CONTRIBUTORS

ALEC BALDWIN

This month’s cover story, an adaptation from actor Alec Baldwin’s memoir, Nevertheless, out this month, shares some of the richest moments of his illustrious career. These include his jittery early experiences on Saturday Night Live, where, 27 years later, his performances as Donald Trump quickly became icons of American resistance. “I don’t think I imitate Trump so much as spar with him, looking at his insincerities and outright lies that diminish the office,” says Baldwin, whose “Prince of the City” is on page 104. “Then we just hit him where he gives us an opening. And there are a lot of openings.”

SALLY BEDELL SMITH

“The Lonely Heir,” on page 144, is an adaptation from Contributing Editor Sally Bedell Smith’s Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life, in bookstores this month. “Prince Charles is so different from his far more straightforward mother, who has hewed to royal routines since taking the throne, at age 25,” says Smith, whose 2012 biography of Queen Elizabeth II was a best-seller. “It was important to explain the contrasts—as well as what binds monarch and heir.”

OSKAR EUSTIS

Oskar Eustis, artistic director of New York City’s Public Theater, explores the history of Angels in America, Tony Kushner’s celebrated seven-hour play about sexuality, religion, and politics during the early days of the AIDS crisis, in “Angels and Demons,” on page 120. A revival, starring Nathan Lane, opens this spring at the National Theatre in London. “Tony’s play is a brilliant evocation of the better angels of our American spirit,” says Eustis, who, this summer, will direct Julius Caesar at the Public’s free Shakespeare in the Park series.

MAUREEN DOWD

In “Elon Musk’s Future Shock,” on page 116, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd distills debates among tech titans about artificial intelligence and its catastrophic potential. “In Washington, we worry merely about the existential threat known as President Trump,” says Dowd, who interviewed Musk, along with other Silicon Valley leaders. “But in Silicon Valley, they also worry about the existential threat of our A.I. progeny.” Dowd’s best-selling book The Year of Voting Dangerously comes out in paperback this fall.

ERIC BOMAN

“Her whole person radiates contentedness,” says Eric Boman of pioneering literary editor Nan Talese, whom he photographed for “The Lady and the Scamp,” on page 128. Shooting in Talese’s Manhattan town house, where she lives with her husband, writer Gay Talese, Boman drew inspiration from “the feeling of being in Nan’s private universe, where for years she and Gay have entertained, not a red carpet in sight.” Boman’s latest book, A Wandering Eye: Photographs 1975-2005, was published last fall.

HOWARD BLUM

Investigating Christopher Steele, the retired spy who compiled the dossier on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, Contributing Editor Howard Blum resurrected his sleuthing skills from his days as a New York Times reporter. “Instead of using the library, I found my old trench coat and went knocking on doors, chasing people down,” he says of his work for “The Kremlin Connection,” on page 85. Next spring, Blum will publish a book about Cold War espionage.

MIKE MARIANA

In his first piece for V.F., “In Trump’s Amerika,” on page 96, reporter Mike Mariani examines the theory that the disorder in the Trump administration is intentional, a chaos strategy adopted from Russia. “I wanted to track down its predecessor in the propaganda tactics used by Putin,” Mariani says about techniques employed to cloud the news cycle. “We don’t use that word very often in America today—propaganda. But we should.”

JIM KELLY

Editorial Consultant Jim Kelly celebrates playwright Lucas Hnath, who, this month, makes his Broadway debut with A Doll’s House, Part 2, which picks up where Henrik Ibsen left off, when Nora Helmer slammed the door shut. “Lucas finds interesting entrances into the mansion of human relationships,” says Kelly, whose tribute, “The Ibsen Mystery,” appears on page 94. “Plus, I’ve never interviewed anyone with better hair—he could play for the Mets!”

CHRISTIAN WITKIN

For “Oslo Confidential,” on page 133, Christian Witkin photographed Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen, the Norwegian brokers of the historic 1993 Oslo Accords—which soothed, for a time, Israeli-Palestinian tensions— alongside the actors who play them in J. T. Rogers’s Broadway show, Oslo, currently at Lincoln Center. “The actors portray two serious political diplomats of commitment, insight, and political savvy, so for the shoot we stuck to a more serious note,” says Witkin, who is at work on a collection of female portraits called Ordinary Beauty.