The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements
Epilogue
PLAYING TO WIN
Emily Wickham, New York Times Magazine
“It’s weird to be back in California,” Whitman Tagore says, leaning over the pool table to line up her shot. “I forgot how friendly everyone is.” She flashes her teeth at me in a grin. “To your face, at least.”
The surprise announcement that Whitman is a nominee for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars probably helps, I say.
“Well,” she says. “It doesn’t hurt.”
It’s a relief to find her in good humor. Whitman Tagore doesn’t give many interviews, and I was late to meet her. She sent me an address on Crenshaw Boulevard where I spent ten minutes pacing outside what looked, frankly, like a shitty dive bar: a heavy door thick with grease, neon lights spelling out PABST and MILLER LITE in headache-spurring blues and whites, a SAVE WATER DRINK BEER sticker slapped against the half-closed aluminum shutters. I was peering in through layers of filth on glass and wondering if I’d fallen for an elaborate prank, when the door creaked open and Whitman Tagore leaned out.
“Come on in,” she said. “It’s Tequila Tuesday.”
Accordingly, Whitman is drinking a syrupy margarita served from a slushie machine (she declares herself “addicted”), and it won’t take long before the first round of slammers arrives. Considering the occasion, Whitman is remarkably relaxed, scruffy in her street clothes with newly short hair curling around her jawline. She has been rushed back to the States for a new round of pre-Oscars promotion from her home in the South of France where she has lived for the past four years, half runaway and half exile. She must be jet-lagged but she doesn’t look it. After our first drinks, she challenges me to a game of pool. Considering we are meeting only days after her shock nomination, I was expecting her to be more—well, shocked.
But her surprise has taken the form of high delight, with a dash of wickedness. “I was expecting to pay for my sins for another decade or so, but I guess they let me out of the doghouse earlier than expected.”
“Ah,” I say. “We’re going to talk about it right away.”
Whitman leans over the table, her cue balanced, her face intent and focused. As she sinks the ball, she says, “Everyone’s always talking about it.”
It would be hard not to. Whitman’s personal life has captured the public imagination as much as—and sometimes more than—her filmography, but five years ago it exploded into a drama even she couldn’t control. Revelations that her longtime boyfriend Leo Milanowski was secretly married to indie musician Lila Gardner were compounded by Gardner’s additional, widely circulated accusations that Whitman and Leo had never been a real couple. Whitman’s career—never scandal-free—dive-bombed into the dirt. Directors, producers, critics, and the public turned away in scorn, and All Rivers Run, her immediate release after the news, flopped at cinemas. Friends flocked to denounce her; hip-hop star Riva Reed released a platinum single that began, “I say he’s a king even though he’s a bore/tongue tying while I’m lying like my last name’s Tagore.”
Whitman’s response to the scandal was an erratic mix of silence and shameless PDA. She gave no interviews, made no appearances, went quiet on all social media, and accepted her censure without protest. At the same time, she was regularly photographed with Leo, as though she hadn’t noticed her elaborate fiction falling apart. Even now, she has never protested her innocence.
“It was a shit time,” Whitman tells me. “It really felt like I had lost everything. And then when I realized I hadn’t, that there was more for me than everything my life had centered on for a decade, that was also kind of terrifying. But, you know, it was a weird year. It was awful. It felt endless. And at the same time it was the happiest I’d ever been.”
It’s been a rocky road back into the public’s graces since Whitman’s weird year. Cast an eye over her output immediately after the scandal, and there’s little of note. A handful of independent films, most of them pretentious flops; a bit part in ensemble comedy RISK, which relied too heavily on fourth-wall wink-wink jokes; a gesture of reconciliation about as transparent as plastic wrap via her cameo in a Lila Gardner music video, which featured an artillery assault in pastel tones, Gardner ramming a baby-blue army tank through the gates of Whitman’s storybook mansion. She failed to land any meaningful roles, and while her few remaining fans were distraught, the majority of commentators agreed that it served her right.
It was around this time that Whitman first considered a switch to TV. Sick of ramming her head against the closed doors of Hollywood, she started hunting through pilot scripts and, late one night over a bottle of red, found Inter Alia. She stayed up until dawn reading and making notes, and at 7 a.m., she put in a call to showrunner Omar Shahbazi.
“It was definitely an unconventional pitch,” Shahbazi tells me. “She said, ‘Omar, everyone hates me, I’m toxic, and every time I try to fix it, I make it worse. I’m perfect for this role.’ I was trying to be professional and tell her, ‘Yeah, let’s meet, run some lines,’ and at the same time I’m waving the team over, like, whisper-screaming, ‘Fucking Whitman Tagore is on the phone.’”
HBO’s acclaimed comedy-drama stars Whitman as foul-mouthed, over-sexed Cleveland district attorney Mita Khan (with a spot-on midwestern accent). Early promo for the show leaned into Whitman’s position as Hollywood’s fallen angel and embraced her infamy. BAD REPUTATION, WORSE LITIGATION, the first teaser screamed, over a picture of Whitman dressed as Lady Justice, a sword in one hand and scales heaped with cocaine in the other.
The show quickly attracted a cult following that exploded into the mainstream with its third season, for which Whitman picked up her first Emmy. It has been praised for its nuanced approach to the US legal system and is certainly more explicitly political than anything Whitman has done before. It was a surprising move from an actress of color who has never seemed particularly interested in talking about race.
“We can talk about race,” she says now. “What do you want to talk about?”
I pause, slightly thrown, then ask her if she thinks she’s been treated differently, as an Indian woman in a historically white industry.
“Yes,” Whitman says, and smiles neatly. “Next question?”
I point out that many people, including other people from the Indian diaspora, have felt that she’s ignored her own position as a British Indian celebrity, a major woman of color in the industry. She could have chosen to campaign, to make an impact, to clear the way for other women like her. She could have spoken for her community.
Whitman considers. “The thing is, I was seventeen when I won the BAFTA. I was twenty when I stopped being able to go out in public. I’ve got a bunch of people telling me the best way to help other Indian actors in this industry is to speak up, and another, louder group of people telling me I’ll only be useful if I shut up, and I’m also trying to keep my own head above water and not go crazy. That was why Inter Alia was such a revelation for me—working with a really diverse team of writers and actors, issues of race and power are always on the table. And we considered it from numerous angles and perspectives, putting these power structures under the microscope, but trying not to draw easy conclusions. That’s something I want to keep doing, aligning my work with my values, and not fighting to justify myself and please everybody by saying, or not saying, the right thing.”
If I were more cynical, I might argue that Whitman is still avoiding the point. Is “letting my work speak for itself” essentially a fancier way of saying “no comment”? Whitman is infamous for her layers of defense and disguise, and it was her ceaseless tinkering with her public profile that exiled her from Hollywood in the first place. She has a habit of changing her image to suit her latest project: hiking through Utah and frowning into the distance before her compelling, controversial role as a hell-raising Calamity Jane; summering on the French Riviera and drinking Sancerre at the races when she was aiming for a slot as a Hemingway heroine. In the dive bar, she’s wearing a battered black leather jacket, big around her shoulders, and a baseball cap tugged low—a classic Mita Khan look, the sort of outfit she’d wear to threaten a state’s witness or seduce a Mafia kingpin on the sly. It’s as though the real Whitman Tagore is hidden somewhere deep beneath. Why is she so afraid to be herself?
Whitman’s smile is gentle and incredulous.
“Emily,” she says. “It’s just a jacket.”
It’s perhaps unsurprising that Whitman is willing to wade into these murkier discussions now, given the film that has catapulted her back into the spotlight. There was general outrage among English literature students and right-wing commentators when she was cast as Dorothea Brooke in Sophie Gammage’s lavish new production of Middlemarch. (if you’re GOING to make WHITMAN TAGORE a character in middlemarch at least know your shit enough to cast her as rosamond, one fan tweeted, referring to Middlemarch’s infamously manipulative antiheroine.) Casting an Indian actress as the pious, milk-skinned face of nineteenth-century English Puritanism seemed to move beyond colorblind casting and into straight lunacy.
“I don’t want to pretend it’s just a human story and I connect to the human individual in the text,” Whitman says. “That’s not true. It’s obviously a white story. But I think if you’re adapting a text like Middlemarch today, it’s worth interrogating why it has to stay so white. One of the things that struck me most about Dorothea is that she’s such an alien. Her sister doesn’t understand her, her guardian doesn’t understand her, her husband definitely doesn’t understand her. And even the man she’s in love with doesn’t understand her for a long time, he misinterprets her, he expects her to break out of circumstances that she can’t control. That didn’t feel so far away from me.”
Much of the public outcry about Whitman’s casting melted away when the film premiered at Cannes. Surrounded by an eclectic group of British talent, Whitman is staggering as Dorothea, bringing fresh life to a heroine routinely dismissed as boring. There is a moment, early in the film, when Dorothea goes to Rome and realizes that she has married the wrong man. She is standing in front of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and the camera moves slowly through the cathedral dripping in gold and marble before it stills in a wide shot that frames Whitman Tagore’s ravenous face against the agony of the saint. Something very minute changes in Dorothea’s expression, a flex of the jaw, a darkening of the eyes, and the effect is devastating. In my screening, the stern silver fox sitting next to me burst abruptly into tears.
It’s unsurprising that Whitman has picked up a nomination for Best Actress for this lush, clear-eyed film. She speaks of it with obvious pride and delight. “It kind of got into my blood,” she says, and adds, “my house is even in it.”
It’s true: one outdoor scene is shot in the hills behind Whitman’s home, offering a brief glimpse of a sloping gray roof and a windowsill laden with flowers. (It’s actually her bathroom, she tells me; they added the extravagant window boxes to hide the modern plumbing system.)
Even before Middlemarch, the house found its own place in the official Whitman Tagore mythology. It’s protected with a state-of-the-art security system and remote location, but once in a while tidbits or even photographs surface. Whitman idly references running through the hills behind her home; best friend and musician Shift posted a photo of Whitman lounging in the long grass on a golden summer afternoon, buttery sandstone walls covered in vines rising invitingly behind her. Last year the New York Post shared an exclusive cache of apparent family photos obtained from Leo’s older brother Geoffrey Milanowski, who was quoted saying, “Whitman Tagore is a great gal. Nobody’s perfect, but once you get to know her, she’s quite the treat.” Opening the family albums was meant to prove his point, and the internet had a field day over the photos, which included a Christmas scene with Whitman and Leo mid-hysterics presenting a very burned turkey to the camera and one of Leo sprawled out on a carpet, mid-conversation, with Whitman’s mother dozing in a chair behind him. The fan favorite was a cheerful shot of Geoffrey and sister Hannah, arms around each other out in front of the French house. In the background, just visible, Whitman and Leo are kissing, Leo’s hand gentle and possessive on her jaw. #WhitowskiLives trended for four days, but the most popular tweet of the week came from a pop culture journalist: can’t believe you guys are STILL falling for this shit.
Four days later, Whitman picks me up in a sickly orange Lamborghini that she tells me, a little embarrassed, she has borrowed from her publicist for the week. We’re headed for a complex in downtown LA, where she and her team are preparing for the first in a long series of dress fittings before the Oscars. “I’m talking to a few designers, but I like a dress that tells a story,” Whitman explains (big surprise). “We want to settle on the overall aesthetic before we make any decisions.”
Once we get downtown, Whitman is not the immediate object of attention. Instead, we arrive to find Leo Milanowski in a neat black suit, turning obediently from left to right as people flutter around him adjusting cuffs and taking Polaroids. His focus is absolute, his face almost severe in its blankness. His features conjure up classical sculpture, the same commanding beauty of something timeless and implacable, and he moves like a statue easing its way into life. He doesn’t react to us entering the room.
“Oh, he’s doing his photo shoot face,” Whitman says to me, and then Leo does turn, quick as a snake in the grass, to wink at her before his attention is back on the camera.
Leo will be Whitman’s date this year, hence the suit, which is not actually the no-brainer it seems. They don’t always attend these events together—Leo presumably has someplace to be, sometimes—and Whitman often replaces him with a member of her tight inner circle. Shift is a childhood friend who survived the crony cull to appear at premieres, and Whitman’s mother is becoming a recognizable, if not regular, red carpet fixture.
“It’s definitely not her favorite activity,” Whitman admits. “I think she still finds the whole thing very frivolous, she hates getting her hair and makeup done. She’s never been a stage mom.” Whitman pronounces this with a disdainful, American twang. “We were talking about the Oscars outfit and she was like, Why don’t you just wear what you wore last year?”
Leo laughs, back in jeans and a T-shirt after his fitting, and Whitman checks her watch. It’s already late morning, and she hasn’t even tried on the first dress. There’s a whole rack of samples from hopeful designers, and everyone has a different idea of what vibe she should be aiming for—metallic, regal, impenetrable? Pale green satin, sophisticated, relaxed? Severe in black? Leo is not consulted for his opinion but offers it nonetheless; he thinks it would be “cool” for Win to wear a cape.
The truth behind the explosive revelations and accusations leveled against Whitman and Leo five years ago remains unclear: whether Whitman broke up a marriage, whether Whitman and Leo were always or never a real couple, whether they were caught up in some seedy polyamorous drama. Of the many hundreds of think pieces published about the scandal, some suggested that Leo was just as invested in the attention as his faux lover, but most agreed that he had been snagged like a fly in a web.
Their relationship is still a subject of tabloid conjecture and feverish late-night forum posting. For those trawling for clues, all I can offer is that Whitman and Leo seem close. When we arrive, she hands him a slim black case that, he tells me with a grimace, contains his reading glasses—he’s not used to them yet, and keeps forgetting or losing them. “I’m on my fourth pair,” he says sadly. During the fitting of a very intense, geometric dress that keeps Whitman’s hands stiffly down at her sides, an assistant announces that Whitman’s mother is on the phone, and Leo answers the call for her. “Hey,” he says, moving to the back of the room and lowering his voice. “You were right, no one agrees with me about the cape.” At one point, tangled in a sheer web of chiffon, Whitman impatiently waves away her stylists and gets Leo to fish her out of the latest outfit. He is neat and capable, and his fingers trail up the back of her neck before he steps away.
All of this, observed from the outside, gives a very good impression of a genuine relationship. Though, of course, it always has.
While Whitman changes again, I probe a reluctant Leo about his latest venture, bankrolling a pair of art studios in London and Paris. His professed mission is to provide a studio space to those who might not be able to afford or find one for themselves. To what extent the pet project of a wealthy celebrity can truly make a difference in the lives of starving or marginalized artists, especially in such expensive, inaccessible cities, remains questionable. Most of the artists currently involved in the project are relative unknowns, and their output has been sporadic. Still, the studios are becoming established on the local scenes. Eloise Teng ran a series of workshops at the Paris location last month, the first big exhibition is expected this summer, and the parties are apparently off the wall.
Leo himself is unforthcoming. “I just pay the rent,” he says, and is saved by the bell, as Whitman announces they’re done for the day. The team shares celebratory beers; alcohol is clearly part of Whitman’s MO, but not one that I complain about, as I’m invited to join the circle. Whitman and Leo reach out to clink bottles without looking at each other, hands meeting naturally in the air.
It’s hard to tell what will happen if Whitman wins Best Actress at the Academy Awards this Sunday; it’s equally hard to tell what will happen if she doesn’t. Her trajectory once seemed like a golden narrative—the young ingenue, the dazzling Hollywood romance, the empress of the silver screen. When she fell, she fell hard, crashing and burning off her pedestal like a plane trailing smoke in the sky. Now she is something else, something that we don’t yet entirely know what to do with. If we’re not quick to make up our minds, Whitman will make them up for us, sliding a new character under our noses so gently that we’ll convince ourselves this version of her must be the real one.
Love her or hate her, it’s easy to project a tragic narrative on Whitman. Her troubled rise, her fall from grace. You can read her as an outsider stigmatized by a cutthroat industry or a control freak who remains Hollywood’s most high-strung diva. Over our time together, though, I kept noticing her gentle swagger, the easy way she lined up her pool shots, the sure hand she rested on Leo Milanowski’s shoulder. She looked amused, as though she had a private joke no one knew about. She seemed calm, in control, her sharp, handsome face relatively untroubled by the scandals cast upon it. It seemed almost as though she was having fun.