KAIA GERBER SLAYS IT ALL

VANITIES

Catwalk. Back lot. Boardroom. Bookshelf. Rebecca Ford meets a self-confident, self-aware multihyphenate

To look at Kaia Gerber is to see the past and present collide in a single face. Take, for example, a scene from the second season of her kitschy Apple TV comedy, Palm Royale. Gerber is sprawled across a bed. The lighting is low; the mood, moody. Her already long limbs seem to lengthen in the powder blue nightgown that floats around her. Her hair is Bardot-worthy, cascading in waves from under a baby blue headband that's tied in a neat bow. She's the very picture of midcentury Hollywood glamour, a vision of the 196 Os brought to life.

But even dolled up like this, Gerber wouldn't look out of place in a Pepsi commercial or a George Michael video. As the daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford, she carries the unmistakable hallmarks of her lineage: striking bone structure; luminous eyes; that radiant, camera-ready smile. Her parentage undoubtedly opened doors for Gerber in the fashion world, at least at first; she's been strutting on catwalks since she was 16 years old. At 24 she's starring in Sarah Burton's first campaign for Givenchy, working as a Mango ambassador, and teaming up with Vuori on By Kaia, a capsule collection inspired by her mother's retro workout style.

But in moments like that Palm Royale scene, Gerber is also forging a new trail. Crawford drew crickets when she tried to launch an acting career with the 1995 flop Fair Game; Gerber, though, is an indemand presence on screens both large and small. What's more, she knows exactly what you're thinking when you watch her—the model-beautiful daughter of history's most famous model—and she's ready to beat you to the punch. "I kind of play with people's perception of me and projections onto me," says Gerber. "So to play a character that mirrors that in a lot of^ays"—Palm Royale's Mitzi is, yes, an aspiring model—"it was really a cathartic experience." And Mitzi is not the only one who's found new footing. "I do see a different person this year," says Gerber's costar Kristen Wiig. "She has a self-confidence, a light inside of her that is allowing her to take chances and explore."

Gerber is not just smart: She's actually a nerd, an inquisitive bookworm with endless curiosity. (More on that later.) Just as importantly, she's clever enough to use her famous parentage to her advantage.

"It's so crucial to be able to make fun of yourself," she says. "I truly believe that if you can't laugh with everyone else—if you can't laugh at yourself—life will be such a challenge for you." The Nigerian British poet Caleb Femi may have put it best, says Gerber, paraphrasing his poetry collection The Wickedest: "You either laugh or you rot."

Once upon a time, Gerber dreamed of dancing on a table in leg warmers. In elementary school she watched Fame; when asked to name her ultimate ambition, she answered, "I want to go to Juilliard." But before the Malibu native could audition, she made her runway debut for Calvin Klein, wearing a black-and-white Western-style silk shirt with a blue turtleneck and bright yellow satin pants. Crawford, naturally, was watching from the front row.

Gerber was an instant sensation. "I kind of got swept up in it," she says now. In the autumn-winter 2020 season, an 18-yearold Gerber walked in 24 shows. Around the same time, an idea began to nag at her. "Iwas like, 'Am I peakingright now? Is this the best it's going to be?' " she says. "I'm just becoming an adult. What am I going to do?"

Then COVID-19 shut everything down— an unexpected blessing for Gerber, whose packed schedule suddenly emptied out. She seized the moment, enrolling in a Brooklyn acting class that taught her essential lessons about how to sit with her own discomfort. "Embarrassment is so underexplored, and we try to avoid it at all costs," she says, "but I think there's so much value in accepting and exploring embarrassment."

Superproducer Ryan Murphy has a knack for casting famous progeny with something to prove—Billie Lourd, Ella Beatty, Kim Kardashian. In 2021 he hired Gerber for her first major professional acting gig: Ruby, a butterfly-knife-wielding ghost tethered to one of American Horror Stories's haunted houses. She joined Murphy again for American Horror Story: Double Feature, playing a college student who's abducted—and impregnated—by aliens. Soon after, Gerber booked Bottoms, starring as a cheerleader who gets worked up because she's known merely for being gorgeous and popular when she's dying for everyone to know that she's "smart and super driven" as well. "When I realized that there was a place for me in comedy, I was like, 'You better beat everyone to the punch,' " she says. "You have to learn everything that someone might think about you or say about you and say it first."

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When her friends were devouring Harry Potter, she did a book report on Of Mice ana Men: "I traumatized my entire second-grade class."

A photo shoot allows her to tell a brand's story; performing requires her to tell her own. And still, some naysayers aren't sure she's even ready to do that. While comedy comes easily to Gerber, she's occasionally been dismissed when going for darker, more complex roles. "The biggest thing that I get— which is such an absurd thing to be told and also an absurd thing to be upset about, so I'm not complaining—is that someone who looks like me would never face challenges," she says. "I've gotten that feedback from people in the industry, from casting directors: 'She wouldn't go through something hard.' I never thought you could be complimented and brushed aside at the same time."

Though Gerber has a cool 9.8 million Instagram followers, she claims not to understand the public's fascination with her—least of all the paparazzi who trail her with relentless interest. "It happens to me more than my career warrants," she says. "I struggle a little with that: Why do people care? I am not doing that much." Perhaps they're so invested because Gerber's feed sometimes pictures her string of famous boyfriends, a list that includes Pete Davidson, Jacob Elordi, and Austin Butler. She is currently dating actor Lewis Pullman (son of Bill) and was spotted kissing him at the Venice Film Festival in September.

The attention bothered Gerber when she was younger, but she's come to accept it. Even if it makes dating a little bit tougher. "You might be on a second date with someone, and the whole world knows, and you're like, 'I don't even know if I like this person yet,' " she says. "I'm sure subconsciously it has impacted relationships. Maybe you feel like there's a little less room for mistakes. But I have made many and will continue to make them. I hope we're at a place societally where we 're not shaming women for dating, for having a love life and for having desires. "

What Gerber wants most of all is a cozy corner and a brand-new hardback. When her friends were devouring Harry Potter and Nancy Drew, she did a book report on Of Mice and Men: "I traumatized my entire second-grade class," she says. Novels have accompanied her on planes, backstage at Fashion Week, on the sets of ad campaigns—the only constant companions in the peripatetic life of a working model and actor.

Musician Gracie Abrams, who's been her friend for more than a decade, says Gerber would be a dream moderator for some sort of salon, "gathering people who are deep thinkers." Gerber inadvertently created that reality for herself when she and a friend whose name, incredibly enough, happens to be Alyssa Reeder began sharing book recommendations on social media. Their series grew into Library Science, a fullfledged book club and community forwhich Gerber interviews notable novelists, poets, and translators on a vast range of subjects. The enterprise has given Gerber a level of creative control and agency she wasn't getting from either modeling or acting. "When someone comes up to me and they say that they found a book because of me, it's truly the greatest compliment," she says.

Some of the best movie producers, I point out, also happen to be passionate, voracious readers. That idea had occurred to Gerber. "The goal is to hopefully produce—and not all stories for me," she says. "It's not just a vehicle for me to be on the big screen."

What could producer Kaia Gerber's movies look like? Her tastes are eclectic— she grew up loving Paper Moon as well as Fame and has room in her heart for both Todd Solondz's social satires and The Dark Knight. Like her pal Ayo Edebiri, Gerber used to review movies on a stealth Letterboxd page, but people have recently discovered that it belongs to her—so she may have to make a new, more clandestine account. "I spend way more time on Letterboxd than I do on Instagram or any other form of social media," she says.

I'd expected Gerber to be a little more guarded, having grown up in the public eye before getting famous on her own terms so young. Yet somehow she's an open book—warm, confident, and levelheaded. Abrams says Gerber has always had her feet "rooted on the ground. She never radiated any kind of anxiety or restlessness; she was always very centered, which I think you don't always see in young people." But while this poise comes naturally to her, she's also reached equilibrium through "a lot of therapy," says Gerber—both talk and psychedelic, which she started during the pandemic. And through modeling, a vocation that forced her to develop a strong sense of self. "Someone would tell me that I looked beautiful, and I would feel amazing. Then someone would tell me that I didn't, and I would feel terrible," she says. "So I really try to not allow either in."

Unlike many children of famous parents—her father, Rande Gerber, has been married to Crawford for 27 years—Gerber doesn't bristle at comparisons to them. Crawford, with whom she's shared runways and shot campaigns side by side, "truly is one of my heroes," she says. "The more that Iwork and become somewhat of an adult myself, I appreciate and respect everything that she's done."

Gerber is also acutely aware of the antipathy that's often aimed in the general direction of nepo babies. "I am positive that people have problems with it, and I absolutely get it—we're all so annoying," she says. "I'm sure it's also annoying to see someone who is successful at one career go into another career."

For the moment, Gerber plans to continue modeling even as she devotes herself more to acting. Right now, she's looking for roles that allow her to strip back, to go inward. At the same time, she's hoping to be offered the opposite: "dumb, dumb, stupid, stupid comedies." That's where Gerber is having the most fun—and getting the last laugh.