Amy Odell Understands The Assignment

When I met Amy Odell in 2015, it was on the heels of the publication of her first book, Tales From the Back Row, a memoir of her early days working in fashion when digital journalists and the then-nascent crop of influencers were still considered second fiddle to legacy media brands. At the time, I was a feature writer and editor at the New York Post and had interviewed her for the career section I edited, and Odell was making waves in media circles for her work running Cosmopolitan.com. I recall sitting at a Tribeca bar with her, swapping stories over rosé and oysters, and feeling intimidated in the best kind of way. (I later worked for Odell at Cosmo, and she’s since become a close friend.)

Ten years later, listening to Odell describe her process writing and reporting Gwyneth, her much-buzzed-about new biography of Gwyneth Paltrow, offers a similar master class in organization, precision, and old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. Odell, who writes the popular Back Row newsletter on Substack, worked for three years on the book, spending a year researching and reading everything she could get her hands on about the Oscar winner and Goop founder; interviewing more than 220 people, some of them multiple times; and compiling extensive timelines and outlines. (The hard work paid off: Gwyneth debuted at No. 5 on the New York Times bestseller list and also landed on the USA Today and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists. )

“She is someone who has been in the public eye for 30 years, so a lot has been written about her,” Odell tells me. “She’s someone who’s been incredibly fascinating to people but also super polarizing. So I wanted to delve into both of those aspects of her persona.”

Paltrow didn’t make things easy: While Anna Wintour, the subject of Odell’s first biography, Anna (another New York Times bestseller), didn’t directly participate with the author, the longtime Vogue editor-in-chief helped make friends and colleagues accessible. Not the case with Paltrow. “I really did have to dig,” Odell says, “but I think I interviewed a lot of people who had never been asked about Gwyneth before. … You can always do a book like this if you are willing to put in the legwork.”

On being persistent:

I always like to talk to people and introduce myself, versus sending messages — which I do if I have to, but it’s always nice to have a personal connection with somebody. And I’m not afraid to call back if somebody says no. Because if you call them back and you say, “Hey, you didn’t want to talk to me two years ago, but I’m finishing up. Do you want to talk to me?” quite often those people will come around.

On reading to unplug:

I’m an insomniac — I will lie in bed and ruminate. So I have to do something, and the thing that works for me is reading. It’s not optional for me. If I’m lying in bed and I can’t sleep, I get up and read a book, and then it helps me go to sleep.

I’m reading Robin Givhan’s new book about Virgil Abloh right now, Make It Ours. And I recently finished Mean Moms by Emma Rosenblum and Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza. And they’re really fun. I mostly read nonfiction, I would say, but right now I’m on a kick with novels. Maybe that’s my escape from my own work.

On her writing essentials:

Any flavor of Spindrift. If I see a new flavor, I always get it. For snacks, I don’t love eating at my computer because it’s messy, but sometimes my afternoon snack will be Stacy’s Pita Chips and Wegmans Everything Bagel Hummus. And then I have these Bose noise-canceling headphones. If I’m going all day on a weekend and the kids are home, the house can be distracting, so I put those on and I can really focus. I listen to a lot of pop music. It could be the new Lady Gaga album, the new Miley album, Cowboy Carter — a lot of Cowboy Carter. A lot of Beyoncé.

On her home office:

I have a pretty large home office with a couch in it and bookshelves and a keyboard, because I play piano. I always mean to mentally detach and play piano during the day, and I seldom do, unfortunately. I have a window out to our yard and I can see my hydrangeas out the window, which makes me happy. I’m always trying to make my hydrangeas look beautiful, and it’s very hard for me for some reason — I don’t have the green thumb that I aspire to.

On my desk, I have photos of my kids and some of their art projects that they bring home from school. And oh, funnily enough, a friend sent me a Miranda Priestly figurine… It’s not a bobblehead because the head doesn’t actually bobble, but it’s a little Miranda Priestly action figure.