Is This Upcoming Novel Really About Natalie Portman?

Celebrities are used to people writing things about the. Sometimes they’re lies or silly gossip and other times they’re nosey profiles that attempt to dig beneath the varnished surface. Every now and then, you find yourself turned into something else, a vessel for a writer’s concerns or agendas. Pop culture is built on barely-veiled retellings of real people’s lives, from A Star is Born to May December. The star of the latter, Natalie Portman, might be finding that out the hard way.

A recent report from Unherd is claiming that a new novel by multi-award-winning author Rachel Cusk is a thinly fictionalised story about the actress. Portman has talked frequently of being a big fan of Cusk, whose work is frequently described as “autobiographical fiction.” Her most famous books, a trilogy made up of the titles Outline, Transit, and Kudos, delved into her personal life and divorce among other subjects. Her newest novel, Life of M, is about a writer who finds herself in the orbit of a famous actress. Here’s the synopsis:

“The movie star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child. With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away.

Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M’s life in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths ― about the very experience of living ― might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture?”

According to Unherd, the whispers among the Paris literary scene — both Cusk and Portman live there — is that the book is 100% about Portman. “The actress’ dissatisfaction and betrayal at the finished product, as recorded in the final pages of the book, is also said to be true to life,” the piece notes.

It’s been a while since we’ve had some juicy literary gossip, and this certainly takes the cake. Imagine being an Oscar-winning actress who’s been obsessed over since childhood, often in deeply creepy ways, inviting your favourite author to hang out with you and them turning it into a book about how you’re possibly detached from reality due to your celebrity status. The Unherd piece on this is super mean to Portman too, claiming she’s essentially a dumb person’s idea of a smart person (that site is full of right-wing reactionary nonsense, so it’s no surprise they’re this derisive of Portman possibly not wanting her life turned into content.) They seem to be excited about the idea of the book being a sordid tell-all, which isn’t really Cusk’s style.

I am admittedly curious as to what is inside Life of M. Cusk is highly adept as delving into the inner lives of her subjects through the perspectives of those around her. Does she have a new perspective on fame beyond, “wow, people treat you differently when you’re famous”? And how much of Portman’s privacy will she potentially plunder to uncover it? The news now makes it impossible to separate this book from the gossip, which will certainly drive sales to Life of M (was that the point of the initial report? It certainly reads like an ad for a friend’s book.) We could probably be here for days discussing the ethics of this kind of autofiction and what, if anything, is acceptable material to mine from someone else’s life. Joan Didion said that all writing was the act of selling someone out. Nora Ephron famously declared that everything is copy. But the Bad Art Friend discourse happened for a reason.

Portman, by the way, is currently pregnant with her third child and largely avoids the spotlight outside of her work. I imagine she wants as little bulls**t in her life as possible right now. Maybe it’s time for her to revive her rap career and get out a diss track. At least it’s not Jonathan Safran Foer writing about her.