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I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity - Hardcover

Finger, Bobby; Weber, Lindsey

 
9798217088324: I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity
Hardcover
ISBN 13: 9798217088324
Verlag: Crown, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

A sharp, funny examination of fame in the digital era and what makes our hunger for it equally alluring and embarrassing—from the podcasters behind Who? Weekly

"Nothing short of a modern soliloquy on what it means to seek the gaze of the masses. Come for the laughs and incredible cultural deep cuts, stay for the exegesis on how we wound up... here.”–Lena Dunham, author of Famesick

While being photographed in 1966, Warhol reportedly said, “Everyone wants to be famous.” (To which his photographer, Nat Finkelstein responded, “Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.”) But Warhol was right then, and he’s right now. Fifteen minutes be damned, all you need is the drive—or desperation—and a singular spark. But if you’re not careful, you’ll end up a Who.

Who is a Who? In I Want to Be Famous, Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, the pop culture journalists behind the podcast Who? Weekly, distill celebrity into two categories—Whos and Thems—transcending the snarky, antiquated judgment of the “A-Listers” to “D-listers.” If you come across an allegedly famous face you’ve never seen before and are compelled to utter “Who?”, well, there’s your answer (Can you picture Rita Ora, Ava Max, or Hilaria Baldwin without Googling them?). If the subject elicits something along the lines of, “Oh, Them,” there you’ve found the opposite (Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Tom Cruise). It’s the fundamental duality of fame.

And yet, as more Whos spawn, the path to Themdom narrows. We’ve entered an era where accessibility to fame is within everyone’s grasp, though only a select few can crack the algorithm and hold our ever-diminishing attention spans. Celebrities have taken desperate measures to stay relevant—from the makeup, supplements, and alcohol they peddle to the Notes App apologies they post—as the media who cover them compete with celebrities breaking their own news on social media and as PopCrave decides who “stuns” next.

Blending juicy pop culture history with the authors’ signature wit, I Want to Be Famous argues fame no longer means ubiquity and examines what the future holds for those seeking our collective attention.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber are the hosts of Who? Weekly, the podcast that tells you everything you need to know about the celebrities you don’t. Finger is the author of Four Squares, The Old Place, and We Are Gathered Here Today. Weber is a freelance writer and editor who spends the majority of her free time at the beach in the Rockaways. They both live in Brooklyn, New York.

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Chapter 1

A Grand Theory of Whos and Thems

Meghan Markle, Evelyn Nesbit & Chappell Roan

At the end of October 2016, a journalist for the British tabloid Express named Camilla Tominey published the first report that Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, was “secretly dating a stunning US actress, model and human rights campaigner.” One could almost hear the sound of every reader cocking their head at once. Who? Exactly. It was Meghan Markle. If you knew her at all, it was likely due to her long-running stint as paralegal-turned-lawyer Rachel Zane in the USA Network legal drama Suits. And if you didn’t watch Suits, then you probably didn’t know her at all. (Harry certainly didn’t! According to his memoir, Spare, he googled her after they first met, and quickly found a few sex scenes. “[I] witnessed her and a [Suits] castmate mauling each other in some sort of office or conference room . . . It would take electric shock therapy to get those images out of my head.”) The two were set up on a blind date in London earlier that year, and for their third (!) date Harry convinced Meghan to join him on a trip to Botswana. Soon enough, everyone had the story: Prince Harry was officially dating an American Who. But she wouldn’t be one for much longer. After some fifteen years chugging along in Hollywood, the reveal of their relationship made her a Them overnight.

When people ask us for a quick explanation of our podcast Who? Weekly’s ethos, we’ll likely launch into some form of that classic “grocery-store checkout” story. While the scenario is a little dated, it tends to get the job done. (Although we may need to think of a new scenario for Gen-Z.) Picture it: You’re at the grocery store. You head to the checkout. You see a display of tabloid magazines. On the covers of some, you see famous faces you recognize: Those are Thems. On others, you might see faces presented to you as famous and think to yourself, Who are these people? Those are Whos. (There are also Nahs, slang for, well, ourselves—those of us who don’t fall into either category. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a Nah. Don’t be offended.) It’s a simple, straightforward binary; celebrities fall into just two buckets: Whos and Thems.

That it takes only a brief moment of relevance to create a celebrity is predicated on the idea that everyone will, at some point in their lives, be famous for fifteen minutes. It’s a foreboding proposition often attributed to Andy Warhol—but it wasn’t anything he ever said. What Warhol did say, however, perhaps better reflects the current celebrity landscape: While being photographed in 1966, Warhol reportedly remarked matter-of-factly that “everyone wants to be famous.” To which his photographer, Nat Finkelstein responded, “Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.” Over half a century later, his assertion feels almost like an underestimation. In the past, a Who’s fame would have begun fizzling out at fifteen minutes. These days, Who-lebrity has a longer tail, and can easily be extended for fifteen years.

Celebrity had long been discussed as a hierarchy upon which fame level ascends the first few letters of the alphabet. Traditionally this took the form of a ladder with four rungs—the entirety of fame spanning from D- to A-list. At the top are the people “everyone” knows, the bona fide superstars with whom the public is on a first-name basis. Madonna. Oprah. Taylor. Denzel. Further down are the ones desperately trying to climb a little higher. (The aspiration to become more famous is implied, for if two rungs were good enough, why not just use a stepladder?) It’s in the middle where things have always gotten murky, as the transitions from B to C can be altered by a change in the cultural wind—a hit song in June may not be remembered the following April, just as a long-hustling character actor may finally book a big, scene-stealing role in the latter half of their career. But letters, like grades, imply judgment, and over time “D-list” evolved into a kind of pejorative label few celebrities—besides Kathy Griffin, who claimed it as the title of her long-running Bravo reality show My Life on the D-List—would ever embrace. This implicit value judgment is the ladder’s most fatal flaw, and has rendered it a largely unhelpful tool in our splintered celebrity landscape, so in our frustration we took it upon ourselves to design another.

If A-listers are calling the paparazzi, and people whose names we’d never seen before can fill stadiums, it’s truly impossible to tell the difference between a B- or C-list celebrity anymore. The monoculture has faded fast. Sure, we’re all quite familiar with Cher, or any other of the remaining big Gen-X or Boomer Hollywood stars, but there is a lack of talent filling those spots and claiming those A-list slots. Not a lack of talented people, more so a lack of stars who have received enough coverage to be known by the masses.

We’ve lost so many access points for stars to get “enough coverage” to make a leap into the A-list. Because how would you go about getting the most eyes on whatever it is you have going on: Win the Super Bowl? Star in a summer blockbuster? Get splashed on the front page of the New York Post? Win an Oscar for Best Actress? Well, both the Super Bowl and the Oscars have plummeted in viewership since the advent of streaming, and movie theaters are still hoping to bounce back post-pandemic. And ending up on the front page of the Post—while a terrifying idea—isn’t guaranteed to grab as many eyes (or clicks) as it once did. We aren’t all looking in the same direction anymore. Why would we all continue to watch the same TV show or movie when there are endless TV shows and movies to stream? Why would we all listen to the same music when there are tens of millions of songs on hand to stream? Monocultural events used to be plentiful, even sought out and looked forward to. Now an epidemic of choice has splintered our attention spans.

We’ve always been obsessed with the utter shamelessness that’s intrinsic to celebrity. It just so happens that the stars most engaged with the idea of celebrity (Stars really do be just like us!) are the ones keeping things interesting. We’ve deemed certain types of behavior “Who-y”—calling the paparazzi on yourself, showing up at “the opening of an envelope” (or perhaps, less metaphorically, a brand-new Sephora)—but they’re the necessity of being famous in the modern age. Naturally, that means a celebrity can make a jump from Who to Them. (Just as Thems can transition into Whos . . . and back again!) While some “grad-Who-ations” are more debatable, it can be quite obvious when someone makes the leap.

Take the case of Meghan Markle: former Suits star, current Duchess of Sussex, and at one time responsible for giving Great Britain’s royal family the shake-up of their lifetimes. The media coverage of her romance with Harry was absolutely absurd, overwhelming, and altogether breathless.

EXCLUSIVE: My name is Meg—but you must call me ‘Your Royal Highness!’ Enchanting birthday party video shows royal bride-to-be playing Queen for a day . . . and, yes, she’s wearing a CROWN! (Daily Mail, March 2018)

Meghan Markle’s royal wedding overshadows her ‘Suits’ nuptials. (Page Six, April 2018)

Princess Diana ‘will be there at Prince Harry’s royal wedding—as a ghost’, say psychics. (The Mirror, March 2018)

Meghan Markle allegedly asked her father to stop speaking to...

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Verlag
Crown
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 13 
9798217088324
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
CROWN
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/

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