Elle is on the cover of W Magazine’s march issue featuring a wonderful new photoshoot by Zoë Ghertner. Elle is sharing the cover with Kirsten Dunst and Rashida Jones.

Back in the 1980s, when Sofia Coppola was a teenager, the pages of this magazine looked a little different than they do now. Flipping through early issues, the filmmaker-to-be was drawn, she said, to “society hostesses posing in their glamorous settings, in those ballgown skirts.” Today, those stately images, featuring the likes of Deeda Blair, Lee Radziwill, and Marella Agnelli in their well-appointed living rooms, offer a respite from our current domestic state.
“I think we’re all so starved for some beauty and fashion after being home,” Coppola, 49, said of her vision for the project you see here. “I wanted the whole thing to be feminine and fancy, because we’re too casual these days. The idea is that these women are lying around like they’re tired after trying on so many gowns.”

Coppola chose to feature three of her closest collaborators, with whom she’s worked throughout her career: frequent muse Kirsten Dunst, whom Coppola first directed in The Virgin Suicides, when Dunst was 16 years old; Elle Fanning, who appeared in Somewhere at age 11 and in The Beguiled at 18; and Rashida Jones, the protagonist of last year’s On the Rocks and a longtime behind-the-scenes influence.
With Coppola appearing on a tablet screen from Belize, where she had been spending part of the winter with her family, photographer Zoë Ghertner captured Dunst and Jones in a Beverly Hills home on an evocatively gloomy day. Photographing Fanning, who is based in London while filming the second season of The Great, was an entirely remote affair, with both Ghertner and Coppola appearing via Zoom while Fanning posed in de Gournay scion Hannah Cecil Gurney’s Battersea house, chosen for its riot of ornate floral wallpaper. Ghertner’s 2-year-old son sat on her lap for part of the shoot, and Coppola’s 14-year-old, Romy—who, as an infant, used to hang out on her mother’s lap while Coppola was on set—popped her head into the frame at one point to say hello. “It was like playing photo shoot,” Coppola said. “I was sitting in my pajamas, having tea.”
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Elle is on the cover of Vanity Fair October’s issue featuring a wonderful new photoshoot by Tierney Gearon.

Elle Fanning has been acting since she was two. She’s 22 now, and there are estimates that she’s logged some 60 roles in her career, which would mean she’s already headed for Streep territory. During a Zoom call, I ask if this is true, or even logistically possible.

She tilts her head. “Could that be?” she wonders. “You know what? I did write it down one time, and I think I still have it on my phone.” She whips out a pink phone emblazoned with a sticker of the cartoon juggernaut Strawberry Shortcake. Her fingers fly.

“Thirty-six,” she announces finally.

The former child star recently triumphed with what she refers to as her “first woman role” as Catherine the Great in The Great—Hulu’s raunchy, rollicking, and, at times, gleefully ahistorical account of the monarch’s bold rise to power—but, at home, her life is reeling decidedly backward through time. Like many of us, Fanning has retreated to a safe space during the coronavirus pandemic. She’s cocooning in place at her mom’s house in the San Fernando Valley with her 26-year-old sister and fellow actor, Dakota; their mother; their grandmother; and the family’s elderly pet schnoodle (mini schnauzer-poodle), Lewellen.

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The writer behind ‘The Favourite’ penned a bawdy, satirical and not-so-accurate tale: “We actually pride ourselves on the lack of historical accuracy,” says Fanning with a laugh.

Lying atop the red velvety covers of an ornate four-poster bed in a gold-soaked set on a rainy day in London, a sickly looking Nicholas Hoult takes swigs from a bottle of water between takes.

“Men love me for my parties, women and … [gulp] … delicious food,” he splutters moments later after the camera begins rolling (bottle now hidden under the blanket), groaning and retching while Elle Fanning, in a corseted light-green gown and tightly curled blond wig, stands at his feet, feigning concern.

“And women love me for my massive cock.”

Welcome to the world of The Great, Hulu’s bawdy, satirical and not exactly (in many cases, not remotely) historically accurate retelling of the early years of Russia’s famed 18th century monarch Catherine the Great.

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The star and executive producer of the bawdy historical comedy on boundaries, blood, and bare bottoms.

The Character: Catherine the Great, The Great
In The Great’s first episode, a pink-cheeked Catherine (Elle Fanning) pilots a flower-entwined swing and burbles to a friend about how romantic her wedding to Russian Emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) will be. But after Catherine is delivered from her sleepy German village to the Russian palace, her girlish dreams are dashed when she meets the tyrannical and narcissistic Peter. As she solemnly presents him with an evergreen as a symbol of their love, he turns to one of his minions and barks, “She gave me a twig. She’s not another inbred, is she?”

It’s the abrupt end of her innocent imaginings, as well as the start of a young woman’s campaign, aided by her wit and charm, to plot a putsch—after Catherine learns that if Peter just happens to be killed, she can claim the throne.

“It’s been phenomenal to watch Elle grow into this character as a performer, to balance a tightrope in bringing her to life as this woman who is naive but strong, and also powerless at times,” says Hoult. “[She’s] understanding this new world she’s been thrown into, and also her raison d’être.”
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