Natalie Portman's ex-friend wrote a book about her. And she hates it.

Overview

The video examines the fallout over Rachel Cusk’s novel The Life of M, which is dedicated to Natalie Portman. Portman had praised Cusk for years, calling her a genius and choosing her books for her book club. The dedication might therefore seem like an honor—until reports emerged that Portman was devastated and angry about the novel’s portrayal of her. Her side reportedly argued that Cusk did not know her well enough to depict her accurately.

Cusk’s Career and the Novel

The host traces Cusk’s career, from her early, conventional novels to candid memoirs about motherhood and divorce, both of which drew fierce criticism. After the backlash to Aftermath, Cusk changed direction, developing the spare, unconventional style of her Outline trilogy. Over time, she increasingly stripped away familiar elements of the novel, including named characters and clear settings. The host also notes that Cusk has faced earlier disputes with people who recognized themselves in her fiction.

In The Life of M, the story is deliberately slight. A nameless, Cusk-like author writes about M, a famous actress whose identity is barely disguised through references to Black Swan, Léon, and Miss Dior. M is shown living in luxury but seeming detached from other people. For instance, she gets irritated by a worker’s apparent medical emergency and reacts dismissively to news that a relative has been hit by a car. The host understands why Portman might object to being portrayed as uncaring and almost incapable of love.

The Confrontation

The book’s climactic scene makes that objection explicit. M tells the author, “You made it seem like I lacked humanity.” The author replies that M is only a character—and admits she knows little about her beyond having watched her films. M says the events and places in the book are not hers and asks the author not to use her name.

The host sees this confrontation as the novel’s strongest moment: it exposes the real-world imbalance between the writer and the famous person she has turned into a character.

The Host’s Theory

The host offers a theory while stressing that she has no inside knowledge: Portman may have asked Cusk to write about her but provided little guidance. Cusk may then have written a familiar, alienated character in her established style without realizing how unflattering it would look when attached to Portman.

The host sympathizes with both women, while noting that Portman’s fame gives her more power to distance herself from the project—and leaves Cusk to bear the fallout.

Review and Commentary

As a book review, the host finds The Life of M easy to read and beautifully written in places, but ultimately dull—a “nap festival.” Her main complaint is that the characters are static and the book’s minimalism leaves little reason to care about them.

She contrasts Cusk’s attempt to dissolve individual identity into a detached, collective consciousness with the work of writers such as Zadie Smith, Sally Rooney, and Jennifer Egan, whose characters and connections feel more vivid. She also discusses the book’s interest in gender and the self, noting that it ends with M asking the author, “Are you a boy or a girl?”

The host also makes a few pointed comic asides: she jokes that autofiction is when writers tell their own stories while calling them fiction “so people don’t hate her,” pokes fun at critics who seem to overhype the novel, and marvels that New Yorker critic Becca Rothfeld is only 34 and writes so well.

Sponsorship

A Surfshark VPN sponsorship briefly interrupts the discussion. The host describes its text-scam protection and alternate email identity feature.

Personalities Discussed

• Siobhan Brier Aguilar (host)
• Natalie Portman
• Rachel Cusk