Celine Song on Materialists, Matchmaking, and Her Favorite Rom-coms

0:29This is The Run Through. I'm Chloe Mal. enjoy it. I had such a good time watching it, not least because the three leads are so attractive and delightful. Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. And I thought it just raises a lot of interesting questions about finding a match and what we value and what we are materialistic about and what we're not. And I am excited for you to watch it, Choma. And I'm very excited for you to hear our conversation with Celine Song. Lisa Macabasco and myself spoke to Celine about how she was once a matchmaker and that inspired this movie. No way! Yes. It's a really fun story and sort of how much she learned about people from that, which definitely comes through in the film.

1:17And there's definitely, to me, it feels like a 2025 successor to Nora Ephron movies. Like, it's very much a New York film. and I'm excited for you to see it. I wonder how one becomes a matchmaker. Like what are the credentials? I hope she gets into it. Celine was very funny. She was like, I had to find a job to make money because I was a playwright in New York and you needed experience to be a barista, to be a hostess at a restaurant. And I met someone at a party who was a matchmaker and it was the only thing that they were like, sure, start tomorrow. Hilarious. Yeah. I want to know all your thoughts on Francesco Rizzo.

1:58I mean, yeah, it's sort of for me, it wasn't one I saw coming. I think Francesco has done an amazing job at Marni, really brought an artistic sensibility and a sense of community. His shows in Milan were so wide ranging and free form. And he kind of brought a different energy. He brought a more bohemian energy to Milan, which often feels much more polished than what he did. And he had this much more kind of freewheeling energy. He would often stage shows that were totally unconventional, that felt a little bit more like being part of a performance art piece. He would invite the audience to dress in a certain way.

2:43His community extended far beyond Milan. I mean, he had such a great connection to New York. In fact, he worked a lot with Babak Rabboy, who is Telfar's right hand. And he had such a link to the music world, too. I mean, that wonderful collaboration that he did with Erykah Badu. Oh, we love that. Yeah, he did things his own way with such confidence. And I'll be sad to see him go for Marnie, but I'm sure he'll show up somewhere else. There's obviously huge musical chairs happening at the moment. and this is just one. And maybe it felt like he'd said everything he had to say. He'd been there for a fair few years and I think he'd really made it his own and maybe it was like time for, maybe it's just time for a new voice there.

3:30Well, I'm very sad. His aesthetic is so kooky and freewheeling. To me, it's like the most glamorous, chic version of Miss Frizzle. It's like a kooky art teacher. It's like everything I want to wear. And his collaboration with Carhartt, Leah Faye Cooper actually today is wearing the Carhartt by Marnie skirt. Ooh, I need that. We were all saying, like, everyone really coveted those pieces. It's that time again when we have to start collecting, we have to start off, like, stockpiling designer pieces. Panic buying. It is sort of that last gasp for a lot of designers. It's, you know, I mean, I obviously went wild with Dree's panic buys when he announced he was stepping down.

4:12But, yeah, this is your Marnie moment, folks. What's the word in London this week? What's happening? It was a really fun weekend in London. The weather is actually superb and has been since March. I don't know what's happening here, but we have this eternal summer moment, which I'm really living for. It's the complete opposite to New York, but I'm thrilled to hear it for you. I've heard. It is gorgeous. Everybody, London is really magical at the moment. And a particularly magical moment happened on Saturday, which was my first Martine Rowe show. she showed yeah she her shows are always basically a big kind of a big family affair and I love the people watching we sent a street style photographer to to document all of the looks and it was it was just like a who's who of cool London you had Julian Isaacs the artist and um Liz Johnson Artur photographer her family her kids her best friend you know all these photographers like Johnny DeFort who shot our cover.

5:14It was like a really, really cool crowd. And oh, and of course, Naina Cherry, the iconic Naina Cherry came through. And Martine likes to do things differently. So she held her show at a job centre. I don't know if you have those in America, but a job centre is basically a place where if you're out of work or on the dole, as we say in the UK, you go and you find a job. So it's like it's a very kind of like working class kind of gathering community space. And she invited a bunch of different vendors to host a market so that you could shop before you attended the show, which was really fun because I think it shone a light and all market and street market culture is so big in the UK.

6:02I mean, I've talked a lot about having grown up going to Portobello Market. and so she invited all these vendors to come and sell their wares, which I thought was really, really sweet and very her because she's always about sharing the space. And then, you know, it's always a big party. There were drinks before, there were drinks after. And then the show itself was so kind of sexy and fun. And she's usually known for an oversized silhouette, but this felt a lot more kind of like 80s, sexy, tight to the body, slinky. You know, the hair was insane. She had these crazy long wigs with quite fried ends, you know, that were popular in the 80s.

6:45So it just was like a boost of adrenaline going to her show. It was so fun and great. And I wanted to wear all of it. And then later on, I went to see Beyonce, which was really fun too. Oh my God, Choma, what a day. Yeah, well, I actually didn't make it that night because Will Call was closed and I had too much fun at Martine to make it for the show. So I ended up going on Monday night, but it was her last night in London. It was like a cloudless sky. It was like a pink sunset. And obviously at one point she's like singing on a horseshoe floating above the stadium. It was like very dreamy. And to see everybody dressed in in the Western wear with those cowboy hats and people screaming at the top of their lungs, you just forget how much of a she's just a, you know, she's a force.

7:36She's a force. What was your Cowboy Carter outfit? I came straight from the office. So I kind of, I think I just stood out like a sore thumb because I had on like slacks and a shirt. I was so like not dressed for the moment because actually her show starts quite early here in London. You have to be there by 7.30 and she's already, you know, we got there at 7.30 and she'd already started. Oh, wow. And for me, one of the highlights was seeing Blue Ivy because she's just come into her own. And she's like, everybody's talking about her as if she's like the next big pop star. And I think she could be because she's like, she knows how to move.

8:18She has presence. And if I think about the Renaissance tour versus now and how she's developed, and then obviously there's a touching moment when Rumi comes on stage. And it's just like so touching to know that she's on the road with her family, singing these amazing songs. and the outfit changes were totally iconic. One of my favorite looks was Estella McCartney. She always like tips her hat to the designers of the place that she's performing in. So there were loads of Brits in the show and there were these amazing fringed chaps that were Estella McCartney and they were silver. And just in seeing her stomp down the stage, it was incredible.

9:01and she also wore this pretty amazing Vivian Westwood corseted look that had all of this Western embroidery on the front. I'm kind of excited to see what phase three of this trilogy will look like because she's kind of outdone herself again. Choma, I feel like it's probably even trickled across the pond, but there has been great consternation and scandal in the Vogue offices around the first look images of the Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, John... I've heard. F. Kennedy Jr. It's also been rumbling around our office. People are not happy. People are not happy. So Ryan Murphy in his American Love Story series, and Ryan Murphy is no stranger to fashion favorites.

9:51I mean, he did the Johnny Versace one, and he obviously the Babe Paley of it all, and the Swans, and the Lee Radswell, But Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and JFK Jr. and their story, which is what has just started filming this week in New York, is going to get scrutiny like I don't think anyone has seen before. And immediately the comments on this were so savage. It was all a lot of fashion insiders commenting. Gabrielle Creva Johnson, Laurence Domingo. People were calling it like Tamu Camelot. But people were very upset with how cheap the clothes looked when it is doable to get, you know, vintage Narciso or Calvin Klein collection from the 90s.

10:36People are very upset about the shade of blonde that Sarah Pidgeon, who's the actress playing Carolyn Bessette, has they have dyed her hair. And we actually, with the help of Virginia Smith, got Brad Johns on the phone, who was Carolyn. No way. Beside Kennedy's hairdresser. I love that. All the fashion girls went to him back in the day. And he was responsible for the signature CBK blonde. And we got him on the phone yesterday. He's now a retired glass blower in Los Angeles. and he hers was much more glossy right it was just more glossy and more and had a bit more yellow yeah this is much more hers feels more this is Gwen Stefani yeah it feels much more platinum doesn't it yes and so we spoke to Virginia and Kate Young and Brad and all these people who went to him and tried to get her hair color and the girls are not happy but Margot did a really fun piece with Brad interviewing him about it which was which was great.

11:43So we are all eager to see how that will evolve. I actually have faith in Ryan Murphy, and I think they always do a great job with costumes. So I feel like it must be evolving and that this was just sort of the first look as a placeholder. But they got a lot of work to do because the fashionistas are not a group you want to mess with. Oh, my God. Huma Abedin, the veteran political strategist, longtime Hillary Clinton aide-de-camp, married Alex Soros, who is the director of the Soros Foundation. And the two of them sort of—it is this Democratic power players supermerger. And the guest list of the wedding definitely reflected that.

12:33Oh, yes. Tell me everything. I was looking at all the images. I mean, what a well-attended wedding. I mean, everybody, Bill Clinton, Kamala Harris. I mean, what? Sienna Miller. It was insane. Jennifer Lawrence, first public outing since her second baby. It was at the Soros family home in Watermill, and Huma's son, Jordan, gave apparently the most touching speech. Anna Wintour, who is a great friend of Huma, was, as she loves to be, helpful with the wedding dresses. Huma wore a beautiful Givenchy by Sarah Burton dress that was a sort of bateau neckline. My favorite part about it was this sort of twisted belt that was sewn on that I thought was really elegant.

13:24And then there was amazing embroidery on the hem and the train of the skirt that was sort of embroidery of olive trees and olive branches because that was something that was very important to Huma's father who is no longer with us. And so that was bringing sort of him into the day. so I and then Erdem made a beautiful lace high-necked multi sort of priest button dress for her Friday family ceremony that I also thought was really beautiful yeah and she also wore a I think she wore a silver Marquesa dress as well she did the party dress yeah so so lots of amazing fashion too and it just felt really joyous and and beautiful and resplendent despite quite a chilly, rainy weather.

14:12Can't believe it's chilly. Choma, have people in the UK caught F1 fever? I think it's simmering around me, but I haven't quite tapped into the fever just yet. But have you? No, but I am very, I was intrigued this weekend by Brad Pitt's outfits that he was wearing. He's been working with stylist Taylor McNeil, who styles Kendrick Lamar and Timothee Chalamet. And we are all divided on whether we think it's working for Brad. Like the Willie Chavaria off the runway maybe isn't exactly what I would do for Brad. But, you know, I respect commitment to a look. And this weekend, Brad, his girlfriend Inez and Bradley Cooper and Gigi Hadid went on a double date.

15:02And Brad Pitt was wearing this like almost sort of taffeta-y parachute top that I need to look what it was. But the story, Anna Cofalo wrote it up on Saturday morning and it did bonkers numbers. People were extremely interested in Bradley squared date night. I mean, it's a pretty epic double day. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that one. Oh, Choma, I'm very invested in, and I know that your team is actually writing something up about this right now, so clearly they are too. Jonathan Bailey did a press tour wearing the row flip-flops, and I just don't feel like a red carpet is the place for men's toes.

15:46No. I don't know why. It's really upset me. I'm adverse to men's feet in general, so that's a hard pass for me. And you know what we were saying this morning? Two rows do not make a right. Just because something's the road doesn't mean you need to wear it or endorse it. I mean, maybe on a beach or off duty. I mean, right now in London, although I don't think flip-flops in a city work because you're just basically sweeping the floor with your feet. Yes, that's a lot of discussion here, too. is should you wear flip flops on the subway? Oh, no. I mean, I spent my first year in New York wearing flip flops and it was an absolute horror show.

16:25And never again. I mean, Javi Annas were having a moment and it was like, no. Choma, enjoy the sun. Thank you.

16:35The run-through will be back in a moment.

16:49Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

17:31Hi, you guys. Oh, hi. How are you? Where are you? I'm in New York City. People always ask, like, where are you? I'm like, I'm in New York City. Both of your films are such New York City love letters. Was that always something that you had in mind, that this was a city that inspired you to depict on film? Or did that sort of happen because of the plots of the stories? Well, I think that I'm very inspired by the city that I live in because I live here and I'm in love with the city. So I feel like it's always such a pleasure to get to make something about and in a place that you love. So I think that really is at the heart of it.

18:09But yes, I think that for both of these movies, it was as a result of those stories and then the characters that the stories are about because of how connected I feel to these characters. I think that they always were and they were born as New Yorkers. Yeah. And also New York transplant New Yorkers, too. I was very excited to find out that you were a matchmaker at one moment in your life and that that was some inspiration for materialists. I have to say, we were talking after we saw the movie, me and our producers, that you either maybe wrote this 10 years ago or right now. Because it feels like we are in sort of a post-dating app moment a bit.

18:54Like people have sort of want something more personal. And I think there is actually a market now for boutique matchmaking services. And also, obviously, that was the case 10 years ago. But in the last decade, it's become obviously very online. And so I was curious what that moment was like for you in your life and then when you translated that into this film. Well, that is very interesting. I didn't know about that little gap of the kind of like an in-person dating being a little bit not in style. But I feel like I was a matchmaker around 10 years ago. Wow. How did that happen? Well, I didn't have a day job that I could get.

19:34So I was a playwright at the time and I can't really pay rent. you can't really pay rent in New York City being a playwright, which is a bit of a dilemma because New York City is like where you're able to be a playwright. So I was looking for a day job and because New York City is a city of dreams and all of us are here pursuing our night jobs, that everybody had a great day job. And so day job market is very competitive. So whenever trying to, I was trying to see if I could be a barista and like you needed like 10 years of experience as a barista to be a barista in, you know, and you know, to be a bartender, you're like, well, you can't be a bartender unless you have 10 years of experience as a bartender.

20:13And I couldn't even get a job as retail because they needed like eight years of experience. So I was sort of in this situation where I couldn't find a day job to save my life. And at a party, I went into somebody whose job was to be a matchmaker. And I asked more questions and then And I applied for that job and then I got the job and I worked on it for six months. And I only worked there for six months because honestly, because I enjoyed it too much that I wasn't writing. That's so much self-discipline to say that I'm taking a new passion is taking me away from the true one. Oh, yeah. Like this new passion.

20:52Because part of it is like, you know, for me as a filmmaker and as an artist generally, too. but like I'm really obsessed with people, right? I'm really obsessed with intimacy and people and psychology. Like that's my favorite drug. That's the best drug I have. So I think in that way, I was just getting my fill being a matchmaker because I learned more about people in those six months than I did in any other period of my life. Yeah, what were some of your takeaways that you still think about sort of types of individuals? I mean, I would just say there was a single people in New York City, right, who are usually working and usually they just are showing up because they want to make an investment on their dating life.

21:35And usually it's a result of not having invested enough time, they feel, and energy and resources into dating before. So this would usually be like an attempt to improve their dating life significantly by spending some money on it. That would kind of be the approach, which makes total sense because everything in life sort of works that way, where you put more resources into it. This was the real inspiration for why I wanted to make this movie, Materialist, is that unfortunately there is one domain, there's one human domain in all of human life, all of the world, where spending more money, putting more effort, being smarter, using algorithms, none of those things can end up in a quote-unquote good result or a great result or any result, which is domain of love, right?

22:24And I was just seeing the wild contradiction between the way that when I'm talking to someone about who they're looking for versus what I actually know what love is. And love is this amazing ancient mystery. Love is this amazing thing where there is no solution for it and there is no math for it. There's nothing you can do about it. And this has been true forever. And I think that in order to pursue and find love, there is so much effort, material effort, practical effort, so many, so much resources and so many promises and numbers and specs, right? The stats, all of those things are all there.

23:11And, you know, people go to the gym and get a therapist, you know, like people get, of course, Botox, every kind of surgery there is so that they can improve their chance of finding love. They want to improve their material reality so that they're more valuable in the marketplace of dating. And all for what? Yeah. All for this very ancient, completely mysterious feeling where you look at another person in the face and you say, I think that I'm going to grow old with you. So I think that tension between all the efforts, material efforts that we put into finding love and then play the game of love and the actual love, I think that that tension was really what inspired me to make this movie.

24:00What I really loved about the movie was how it really interrogated our approach to relationships and what we value in them and how we do this as it's called, I believe it's matchmaker math. Did you find that that was something people were actually interested in knowing about? And is that sort of the math of what makes two people a match? Is that something that stayed with you and that you sort of took forward when you were thinking about even casting people? Has that affected other decisions in your life? Well, I think that to me, it's like when it comes to dating and expertise in dating, because it's a very different thing.

24:37And Lucy says this in the film. Lucy is Dakota Johnson's character. And she says this in the film where she goes, oh, I'm an expert in dating. I'm not an expert in love. Right. I do think that I learned a lot about the dating world. Right. Because at the time that I was a matchmaker, I was already married. So and I've never been on an app, never been on a dating app. So for me, I don't really know the ins and outs of what it is like to be single. I met my husband when I was 24. Wow. So in that way, so I think I learned so much about how the dating world works, but from the point of view of a matchmaker.

25:15But what that means, though, is it's kind of like being from the understanding finance from the point of view of a stockbroker, right? Or like somebody who's in charge of an investment portfolio, where I'm kind of getting to see the way that all my clients and also by extension, everybody in the world kind of land when it comes to the marketplace of dating. so because of that i think that the way that the dating market works is so defined by what we see and we watch and the way that so much what we see in the magazines and the newspaper and then the eventually the tv and eventually on our phones all of those things have built us and what the dating market really is so i think that i can tell you what would make somebody valuable or not valuable and what makes that person worth this and worth less than this and more than this, given anybody I talk to in some way, right?

26:11But it doesn't necessarily mean that higher value you have, more you get to have love. It's absolutely untrue. So the project of dating is one thing. Expertise in dating is one thing. When it comes to love, I believe that love makes fools of all of us. That's what they say, right? And I think that's absolutely true. I also wanted to ask about the trailer. I know when... It was a big hit in the Vogue Slack channels. I'm so happy. People were very excited. It's very exciting. I'm so happy. I know when that happened, there was some chatter on Twitter about the voiceover and kind of people saying it felt like a throwback, like 90s style, because you don't really see that in trailers anymore.

26:55Was that deliberate or was that, I assume. Yeah, of course. I mean, marketing. Marketing is deliberate. Of course. We should be. But I think that it has just so much to do with an amazing relationship that I have with A24. The truth is that, like, I love working with A24 and I respect them so much because they actually are so interested in the filmmaker and what the filmmaker believes about their own film. They really genuinely believe that the filmmaker knows their film best, which seems like it should be obvious, but it is quite rare for the filmmaker to be believed to be the expert on the film that she made.

27:34So I think the truth is that, like, I was talking about the references for the film that are those films in the 90s and even sometimes as old as Billy Wilder, right? So I'm thinking about or like, you know, when you're talking about like, you know, like Sabrina or something, you know what I mean? Or The Apartment. Like, I feel like those that even that era or and of course, like, you know, the broadcast news, that era, like there are so many films. And of course, all the Nora Ephrons, right? The You've Got Mail, the Harry Met Sally. So those are the kind of films that I was talking to them about when it comes to the project of this movie.

28:09Well, yes, of course it's a romantic comedy and it's a romantic drama and it's all of those things. And it has a way that we're just going to deal with love for two hours. You're going to walk into the movie theater, you're going to sit down and we're going to deal with and be in love and experience love and talk about love for two hours. But as a result, we're also going to get to talk about something that we as a current day audience or modern people, we are able to be interested in something that we want to talk about. So I think that to me is something that I've been talking to A24 about throughout the making of the film.

28:48So then like tonally, the heart and soul was always rooted in these movies from the past. Well, I mean, I always talk about it more as like it's in the lineage of those films. or something like that, right? Because, I mean, like, you can also talk about all the Victorian romance. I mean, this lineage goes back as far as the Pride and Prejudice, the novel, right? In Jane Austen, right? The first line of Pride and Prejudice is probably the most materialist line ever. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. So good. Perfect.