being in the misery of it’. After dropping Sly off at school, if she doesn’t he a car picking her up to take her to a shoot, she’ll return home to write and edit all day.
Morgan MaherCardigan, £1,610, and shorts, £690, both PRADA‘I used to be somebody who would write in bed and on my phone – basically anything to make it seem as if I wasn’t feeling pressure. Now, I actually really enjoy the ritual of sitting down and being like, “We’re getting to work.”’
Writing is, she tells me, what’s getting her through this moment in American politics. ‘I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about [writing], so it definitely provides a welcome distraction and focus. I hate when people, celebrities specifically, are like, “I’m just really just focusing on my own life right now.” It’s what we all do to survive [the sense that you he no control over nightmarish global politics] but, listen, the world could end tomorrow. It is important to really enjoy your life and take care of the people that you’re close to.’
She relates heily to a recent piece in The New Yorker by Jia Tolentino titled ‘My Brain Finally Broke’. (Ratajkowski admits she is ‘chronically online’, and if there’s a viral long-form feature, you can bet she’s read it.) In the article, Tolentino explains that ‘much of what we see now is fake, and the reality we face is full of horrors. More and more of the world is slipping beyond my comprehension’. ‘I’m so overwhelmed by the state of the world,’ Ratajkowski says. ‘It’s really hard. I used to feel slightly ashamed by that. But I think there’s something important in just being like, “I’m not really totally sure what to do.”’
Morgan MaherShe says that ‘every year I’ve become more and more left-wing, which is great because I think that in college there’s this idea that you’re going to become more conservative as you get older. But between Joe Biden and now Trump, I just feel more connected to [the left]. Basically, there’s no confusion for me.’
She describes the last four years of American politics as ‘being asleep at the wheel’. ‘With Biden,’ she says, ‘people were like, “He’s left-wing enough and he’s not crazy. He looks like what a president should look like.” He said the right things, and I think that a lot of people backed off being politically engaged. Now, we’re in a state of shock in the US, because just the first hundred days [of the Trump administration] he been this unbelievable news cycle.’
She points to the demonisation of transgender people and says: ‘I can’t believe what’s happening when it comes to trans people in this country. It’s terrifying. I he friends who are parents of trans kids, and they’re thinking about Canada, they’re thinking about moving. I he friends who’ve trelled internationally and been questioned, and he had their IDs changed. I don’t care about gender, other than as a personal expression. So it’s really hard for me to understand this thinking and the desire to control people. But the personal is political.’
Morgan MaherJacket, £2,650, trousers, £1,150, and bag, £4,150, all PRADA So, for Ratajkowski, is fashion. She becomes visibly animated, perhaps more so than she has been throughout the entire call, leaning towards the camera, her eyes darting mischievously. ‘It’s a little bit of a walk to my son’s school now, so I can’t wear heeled shoes,’ she tells me. ‘But, when I was in the city, we lived two blocks from his preschool, and I would often just lee for work from there. At that point I was hosting my filmed podcast, so I would be in an outfit.’
How did that go down with the other parents, I wonder. ‘Oh, I was definitely dressed up compared to them. I think that’s actually one of the ways I really enjoy being subversive with motherhood. There’s so much around what a mom should look like.’
Morgan MaherShirt, £1,610, PRADA She believes that people who are really concerned with how they come off as a parent maybe aren’t always necessarily focused enough on how they actually are. ‘I know what kind of mom I am, and I only deeply care about my son’s reaction to that. Anybody else who has opinions about me as a mother because of the way I dress – it’s just so inconsequential.’
I picture Ratajkowski dropping her son off at preschool this morning, wearing a fabulously explicit piece of art on her T-shirt, before tossing her beautiful hair over her shoulders, checking her phone, filming some hot takes and then heading home to write a feminist critique. ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s getting older. Maybe it’s motherhood, but it just is what it is,’ she says, shrugging.
And does she care about what other people think, I ask. ‘No,’ she answers. ‘I don’t think I do.’
HAIR: Hos Hounkpatin at The Wall Group. MAKE-UP: Emi Kaneko at Bryant Artists. NAILS: Maki Sakamoto at The Wall Group. STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS: Gal Klein and Kenny Paul. ON-SET PRODUCTION: Gigi Guldas
Morgan MaherThis interview can be found in the July/August issue - ailable on newsstands now.
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Lotte JeffsLotte Jeffs is the author of five books and their debut novel This Love, about the power of queer friendship, is out now.