Vanity Fair parts ways with Olivia Nuzzi amid Robert F. Kennedy Jr. controversy

Olivia Nuzzi poses for photographers as she arrives at the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington, Saturday, April 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

NEW YORK — Vanity Fair is parting ways with West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi amid ongoing controversy over her relationship with profile subject Robert F. Kennedy Jr. while she was the Washington correspondent for New York magazine.

A joint statement from the magazine and Nuzzi Friday said they “have mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.” She had been hired as its West Coast editor in September.

Nuzzi, 32, had been a star reporter for New York magazine known for colourful political profiles until the fall of 2024, when it was revealed she had an intense personal relationship with Kennedy, a presidential candidate at the time she wrote about him and now head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Nuzzi was fired by New York for not disclosing her relationship.

She reflected on their relationship and the fallout from it in the memoir “American Canto,” which refers to Kennedy as “The Politician” and ex-fiance Ryan Lizza as “the man I did not marry.” It was excerpted in Vanity Fair but competed for attention with a series of Substack posts by Lizza that contained embarrassing allegations.

Their feud quickly gripped media insiders as Lizza alleged that Nuzzi had an affair with another profile subject and had given Kennedy political advice, both considered off limits for journalists. Lizza even posted salacious, cringeworthy text messages from Kennedy to Nuzzi that he had intercepted.

Nuzzi denounced her ex-fiance’s posts, in a Substack interview with Emily Sundberg, as “fiction-slash-revenge porn.”

Friday’s announcement came only days after the publication of “American Canto,” disdained by critics and apparently of little interest to the reading public. The book ranked just 6,094 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list as of Friday afternoon.

Critics were harsh: “A tell-all memoir? Ha. This is a tell-nothing memoir,” wrote Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.

Through a miserable week, Nuzzi posted a humorous Substack column of “Signs Your Book Rollout Has Gone Awry.”

Among them: “Monica Lewinsky reaches out to check on your mental health.”

David Bauder And Hillel Italie, The Associated Press