Note: this VF cover story came out a few months ago but it got lost in the awards-season shuffle. I still wanted to talk about it because Margaret Qualley comes across so badly!!

Do you ever read a celebrity profile and chuckle to yourself because it’s abundantly clear that the magazine writer dislikes their subject? So it is with Vanity Fair’s cover interview with Margaret Qualley. I like Qualley a great deal as an actress – I find her underrated and willing to take on weird and quirky projects without vanity. But she doesn’t come across well in this VF piece at all. In the middle of drily reciting all of Margaret’s celebrity friends swearing up and down that Margaret is amazing, VF notes: “Her coworkers vouch for a humor and a warmth that Qualley herself struggles to communicate to nonactors, or at least to strangers like me.” LMAO. As in, she doesn’t come across as warm or funny, just charmless and humorless. Some highlights from a hate-interview:

On her husband Jack Antonoff: “I’ve always been very love-oriented. I’ve always been looking for my person, and I met Jack.”

Will Qualley and Antonoff have kids? “Yeah, for sure,” she says. I jokingly ask if she has names chosen. “If I did, I wouldn’t talk about it.”

Her apology after the first interview: “I don’t feel like I’m always good at representing myself publicly in real time, so I would almost rather say nothing at all? Because rather than have the wrong idea about me, someone just wouldn’t have any idea about me.”

On acting: “Acting is kind of like magic, and magic stops being magical if you try to explain it,” she says. In a text she writes, “I love my job. I love being alive, and I love how alive I feel when I’m acting.”

Ethan Hawke on Qualley: “Whenever someone is an ingenue, you think…” He pauses. “Margaret is not what you imagine. She’s a spitfire and funny and inappropriate in the best ways.” He would like to see her take Katharine Hepburn–style roles, with the same intensity and strength and humor. “She’s been through a lot, she’s a serious young woman, she sees through a lot. She’s not desperate to please, in a way that’s really charming. I have met a lot of young ingenues who are afraid that if they work too much, something will be revealed.”

Another text from Qualley: “I love my husband, my family. I love dancing and horses. I love the moon. Happy crying is the best. I love listening to Tara Brach and books on tape. And anything Jack writes. Female friendships are so holy, shout out Talia Ryder. My sister was my first soulmate. I wanna die on a farm. I need to learn how to drive stick, my brother tried to teach me but I was 12 and it didn’t land. Smokey, dog, god. I love you world, thank you for having me.”

On femininity: “I started working so young, and when I first started acting, I was just overwhelmed. I felt like if I was fully myself, women would hate me and men would hurt me. And so that took away some of the tools that come with being a woman because I was scared. Gradually, now that I feel like I have more control of my life, I can kind of lean more into the sensual and the feminine. Jack has helped me for sure, because he has made me feel more confident to explore all the parts of myself. But I’m also thinking about Mother Earth and the divine feminine and surrender. Those are the things I’m trying to lean into, that moment in my life.”

[From Vanity Fair]

I’ve read Qualley’s interviews before, and she’s never come across as this… I don’t have the word for it. She’s trying to be cryptic or mysterious in person, but then she sends weird texts which really don’t clarify anything. She’s not a mysterious person, and I don’t really think she’s this vapid either, but yeah, she definitely comes across that way. My guess is that Margaret’s publicist didn’t tell her that Vanity Fair expects their cover subjects to gossip and provide some big exclusives, and the VF interviewer was mad that Margaret wasn’t playing along with the unwritten rule.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, cover courtesy of Vanity Fair.