Ary Russell

2 weeks ago | interviewmagazine.com | Ary Russell

On a video call all the way from London, the British pop star Rachel Chinouriri reflected on her upbringing as a young Black girl at an all-white school. “Maybe I’m a bad bitch and they were a little bit scared,” she said. Now, Chinouriri is strutting her stuff on stages all over the world—in her knee-high socks, sequin tank tops, and the miniest of mini skirts. But it wasn’t always easy.

1 month ago | interviewmagazine.com | Ary Russell

After a period of loss, doubt, and disillusionment, British rapper Little Simz is doing what she does best—turning it into music. Lotus, her sixth album, is both a reckoning with the industry’s toll and a release from its grip. To break it all down, the North London native, born Simbiatu “Simbi” Ajikawo, got on a Zoom with I May Destroy You creator Michaela Coel, a fellow Brit who understands firsthand the alchemy between poetry and pain.

1 month ago | interviewmagazine.com | Ary Russell

Where do you dance? In the kitchen. Who do you trust most with the AUX? This is kind of a cagey way of looking at it, right? Go ahead, plug in! For me, curiosity and the possibility of discovery trumps the comfort of sitting in a curated bubble of me & my friends’ exquisitely tasteful sensibilities lol… What’s your earliest musical memory?

1 month ago | interviewmagazine.com | Ary Russell

When multihyphenate Broadway diva Whitney White first conceived of her latest project, Macbeth in Stride, she had one goal. “I’m trying to surf the wave of Black feminine embodiment as I experience it,” she told me the day after the show’s opening night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Raja Feather Kelly, the production’s choreographer, chimed in from Montreal, where he was already hard at work on another project.

1 month ago | interviewmagazine.com | Jenna Ortega |Ary Russell

It’s not exactly “mommy mode,” but when Natalie Portman greets a jittery Jenna Ortega on Zoom, she immediately puts her younger costar at ease with the effusive warmth that comes naturally to a seasoned actor—and mother of two. At 43, Portman, who divorced her husband last year, is keeping busy. She just wrapped shooting The Gallerist alongside Ortega, and ignited a bidding war when she signed on to star in Lena Dunham’s Good Sex.