{"id":1935,"date":"2026-05-19T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/19\/jill-kargman-is-still-the-upper-east-sides-most-unlikely-ambassador\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:30:00","slug":"jill-kargman-is-still-the-upper-east-sides-most-unlikely-ambassador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/19\/jill-kargman-is-still-the-upper-east-sides-most-unlikely-ambassador\/","title":{"rendered":"Jill Kargman Is Still the Upper East Side\u2019s Most Unlikely Ambassador"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\tJill Kargman<\/a> is known for being gleefully out of step with the denizens of her native Upper East Side, so it seems fitting that when I find her in the aggressively floral library of a private club in her neighborhood \u2014\u00a0one of so many to open in New York of late \u2014 she is, as always, wearing black. And even though the May weather outside is starting to flirt with summer temperatures, she is completely covered.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI have the blood pressure of a vampire, 86 over 60,\u201d says Kargman, explaining the cup of tea warming her hands. \u201cI\u2019m like a dead body. I\u2019m cold on a beach.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tThis public-facing version of Kargman, the one who grew up on 66th and Madison Avenue and only briefly entertained a life downtown, is familiar to many who\u2019ve followed her dispatches from her beloved corner of Manhattan. She\u2019s published a dozen books with titles like Momzillas<\/em>, The Rock Star in Seat 3A <\/em>and Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave<\/em>. Perhaps more prominently, she created and starred in the three-season Bravo comedy Odd Mom Out<\/em> (Yes, Bravo briefly made scripted TV). It was her outlet to comically position herself against her wealthier, pastel-loving neighbors. But in her new movie, Influenced<\/em>, she takes the opposite approach and goes full Stepford. Almost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tBorn of an early-lockdown Instagram bit, Influenced<\/em> follows a seemingly vapid Upper East Side Mom (Dzanielle) on a journey from social striving to self-realization. Famous pals Gwyneth Paltrow<\/a>, Drew Barrymore and Matt Damon make cameos. And a Pomeranian must endure an interview before being taken on by an elite dog walker. It\u2019s playing in New York and Los Angeles, expanding to more cities through June before a streaming drop eyed for September. \t<\/p>\n

\tWhile trying to keep warm, Kargman spoke about her segue into features, why she thinks the women she affectionately mocks don\u2019t even pick up on the satire and going darker (much darker) with her next project.<\/p>\n

\tWhen I found out we\u2019d be speaking, I revisited the Odd Mom Out<\/em> pilot. I\u2019m kind of shocked that came out over ten years ago. That was an Obama-era show. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\tIt\u2019s funny because we predicted a lot of shit in there. Not that we\u2019re The Simpsons<\/em>, but we predicted a pandemic. We predicted billionaires going to space. All this fitness shit and all the anal bulimia.<\/p>\n

\tThe what now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tThe fiber everything! People chow fat things on fiber crackers and then pee out their butthole. I call it anal bulimia. Because, instead of hurling, they just put a honk of cheese with a fiber thing and it\u2019s just\u2026 Remember Olestra?<\/p>\n

\tOh, I sure do. So this character is very different from Upper East Side mom of Odd Mom Out<\/em>, who was much more akin to yourself. It started as an Instagram bit and just grew from there. Do you feel like you\u2019ve finally excised her from your system?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tYes. It\u2019s been a journey. We went to Aspen for spring break, and there was a moment where I thought, \u201cOh no, I need to do a sequel, Dzanielle takes Aspen!\u201d It\u2019s like fish in a barrel with these dumb fucking $2,500 cowboy hats. But I\u2019m done with this. I\u2019m moving on. My next thing is the opposite. It\u2019s super dark because it\u2019s based on one of my books. It\u2019s about a death positive family that does green burials and there\u2019s a death doula. It\u2019s really gothic and dark. I can\u2019t go back to the spray tan blonde thing. It just feels frivolous in this world. But that was why I think this movie was good for this moment because it\u2019s just pure silly escapism. \t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tDrew Barrymore and Jill Kargman in\u00a0Influenced<\/em><\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tWe\u2019ll get back to the death thing. But this was an Instagram bit during early covid. That\u2019s when we spoke about it last. A feature is much bigger commitment. When did you decide it had legs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tOriginally, I sold it as a half-hour pilot to IFC. We had done drafts and notes and it was going great. And then one day I found out all my executives got fired. Of course, I was devastated for them. But also, what does this mean for my show? Sadly, it was jettisoned. So then I did that movie, Love\u2026 Reconsidered<\/em>, the director [Carol Hartsell], told me she\u2019d been dying to write about the Upper East Side and asked me if I\u2019d want to collab. I said, \u201cYeah, I have this pilot. It\u2019s 30 pages. Do you want to help me flesh it out into a feature?\u201d She and her husband gave it more gravitas \u2014 which is not something I typically go for. I\u2019m the fluff bitch. I just want to be silly.<\/p>\n

\tIf I remember correctly, the Instagram character had fewer redeeming qualities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tIt was inspired by this mom. My kids, not that they\u2019re saints, but they did not react to the pandemic like their friends. Dzanielle was born from my daughter on the iPad, FaceTiming one of her little twat friends. Her mom was in the background being like, \u201cThis is a fucking nightmare!\u201d And I heard [my daughter] Sadie be like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t a nightmare. You\u2019re in a mansion on the Hamptons. You have Seamless. You have the internet.\u201d So, I started making fun of this mom, doing the whole shtick for my friend, and she said, \u201cYou have to post this. \u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tHave you alienated many of these women by lampooning them for a living?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tOh, I don\u2019t give a shit about them. And I don\u2019t think that this character\u2019s mean-spirited. Even with Odd Mom Out<\/em>, it never was mean. There was never any malice. If you look in a funhouse mirror at a carnival, it\u2019s just silly. I know it\u2019s not me. I know it\u2019s warped. So, I can\u2019t get mad at the mirror.<\/p>\n

\tBut other people might not share that self-awareness.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tTrue. But I think the people who don\u2019t are a little bit delulu and would never recognize themselves in any of these characters. I learned this with Odd Mom Out<\/em>. No one thinks they\u2019re a bad mom. They all think they\u2019re a good mom in their way. Even if you\u2019ve farmed everything out \u2014 never given a bath or changed a diaper.<\/p>\n

\tDo you still have relationship with the other moms of the Upper East Side now that you\u2019re kids are all out of school?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI still see all the moms. At one point, I had three kids in three schools. And when they were young, if you don\u2019t work full time, it felt like you\u2019d wind up at everyone\u2019s birthday lunch for 12 people. Because you\u2019re not driving anywhere, you\u2019re walking, it\u2019s just very close quarters. I bumped into 10 people on my way here. You gather material by osmosis. But I really am only friends with the down to earth, normal people. I\u2019m not friends with these over-the-top ones. What people don\u2019t understand about the Upper East Side and lampooning it is that you go for the easy joke. You can go for the hyperbolized cartoonish characters, but there are also normal hardworking moms who are badasses \u2014 PhD professors, heart surgeons, child oncologist. But people don\u2019t see that in the media and representation, the amazing parents and they\u2019re raising amazing kids. \t<\/p>\n

\tThen, on social media, you have this sort of keyhole view behind the brocade curtain of these bratty, flashy people \u2014 everything that I was raised to not do in the eighties. I feel like even the wealthiest kids at Spence were dropped off from their stretch limousine two blocks from school because they were embarrassed. Now, it\u2019s the total opposite. People are posting a shot of a private jet shot and geo tagging Teterboro. It\u2019s just vile and disgusting. Those two worlds exist concurrently, and I\u2019m just one of the normal people steeped in it geographically.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>

\t \t\t\t\t\tJill Kargman in\u00a0\u2018Influenced.\u2019<\/span> \t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\tGwyneth Paltrow, who you know from Spence, appears in via FaceTime in the movie. Were you the first talk her out of retirement or was it Josh Safdie?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tJosh Safdie, but I have always been saying she should be acting. I\u2019m really excited for Strangers<\/em>. Belle Burden is a friend of mine. I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy and I was like, not only is this going to be a New York Times bestseller, it\u2019s going to be a major motion picture. And I was write about both.<\/p>\n

\tYou keep a \u201cfunny shit\u201d note on your phone. What\u2019s on it these days?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI erase it when it\u2019s been vomited into a script. So now I have a new one going. So right now it\u2019s all like death shit.<\/p>\n

\tOK, back to death. What does a \u201cdeath-positive\u201d family look like?
<\/strong>
My dad, he was obsessed with death my entire life. He had to take the Concorde for work and he would always be like, \u201cGive me a hug because, one of these days, that pig\u2019s going to blow.\u201d And then it did! I grew up in the real Addams Family<\/em>. They talked about death all the fucking time, and my mom\u2019s family is buried in that horrible cemetery in Queens. They all died super young. We\u2019d go to visit their graves and there\u2019d be a plane flying so low it was shaving your head. My dad would look around and be like, \u201cThis place is disgusting. I am not RIPing here.\u201d So they began this odyssey to tour cemeteries the way that normal people tour colleges. They went everywhere in in the tristate area but then they found one in Massachusetts. It\u2019s like a co-op. You have to get letters written for you. \t<\/p>\n

\tBy the dead?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tNo, by the living who have plots. What do the letters need to say? \u201cThey\u2019ll be really quiet?\u201d \u201cTheir kids will not leave tacky flowers?\u201d By the way, post-script, at first they got rejected. I think because we\u2019re Jewish.<\/p>\n

\tOh, so it\u2019s like a country club.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tIt is, only for the dead. And then my godmother [Teresa Heinz Kerry] is married to John Kerry, so we asked him to write a letter. They moved over some bones of people, and we got spots. (Laughs<\/em>.) But, really, there was suddenly more space. The rumor was that people had to sell their plots because they lost all their money with Bernie Madoff.<\/p>\n

\tAnd there\u2019s room for all of you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tWe have 24 plots. So there\u2019s room for my unborn grandchildren. It\u2019s so fucked. My book Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave <\/em>is all essays about my morbid family. The upshot is that when you are morbid \u2014 and there are studies backing this up \u2014 you\u2019re actually happier than everybody else, because you don\u2019t sweat the small stuff. We\u2019re all going to fucking die. That\u2019s the prism through which I\u2019ve lived my entire life. Very carpe diem. I am very much appreciating every single day, and I just think I\u2019m happier than everybody else.<\/p>\n

\tTo your point, agonizing about everything isn\u2019t doing me any favors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tI\u2019m the happiest person I know. I think it\u2019s because I was raised with hourglasses everywhere. I have an hourglass collection now. My parents are those people in Annie Hall who were like, \u201cGuess who has stage four pancreatic?\u201d So, I was just very aware. People think I\u2019m Debbie Downer sometimes because I\u2019m just like, \u201cGuys, we\u2019re going to die. Let\u2019s not worry about this nonsense.\u201d \t<\/p>\n

\tAt the risk of ending this on a dark note, you lost your father two years back. Is he the only one currently occupying this very large family plot?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\tHe\u2019s holding down the fort. When he was sick, I called my parents and they were like, \u201cWe can\u2019t talk. We\u2019re looking at tombstone fonts.\u201d They were literally on Pinterest, scrolling tombstone fonts, talking to the designer. He was fully involved. When we buried him last August, I was bawling but also kind of laughing because it was what he wanted. He\u2019d said, \u201cWe got the best view.\u201d I said, \u201cWe\u2019ll be dead. Who cares about the view?\u201d It was just so him. I kind of want to die like that.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jill Kargman is known for being gleefully out of step with the denizens of her native Upper East Side, so it seems fitting that when I find her in the aggressively floral library of a private club in her neighborhood \u2014\u00a0one of so many to open in New York of late \u2014 she is, as always, wearing black. And even though the May weather outside is starting to flirt with summer temperatures, she is completely covered.\u00a0 \u201cI have the blood pressure of a vampire, 86 over 60,\u201d says Kargman, explaining the cup of tea warming her hands. \u201cI\u2019m like a dead body. I\u2019m cold on a beach.\u201d This public-facing version […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1206,2,1207,164,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hollywood","category-jill-kargman","category-movie-features","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}