Classic Reissue: Vanity Fair’s It Girl and The Smearing of Gretchen Mol

A rising star and the rumours that plagued her career...

This was my second-ever issue of the Gossip Reading Club back on the Letterdrop days. It seemed like a relevant topic to cover in the post-#MeToo era. Alas, it’s only grown more relevant.

Vanity Fair. "The Hazing of Gretchen Mol." September 1998. Ned Zeman.

(Read the profile here.)

The insidious force of Harvey Weinstein leaves a dark shadow across much of Hollywood. We may never fully understand the ways he irrevocably changed the film industry thanks to his bullying, business machinations, and systemic terrorizing of women. Before he was revealed to be a serial sexual abuser, the rumours of his "love" of certain actresses and his status as a puppet-master were infamous. Gwyneth Paltrow, for example, was nicknamed the First Lady of Miramax. Many of these gossip whispers focused on the so-called casting couch practice, playing up the idea that these women were somehow complicit in their own harassment, desperate for fame and willing to pay the price. We now understand the power dynamics at play and the ways that Weinstein vindictively lashed out at those who rejected him, such as Salma Hayek and Annabella Sciorra.

Gretchen Mol has never directly accused Harvey Weinstein of misconduct, but her career is forever defined by the role that he played in introducing her as a star in the making in the late '80s. A former model with bit parts in films by Spike Lee and Abel Ferrara, Mol lined up a number of bigger roles in 1998, including Rounders and Woody Allen's Celebrity. Both were star-studded projects, and both were Miramax titles. The company quickly went to work in making sure that Gretchen Mol’s status as the next big thing was guaranteed, culminating in this Vanity Fair cover.