This edition includes an essay from Celebrity Intelligence’s first ever guest writer. I’d like to thank India Oxenberg for giving me the weekend off and saving my marriage (joke) by giving us some quality time to catch up on The Comeback, Euphoria and my new guilty pleasure The Night Manager.
India is the perfect contributor to Celebrity Intelligence as she has spent more time than most thinking about the gap between who people appear to be and who they actually are. The daughter of Dynasty actress and royal descendant Catherine Oxenberg, she grew up inside exactly the kind of rarefied celebrity world her essay examines. Then she survived NXIVM, a cult that weaponized the very dynamics she writes about here, using the promise of belonging and access to devastating effect. She came out the other side with a clarity about image, performance, and the human need to feel seen that most cultural critics simply haven’t earned. India is also the author of From Numb to Normal, a spoken word-inspired poetry collection about fear, identity, love, humor, and becoming yourself again.
