bitchy | Ayo Edebiri: ‘I had to slap literally God’s gift to humanity, Julia Roberts’

Ayo Edebiri is one of three November cover stars for Vogue Magazine. Nicole Kidman and Greta Lee are the other two. Vogue chose well – Greta, Nicole and Ayo have some of the hottest careers in Hollywood today. Ayo is 30 years old and she’s busy, busy, busy. This cover profile is mostly about After the Hunt, but Ayo has been booked solid for the past two years, and she’s booked solid for the next two years as well. It couldn’t have happened to a woman more prepared for it, honestly. She appreciates where she is professionally and the only thing she complains about is not having enough time to stay at home so she can clean and read books. Some highlights from Vogue:

She’s an early riser because she’s a former New Yorker: “No matter how early you get up in New York, there’s always somebody who’s either earlier or their day hasn’t finished. But in LA, it’s office hours.”

She’s lived in LA for six years, but it’s only felt like home recently: “I don’t really think I started to enjoy living here until last year. I liked it, but I don’t think it really meant anything to me. And I missed a lot of my friends on the East Coast.”

She attended a No Kings protest in LA recently: “It was actually amazing. We’re in such a weird empathy drought, which it’s hard not to be—you want to slash your own skin. But it’s like, If we’re supposed to be evolved people, we extend care to each other.”

Her character in After the Hunt: Maggie, to put it plainly, is a bit of a pill. She’s affected, sneaky, entitled (her adoptive parents are major Yale donors), and she takes a grating pleasure in talking down to people, especially men. Edebiri will often build playlists around her characters, and for Maggie, the sound profile was “a lot of noise. A lot of chaos and depressed, misplaced anger.” She also had, from early on, a very clear—and fairly devastating—vision for her look: “I sent Luca a bunch of girls with bad wigs, basically. I was like, I think that’s who Maggie is.”

She had to slap Julia Roberts in a scene, and Julia insisted that Ayo do it for real: “It was horrible. I had to slap literally God’s gift to humanity, Julia Roberts.”

Her dream vacation: “If I were to have 10 weeks at home—my dream—I would just be like, Great: I see two friends a week, I work out, and then I clean. I yearn to dump and donate.”

Turning 30: “I was one of those tragic children where, literally, an adult would come to me at a rave and be like, ‘You’re going to love 32.’  It’s so beautiful to know yourself more. I’m grateful for that—to just be learning about the depths of my heart, the things that I really care about. It wasn’t very long ago that I felt like I had all the time in the world. And immediately, I think maybe it’s because I’ve lost people”—a close friend of Edebiri’s died two years ago—“my parents are getting older, the world is in various states of disarray…”

Whether she wants to get married & have a baby: “I think about it quite politically, to be honest. If I have a baby, am I going to have this baby in America, where funding for research for the maternal death rate is being snatched away at every second? And I’m a Black woman, but also I’m in a position of relative privilege. So would I be able to afford a doula or private care that somebody else would not be able to afford? My brain goes there. But in terms of my own personal timeline, I’m not too concerned because I’m not putting that sort of pressure on myself.” Then, hearing what she’s just said: “My grandmother will be like, ‘That’s the wrong answer. You want a male husband and you want a baby tomorrow.’ ”

[From Vogue]

That part about what she thinks about when she considers motherhood is amazing. To give that kind of answer to Vogue! To talk about the politics of it, to vocalize your concern for giving birth to and possibly raising a child in America in this day and age. But she’s right and that’s another reason why the birth rate is declining. Also: while Ayo absolutely works her ass off and she’s incredibly talented, I also feel like she’s had so many industry figures who see her work and her talent and they’re just like “wow, I need to work with her and make sure that she’s getting everything she needs.” That seems to be the reaction to Ayo across the board – like, this young woman is something special, let’s make sure she’s protected from a lot of the bullsh-t.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Vogue.