"A woman sits next to a very dashing, mysterious man in first class, decides he's the love of her life," Tia Williams says, describing her new book, The Missed Connection. "They didn't exchange information, and she hires a detective to track him down. The detective is also hot, so she has a love triangle on her hands."

The Missed Connection is Williams’ eighth novel, the latest in a successful career that includes Seven Days in June and The Perfect Find, which was adapted into a film starring Gabrielle Union. Williams certainly knows how to craft a romance, but before she was dreaming up stories about jet-setters and detectives, her ideas came from her own life—with a twist.

Williams has been writing since she was a child, and as a “socially awkward” middle schooler, she developed a process for getting through tough days.

"I would come home and I would rewrite the day so that it worked out," Williams tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the "Nice Talk" podcast. "So that I said the funniest, coolest thing, that I got the guy. So I would do that as, like, I guess today you would call it self care ... And I was writing fiction, I was writing Tia fanfic."

And that fan fiction about her own life didn't stop once she was out of school. In her twenties, while working as a editor at Glamour and dating "a lunatic, as one does," Williams decided to make a change and move to Spain.

"I was teaching English to third graders in Seville, and while I was there, I just did what I always do," the author explains. "I started rewriting this horrific love story into something beautiful. I made my crazy boyfriend be, like, a good guy, and I gave it a happy ending, and all this stuff. And when I got back to New York, working at Condé Nast again, I was looking over what I'd written in Spain, I was like, 'Oh, this is my first book.'"

That book is 2004's The Accidental Diva—about a career-focused magazine beauty editor who falls for a performance artist.

Williams' habit of injecting her own life and background into her work isn't always quite so literal. More broadly, Williams writes about Black women, like herself, because they were left out of the Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz "glamor fiction" that she loved reading when she was growing up.

"There was always career drama and relationship intrigue, and it just felt so larger than life, and just so cool," Williams says. "But there were no Black people in those stories."

She goes on, "I remember having that thought, like, 'When I grow up, I'm gonna write these books starring us.' Because what I would do is recast the books with Black people, which is, like, a very dehumanizing thing to do as a kid, because you're teaching yourself Black is a version of white."

These days, Williams says she especially enjoys writing Black women villains. She's inspired by Dynasty's Dominique Deveraux, who was played by Diahann Carroll, and was "just as bitchy as Alexis, just as beautiful, just as glamorous, just as rich."

"It was like the audacity of us rooting for a Black female villain," Williams continues. "Because we're either supposed to hate her or she's supposed to be, like, good and virtuous, so we can love her. Loving someone who isn't good and virtuous but is Black was groundbreaking."

For more from Williams—including her writing tips and a glimpse at what goes down in the group chat for Black romance writers—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

In her newly released memoir, Transcendent, Laverne Cox looks back at her life and career, including, of course, her breakthrough role as Sophia on Orange Is the New Black. When the series premiered, Cox was 41. And while she might have been trying to make a name for herself as an actor before this—looking back, she's glad that stardom happened when it did.

On the latest episode of the "Nice Talk" podcast, Cox opens up about how, in her childhood, she tried to gain love through her achievements in school, because she couldn't be loved for being her authentic self. "That's a problem. That's not healthy," Cox says, but she continued to see this pattern pop up in her adult life.

"We're turning 30, and like, well, wasn't a star yet. I wasn't famous yet, and I felt like a failure," she recalls. "And then, when I hit 40, it still hadn't happened. There was something in me that defines myself a little bit by what I do."

Now, having gone on to huge success as an actor and TV host, she has a different perspective on fame than she would have had earlier in life.

"What I understand now is that it is all to be of service to something bigger than me," she says. "It's not about my ego, which it would have been if it had happened in my twenties or thirties. I think fame would have been about my ego, and now it's about being of service. And so I think that's the difference between adult Laverne who's, like, a little more healed than the Laverne who was like, 'I'm gonna be rich and famous. I'm gonna show all of you bullies I'm fabulous' or whatever."

Part of that bigger mission is Cox's advocacy for trans rights and representation. She says that her book being released in the current political climate feels "divine."

"What we are witnessing around how trans people are talked about and legislated against in this moment is completely about dehumanization," Cox explains. "The Republican Party has been able to very successfully dehumanize trans people. I think they've done an amazing job of it." She says this "well organized, well funded propaganda campaign .... manufactures consent to take away rights and commit violence against us."

With her book, she's contributing—as she has many times in her career—to changing this hateful narrative.

"I think a lot of our work right now is to rehumanize trans people, and the way we do that is with stories," Cox continues. "We do that by telling our stories, elevating the voices and lived experiences of actual trans people."

For more from Cox—including tales about her "broke and fabulous" days in '90s New York City—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Many reality stars use TV as a launchpad for other opportunities, but not everyone is as refreshingly open about it as Whitney Leavitt.

Even before she gained a massive following on TikTok as part of the Utah-based "MomTok" group, Leavitt wanted to break into acting.

"I didn't even have an agent at the time, and good old Google was like, well, you know, start on social media, like, get your name out there," the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the "Nice Talk" podcast.

Social media led to reality TV, though that wasn't part of the plan. But Leavitt saw where the path might lead. "It just happened so organically, and in my mind, my business mind, I said, okay, I'm gonna meet people in this industry, I'm gonna get on a network, and then hopefully lead to other things."

And that it did. After deciding to leave Mormon Wives following season 2, Leavitt ultimately returned for a third season after finding out it meant she could audition for Dancing With the Stars—a fact she pointed out on Mormon Wives in a meta twist. Leavitt ended up on the dance competition show and made it to the semifinals. Three days after she was eliminated, she found out she'd been cast as Roxie Hart in Broadway's Chicago.

Now, Leavitt has actually left Mormon Wives, and the upcoming fifth season will be her last. She announced her departure in May, during her final Chicago performance.

"This time, it's different," Leavitt tells Ogunnaike. After leaving the show with "frustration and anger" in the past, she now says: "I'm leaving with gratitude. Like, my cup is full. I don't feel like there's anything more for me there."

So, what's next? Well, Leavitt started a production company, Leavitt Media House.

"I love being cast in things, but I also love creating, and this felt like an avenue to do both of those things," the mother of three says. She adds that she's "very inspired by Reese Witherspoon ... There's many books that I'd love to adapt into film," but she's most intrigued by "characters that are just emotionally honest."

She also starring in a Christmas movie—on which she is an executive producer—that comes out this holiday season.

"That was my first number one on the call sheet, my first feature film," she explains. "I connected with the writer, and we started with literally nothing. It was just me and the writer, and then we connected with the producer, and then investors, and it is where it is today ... I'm so excited for the world to see it."

Leavitt says that she'd also love to act in a Broadway show again. "There's been some talks of some shows and plays, and I think it's just figuring out what that right one is," she says. "I felt so incredibly welcomed by that community."

On top of all of this, you might even see Leavitt on reality TV again. On "Nice Talk," Leavitt shared that she's open to doing Traitors, and after her podcast interview, she teased a potential reality show from her own production company on Instagram.

For more from Leavitt—including her advice to anyone trying to grow their social media following—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Dr. Becky Kennedy has built an Instagram following of 3.5 million by sharing her tips and strategies for raising kids. And while many of those 3.5 million people are undoubtedly parents, on the latest episode of the "Nice Talk" podcast, Kennedy explains that her viral parenting strategy can apply to another major facet of life: the workplace.

Kennedy co-founded Good Inside, which is now an app, website, book, and podcast with parenting advice all based around the same idea of "authority without aggression and connection without collapse." The clinical psychologist calls it a "middle ground" based on her belief that "we've over corrected from 'parents don't care about kids' feelings' to 'kids' feelings now dictate parent decisions.'"

Kennedy says that she hears from parents who use the Good Inside app only to find that the tips are also "really useful in work." This is not a surprise from her standpoint: "Human relationships are human relationships."

Some parenting strategies that can apply to the office include the idea of being a "sturdy leader" rather than a "selfless martyr"—a.k.a. "the best moms run themselves into the ground. The best moms are the most tired moms. The best moms are the most selfless moms."

"'Selfless' is a terrifying word for me," Kennedy says. "I don't want a selfless pilot. I want a pilot, I want a CEO who knows what they believe in, who's listening to other people, but losing yourself? That's not a good situation. I think being a sturdy leader actually can be captured by our ability to do two things at once. You're able to stay connected to yourself, meaning I know my values, I know what I want, I know my limitations, I know what limits I need to set to stay a sane person, and I'm also able to stay connected to someone else, meaning I can hear that they don't agree with me, I can let them be upset, and I can tolerate that because it doesn't threaten me so much."

Kennedy gives an example of a parent having to deny a kid another episode of TV and a manager having to turn down an employee's request for a promotion that is not yet available. You care about how the person feels—even if the decision being made is not what they were looking for and will upset them—but you also know that it was the right move at the time.

Another Dr. Becky tip that can apply to many interpersonal scenarios: "Do and say nothing until you've gotten yourself in an effective mindset." Basically, don't try to solve a problem while you're thinking of the other person as the enemy or as the thing that needs to be fixed.

"People like to be brought in to solve problems," Kennedy says. "They're like, 'Oh, let's solve this problem together.' Nobody likes to be talked to like they are the problem … And if you just approach someone like you're on the same team, there's nothing to defend, and now you can do more pure problem solving."

She continues, "With the kid, instead of saying, 'Hey, every time you go to the park, you hit someone, like, what's wrong with you? We don't do that in this family' versus 'Hey, you know what? It's so hard to be in the sandbox and watch someone have that red truck and have to wait for it ... Hitting is not okay, but I wanted to think about this together. What do you think you can do when you're in the sandbox, knowing it's hard? What should we do?' Even a four-year-old, even a two-year-old will really benefit from it. So, again, same method, same team mindset is to me always a first step, and then usually the conversation is easier and more effective."

For more from Kennedy—including her explanations of emotional regulation and weaponized incompetence—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

After seven seasons, Ego Nwodim left Saturday Night Live last year. And while fans of the long-running series may have had to say goodbye to Lisa from Temecula, they can still get plenty of Nwodim: the 38-year-old comedian hosts the podcast Thanks Dad and is set to appear in Hulu’s upcoming series Not Suitable for Work and Netflix’s Little Brother.

Clearly, Nwodim is still putting herself—and her talent—out there. But she’s also being intentional about what she takes on, resisting the urge to say yes to every opportunity or weigh in on every conversation simply because her career has given her the platform to do so.

"I've learned that I get tired of my own voice and not in a self-deprecating or self-abusive kind of way. I'm just like, we don't need to hear you talk all the time," Nwodim says of what she's learned from podcasting on the latest episode of "Nice Talk."

Nwodim explains that this way of thinking extends outside of her podcast, too.

"Just because I've been given opportunities and people do ask me to show up places, doesn't mean that I should. Not because I'm like, 'I need to have a boundary'—though those are good, too. But namely, just because people will give me a microphone now and allow me to show up and talk, doesn't mean I need to. I don't have to comment on everything."

She's also aware that stepping aside could mean making "the room for someone else," because "someone else might have something better to say at the time."

When it came to leaving SNL, Nwodim, similarly, didn't want to be a "ball hog."

Reflecting on being part of the legacy of Black women on SNL—of which there have been very few—Nwodim says that she's "very grateful" that she got to "showcase some of [her] sensibilities.

"I definitely thought about representing for Black women on the show, and I was excited to do that and honored to do that. And leaving the show, I'm like, there are so many talented Black women out there who are so funny," she continues. "Someone else go play. I don't need to be a ball hog."

The Hoppers actor recognizes that not everyone will agree with this approach.

"Listen, it's a hard thing to get a job in this industry, and if you want to hold on to that ball, I respect it," she says. "I just know that I was like, oh, someone else can come play."

For more from Nwodim—including why she finds improv "meditative" and what she considered the best part of SNL—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Cleo Wade knows all about taking a chance on a passion, having gone from feeling unfulfilled in a corporate job in fashion to becoming a hugely successful poet. So the poet—whose seventh book, In a World of Sunrises: 365 Days of Heart, Soul, and Hope, hit shelves in April—has some go-to advice for others looking to follow their dreams and work for themselves.

On the latest episode of Marie Claire's "Nice Talk" podcast, Wade explains that she became "dissatisfied" with her fashion career, but she stuck with it because "my goal in my life was financial security." Ever since she started working in a clothing store at age 12, she says, people had reassured her: “You can do this and you’re good at it.”

"I was uncomfortable, but I didn't realize that I wasn't living in something I was dreaming for myself," Wade says.

When she "eventually left doing any type of work in fashion, because, frankly, it's too hard," one motivating thought kept returning to her: "I remember having this thought, which is like, 'What if I took everything I knew and I worked as hard for myself as I worked for everyone else?' And that's the one piece of advice I give everyone who goes independent or has to apply any type of entrepreneurship to their journey," the author says. "You'll work that hard for somebody else. I can't even imagine what you could do if you worked that hard for yourself."

For Wade, that meant focusing on poetry, something she had loved since taking a class at a childhood summer camp, and, with the encouragement of friends, getting comfortable sharing her work publicly. When she began posting her poems on Instagram, her words resonated quickly. Today, she has 747,000 followers on the platform. And while her account started with photos of her poetry notebooks, she now shares pages from her published books.

"I think you have short yeses and long nos in life," Wade reflects. "And so I think you can be living in a long no professionally or relationally ... I got out of a long relationship before I met [partner] Simon [Kinberg], and we had our first kid within a year of being together. And it was just a short yes, I guess, and now we have three kids. I think with my work, I think the idea that things feel overnight is actually just because you had a short yes, and it just happened really fast and no one pays attention to your long no."

For more words of wisdom from Wade—including advice on how to start journaling and how to stay true to yourself despite outside influence—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Professional sports aren't just about being able to make a basket, score a goal, or serve a ball—everyone you're competing against can do that. Especially at the highest level, sports are a mental game. WNBA players—and Skechers ambassadors—Rickea Jackson and Kiki Iriafen agree that being in the right mental space is one of the most important factors when comes to success on the court.

On the latest episode of "Nice Talk," Jackson tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike that, for her, basketball is "a larger percentage mental than it is physical."

"I feel like I always want to be the one that no matter what's thrown at me, I'm prepared," Jackson says. "No matter what's thrown at me, I'm here, I'm level headed. Never too high, never too low."

The 25-year-old Chicago Sky player explains that the key is to exist in the moment. For instance, instead of focusing on shots she missed or calls that were made, "I just had to learn to have a short memory in those aspects, because basketball is so quick. You look up, you're in the third quarter. You look up, you're in the fourth quarter. You have to make a game winning shot. You can't be thinking about what happened in the first quarter when the ref called a bad call."

As for Iriafen, she says that having the right mindset has a noticeable affect on how she plays.

"If I tell myself I'm one of the best players on the floor, I'm going to play like it," she says. "If I'm unsure, if I'm like, 'I don't know,' I'm going to play like that. I'm going to play unsure."

Iriafen, who will start her second year in the league with the Washington Mystics this month, made a point to get her "mind in a great spot" prior to joining the WNBA. She knew playing professionally would only increase the pressure she felt as a collegiate player.

"The same amount of time that I put into my craft on the court, I'm putting it into my mind," Iriafen says. "I think that's an area where a lot of athletes can grow in. A lot of athletes are in the gym 24/7, which is amazing, but what about the mind part? I feel like this is always an afterthought, and it's when things get bad that we start working on that—which is okay too, but I wanted to be really proactive about it."

Iriafen works with a mental performance coach, which she describes as a "basketball coach, but just for your mind." Techniques they work on include breathing, journaling, and imaging, the latter of which she says has to be "super vivid and intentional."

"I imagine myself checking in at the scorers table, high-fiving my teammate off the court, hearing the ball dribble," the 22-year-old says. "You make it super, super real, because most of the time, your brain doesn't know the difference between reality, what actually happened, and what you're telling it happened."

Jackson says that one struggle that she had to find a way to stay grounded during was multiple coach changes.

"I've had so many different coaches since my collegiate career. I think I've had about seven coaches in the last eight years, which is kind of unheard of," she explains. Jackson says that she's "proud" that she was able to adapt to so many styles and personalities and credits "talking to therapists, talking to my family, my loved ones, just opening up about that. It's just something that I felt always keeps me relieved of it." She adds, "Also being grateful to even be here is what just makes me just have gratitude for being able to still dribble this basketball."

For more from Iriafen and Jackson—including their thoughts on the growing popularity of women's sports, what the WNBA draft was really life, and tunnel 'fits—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

With her popular social media accounts, podcast, and upcoming book, Haley Sacks—aka Mrs. Dow Jones—is teaching the new rules of building wealth and managing your finances. And if you’re truly starting from scratch—as in, you don’t even want to check your bank account—she has some advice for you.

On the latest episode of the "Nice Talk" podcast, Sacks shares with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike the financial habit that everyone should start today: "money dates".

"I do it on the last Sunday of every month. I always say I'll only miss it if there's a funeral or Taylor Swift invites me to hang out," Sacks jokes. "But it has to be in your calendar because you will literally do anything else ... than deal with your finances. Like, literally, I'd rather scrub my bathroom floor with a toothbrush than review my credit card statement. It's a hurdle, and so you really do have to schedule it."

Sacks says a starter money date can take as little as 15 minutes.

"Just look at your credit card statement and your bank statement. And I'll Venmo everyone $10 if they don't find anything wrong in there, because I promise there will be something," the Future Rich Person author says. "And start to desensitize yourself to that, because unfortunately, sweetie, we're gonna have to do that forever. It's just like working out. You have to go to the gym if you want longevity."

When you’re ready for a longer, more involved money date, Sacks recommends scheduling one each month. She uses that time to review all of her spending, from cashing out her Venmo to making sure she’s sticking to the ratios outlined in her budget to checking if there are any packages she needs to return.

But a money date isn’t the only habit Sacks recommends financial planning newbies start right away.

"Open a high yield savings account," the "Financial Tea" podcast host continues. "Please don't keep your savings in your checking account. Don't keep it just rotting in your bank account. These are free accounts to open. You literally get like, 10 to 100 times more interest." But on top of letting your money make money, Sacks thinks its very important to keep savings separate from funds you can spend.

"I feel like a lot of people just keep their savings sitting in their checking account, and then when they open their checking account, they're like, 'I'm rich. I'm rich.' And it's like, 'No, babe, like, that is not money we're spending.'"

For more tips from Sacks on everything from bachelorette parties to prenups, check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

When you picture the Academy Awards red carpet, you probably see a bustling stretch of photographers and celebrities in fabulous gowns and slick tuxes. But someone has to be the first famous face there. This year, that person was Anna Cathcart.

"I pulled up in my car, and I was like, 'Mom, I think we're in the wrong place. Where are all the people?'" the XO, Kitty star recalls of the "embarrassing" moment on this week's episode of "Nice Talk."

"My sister has a photo of me looking so lost. I was like, 'What is happening?' to this lady, and she's like, 'So you are literally the first person here.' I was like, 'That's humiliating,'" Cathcart goes on. "Talk about me not fashionably late."

The actor says that she got there at 12:29 p.m. and the carpet opened at 12:30 p.m. "The photographer is like, 'It's official. The 2026 Oscars have begun!'"

This year was Cathcart's Oscars debut, and she says that the event lived up to the hype, calling it "surreal."

"I got to do the Glambot for the first time, like, all those things that I've seen on my Instagram feed forever," the 22-year-old says. "I was like, I can't believe it's me now. Like, I'm here. It was very cool."

Cathcart explains that she wanted her first Oscars dress to strike a balance of being "special," but also to "reflect" where she is in her career.

"I think one day, hopefully, I can be there as a nominee, and hopefully, can be there when I'm more involved in the projects that are attached to the Oscars."

Currently, Cathcart is making her mark with Netflix's To All the Boys I've Loved Before spinoff series XO, Kitty. The third season premiered April 3.

Cathcart, who is a self-described perfectionist, says that she has been influenced by her character, Kitty, who "lives so boldly and loudly."

"One of my favorite things that I've learned from Kitty is it's okay to be messy sometimes," she says. "It's okay to not be perfect. It's okay to not know who you are, or what the answer is, or how something's gonna turn out. I think she's really good at diving head first and being brave with love and friendship and chasing her dreams and going after what she wants."

For more from Cathcart—including why wearing her glasses is more than a fashion statement—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Emma Grede is the CEO and co-founder of the denim line Good American and a founding partner of the shapewear brand Skims, among other ventures. But long before her business success, her life looked very different from that of her Kardashian co-founders. Raised by a single mother in East London, Grede helped care for her three younger siblings. She grew up quickly, she says, and credits that early responsibility with giving her a strong sense of confidence and drive.

There was also a piece of advice from her mom that she says contributed to her "immense confidence."

"I really believed what my mum told me, when she said, 'You're no better than anyone else, but nor is anyone better than you,'" Grede shares on the latest episode of the "Nice Talk" podcast.

Grede didn't come from a wealthy family, and she also struggled in school due to being "unbelievably dyslexic". But when she found herself in "work experience" situations with kids who "had a lot more than I, had much better education," her reaction was: "I'm still gonna win. Like, I'm still gonna be the best intern. I'm still going to be the sparkliest one. I'm going to work the hardest."

More than that, she knew she brought skills and instincts that some of her peers didn't have.

"Actually, I know more than you," she recalls thinking. "Because I know the other side of things. I kind of looked at my skills very broadly. I was like, I can make a roast dinner. I'm 11 ... And I appreciate that about me, yeah? But I knew it very, very young, and so the confidence was built in."

Now, as a 43-year-old CEO named to Forbes’ list of America's Richest Self-Made Women, Grede carries that confidence with her, and says imposter syndrome has never really been part of the picture.

"Something that they say is like, 'It's small at the top.' It's not small at the top, it's minuscule. It's absolutely minute. And when you start to understand what has got people to the positions that they're in, it's never what you think," Grede says. "It's never about ability alone. It's always a mixture of a lot of different things: the right school, the right connection, all of this stuff that plays into it. And so my experience has taught me that usually the people around me don't know better, they've just had a different path, somewhat an easier path. So, I don't believe in imposter syndrome, because the reality of it—once you get there—is that it's not real. You're not an imposter. If you're there, you're there for a reason."

Another common qualm for working mothers that Grede doesn't engage with? Mom guilt.

"I think that you can get together and have like a guilt off. 'I feel worse. No, I feel worse' ... Let me tell you, when I'm out having dinner with my friends at nine o'clock, I don't want to go back to my kids. I'm having a great time," the Start with Yourself author says. "And fine if you feel like that, then stay home. But if you're out and you're doing your thing, like, be in that moment and enjoy it."

Grede says that she measures herself against the standards that she has set as a parent, rather than comparing herself to others.

"I'm not using other people's expectations ... or what the mum groups or Instagram has told me to do," the mother-of-four explains. "I have a set of principles for the way that I like to parent, and I want to make sure that I'm putting my kids to bed X amount of nights a week. And once I've done that, I'm good, because that's what I believe."

For more from Grede—including her negotiation tips and what she suggests as an alternative to manifestation—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Big news: Marie Claire’s podcast Nice Talk, hosted by editor in chief Nikki Ogunnaike, has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Podcast – Lifestyle category.

Launched in 2024, Nice Talk has become a weekly destination for women who want more from a podcast than surface-level chatter. Each episode, Ogunnaike sits down with fascinating women across entertainment, sports, and business to talk about how they got where they are, what makes them feel powerful, and the role played by their personal style.

Over nearly 70 episodes and two seasons, guests including Padma Lakshmi, Issa Rae, Coco Gauff, and Da'Vine Joy Randolph have opened up about building their careers, negotiating their worth, and the wardrobes that carry them through it all.

“Working on Nice Talk has been such a joy! Imagine getting to sit with a wide swath of fascinating women—entertainers like Teyana Taylor and Julia Fox to entrepreneurs like Emma Grede and Lena Waithe, to discuss money, power, and style,” says Ogunnaike. “‘Well-behaved’ women have long been discouraged from speaking on these topics—style should be effortless, and conversations about money or power aren't ‘proper’ ‘ladylike,’ or ‘nice.’ But with our episodes of Nice Talk we’ve been able to redefine those notions every week.”

Now, we need your help taking it home. Winners in the Webby Awards’ People’s Voice category are decided entirely by public vote, so consider this your formal ask.

How to Vote

1. Head to the Webby Awards Podcast — Lifestyle voting page.
2. Create a free account or log in.
3. Vote.

Voting is open through April 16 and takes less than a minute.

When it comes to celebrities speaking out about politics, one side says they should stay in their lane; the other demands more. Ask Padma Lakshmi how she thinks about using her platform, and her answer is refreshingly simple.

"I think anybody should use every opportunity they get—celebrity or not, well known public figure or not—to do what they can to better the world we're all sharing," Lakshmi says on the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk".

"Whether that's walking by a piece of trash on a New York City sidewalk and actually bending down and picking it up, to calling out when there's abusive behavior in a kitchen, or speaking up for the causes that matter, whatever they are," the former Top Chef host goes on.

Lakshmi makes her mark by choosing to speak about the issues closest to her.

"In my case, I think I felt comfortable speaking up because the issues that I have spoken up about are issues that touch me personally and that I have some experience with," she explains. "Whether it's immigration, or women's reproductive rights, or children's issues, or food scarcity issues, I try not to comment on things I'm not informed about or don't have, you know, some kind of experience and knowledge on."

You can see that ethos in Lakshmi's series Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi, which aired for two seasons on Hulu. The travel series highlights primarily immigrant communities across the United States and allows viewers to connect with various cultures through their food.

"It's about giving my microphone to others to tell their own stories as they see fit and just using food as a vehicle to do that," Lakshmi says of the show. "Taste the Nation was not created for people who actually think like me or [are] politically inclined in the ways that I am. It's actually designed for people who are very leery of immigration or opening the doors a little bit more."

Today, Lakshmi is working on a new show, America's Culinary Cup, which, like Taste the Nation, she created and hosts. The CBS competition series follows 16 chefs as they compete for a $1 million prize. Lakshmi sees it as “the Olympics of cooking” and wants audiences to watch it the way they watch sports (a deliberate goal for a network with a large, built-in sports audience).

"Watching live cooking can and should be like live-action sports," she says. "Instead of bats and balls, we have knives and fire, right? You know, anything can happen, and that's why it's so fun to watch."

For more from Lakshmi—including her go-to dish to make at home and the most overrated food trend—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Lauren Sherman doesn't want to be banned from fashion shows—but if that's the result of a great story, she'll take it.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk," the Puck fashion correspondent and longtime fashion journalist speaks to editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about not being invited to a recent show after publishing an article about the brand.

"I don't think anyone should not invite me because they're mad about something I wrote," Sherman says. "It benefits people for me to be there ... It's easier to judge a collection and judge what's happening with the business, as well, if you're in that room."

That said, when it came to the aforementioned brand's recent show, it was clear to her why she didn't get an invite.

"I didn't get to go to a show that I wanted to go to this season, because I reported correct information before they were ready for that information to be released," the "Fashion People" host explains. "And it's like, that's journalism. Like, that's the thing that I think other industries that happens all the time ... Whereas in our industry, it's kind of, you need to wait."

Sherman notes that if she had been asked to wait, she would have considered it, but explains that "everyone knew" what was happening behind the scenes. "It was going to get out anyway."

"Honestly, I made it better for the whole situation that I published early," she says. "Unfortunately, the designer did not feel that way and did not invite me. But you know what? I still love that person's clothes."

When it comes down to it, Sherman says, "I'm not going to not do a story because I want to go to a show, and so the story is going to come first. And this show that I didn't get to go to during this recent Paris Fashion Week, if I had to go back, I would do it exactly the way I did it, because the story needed to be told."

Sherman recognizes that the ability to make a decision like that is a privileged position to hold.

"The priority for me will always be being as truthful and honest as I can, because I'm really lucky I get to do that and still be employed," she says. "There really aren't a lot of other people who have that freedom."

For more from Sherman—including the differences between the four major Fashion Weeks and her thoughts on A-listers in the front row—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Countless fans got to know Yvonne Orji as Molly on Insecure, but before she landed an Emmy nomination for the hit series, Orji got her start in stand-up comedy. And she's still performing today—even though taking to the stage continues to scare her.

"Comedy scared the crap out of me. Still does," Orji shares with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the latest episode of "Nice Talk".

"It is the thing that I know I'm purposed to do, but the thing that I always feel like I'm incapable of doing," she explains. "Before a sold-out show that has my name on the marquee, I'm hyperventilating in the back ... And then, without fail, the minute I hear 'Coming to the stage next, your headliner, Yvonne Orji,' it's like, I grab the mic and I'm a different person. Like, when Beyoncé says she becomes Sasha Fierce, I understand. I become this person that's supposed to do this thing."

One thing that helps with Orji's confident onstage persona is her outfits. She's already excited about the "bedazzled ... oversized" looks she's planning for her upcoming tour.

"You always gotta look good, because even if your jokes fail, everything can bomb, but your shoes gotta be the bomb."

Her shoe of choice?

"I'm always in some kind of a boot, thigh high. It could be stilettos, but, like, just sexy. I want to feel like a femme fatale up there," the 42-year-old says. And she pairs her boots with shorts or pants, because they work well with the physicality of her shows. "I'm dropping down. I'm basically being Mary J. Blige up on stage."

Looking back on the outfits she wore for her two HBO comedy specials, 2020's Momma, I Made It! and 2022's A Whole Me, Orji says, "I was like, we can be sexy and funny."

And while Orji is making this statement loud and clear now, she knows that it's viewed as outside of the norm for the comedy world, which she says tries to "put female comics in the box."

"When I first started doing comedy," she continues, "I would dress up and people were like, 'Oh, you here for the spoken word?' I'm like, 'Is it spoken word? Are we at a comedy club?' They were like, 'Oh, you singing.' I was like, 'If I do, everybody's leaving.' But it was just this idea, this concept that I was too pretty to be funny. I hated it." She jokes, "I mean, I am pretty and funny, and my number is..."

For more from Orji—including the documentary she accidentally starting making and her new podcast, "Foolishness at Its Finest"—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Anyone who has ever doomscrolled knows that logging off is easier said than done. But when you have 11.6 million followers on Instagram like Jordyn Woods, knowing when to just put the phone down is a very important lesson to learn.

Whether it's reality TV fame, modeling fame, influencer fame, or dating-an-NBA-player fame, Woods knows what it's like to be in the spotlight—and for the conversation to not always be positive. On the latest episode of "Nice Talk", Woods shares the best advice she's received on handling celebrity.

"One, log off. Two, silence is power," the 28-year-old says. "I feel your voice is more impactful when you don't overshare or over-speak, because when you do have something to say, people are more tuned in and really just have strong faith."

She adds another suggestion that anyone, famous or not, can benefit from: "Figure out something that makes you happy, whether that's journaling, getting outside. Like, know when to log off."

Woods says that it's easier to not respond to criticism of herself than it is to not respond to remarks about her loved ones, including her fiancé, NBA player Karl-Anthony Towns, and that's why it's so key to just stop looking.

"I know when I'm having a rough day to just not listen to the noise, because you can't control when you're scrolling what you see," she says. "Dating an athlete, there's going to be a lot of discourse. And as much as I want to respond to everything ... more so with people I love, whether it's my sister or fiancé or mother or whatever—because me, I know people are gonna say... they've said everything and they will continue to say it—but when it's my family, I'm like, How do I not respond? I need to log off."

Woods is introspective about how much of herself she shares online, noting that for "a certain period of time, I really shut down."

"Now, like, slowly giving people a little bit more and more and more, you almost feel like you want to protect yourself and you don't owe people anything. I feel like I have so much to share, and I want to be able to do it, but what's the right way?"

As Woods continues to do what feels right when it comes to sharing her life with her millions of followers, her Instagram is currently full of updates about her fashion line, Woods by Jordyn, cute moments from her relationship with Towns, and plenty of pictures of her outfits for New York Knicks games.

To hear the entrepreneur dive deeper into all of this and more—including how wedding planning is going—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Being the first to achieve something is exciting, but it also can bring on doubt. Doubt about if you're doing it right. Doubt about if you're letting anyone down. Doubt about whether being the first means there will ever be a second.

Malika Andrews knows these feelings well. In 2020, Andrews became ESPN's youngest sideline reporter, and in 2022, she became the first woman to host the NBA draft. She's gone on to host the draft every year since.

On the latest episode of "Nice Talk", Andrews opens up about the pressure that comes with titles like "first" and "youngest", from wanting to appear older to the tough question she began asking herself.

"Being the first means you don't want to be the last, and we have still a 'prove it' society," Andrews tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "When you are the first person to do something—especially when you are the first woman, let alone the first Black woman—you are looking to give people a reason for this to continue."

Similarly, she felt pressure from being one of the youngest people in her workplace—though this pressure was largely internal.

When she was starting her career, Andrews says, "I was dressing like I took nana's curtains, cut them off, and wrapped them around me. I was like, I will be taken seriously if it is the last thing I do! I am 25, but you will be thinking I am a ma'am! I was so nervous."

She attributes this, in part, to women being told "that we need to justify the reason that we are in a room, instead of walking in knowing that our qualifications will speak for themselves."

After being labeled the “youngest,” Andrews naturally began to worry about what it would mean when she no longer was. The NBA Today host recalls an exchange with a tennis legend that unexpectedly helped her move past that concern.

"I was down in the Australian Open and I had a birthday when I was down there," Andrews shares. "And John McEnroe, he asked me how old I am ... 'What are you? Twenty-one?' I was like, 'No, I'm actually 31.' He goes, 'Oh, that's a real age.' And I was like, No one's ever told me that. Got it. I'm finally at the real age."

She continues, "I do think for so long I've had that qualifier that I did start to let the green monster of doubt creep in. What happens when I'm not just the youngest? Am I still good enough? And so now I get to play in the space of being ... 'still young.'"

Andrews says she has an "ease and a comfort" with hosting NBA Today, so now she takes on new assignments—like covering tennis—"not from a place of pressure, but a place of joy."

"I'm chasing butterflies," she says. "These new assignments that give me the feeling of being nervous and alive."

For more from Andrews—including her advice for her younger self and why she was scared to admit she wanted to be on TV—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Some people recite affirmations to boost their confidence. Others cue up an empowering playlist before a big moment. But Taylor Rooks? She watches Coco Gauff do her thing on the tennis court.

The host of NBA on Prime Video sits down with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the latest episode of "Nice Talk". During the interview, Rooks shares that rather than turning to a hype song when she needs to feel powerful, she looks to other women kick butt in their areas of expertise. "So, like, I might watch Beyoncé's Homecoming documentary, because I watch that and say, 'Wow, I can do anything. If I had to fly right now, I would figure it out.'"

And being a sportscaster, it's unsurprising that two of the other women Rooks turns to are athletes. "I'll watch Coco Gauff beat [Aryna] Sabalenka," Rooks continues. "I'll watch Sue Bird beat the Phoenix Mercury. It's these moments where women are powerful I think that make me feel really powerful."

Rooks—who, in addition to hosting Amazon Prime Video's NBA show, works on Thursday Night Football for the streamer—opens up about some of the nerve-racking situations she's faced during her career on the podcast. (You know, the type of situations that could benefit from watching Beychella first.)

For instance, when she was offered a job at TNT while she still had a year left on her contract with New York sports network SNY, she had to decide whether to take the leap. And by working up the courage to ask her boss about making a change, she learned an important lesson: “Just ask.”

Rooks recalls telling her boss, "'I received an offer that I feel like I can't not take. It's something that could just be huge for my career. I would love if you all did not pick up the last year of my option." And rather than deny her the opportunity, he confirmed what she already thought about herself.

"He said to me, 'I appreciate you coming in here and saying all of this. I feel like you have outgrown this place. You are incredible. We will let you go to this next spot.'"Rooks says this "formative moment" taught her that "You have to open your mouth... You have to at least try, so that taught me to just ask."

Another tactic Rooks uses in tough moments? Being over-prepared. "I just tried to over, over, over-prepare, which is what I always do," Rooks remembers of beginning to host NBA on Prime. "I think that that is the best antidote to not feeling confident."

The 33-year-old goes on to describe the feelings of imposter syndrome she experienced as she began "the biggest job that I've ever had in my career."

"I feel like everyone kind of has that voice of Am I going to be found out? Am I good enough? Can I do this thing? And I actually think it was important for me to be honest about this feeling, so that I could fight through those feelings and then ultimately understand that those are not feelings that are true." she says. "It's just this sort of reality you're creating in your head, because you kind of think that it keeps you safe, but really it can hold you back."

For more from Rooks—including her career journey and the meaning behind the outfits she wears on-air—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Before every professional basketball game, style and sports converge during the tunnel walk. It’s essentially the backstage of an NBA or WNBA game: Players are photographed walking into the arena before changing into their uniforms. And just like actors and musicians are styled for red carpets, many athletes now have stylists, ensuring they look their best for the tunnel walk and everything that follows.

One of the top stylists in the game is Courtney Mays, who focuses specifically on sports stars. Mays’ clients include Chris Paul, Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, and Megan Rapinoe. She also works with a few entertainers, such as actor Anthony Anderson and musician Brittany Howard.

“I'm a fan of the game, whatever game. Basketball, football, hockey, soccer, I'm a fan,” Mays says on the latest episode of “Nice Talk”. “And [athletes] are novices to the fashion space, so I can come in as sort of the educator. Also, they're really collaborative, maybe the team sport of it all. I think we can have those real conversations about what their goals are.”

Of course, like anyone else, an athlete’s knowledge of fashion and connection to their personal style is going to vary. For example, “Chris, we call little President Obama. He's very conservative, but, like, cool,” Mays says. “He loves fashion, and he wants to look great, but he doesn't care that much.”

But some players care a lot. Like fellow NBA player Karl-Anthony Towns, who Mays has also worked with, including during the recent NBA All-Star Weekend.

“The most fascinating thing about him is he is such a student of the industry, and he knows the designers, the history of the designer, the collection from 15 years ago,” Mays says. “He's really into the vintage. He's so knowledgeable. I'm sitting there, like, taking notes.”

Beyond making her clients look and feel good, Mays says her work is driven by a bigger mission: championing diversity in all its forms, from body size and sexual orientation to gender identity and personal style. For her, the WNBA is the clearest place to see that ethos in motion: “How cool is it that there's such a diversity in style sensibility and there's a diversity in identity within one sport?”

She continues, “When you look at women in sports, there's a huge queer population that's not being shown publicly in a way that I think is appropriate. I think that we should be celebrating queer identities. I think we should be celebrating the diversity in body types, especially in women's sports. So I'm like, if I have to shout it from the rooftops that, you know, not all of us want to be in miniskirts and crop tops, then I'm going to do that … I think that if I can find a way to use fashion to champion all of that, then I've done my job.”

For more from Mays—including her advice for aspiring stylists and why she’s not interested in “viral moments”—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Amy Smilovic is a fashion brand founder, illustrator, and author—exactly the kind of work you can picture someone passionately working on at all hours of the day. But before starting her line, Tibi, in 1997, Smilovic worked for American Express, where she learned something unexpectedly profound about what being "passionate" actually means.

"A lot of people assume like, well, if you're going to be passionate about something, it must be because you are in the music industry or the film industry, right? I call bullshit on that," Smilovic tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the latest episode of the "Nice Talk" podcast.

"When I was at Amex, I used to lay in bed at night and think like, 'Oh, how could I reposition this financial scenario to get this account to accept American Express? Like, I was running through, you know, discount rates and fee structures in my head. I was really passionate about it," she continues.

As Smilovic sees it, passion isn't limited to traditionally "exciting" fields. You can be passionate about almost any subject, no matter how mundane it might seem. And sometimes the passion isn't tied to a specific topic at all, but to a bigger, more conceptual way of thinking or working.

"I'm passionate about being curious. I'm passionate about having energy and, like, gusto after things," she goes on. "So if you're curious, if you're a high energy person, if you have pride in your work, that's passion. And you don't turn that off at seven o'clock."

Which brings Smilovic to another topic she "calls bullshit" on: work/life balance.

While people have very different ideas of what that looks like (and many genuinely want to switch off their work brains at home), Smilovic says it's easy to default to judging passion for work, especially when it spills into the rest of your life, as inherently a bad thing.

"I think that the danger is when anyone logically understands that, but you're being told by you being passionate, you're giving too much to someone else," the Creative Pragmatist author says. "You're giving too much to your boss. You should feel bad because you can't turn it off. You should be angry at your boss because you can't turn it off."

For more from Smilovic—including the scoop on her upcoming book, Almost Reckless (out March 3), and her advice for getting the most out of your wardrobe—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Jennette McCurdy became a celebrated author with her 2022 memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. Ask how she went from feeling powerless as a child actor to taking control of her life and work, and she’ll tell you her own rage helped her get there.

“I think any decision that I've made in my life that has put my life on a significantly better path has been a decision made from a place of rage," the 33-year-old tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the latest episode of "Nice Talk."

"Rage is the reason that I was able to overcome an eating disorder," she continues. "Rage is the reason that I'm in a healthy and loving relationship of nine years. Rage is the reason that I quit acting and started writing."

Of course, everyone experiences rage differently—different reasons, different scales, different frequencies—but, as McCurdy explains it, anyone can benefit from recognizing when they feel anger and exploring what it might mean.

"If we can only touch base with our anger and sit back and go, 'What is the information it's giving? What am I angry about that can lead us to make better life choices moving forward?' she says. "It might be jarring. It might be anger toward the relationship you're in. It might be anger toward the career you're in. It might be anger toward your best friend, who you've outgrown. That anger is trying to tell you something really, really, really important, and so suppressing it is only going to keep you on a disingenuous path."

McCurdy released her second book—and first novel—Half His Age in January, and, as she puts it, “rage is a huge theme” throughout. The story follows Waldo, a 17-year-old girl, who enters a sexual relationship with her teacher—and it aims to leave readers a little disoriented and unsure of what to think.

"I really wanted the reader to be uncomfortable and to just feel because, ultimately, what you're supposed to feel is neither here nor there," the writer says.

She adds that there was "a lot of unprocessed anger about situations from my past that I think was fueling this process and the writing of this book."

McCurdy was in "a significant age gap relationship" when she was 18, but she warns that "to project me onto it too much—which I'm aware people will do—I think would be a complete misread."

She goes on, "Waldo really does deserve to be seen as her own character, because she is that. But I do think that unprocessed rage was the emotional charge that got this book done."

For more from McCurdy—including about her style evolution and the expensive purchase she made after the success of her memoir—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Erin Walsh is the stylist behind memorable red carpet moments from Selena Gomez and Anne Hathaway. But ask her to describe her process, and you’ll find there’s more to it than picking out striking looks.

Walsh joins editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the latest episode of "Nice Talk". On the podcast, she explains why she considers herself a "fashion therapist" and how she's putting that title to use for a wider audience in her upcoming book, The Art of Intentional Dressing.

"I didn't want to make a celebrity style book. I didn't want to make a fluffy book about getting dressed and playing with clothes. I wanted to create a movement that would fundamentally shift the way women think about their own possibility and their lives," Walsh says ahead of the book's May 5 release.

The Art of Intentional Dressing delves into Walsh's "create" method. The acronym standing for clarity, ritual, edit, align, truth, expansion—all things that Walsh suggests women think about as they build their wardrobes and get dressed every day.

"I created the method in the book by learning to live this way, and the ways that I had worked with clients for years that I was unconsciously doing," Walsh adds. "I've always considered myself to be a fashion therapist, not just a stylist, because I deeply want to connect with somebody and reveal essential things of themselves that they want to reveal through the clothes."

The best experiences with her clients are “deeply collaborative,”

"It's the process of me trying to unpack what do they need? How can I serve the story they need to tell?" she says. "And for actors that's many different boxes to hit, because it's not just 'How do you want to feel?' It has to do with the roles you're cast in, the career you're making outside of your career, what you're doing. And everybody has different tangents to their careers now."

Speaking specifically about Hathaway—with whom she has worked since 2019—Walsh says their collaboration has become "incredibly intuitive" and "like making music together."

"I always try to operate by setting my ego aside," she says. "If they ask, 'What do I think is best?' Yes, obviously ... But the point should be about the result and how they feel and how they they look."

Hathaway has a huge year ahead with five movies set to premiere, including the highly-anticipated The Devil Wears Prada 2.

Walsh teases fashion lovers with this: "With that movie, specifically, you have to really rise up to the occasion. It should be like a fashion extravaganza."

For more from the stylist—including her tips for editing your own closet—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

When it comes to manifesting, a lot of people focus on money. (I mean, ask yourself what you need more of and the answer is likely cash.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, Broke Millennial author Erin Lowry is not entirely on board with the idea.

"I'm gonna say 80 percent sham," Lowry responds when asked about money manifesting on the latest episode of "Nice Talk". "And by that, I mean 80 percent of the time it's not actionable."

Lowry—known for the practical money tips she shares on social media and in her book series—says that often, people who push manifestation online are "trying to sell you something ... a journal, a crystal, a course."

But, she continues, "I think the 20 percent where I like it is when the focus is on switching from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality. I am very much pro trying to wire your brain to an idea of abundance, which, unfortunately, can then just get still down to like, 'Money will always flow to me. Money will always come back to me'—which is not a negative mantra to have. Let me be very clear: If you want to say that out loud to yourself every day, I love that for you. But, how are we pairing that with action?"

Rather than "being like, 'Well, I put it to the universe, the universe will provide,'" Lowry suggests looking into the answers to questions such as "Are you in control of your money? Are you saving? Do you know how you're spending? Are you investing? Are you upskilling so that you can move up in your career? Are you figuring out how to bring more money in? So much in personal finance does fixate on cut, cut, cut as opposed to how can we expand, and again, that's a way where I feel like an abundance mentality is very positive."

On the other hand, a "scarcity mentality"—which definitely does not go hand-in-hand with manifesting—can hold people back financially, according to Lowry.

"Scarcity mentality also can be incredibly negative with your money," she says. "It can keep you from investing. It can keep you scared of, you know, getting into the stock market, of buying property, of investing in yourself, of going back to school, whatever it is."

Lowry is all about making financial planning accessible—not just something that one can dream about implementing one day. She stresses that you don't have to manifest more money into your life before getting started.

"Either you control money or money controls you. It's really that simple," she says. "And even if you don't make a ton of it, you still can be in control. That's really the fallacy for a lot of folks is, like, 'Well, I don't have enough money to be good at money.' Says who?"

For more from Lowry—including her tips on raising your credit score and what to do if you overspent during the holidays—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Spoilers from the first three episodes of The Traitors season 4 ahead.

Fans of The Real Housewives of Atlanta know that Porsha Williams can certainly hold her own in an argument. But on The Traitors, the reality TV star didn't realize just how much of a fight she would have to put up.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Williams opens up about her time on the competition show, including how she "underestimated" the intensity of filming the roundtable.

If you're up-to-date with The Traitors, you know that Williams was banished by her fellow contestants in episode 2, after comedian Ron Funches presented his "evidence" that she was a Traitor. She wasn't.

"I underestimated how much fight you have to give at the roundtable," Williams tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnake.

Funches told the group that Williams had said, “I killed Ian,” referring to the murder of Big Brother winner Ian Terry by the Traitors. To him, her use of “I” was a clear tell that she was a Traitor herself.

"Once I got there and I realized that [Ron] was flies on shit, like he was not gonna let it go, I was like, Oh, okay, so I'm supposed to go toe-to-toe. I just wasn't prepared for that," Williams says of the roundtable.

She explains now that she was "talking from the mind frame of a Traitor. My whole sentence was, 'Okay, guys, we got to figure this out. Let's say if I'm a traitor, I already killed Ian. Why?'"

Williams laid out her case at the roundtable, but it wasn't enough to save her. Beyond the "I killed Ian" moment, Funches shared that Williams had also said there were four Traitors—something that she couldn't technically confirm unless she was a Traitor herself. Williams says she just assumed as much, as past seasons typically featured three Traitors, and this one introduced a new Secret Traitor as well.

But the shock of the roundtable wasn’t the only thing weighing on Williams; she was already exhausted by a personal situation outside the show.

"I think the timing was just probably not the best for me," the 44-year-old explains. "I had literally just spent 15 hours a day before in court divorcing, and so I didn't have any more fight. I was like, 'Oh, y'all don't believe me? Okay, got it. Okay. Divorce me, then. Banish me, then. Bye ashies, all of ya'll!' Of course, I wanted to say way more when I stood up there, but I was like, keep it cute."

Had Williams held out longer on the show, she might have helped take down the Secret Traitor, Donna Kelce. Williams said she knew the mother of NFL players Jason and Travis Kelce was a Traitor right away.

"Oh, I knew Donna from day one, from the moment she got her card," Williams says. On this season, host Alan Cumming picked a Traitor in front of the entire cast by revealing a secret card to the chosen contestant.

"I knew it when she turned around," she continues. "At first, I was joking with people. I'd be like, 'What if she's the Traitor?' And then she started kind of just changing. She was really calm, laid back, and then all of a sudden, she'd, like, start talking to you, you know what I mean, and she picked certain people to do it with ... I told everybody, even going into that first roundtable, I was like, 'I think everybody should vote for Donna.'"

So who does she think should go home next? "Michael [Rapaport]," she says. "Listen, he probably has a kind heart...I think he should go only because he is throwing everything off." She adds: "If he's a Faithful, which I think he probably is, just a horrible Faithful, I think he should probably go."

For more from Williams, check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

If you're into manifesting, a new year means a renewed focus on everything you want the future to hold. But if you ask content creator Cyrus Veyssi, anyone leaving out one particular aspect of manifesting is doing it all wrong.

Followers of Veyssi know very well that the beauty and lifestyle influencer loves an affirmation. Sometimes the affirmations are humorous—"You don't have to date an idiot." Other times, they're more pointed: "They're not smarter. They're louder." But regardless of the delivery, Veyssi loves affirmations so much that they've released an entire book of them.

On this week's episode of "Nice Talk", Veyssi opens up about their new book-journal, Honey, and explains why affirmations are the "fuel" that powers manifesting.

"For the longest time, I myself doubted the power of writing down affirmations and even journaling. Like, I was not that person," Veyssi tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "When I started to write, I realized how important affirmations are to creating the version of yourself that you want."

Honey features 30 affirmations written by Veyssi and 30 blank pages for people to write down their own, which Veyssi strongly encourages.

"Manifesting is not enough, you guys. It's not," they continue. "I always say it's like manifesting is the vehicle and affirmations are the fuel."

Veyssi recognizes that affirmations and manifesting aren't for everyone.

"It's one of the things where it's like, if it works for you, it works for you," they go on. "And I think that when people ask me about confidence, and people ask me about mental health and how to navigate it, I'm not a professional, right? I don't have that background. All I can say is from what I've understood in my life, manifesting was not enough."

Veyssi's content runs the gamut from testing new makeup, to their "Bonding with my Straight Dad" series, to their "Bougie Gay Uncle" comedy videos. They were inspired to release Honey after seeing just how deeply people connected with the affirmations they shared on social media.

"People really do enjoy both the silly affirmations of, like, a reminder to delete your ex's number out of your phone because it's been three months, to, like, how important it is to be single instead of settling for someone that would make you crave your solitude."

Veyssi, who self-published both physical and digital versions of Honey, hopes to release additional affirmation books in the future—especially given how many other affirmations they've written down that were not included in this first journal.

"I could write an entire affirmation book for people of color. Write an entire affirmation book for queer people." But, with this first version, they asked, "How can I launch with something that a mother who is 60 in Minneapolis can read and resonate with, to a teen, who is in high school and is having difficulty?"

For more from Veyssi—including the two affirmations they suggest adopting in 2026—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

New York Fashion Week isn’t dead—it’s evolving. And for designer Daniella Kallmeyer, that evolution is working just fine.

On the latest episode of "Nice Talk", Kallmeyer chats with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about launching her eponymous line and identifying the "void in the market ... between designer and contemporary" that she sought to fill. The designer also explains why she's "thriving" at NYFW—and why the changes the event has undergone are ultimately a good thing.

"It's clearly not [dead], because I'm thriving," Kallmeyer says. "I think that there's a new guard, and maybe people don't have their eyes open enough. Maybe the old guard has moved or shifted or changed. Maybe they've left New York ... And, you know, as they exit, so comes in a new class of designers. And it's hard to do it, and it's hard to make it, and sometimes it takes time for enough people to have eyes on things."

Kallmeyer points out that newer designers are showcasing their work in untraditional ways that people might not be used to. Kallmeyer, for example, didn't do a show for her first NYFW, but instead "it was a salon, it was high tea, it was lunch with the girls." Kallmeyer launched her brand—which has gained popularity in recent years—back in 2012. "Not everybody knew about it," she says of her first NYFW, "because it didn't have big, blazing lights."

Looking back on what some might consider New York Fashion Week’s heyday, when shows were staged in massive tents at Bryant Park, Kallmeyer notes that the structure of the event left far less room for variation in how designers presented their work.

"That was a time that doesn't make sense anymore, you know?" she says. "And that was also hard. You were in or you were out. I think it's more spread out. It's more unique. It's less formulaic than it used to be."

Kallmeyer was nominated for Womenswear Designer of the Year at this year's CDFA Fashion Awards. The honor was so unexpected that she nearly deleted the email notifying her about the nomination. "I read it out loud to [my publicist], and we both cried."

"It's hard not to have imposter syndrome," Kallmeyer explains. "We've been around for 13 years, and I've been grinding, and we have two stores, one store on Madison Avenue. We sell to some of the best wholesale accounts. We've dressed some of the biggest celebrities, and I still feel like I'm emerging."

But that first New York Fashion Week (without the “big, blazing lights”) ultimately became an ethos that still defines the brand today. "Kallmeyer doesn't shout," the designer says. "It introduces itself, and you'll meet us when it's time."

For more from Kallmeyer—including how she defines success and the role her queer identity plays in her line—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

"Work/life balance" and "having it all" are phrases most often associated with working women—and chasing them can create unrealistic pressure around what we’re actually doing, which is living our lives and trying to feel as happy and at peace as we can.

So the real question becomes whether "work/life balance" and "having it all" are even goals worth pursuing. For Jeanelle Teves, the Chief Commercial Officer at stroller brand Bugaboo and a mother of two, both ideas are "falsehoods."

Instead, as Teves shares on the latest episode of "Nice Talk", she thinks in terms of "work/life alignment ... prioritizing the thing that matters most to you in that moment that will mean that you are not going to be able to do something else."

She explains this through what she calls the "pie theory."

"Think about your life and your energy and your time as a whole pie," she says on the podcast. "You're never going to have a perfectly sliced pie. You're going to have some weeks where your work slice looks really big, because maybe you need to kill a pitch, or you have a board presentation. Three weeks ago, it was one of my children's birthdays, and we took them to Disney World, and my entire pie was my family. I had to delegate at work. I did not work out that week. I did not see my friends. No other slices."

Along with the pie theory, Teves—who shares career advice on social media and through her platform Work Lunch—leans on another framework for deciding how to prioritize her time.

"A good exercise, or a good way to determine what actually matters, what's important versus urgent is—I like to think of the things in two timescapes," she says. "So, what is going to matter five months from now and what is going to matter five years from now? And start to prioritize what's important versus what's urgent."

For people working in business especially, the former Nike senior director adds, "It's where can you be good enough, and where can you be excellent?" For example: "Can the deck be an email? Can the presentation be a one-pager and still get the same impact? ... Where are those matter moments where you really have to shine? If you don't know what those are, ask your manager or pay attention in the town hall. There are the things that the boss is talking about and the themes that they're repeating over, and choose projects that you are going to be excellent in those areas."

For more from Teves—including her tactics for becoming more confident at work—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Before Meredith Koop was Michelle Obama's stylist, she thought she was going to be a backup dancer. Or maybe a psychologist. The three jobs couldn't be more different, but the path between them feels familiar: trying on identities until something finally fits. For Koop, what ultimately fit were fittings with the First Lady of the United States.

On the new episode of "Nice Talk", Koop chats with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about her career in fashion, starting with the "bold" move she made to get a job at a boutique.

Koop moved to Chicago after college and lived with her uncle while looking for work.

"I saw this ad in this local paper, and it was for a sales associate at a high-end boutique," she recalls. "I was like, 'Oh, I could do that. This has always been an area of interest for me.' So, I went in and had this interview. I was so mystified by the store and how beautiful it was seeing all these clothes in real life ... I'd never been in this level of a store to see Alexander McQueen in real life. I just wanted to work there. I really didn't even know everything that it would entail. "

Koop interviewed with the owner, Ikram Goldman, and was initially turned down because of her lack of experience.

"I was like, 'Oh, no, no. You don't understand. I want to work here. Like, I will do whatever it takes. Put me on a trial. Just allow me this opportunity.' And I think I look back at some of these moments where I was like, 'Why was I so bold?'"

She attributes some of that fearlessness to her age. "I really was willing to do whatever." Koop explains. "I don't know that that's the healthiest perspective for someone to have, but at that time, and at that age, 21, with the internal resources that I had, I was like, 'I will do whatever to be here.'"

Koop worked at the boutique for a while before heading to graduate school for psychology, and continued to juggle retail work in Chicago. Then, she got a call from Goldman, who was now styling Obama during her early days in the White House. Goldman brought Koop on as a "liaison of sorts", but eventually, she became Obama's stylist herself.

"I recall being upstairs with her talking, and she was just like, 'Why don't you style me?' And I was like, 'Oh,'" Koop says. "It was like: 'Would you like a sandwich?'"

That was in 2010. Koop went on to style Obama for six more years at the White House, and remains behind her outfits today. The pair recently collaborated on the book The Look, which explores Obama's style.

"This was something that she really wanted to do for a long time," Koop says of The Look. "I think the obvious move was to write the memoir coming out of the White House, and then she had the follow up with The Light We Carry. And then it was like, okay, this is the next project. This is part of the legacy ... This is something that gives people a look into the history of this First Lady that will be around for many years to come."

For more from Koop—including the "tricks" she used when styling Obama as First Lady and what music they listen to during fittings—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

In the new film Eternity, Elizabeth Olsen plays a woman who has to decide which of the great loves of her life she wants to spend the afterlife with. Her real life co-star, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, already knows how she’d like to spend eternity—and her answer nothing to do with romance.

"The Ritz-Carlton luxury cruise liner," Randolph responds when asked about her own afterlife fantasy on the new episode of "Nice Talk".

"And I've never been on a cruise in my life, but I say that in a sense of, like, I want to be on the water along the Mediterranean, and just having the best food, and all the spa amenities, because I think I work hard."

No argument there. Eternity marks the third of Randolph’s three films out this year. (She also appears in the thriller Shadow Force and the action-comedy Bride Hard). In Eternity, she and John Early play a pair of afterlife coordinators who help Olsen’s character make her everlasting decision.

Randolph enjoyed how the film gave her an opportunity to show a different side of herself.

"I always like to be intentional in switching it up," the 39-year-old explains. "You have to diversify your skills. If you got them, show them."

So far, Randolph's diverse résumé includes an Oscar win for the dramedy The Holdovers, a Tony nomination for Ghost the musical, and projects ranging from the biopic Rustin to the TV comedy Only Murders in the Building.

"I think, too, as a Black artist ... they pigeonhole everybody, but they really—I think, because it's somewhat unknown to them—put us in boxes where we're familiar," Randolph continues. "I'm very rebellious in that. And so this was something that I was like, 'Oh, no one's gonna expect me to do this movie.'"

Randolph was also intrigued by the chance to work with co-stars around her same age. "I usually play older—way older than I am, for whatever reason—and I usually am [working] with legends," she says. "So just to have that kind of younger energy, I was excited about that. And again, to show this different type of humor, a bit more mainstream, a bit more quirky."

You can catch Randolph as afterlife coordinator Anna when Eternity hits theaters Nov. 26. And for more from the actor—including her love-hate relationship with Los Angeles and the career advice Sandra Bullock gave her—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Bobbi Brown built her career on not following trends. In the 1980s, when bright, bold colors dominated the beauty world, she gravitated toward a natural, subtle look. And she stuck with it, despite plenty of criticism.

On the latest episode of “Nice Talk”, Brown shares the bad advice she received during her early career, including the perfect response she had to one critic who told her she needed to be less “soccer mom”.

“I tried to do makeup that was popular. I tried to do multicolor eyes and pale faces and contour and all of that. And I just thought everyone looked terrible,” Brown tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. “It wasn't my aesthetic. So, I started to do things that were revolutionary, like finding a foundation that matched the skin. Duh! I thought it looked so much better.”

And as she found her signature style, she bumped up against some unsolicited advice.

One “suggestion” came from another prominent makeup artist, who she doesn’t name. He told her she was “never going to work if you can't do the makeup that's popular right now,” Brown recalls. “I just didn't listen. I didn’t, like, intentionally not listen, but when I went to the next job, I continued to do what I thought was right for that job.”

Brown stood out not just for her aesthetic but because she didn’t subscribe to the lifestyle others in the industry seemed to expect.

“I had hairdressers say to me, if you don't cut your hair into a style, no one's going to want to work with you in fashion,” Brown says. “My long, straight hair parted in the middle, I guess wasn't a proper style. I had a stylist that told me she wanted to take me shopping in the East Village to get me some fabulous clothes to kind of help my style. And I went with her, spent stupid amounts of money, ended up throwing all the leather pants and all the other stuff I got in the garbage—I probably donated it—and I didn't listen to that.”

Even her choice to live outside the city drew commentary. Brown lived with her husband and children in a New York City suburb, not in Manhattan like many in her field.

“Someone said, ‘Get a pied-à-terre in the city, because nobody wants to take makeup advice from a soccer mom,’” Brown says with a big sigh. “By the time I got that advice, I was smart enough and confident enough to just say, ‘Yeah, right.’ And I did. I answered back. I said, ‘Guess what? Soccer moms buy makeup.’”

Brown’s hugely successful makeup line, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, is proof that she knew what she was talking about. The company was bought by Estee Lauder in 1995, and Brown continued to work with the brand until 2016. Today, she’s the creator of a second successful makeup line, Jones Road, has authored 10 books, and continues to prioritize what matters to her most, both at home and at work.

“There is no such thing as work/life balance,” the 68-year-old says. “And, you know, especially at this point in my career, I get these opportunities, and they're interesting, they're fun, but then I realize, do I really want to be away and do these things? Do I really want to go into the city and show up at some fabulous dinner and then my husband's going to eat by himself? I don't really always want to do that, unless it's something that really matters to me.”

For more from Brown—including choosing family over everything, and why she never thought she’d make lipstick again—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

After seven seasons playing Betty Cooper on Riverdale, Lili Reinhart is ready to slow down and be more intentional about her next chapter—whether that means acting, growing her skincare brand, or practicing as a reiki master.

"I love acting. It's why I do what I do. But ultimately, if I could do that job without any ounce of anything else—or even just the industry involved in general—I would," Reinhart explains on the latest episode of "Nice Talk". (The 29-year-old spoke to editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike at Marie Claire's Power Play event in Philadelphia in September and the conversation was recorded for the podcast.)

Reinhart feels that the entertainment business can be "like a chess game" where the "creativity and artistry about being an actor kind of gets taken away at a certain point, because it's all about ... how can I keep climbing the ladder, or how can I keep getting these accolades, or these better roles, or a promotion."

She goes on, "I am here to just act, so I think that's something that I struggle with. And then post-Riverdale, especially, kind of having a little bit of, like, not a blank slate, but a chance to sort of rewrite what the next phase of my career looks like, to just be very mindful. And I'm just doing a lot of projects that make me personally feel happy."

One of those projects is Hal & Harper, the Mubi dramedy series that premiered in October. Reinhart stars alongside Mark Ruffalo and series creator Cooper Raiff, and also serves as an executive producer.

Reinhart tells Ogunnaike that she’s especially proud of her work as a producer through her company, Small Victory Productions, and of her skincare line, Personal Day. True to her ambivalence about fame, Reinhart made a deliberate choice to keep some distance between her own name and her beauty brand.

"When I see a celebrity has a brand, I roll my eyes, as well," Reinhart admits. But she decided to launch one anyway after struggling with acne for years and realizing that many of the products she used were actually making her skin worse. Knowing she could use her platform to help others dealing with the same issues, she moved forward with the idea, albeit with a few ground rules in place.

"My name is not on the packaging. Like, you wouldn't know was my brand looking at it, and my face is also not plastered all over our socials," the Hustlers star explains. "The one thing that I said when I created the brand was, 'I just want it to be known for its effectiveness.' I don't want anyone to just say, 'That's Lili's brand.'"

So that’s acting, producing, and running a skincare line... so why not add becoming a reiki master to the list, too? Reinhart says she began her training after “leaving a really bad relationship.”

"I needed to heal a lot. There was only so much processing through talk therapy that I could do at that point," she says. "I just wanted to kind of take healing into my own hands, quite literally. And I had had reiki done to me, like, a few years before, and I remember I really liked the sensation of it. It's just working with your energy in your body, through your chakras. And so I went on that journey, and I'm a reiki master." She adds with a laugh, "For some reason."

For more from Reinhart—including her "cringy" poetry book and how she feels about taking brand deals—check out this week’s installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Laura Correnti didn't plan on working in sports. But when it happened, it made perfect sense.

Correnti is the founder of Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, "the first firm in the world dedicated to bringing commercial investment to the world of women's sports exclusively," she explains on the latest episode of "Nice Talk".

After getting her start in advertising, Correnti noticed a a major gap in the market when she watched the 2019 Women's World Cup and saw the crowd chant "equal pay!" for that year's winners, the U.S. Women's National Team. They were some of the most successful and exciting American athletes, yet the money and marketing just wasn't there. Correnti sought to change that in women's soccer and beyond by launching Deep Blue in 2023.

With a sports background herself, Correnti says her time playing division 1 soccer in college helped shape how she operates as a businessperson today.

"It shows up in the most subtle of ways, and now that there's an awareness of it, it shows up in the most obvious of ways," Correnti tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "The transferable skills are totally on display. When you think of things like communication styles, how to navigate a locker room is no different than how to navigate a boardroom. Thinking about interpersonal dynamics, resilience, adversity, what it means to fail."

Correnti says that she often advises job seekers to use their athletic background as an advantage. When talking to recent graduates, she says, "One of the first comments that will come out is like, 'Well, you know, my resume is a little light. I was just an athlete,' and I'm like, 'Whoa, whoa. You weren't just an athlete.' And I spend time talking through ... the list of credentials and criteria and skills that people have developed that, whether it's in the corporate office or on the field, these are real, practical, tangible, lived experiences that can be applied."

And the data backs her up. "Girls who play sports become women who lead. This is an inherent, proven connection. Ninety percent of women in the C suite have played some sport at any level in their lives, and over 50 percent of them collegiately," she says.

On the flip side, "Forty-five percent of girls are dropping out of sport by the age of 14, largely due to body confidence issues," the entrepreneur goes on. "And you start thinking, well, what influences body confidence issues? The media, marketing, and advertising industry, of which I'm a part of. And so it's a great responsibility to say, we got to rewrite the script here."

Correnti has seen the transferrable skills of sports-to-business in action with Deep Blue partner and chief strategy officer Sue Bird, the four-time WNBA champion and five-time Olympic gold medalist.

"I get so excited to see [her] in action in the same way, I'm sure, countless practices, games, international competitions, she commanded the floor," Correnti says. "She anticipated where her teammates were going to be. She put things in motion. She ran plays. No different watching her in the boardroom. The subject matter is obviously different, but that innate sense of understanding and anticipating what needs to happen two or three plays ahead to get to a result—one of the best I've ever seen."

For more from Correnti—including how all of us can help keep up the excitement and momentum for women's pro sports—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

There's no such thing as an "off-year" election, if you ask Shaniqua McClendon. The VP of Political Strategy at Crooked Media prefers to call elections like the ones happening this year "odd-year" elections.

"I feel like there's no off years," McClendon says on the latest episode of "Nice Talk". "These super down-ballot races matter a lot, and that's typically what's happening in an odd year."

The elections culminating on Tuesday, November 4—because, remember, early voting is already happening in many places—do include some highly publicized races. There's the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayoral race in New York City, and Proposition 50 in California. But voters in various states will also be electing state supreme court justices, mayors, and legislators, as well as voting on ballot measures.

"These elections can literally impact how much money you have each month after you pay all of your bills," McClendon tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "Our courts are important. A lot of decisions run through them at the state level. And so if you have a legislature or a governor who's doing things that are not great, the courts are supposed to be a check there."

To anyone who doesn't participate because they feel like their vote doesn't matter, McClendon—who leads Crooked Media's Vote Save America initiative—has a response.

"For every one person who says, 'My vote doesn't matter,' there are millions of people who have said that, and when you put all of those people together, that starts to have an impact on who is in office and who's not in office."

This way of thinking about voting comes into play particularly in odd-year elections.

"Fewer people vote in odd years," McClendon explains. "I wish as many people who vote in presidentials voted in midterms and odd-year elections, but it actually means that fewer people can have a lot more impact on the outcome of the election ... Everyone's vote counts equally, but when they don't show up, you have more power. Or if you don't show up, the other people who showed up have more power."

And on top of these statewide and local elections having a direct effect on citizen's lives, they have an effect on the upcoming federal elections in 2026.

"From more of a political and less of a civic engagement standpoint, the outcomes of these odd-year elections give a lot of narrative to what goes into the midterms," the former policy advisor says. "We know that the House of Representatives is what Democrats feel like they can take next year to start holding Donald Trump accountable."

She continues, "But when people start paying attention for these 2025 elections, if Democrats lose, that starts to create a prophecy, if you will, where, Okay, if they didn't win these gubernatorial races, then they probably won't win these House seats, so I'm not going to donate to them, I'm not going to volunteer for them, and then it just fulfills the self-fulfilling prophecy."

For more from McClendon—including her advice for making an impact outside of voting and how to stay on top of the news without getting exhausted—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Talking about money doesn't come naturally for everyone, but it definitely does for Erin Lowry. The author of the Broke Millennial book series and self-described "financial translator" learned the importance of having open, regular conversations about money from her parents. Now, she's made a career out of encouraging others to do the same—and sharing her hard-won financial wisdom along the way.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Lowry chats about when and how she thinks people should talk money while dating.

"I mean, listen, I'd love a date one," the writer jokes. Seriously, though, she says that the exchange of financial information doesn't even have to be an actual conversation—at first.

"It's just context clues that you're already getting right away," she explains. "What type of dates are you going on? What's the expectation of who pays and how? How is somebody paying? And I know that sounds weird, but is it credit card? Is it debit card? Is it cash? Are they using a coupon? Is it happy hour? ... Sometimes people look down on things like figuring out a discount. Somebody like me, I'm like, 'Okay, I see you.' So you're also kind of finding out: Is this person in a lifestyle way compatible for me?"

Once the relationship becomes more serious, Lowry says that "you should be very prescriptively having these [money] conversations."

"It starts with small things, like, what kind of lifestyle are we living as a couple? How lavish are our dates? What kind of vacations are we taking? What's our expectations of each other? What kind of gifts are we giving each other at the holidays, at birthdays, for anniversaries?"

The next level should take the lifestyle conversation into more substantive territory.

"First, have just the conversation of what kind of life do you want to live?" Lowry says. "Where do you want to live? Do you want kids? If so, how many? What kind of schools would those kids go to? What kind of trips would we take? What kind of jobs do we want to work ... Do you want to be able to micro retire at some point? When do you want to for real retire? Do you have to take care of family members at any point? Like, all of those things are incredibly important to know from your potential lifetime partner."

And while the lifestyle conversations will naturally overlap with the financial conversations, you do want to make sure you talk about finances, specifically, "well before" moving in together.

"If you two are searching for an apartment together, money information is coming out, or if somebody's going to buy a house, that's going to be made clear," Lowry says. "But if you're going to get married, you have to have all of the nitty gritty financial conversations."

And it doesn't end there. For couples in serious relationships, she suggests having money convos about spending, planning, and goals "quarterly minimum."

Doesn't sound fun? "If you're a couple who really doesn't love having these conversations, order your favorite takeout, have a favorite bottle of wine or beer, bake a favorite dessert," Lowry says. "Just have something that's positive."

For more from Lowry—including her advice about wedding budgets and prenups—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

For April Lockhart, fashion went from being about covering up to opening up.

Lockhart is a fashion content creator with more than 180,000 Instagram followers and the founder of Disabled&, a community for creatives with disabilities.

Lockhart was born with one hand, and as she explains on the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", she used to hide her limb difference growing up.

"I think I used fashion many of my teen years to hide. You know, long sleeves," she tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "It's so easy to hide a disability like a limb difference, because long sleeves or a jacket, no one would know. I mean, the first night I met my husband, he had no idea until days later, he, like, grabbed my sleeve and was like, 'Whoa, where'd your arm go?' I was frozen. Just, like, anxiety."

She goes on, "I was also so insecure then. So, I think I used fashion to cover up, which is the sad part of it, but then it also became this catalyst for me really opening up."

Now, Lockhart has built a career—and a much-needed community—around that openness. Her Instagram and TikTok accounts took off when she posted a series called "Normalizing Disabled Fashion Girlies".

"It wasn't an overnight thing, which I love. It was a steady build," the influencer explains. "I had seen people doing multiple days of outfits, and I was like, 'You know, what? What if I try this, but I show all the different ways that I get dressed.' Like, zippers are difficult, buttons are difficult, tying things, just, you know, how I do things with a limb difference ... I was terrified, but I was also just like, 'If not now, when?'"

Sharing her process also helped Lockhart define her personal style.

"I always loved wearing color. Then I feel like I regressed a bit," she says. "Wore a lot more neutrals, which is interesting looking back on it how reflective it was [with] what was happening internally for me. Anybody who follows me knows I love color, so I feel like I've rediscovered that love."

Through Disabled&, Lockhart is now creating spaces for disabled creatives offline as well. The initiative hosts events ranging from networking meetups for adults to sponsored parties where young girls can have fun getting "glammed up."

"This has been just, like, a cool journey of discovering the limb difference community ... The first step was creating an online community. The next step has been the IRL part."

For more from Lockhart—including her tips for finding your personal style and her thoughts on the state of disability inclusion in fashion—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Long before Michaela Jaé Rodriguez earned an Emmy nomination and became the first trans actor to win a Golden Globe for her lead role in Pose, she knew she was destined to make it as a performer.

"Never worried about not making it ever. I always had the mindset of, like, achieving what I wanted to achieve," Rodriguez says on the latest episode of "Nice Talk". The conversation was recorded in September when the actor and singer joined editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on stage at Marie Claire's Power Play summit in Philadelphia.

Rodriguez attended a performing arts high school and later studied at Berklee College of Music, where she says taking business courses alongside her music studies helped her better understand the entertainment industry.

"[They] made me more aware how the mechanism of the machine worked, so that when I went in, I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do and how I was going to move collectively in it," the 34-year-old says.

But beyond her training, Rodriguez credits her confidence and drive to her mother.

"I always go back to my mother, because she was always the person to achieve what she wanted to achieve. And she never stopped," the American Horror Story star says. "She was literally the vision that pushed me forward ... And I don't see it any other way, either. I'm gonna keep going."

And while she’s undeniably self-assured, Rodriguez admits that before landing her breakout role on Pose, there was a moment when doubt crept in. During a period when she was “auditioning like crazy” and feeling discouraged about her career, it was her mom who offered the words she needed most.

"I remember going into my mom's room with my stepdad, and I was just like, 'I'm giving up. I'm just gonna go and live my regular life, and I'm gonna get a nine-to-five, and we are gonna be okay, and we are gonna be alright'. And my mom said, 'I just don't see that for you. I see it. Something's right around the corner.' After my mom said that, literally, two days afterwards, I saw a breakdown and it was Pose."

Now, Rodriguez is continuing to push forward. She's woking on a new EP—her last album, 33, was released in 2024—and she's starring in the comedy series Loot alongside Maya Rudolph. The third season premieres on Oct. 15.

"The whole cast, we are fools," Rodriguez says. "We have so much fun on that set. It's a dream."

For more from Rodriguez—including how she felt about winning her Golden Globe and the celebrity whose closet she'd love to raid—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

How someone prepares—or doesn’t—for an interview can vary widely depending on the industry. But according to career influencer and Interviewology CEO Anna Papalia, there is one thing that everyone should do before meeting with a hiring manager.

Papalia recently joined editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike for a conversation at Marie Claire's Power Play summit in Philadelphia, which has been released as this week's episode of "Nice Talk". She’s made interviewing into something of a science, identifying four distinct categories that she says capture every interviewing style.

Whether you're a "charmer", "challenger", "examiner", or "harmonizer," Papalia says before an interview "think your way into the job."

"It doesn't matter if you're 20 or 50, my clients all have very similar fears, and that is: I don't think I'm good enough," the author of Interviewology: The New Science of Interviewing, explains.

Papalia says that people tend to focus on the reasons they don't deserve or aren't qualified for a job. They "get in their heads and they think: Well, I didn't finish college, or This last job wasn't the way I wanted it, or I got laid off, or I don't have everything on the job description. I mean, you name it. There's a million things you could think your way out of a job, but instead, think your way into the job."

Papalia suggests deliberately changing the way you speak to yourself prior to an interview.

"A mantra I coach people on all the time is, before an interview, you tell yourself: 'They would be lucky to hire me.' Everyone goes into interviews [thinking], 'They're not going to hire me.' Well, yeah, with that attitude, no, I wouldn't either. It starts with self-belief first."

Papalia acknowledges that building confidence isn’t easy. She says it starts with knowing yourself and being comfortable staying true to who you are—something that will naturally come across in interviews.

The biggest mistake Papalia saw applicants "making over and over and over again is they thought that they had to tell people what they wanted to hear and have these perfect answers. There is no such thing. There is no perfect interview answer. There is no perfect way to be ... But, man, when you come in confident, and they're like: 'That girl can do the job.' They didn't know that. That's what they needed. You just went in and you owned who you were."

For more from Papalia—including why she considers "networking" to be a "dirty word"—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

The state of the world does not exactly fill one with hope right now, but according to Issa Rae, that makes it the most important time to be creative—both because of the optimism the work creates, and the optimism that doing the work brings to the creator.

“Through these kind of times when it's trying, it breeds innovation,” Rae tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the podcast “Nice Talk”.

“You know, when we're having these constant conversations, it's like, this is the time when we're the most creative. When our backs are against the wall, when when everybody's struggling, at the same time, when there is no norm, when the rug has been pulled, when there's no foundation, it's just like, ‘Oh, now this is the time to create foundations.’”

On the podcast, Rae zeroes in on topics like the lack of Black representation on television, the rise of artificial intelligence, and the control the uber-wealthy have over society.

“We're all in the same boat,” the Insecure creator goes on. “Everybody is struggling out here and trying to figure it out. So that's where my optimism comes from, because it's like we've been in these places before."

She adds, "Not to this level, and it's new to us, because nobody knows what, like AI, where AI is going to lead us. And I don't know that in America, we've also ever had billionaires literally dictating and running our culture that we could just plainly name, like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and all these people [who] own what we create, where we create. They're dictating so much of our lives, and that's not being offset in any way, and that only means that some sort of rebellion is coming. But I don't know to what level.”

And for anyone trying to get into the film and TV industry like Rae, she has some advice: Creativity is, of course, necessary—but it's about more than just that.

“I always talk about what you're bringing to the table, standing firm in that. And that is what your unique perspective is that is elevating any project you take on,” she says. “And being consistent. Consistency and being someone that people can rely on is a game-changer, and that's afforded me so many opportunities. When people know that you're going to show up on time, you're going to do the work, you're going to be last to stay with them. Once people recognize that, that goes a long way. Your reputation is everything, especially in this industry.”

When it comes to working in television, the days are long. Rae notes that being someone that your colleagues want to be around plays a role.

“Make sure that you're showing up in a way where people will be happy to say nice things about you when you're not here, when you're not in the room. There's so many people that I've thought were incredibly creative, incredibly funny, incredibly just dope, and then I met them and was like, ‘Oh, I don't want to be around them. They… they suck,’” she says with a laugh. “So do I want to be in a writer's room with you? Do I want to be on set with you for 15 hours? And so much of being in this industry is just being cool to be around and passing a vibe check.”

Rae says that when she was up-and-coming as a TV writer, she felt she had to lean more professional and treat opportunities “like a job interview, as opposed to I'm interviewing for a comedy room.”

She explains, “That means you show off your charm. That means you show off what you would bring to the character you might identify [with]. ‘Oh, I could write for this particular character in the pilot, because this is part of my life.’”

For more from Rae—including why her career trajectory sometimes feels “accidental”—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Some people gravitate towards handbags. Others notice shoes. Brynn Wallner always spots watches.

Wallner is the founder of Dimepiece, a website and Instagram account dedicated to watches for women. While working in editorial at Sotheby’s, she began contributing to the watch department and quickly realized that coverage and marketing in the category were overwhelmingly geared toward men.

Wallner set out to change that. And while she wasn't an expert at first—and didn't even own a watch when she started the Instagram account—she really knows her stuff now.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Wallner sits down with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike to chat all things watches—including what she considers the current It Girl timepiece.

"I think it's definitely the teeny tiny Royal Oak," Wallner says. This is the Mini Royal Oak by luxury brand Audemars Piguet (or "AP" to watch fans). There are various styles, but a new one can retail for $38,000.

"Hailey Bieber's wearing it. Rihanna's wearing it," Wallner continues. "I was really happy when AP officially re-released it, and they did it with that hammered gold, the Carolina Bucci 'Florentine Finish'. She's iconic. They've done a really good job pushing that."

With AP behind it, Wallner adds, “it feels really serious watch-y, but it’s in this cute, cool little package.”

The hype is real: an Olympic champion even reached out to Wallner for advice on how to get one. "Simone Biles wears one. She DM'd me. She was like, 'Where can I get this watch?' And I was like, 'Let me set you up with the AP people.' And that was around the Olympics. I was like, 'Ahhhh!' And seeing her wear it in photos with, like, Serena Williams at Art Basel... so you're getting a range of It Girls."

Of course, the $40K It Girl watch is probably not the best starter watch for most people. For those new to collecting, Wallner recommends Cartier.

"I started with Cartier," she says. "I feel like that's a brand where it's like the price point is still okay. It's luxury and it's still the most money I've ever spent on anything in my life … I was turning 31, so it was about a year into me starting Dimepiece, maybe a little less, and I was like, 'I'm gonna buy a watch.'"

Cartier, she notes, offers accessibility that many other marquee brands don’t.

"You can't buy a Rolex at a Rolex boutique. You can't buy an AP at an AP boutique. All these watches have really high demand and low supply, but... you can still walk into Cartier and walk out of there with a watch. And so, for me, my first watch, my starter watch, I was like, 'I want the pomp and circumstance of the retail experience.'" She adds, "'There's a macaron!'"

For more from Wallner—including her tips for buying watches secondhand and how her collaboration with Timex came to be—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Teyana Taylor is drawn to the “in betweens”—the journeys that move people emotionally and literally from one stage of life to the next, whether in relationships, passions, or careers.

She’s had plenty of those transitions herself, and they’re at the heart of her new album, Escape Room, which marks her return to music after a five-year hiatus.

The record “shows [everything] from heavy to light, from broken to repair, from heartbreak to healing—it's an ombre album,” Taylor tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the "Nice Talk" podcast.

“I feel like a lot of times we hear records, and it's just a person being in a really hurt or dark space, and it's just like, ‘Damn, what happened? How'd you get there? How did you get out of it?’” the Marie Claire cover star explains. “Then you hear people that make completely light-weighted, pure love records. And it's like, ‘Well, girl, what was the prayer? How did we get here? Let us in, sis. Like, don't gatekeep that.’”

Although Taylor did go through a major life change—her divorce from former NBA player Iman Shumpert was finalized in 2024—she makes clear the album isn’t simply about moving past a breakup.

“It's so much bigger than, you know, people automatically just assuming, ‘Oh my god, this is just [about a] relationship.’ No, baby. I've been in relationships with music ... friendships ... business, all of the things, all across the board,” the 34-year-old says. “So it's escaping the things that just do not serve me—even if that includes myself, because we sometimes fall into these dark places. You got to hold yourself accountable. Say, ‘Girl, get up. Get out of this space. Get out of this room. Get out of this box.’”

Taylor has her own wisdom now when it comes to making moves in life, but back when she was an up-and-coming artist, she received advice from one of the biggest names in music: Beyoncé. At just 15, Taylor choreographed Beyoncé’s “Ring the Alarm” video, and the two stayed in touch, with the superstar becoming a mentor to her.

Taylor recalls speaking to Beyoncé about a decade ago, when she was at a turning point in her career. (Her debut album, VII, was released in 2014.) The Cowboy Carter singer’s advice? “‘You're never gonna fully get what you want unless you go and do it yourself.’ That always stuck with me.”

Taylor says that while many new artists performed to recorded tracks, “I was kind of one of the only up-and-coming artists that was like: ‘I want a band, I want six dancers. I want, I want, I want.’ I wanted the world. I wanted everything with a bubblegum and shoestring budget. And I realized that I would walk away with less money because I was paying more people.” But with Beyoncé’s influence, “I was okay with that.”

“Of course it hurts in the moment,” Taylor continues, “because it's like, ‘Oh my god, I could be making so much more money.’ But then [I'd talk] to Bey, and she just gives you that reassurance of like, ‘Oh no, that's normal. That just means you're a true creative. Spend the money. Do what you gotta do to get what you want.’ What that did was build up my credibility in that space. When people ask Teyana for a show, they know what they're in for.”

For more from Taylor—including how she feels about working with Academy Award-winning actors in her new film One Battle After Another and why she decided to attend culinary school on top of everything else—check out this week’s installment of Nice Talk. The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

For close to 20 years, Teyana Taylor has commanded attention. Elder Millennials, like me, recognize the Harlem, New Yorker from her ’80s/'90s-themed birthday extravaganza, featured on My Super Sweet 16, as well as her 2018 reality TV show, Teyana & Iman, and its 2021 sequel We Got Love Teyana & Iman, filmed with ex-husband Iman Shumpert. The youngest Gen Zers first caught sight of her on the premiere of Kanye West’s “Fade” music video after the 2016 MTV VMAs when a chiseled, glistening Taylor danced across the screen for a captivating 3 minutes and 44 seconds. This past summer, Gen Alpha heralded her return to music after retiring to slack-jawed shock back in 2020, with her album Escape Room.

And this fall, the proud multi-hyphenate continues to impress all generations as she firmly enters her acting era, coming off her role as Detective Kay Raymond (a cop with a walk and a bob that took TikTok by storm) in Straw and garnering attention for her turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.

Her willingness to take a risk, to try something new, yet remain a humble student of the entertainment industry is why I was so honored to interview Taylor, 34, for Marie Claire’s “Nice Talk” podcast. It was an interview that managed to do the impossible: reveal yet another side of the intrepid creative and entertainer. Which is why I decided to share an edited and condensed version here.

The conversation includes details on Taylor’s forthcoming projects, the people who have influenced her career, and how the podcast’s key topics—money, power, and style—intersect in her life. Over the course of an hour, she describes herself as a “Glade PlugIn” (“Why make one room smell good when you can make the whole building smell good?”), a “lover girl” (“I am a soldier of love. I am a love warrior”), and a champion of creators (“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do—protect creatives and pour into them”).

A month after our interview, Taylor posted an unexpected Instagram story, revealing that she’d been quietly dealing with vocal challenges and would need immediate surgery to remove a noncancerous growth on one of her vocal cords. I felt crushed for the singer, knowing just how excited she was to share her album with fans and the greater public. “It’s not lost on me, just as I was getting ready to finally share this with you, life handed me my own unexpected ‘Escape Room’—one I didn’t ask for but now I have to find my way out of with patience, rest, and faith,” she wrote in the post.

I’m further reminded of what Taylor told me during our time together, perhaps foreshadowing what was to come: “Everything’s a gamble. You won’t know until you take that risk. I always say, the wait is not punishment, it’s preparation for what was already written.”

Before we started recording, you were telling me that Beyoncé really taught you about the power of investing yourself.

Yes, everybody knows I don’t play about B. She’s the one who would help me understand, you’re going to have to invest in yourself to get what you want. I remember just being in a space where I was trying to figure it out, and she was just encouraging me to keep going. Never be afraid to invest in yourself. You’re never going to fully get what you want unless you go and do it yourself. That always stuck with me. I wanted everything with a bubblegum-and-shoestring budget, and I would walk away with less money because I was paying more people, but I was okay with that. It hurts in the moment because it’s like, “Oh my God, I could be making so much more money.” But then to go and talk to B, and she reassures me that’s normal; that just means you’re a true creative.

No matter where I’ve ever been, whatever challenges I was going through, wherever I’ve been in my career, feeling stagnant or feeling unseen or unheard, to just hear Beyoncé tell me how proud of me she is, no matter where I am in my life and my career, really inspires me to keep going and just keep following my heart and following my gut.

I want to kick things off by talking to you about being a changemaker. What does that mean to you?

It’s never your intention to say, “I’m going to do this, that, and the third to change the world.” You’re just being you. So I think that that’s what a changemaker is: a person being themselves and really standing up for their views and what they believe in. My goal is to help people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do: protect creatives and pour into them. And the fact that that plays a part in changing the game, I’m so grateful for that, because like I said, my goal wasn’t to come and try and change anything or anybody. My goal was to come in and show up for people in any way that I can.

I think that a key part of being a changemaker is being willing to take a risk. Are you a risk taker by nature?

Now, that’s one thing you always know I’ve been. That is what I stand on. I think that’s why everybody’s so happy that I’m back. [Retirement] was never any hard feelings, you’ve just gotta move the way you gotta move for your happiness and your mental health. And that was a risk that I was willing to take. I consider myself a Glade PlugIn. You can plug me in anywhere, baby, I’m gonna make the room smell good. But you ain’t about to have me locked in the bathroom, plugged in by the mirror. I’m going to take up every square foot of this building. Why only make one room smell good when you can make the whole building smell good? Don’t lock me in a room. Don’t lock me in a box. I need keys to multiple doors. And I can pick and choose which one I want to unlock in my own divine time.

That’s a risk, saying, “You know what? I’m going to take a break on this right now because this is not serving me. And I’m going to go over here and I’m going to be an actress, and people are going to take me serious one day as an actress, and people will take me serious as a director and a creative director.” It was scary. But everything’s a gamble. You won’t know until you take that risk. You won’t know until you drop that dead weight. I always say, the wait is not punishment, it’s preparation for what was already written.

When you say weight, do you mean W-A-I-T? Or W-E-I-G-H-T?

I mean both. For me, it’s like a double entendre. Because look at us and how far we’ve come. I’m sure from 2014 until now, it’s been a wait. Like, okay, when’s it gonna happen? When’s it gonna be my turn? When’s it gonna be my time?

And then that weight that you’re carrying, that dead weight that you’re carrying, the emotions that you’re carrying, the heart on your sleeves that you’re carrying, it’s heavy. When that’s lifted, you can make moves. You don’t have these heavy weights on you. You also don’t have these long waits.

You went on hiatus in 2020, but you’re back with Escape Room. Why now?

I love that you asked this right after us talking about the weight and the wait. I think that’s what the album shows—from heavy to light, from broken to repair, from heartbreak to healing. It’s an ombré album. The album is showing you how to get to the next space. It’s showing you the in-betweens. A lot of times with records, you hear a person being in a really hurt or dark space, And it’s just like, Damn, what happened? How’d you get there? How did you get out of it? Or you hear people that make completely just lightweighted, pure love music. And it’s like, “Well girl, let us in, sis.” This album takes you from where it started, but there’s also the in-between.

There can be a bit of messiness in the ombré too.

Exactly. I want to walk you through every single step that it takes to get to a better place, every single step it takes to get to the color that you want to get to. Every single step it takes from wet to dry. With this album, it’s like every step of vulnerability.

Where did the name for the album come from?

It’s getting from one place to another. It’s all still a process, escaping anything that doesn’t serve you.

People may automatically just assume this is about a relationship. No, baby. Whether it’s friendships, relationships, business, I’ve had my ups and downs with music. I’ve been married to music. This has been a crazy, wicked game for me. So it’s like escaping the things that just do not serve me—even if that includes myself!

Because we sometimes fall into these dark places ,and you’ve got to hold yourself accountable and say, “Girl, get up. Get out of this space. Get out of this room. Get out of this box.” You know, like I said, I’m a Glade PlugIn. When I retired, it was just me leaving one room and going into another. It’s time to plug in as a creative director. It’s time to plug in as a director. It’s time to plug in as an actress.

It was announced that you’re joining the upcoming Netflix Kevin Hart film, 72 Hours, and this fall you’ve got All’s Fair, created by Ryan Murphy, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another. What has this acting journey been like for you?

That’s one thing that I can say I’m really proud of. When I was taking that risk and nobody else believed that I would make these things happen if I took that risk, that’s one thing that I get to sit here today and say, “I’m proud of that.” And did, and did, and did, and did. I said I would do it and not everybody believed that.

A Thousand and One was the first script that I got across my desk, literally a month after I retired. Dealing with postpartum and dealing with the other things that I was dealing with, I had a plan and I had a point to prove. And I noticed, every single time I trust God and I continue to be a prayer warrior and I continue to lift whatever weight is holding me down, He shows His favor. I feel like timing is everything too. What if I was still pregnant with Rue and decided to retire? Being a mom of one, I wasn’t playing. Now being a mom of two, I’m really not playing. I’ve got these two beautiful, pure, loving souls that love me for me that I’ve got to live for. So there were no games. Motherhood was the wake-up.

What have you learned, working with the people you’ve been on set with?

It’s always a joy and a pleasure to work with Regina [Hall]. She’s helped me through a lot, and I appreciate and love her so much. I also want to just give a shout out to Sherry [Shepherd] and Taraji [P. Henson] as well, working with them on Straw. Those are my girls. It’s the sisterhood of it all—how every woman that I’ve worked with has just been there with open arms. That quiet; we’re just speaking with the hug. And the pull back from that hug, and they give you that look. It’s “You’re good. You’re good. And we got you.”

I’m curious—who’s influenced the way you move in your life, in terms of being a changemaker?

My mom, for sure. That’s where it starts. I have been and am very blessed to have so many incredible women in my life that are super hands-on. To have my mom and my incredible aunt and my nana. I am so lucky. These women have kept me levelheaded. My mom being my manager, we really came up in this industry together, conquering this wicked business. She has kept me in shape in every single way. She’s just so amazing, and she’s such a great leader.

That’s so true. You have been in this industry since you were 15 and shot to fame working with Beyoncé on Ring the Alarm, and obviously, everyone knows about My Super Sweet 16.

I want to make sure that I give flowers to all the people who have been a part of my journey. My mom and the women in my life, that’s my roots. That’s my tribe. That’s my everything. Outside of that, having an opportunity to work with Beyoncé and getting signed to Pharrell and getting signed to Kanye, these guys shaped a lot of my creativity. I’m lucky. I come from prayer warriors, and then to get to be in the hands of the most creative people in the world. I’ve had it good.

How has your perspective on what it means to be in the public eye changed over the years?

One thing about me is, I’ve always been very, very, shy and private. People may think, Oh, well, you had a TV show, but that just means you’re going to see what you’re going to see, but it doesn’t take away the private person that I am. I show you what I choose to show you. I take my private life very seriously. My whole life being on Front Street, that’s what comes with the territory. That’s what comes with being in this business, and the most we can do is navigate our privacy as best as we can. I’m fine for you to be in whatever part of the business that I choose to share, but I don’t want you in my business.

I saw an interview where you called yourself a lover girl. Tell me about how you find power in being a lover girl. Some people may say that being a romantic means that you’re weak.

Or call you a simp. But no, that’s not that. And those are people—that’s their guilt, their own issue. That’s a them problem. I’ve noticed that people who will make fun of lovers are people who don’t have the ability to love at the full capacity, and they’re jealous of that. You know the quote “Good girls finish last”? No, good girls finish on their own divine time. Like, I’m going to take my time. And I’m gonna properly love and I’m gonna be a lover girl and I’m gonna be a simp, whatever comes with that. I love to love. People that don’t have emotional intelligence make fun of lovers. I am a soldier of love. I am a love warrior. I am a lover girl and I love everything about it and I’m okay with that. One thing nobody could ever take away from me is the love that I give. Never ever be ashamed of being a lover girl. I think lovers are the most emotionally intelligent.

I think that that will help people reframe a lot of their thoughts on either being a lover or a hater.

That’s why I’m excited about Escape Room—because I feel like even though there are the ones who make fun of it, everybody is low-key lovers. It’s just not the cool thing to do because we’re in a prideful and very egocentric time of music right now. But what I want is to create a safe space for women to be able to love again and to create that safe space for men to be gentle and to be lovers because they want to feel protected too. This album opens up that dialogue.

You’ve done so much in your career. Is there one space where you feel the most powerful?

I feel most in my power when I’m empowering and uplifting others, so being a creative director, showing up for people, pouring into people, pouring into creators, letting them know more is more—and that your ambition will never be too much. Your ambition will never be impossible to execute. I feel the most powerful pouring into others.

What was your relationship to mentorship back when you were just coming up and how has that impacted the way that you’ve mentored others?

See, it may be a little bit different now, because the young’uns coming up are stuck in their own ways. Our generation was really willing to be students. I looked at the Beyoncés, the Kanyes, the Pharrells, and I just wanted to soak up knowledge. I was always ready to learn. Even to this day, I’m always willing to be a student, no matter how much I pour into others. I may be a teacher to others, but I’m always still a student. No one is ever above learning. That was another thing that I took with me from working with Beyoncé and being able to walk into that room and teach her the Chicken Noodle Soup dance when I was just a 15-year-old girl from Harlem. She’s in it. She’s not laughing. She’s like, “Okay, cool. Now show me how I do this.” She’s not like, “Why does a little girl keep doing all these moves?” Even with Kanye and Pharrell, even though I was signed to them, they also valued my opinions.

What’s the best piece of advice that anyone has ever given you about your career or longevity in the entertainment space?

Don’t take none of this shit personally—from my mom, who was very, very clear. I got it a few more times also throughout the business, but at a young age of 15, you’re trying to figure it out and you pour so much into people and when it’s not reciprocated, your feelings are hurt. But it’s like, pick your head up, adjust your crown. Don’t take none of this shit personally. Business is business.

You recently dropped that you’re making another change and going to culinary school!

I’m so excited. Like, literally as soon as we get off this interview, I’m going straight to class. I’m putting on my coat, my uniform, and I’m getting to it. It’s always been a passion of mine. I’ve always loved to cook. It’s been very therapeutic for me. And again, I’m just showing up for myself. You know, I don’t have the time to do it, but I have the time to show up for me. That’s what I want to show people. Even if you don’t have the time, find time to show up for you. It’s “work” in the best way because it’s something that you’re doing for you. It’s a passion that you’re turning into purpose.

To see the comments on Instagram when you posted it. Ayo Edeberi of The Bear said, “Yes, chef!”

Yes! My God, I was so excited about that. I love my girl Ayo. Seeing that comment was really, really, really dope. And to see how many people it inspired—you know, like, I love to show the world that.

Let’s talk about fashion because I know that you are a lover of style. Your Met Gala look was so major. What was it like to work with Ruthie Carter on that look?

Honestly, I am very humble and I’m very modest when it comes to speaking about myself. But like, when you get to work with the Ruth E. Carter, if you thought for one second, I thought that outfit was going to be anything less than amazing. Like, baby, if I wasn’t invited to the Met, I was sneaking on that carpet and I was getting Best Dressed. When you’re working with the Ruth E. Carter, to understand the amount of love and detail that went into that, you already should have known that Ruth was going to come through. Every bit of praise that we’ve received is exactly how it was supposed to be. And now I say that with all cockiness.

And you’re going to have so many red carpet moments coming up. Your fall is stacked.

My God, my fall is amazing. I’m working with some designers, but also I’m working on original pieces that I’m going to design. Let’s just see where that takes me, because maybe that can be the start of my own actual line.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Photographer: Micaiah Carter | Stylist: Sam Woolf | Hairstylist: Brooke Crittendon | Makeup Artist: Yeika Oliva | Manicurist: Sarah Chue | Set Design: Francis Cardinale

“It has pockets!” is the universal refrain when a woman tries on a dress and delights in the rare acknowledgment that, yes, women want to carry things too. Sali Christeson, founder of the women’s workwear brand Argent, makes sure her designs come loaded with those details—think plentiful pockets and blazer sleeves that actually stay pushed up. But when she first went out to raise funding, one male venture capitalist gave her a piece of feedback that would make any woman who’s ever cheered for pockets roll her eyes.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Christeson shares the piece of sexist feedback she still keeps in her “inspire folder.”

“In 2015, I was out raising money—not a lot, but just enough to get Argent off the ground, because there’s a high barrier for entry in apparel. It’s costly,” Christeson tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. “Our deck got in front of a man who’s a partner at a really reputable VC, and his feedback—and I have it saved in my inspire folder—was, ‘We’ve seen a lot of pitches for women’s workwear brands and utility does not belong in women’s clothing.’”

She continues: “This is a 50-ish-year-old straight white man. That’s the demographic that’s been leading this industry … They’re making decisions without having the lived experience.”

Christeson knew firsthand that women were “frustrated” by the options available. She had been working in a corporate job at Cisco Systems before launching Argent, and the evidence was everywhere.

“‘Utility doesn’t belong in women’s clothing?’ What’s, like, the most meme-d thing across the internet? It’s pockets. So I already knew there was an opportunity. But I love stuff like this. I love people who don’t believe in me.”

Today, Argent is worn by many high-profile women, including Hillary Clinton, Meghan Markle, and Kamala Harris. Christeson calls seeing celebrities in her designs “pretty surreal,” adding that it “legitimizes and gives credibility to our business, because we are still small.”

But it isn’t the big names that drive her. “I consider our woman to be time-constrained, a pioneer, and most often not a household name,” she explains. “The woman I get most excited about is behind the scenes—a chemist in a lab, someone creating a cure for morning sickness. I get really excited about that doctor who’s working on that. These are the women who are truly incredible and remarkable, leaving their mark on the world.”

For more from Christeson—including the study linking women’s appearance and income that inspired her to start Argent, and her take on the term girlboss—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Brooke DeVard, doesn’t believe in work-life balance. For the creator of the award-winning podcast "Naked Beauty", the word that defines her career is “sacrifice.”

DeVard has hosted the podcast since 2016, launching it while working full-time in marketing at Viacom. At first, she handled every aspect herself.

"I'm uploading everything. I'm editing everything. I'm doing the cover art. I'm doing it all," DeVard explains on the latest episode of "Nice Talk" with Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike.

At that stage, balance was impossible. All of her free time went into the podcast.

"Sometimes—when you're building something, especially—there's a lot of sacrifice," she says. "I feel like 'sacrifice' is the word that comes to mind for me more than 'balance'. There are so many things I missed out on as I was building 'Naked Beauty' while having a full time job ... parties, birthdays, but I'm like, I have to get this episode out on Monday, and I'm editing it myself."

The trade-offs paid off. Today, she still hosts Naked Beauty, but with the support of a team.

"There was a lot of sacrifice, but what that sacrifice has done is it's allowed me, now, nine years later, to be in a position to have a team and to have that support," she explains. "So I think balance is a little bit of a myth, because I think when you are ambitious and you're building things, I think it's really hard to have balance. You're not going to be able to get to the gym every day, eat a balanced meal, catch up with all your girlfriends, make sure you're on top of all of your emails and texts, and have a great relationship with your partner. You just can't do all of that."

After Viacom, DeVard spent several years at Instagram before eventually making the podcast and content creation her full-time career. Most recently, she took on another major role: in June, she became chief content officer at Refinery29. ("Naked Beauty" is now part of the media company, too.) She's also a mother of two children.

And while she calls balance a myth, DeVard did recently find a way to reset her focus—by taking a social media break earlier this year.

"I loved this period in my life. I talk about it like it was this, like, year sabbatical I took in Italy, and it was two months of my life. But I reflect on it so fondly. This December and January, I had offline ... I highly recommend it to everyone."

She took the break while on maternity leave, deleting apps from her phone to break the “muscle memory” of checking them.

"The first week was really hard. I felt like I missed it. I kept kind of opening my phone and going to check something, but very quickly I realized I'm not really missing anything, and I actually don't really care."

Her biggest takeaway: "We get very comfortable getting things pushed to us through an algorithm. And I think there's an exercise a little bit in this of remembering your taste, remembering, like, what is the media you seek out, independent of it being fed to you?"

For more from DeVard—including her thoughts on plastic surgery and the beauty trends she's loving right now—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk"" The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

With her company Drybar, Alli Webb built an empire around the idea of "perfect" hair. The chain of salons—which she sold in 2019 for $255 million—offered no cuts or color, only blowouts in a range of styles. As the founder and face of a brand devoted to sleek hair, Webb felt she had to embody that perfection herself—or at least look like it. Yet at the height of her success, she was deeply insecure about her own hair.

"I wanted my hair to look a certain way, so then I wore extensions forever. And I was so insecure when I would wear extensions, because as someone who's, like, very obsessed about their hair, I was always nervous you could see [them]," Webb tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike on the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk".

"I never went anywhere without a handheld mirror. Every time I went to a bathroom, I would look at the back of my hair, make sure nothing was fucking showing," Webb continues. "I felt this pressure that I had to have this long, beautiful, perfect hair, and my hair wasn't. It was broken and damaged."

Webb says she felt "so blessed" to be featured in magazines, do photoshoots, and appear on Shark Tank—but admits she was wearing extensions during "all these very big moments in my life."

"I can't tell you how many times they were like, 'Will she put extensions in?' Because it was just, like, I was supposed to have this perfect, beautiful hair." But rather than boosting her confidence, the extensions made her feel "terrible."

"I felt almost, like, not enough. It's funny, I've never actually talked about this, but I remember that made me feel very insecure."

Webb says the pressure to project perfection went far beyond her hair.

"I really felt like I had to be perfect, and I had to have the perfect hair, and—I was married to my co-founder—this perfect marriage, and these perfect kids ... And it just was a little hollow, you know, and a little unrealistic, and I kind of kept up that facade."

Still, she adds, "I loved what we were doing, and I loved the fact that we were giving women confidence. And at that time, 15 years ago, it felt like the world needed it, and it was the right thing at the right time."

These days, Webb says the “pendulum has swung” in the opposite direction. Her new brand of haircare products, called Messy, is all about embracing ease—using low heat or letting hair air dry. Even the products’ names are affirmations: the styling cream, for instance, is called is called "I Am Enough." (And now, Webb says she feels “giddy” about her hair.)

"I was 35 when I started Drybar, and our tagline was 'crafted for the perfect blowout.' But, you know, as my own personal evolution and journey, I'm like, I just don't subscribe to that anymore," the now 50-year-old shares. "It's like, yeah, I did start Drybar, and it was a huge success, and I'm so incredibly proud of it, and I always will be. And now I'm just in a different place. You can be, too. We don't have to be who we were yesterday."

For more from Webb—including how she started Drybar, the best career advice she's received, and how the pandemic inspired Messy—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Liza Koshy began her acting career nearly a decade ago, debuting in Boo! A Madea Halloween before appearing in the dance flick Work It, the thriller Cat Person, and the nostalgic comedy Good Burger 2. This year alone, she’s in three films: the Hulu comedy Summer of 69, a voice role in Netflix’s hit KPop Demon Hunters, and the latest Naked Gun movie. So, will people finally see Koshy as an actor rather than a YouTuber?

She’s done worrying about that.

On the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast “Nice Talk”, Koshy opens up to editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about her acting career and the imposter syndrome she battled when transitioning from social media sensation to film and TV star.

“I can't depend on somebody else's perception to be my definition of myself,” Koshy says. “And at one point, I allowed that perception to be my definition, and that perception was ‘just an influencer.’”

Now 29, Koshy feels “the world is catching up” to the fact that she’s an actor, not a YouTuber—a platform she stopped posting to four years ago, leaving 16.7 million followers to process her pivot. While audiences have been getting to know her in a new light, she’s had to adjust her own view of herself, too.

“Although I've been acting since 2015, since Tyler Perry gave me my first role in Boo! A Madea Halloween. Although I've been acting consistently since, and I've had movies like Family Affair and Work It—which was my utmost pride and joy with Sabrina Carpenter in a dance movie, like, that was summer camp for me—in my soul, there is a neutral feeling in my gut when I say ‘I'm an actor.’ And I feel so proud to be able to own that now fully.”

That confidence came slowly, and not without some stinging moments.

“I totally had imposter syndrome in the very beginning, and that was due to some actors being like, ‘You're only here for marketing reasons,’” Koshy says. “I had, unfortunately, someone that I was in a deep relationship with tell me that ‘you're only getting hired because you're ethnically ambiguous. You're getting hired because you're a brown woman and Cardi B is working, so you kind of look like her, and you're gonna work, too’ … It just hurt, and it makes you feel like, oh, my value’s only in what I look like.”

Koshy says she no longer gives comments like that “power.” Time, experience, and relentless auditioning helped her build self-assurance.

“I think auditioning, hearing ‘no, no, no, no, no, no’ and just hearing instead, ‘go, go, go, go, keep going, girl’ …. and you just keep going,” she explains. “You do the jobs that excite you, and then you meet people that are excited by you. And then you continue to foster a creative community that taps into each other.”

For more from Koshy—including how she started her content creation career as a teen, why she decided to quit YouTube, and why she has an email account for a fake assistant—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

What is Alison Brie best known for? Is it Trudy in the 1960s period drama Mad Men? Annie in the campus comedy Community? Ruth in the wrestling dramedy GLOW?

It’s hard to pin her down—Brie likes to mix it up. Genre-wise, she’s done a little of everything, and she’s also stepped behind the camera as a writer and producer on projects like Horse Girl and Somebody I Used to Know. (She starred in both, too. And for the record, that adds two more genres to her résumé: psychological thriller and rom-com.)

Now, she's trying something scarier with Together. As she explains on the latest episode of "Nice Talk", horror is a space she’d love to stay in for a while.

"I like to do it all, I really do," Brie tells Marie Claire editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike. "I think that it's what has made for a really fun career is coming out of one project and saying, 'Oh, good. Now I scratched that itch. What can I do that's really different from that?'"

Together, which is in theaters now, is certainly different. Brie co-stars in the body horror film alongside her husband, Dave Franco. They play a longtime couple who begin experiencing mysterious physical changes.

"Going into this film, Dave and I were like, this is a risky choice," Brie says. "There are a lot of things in this movie that, if they weren't done perfectly, if they weren't executed perfectly, could be pretty embarrassing."

The 42-year-old goes on, "Lately, I just love the horror space. I feel like I'm running at it. I would love to do more stuff in horror—the weirder, the better. I just think people who are making horror and genre films now are taking the biggest risks, and they're writing really unique material and stuff that you haven't seen before, and so that is very exciting."

She especially loves how filmmakers like Jordan Peele use horror to "make commentary on larger issues." In Together, that means examining "relationships and monogamy and codependency." As Brie puts it, "Horror is such a fun space in which to delve deeper into topics and sort of extrapolate them to their different horrifying degrees."

Still, while she is in a horror era, comedy remains her comfort zone.

"It's like the closest to my personality, because I like to joke around," she says. "I'm a jokester. I'm like a kid on a set. I always just want to be making noise and having fun."

For more from Brie—including stories from her early career, how she decided to start collaborating with her husband, and her press tour style—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

She carries Telfar bags and wears Nike sneakers. She rocks a long braid. She’s a pro at twerking. She’s... an elephant wearing a Statue of Liberty crown? She's, of course, Ellie the Elephant, the breakout mascot for the New York Liberty. The WNBA is bringing in more fans than ever, and while the sport is already thrilling, one of the most fun parts of attending a Liberty game is watching Ellie dance, whip that braid around, and mingle with the crowd.

But who came up with this sassy, on-trend anthropomorphic elephant? One of the people responsible for Big Ellie is Shana Stephenson, the Chief Brand Officer for the Liberty and this week's guest on the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk". Stephenson chats with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike about the inspiration behind Ellie and the cultural phenomenon that the mascot has become.

Stephenson began working with the Liberty in 2018, just before the team moved from Westchester to Brooklyn. Before their brief stint in Westchester, the Liberty had long called Madison Square Garden home.

“We had a mascot prior to Ellie, named Maddie. Maddie was a lovable golden retriever—and Maddie could dance, too,” Stephenson says. “So it’s not like Maddie was corny or wack. Like, Maddie was dope.” But Maddie was named after Madison Square Garden, and bringing her to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center didn’t feel right. “That created an opportunity for us to introduce a new mascot.”

The Liberty’s CEO, Keia Clarke, came across a story about how, when the Brooklyn Bridge was built, P.T. Barnum led herds of elephants across it to prove its strength. “We loved the symbolism of the Brooklyn Bridge and the migration from Brooklyn to Manhattan,” Stephenson says. “And, you know, we were doing the reverse.”

Stephenson and her team held open auditions to find someone who could embody Ellie's spirit and hype up the crowd from inside the sweltering costume. She calls the person they hired "just phenomenal," but if you want to know who it is, you're out of luck. The dancer is anonymous.

“We just got lucky,” Stephenson says. “The performer is actually from Brooklyn, so a lot of what you see is a combination of them, Criscia, Shenay, and our CEO—this group of brilliant Black women who’ve completely leaned into Ellie and helped shape and elevate the brand.”

Emphasizing just how loved Ellie is, Stephenson tells a story of attending an event with her.

Ellie’s star power is real. “I did a red carpet with Ellie,” Stephenson recalls. “They were like, ‘Okay, thank you, Shana... but Ellie! Ellie!’ They completely shooed me to the side!”

For more from Stephenson—including her career journey and her mission to make Liberty green as iconic as Yankees caps—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

She’s competed in five Olympic Games, won three gold medals (plus four silvers and a bronze!), and is considered the third-fastest woman of all time. On the track, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is best known for the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 100-meter dash. Her personal record? Just 10.6 seconds.

The race may be short, but Fraser-Pryce makes a lasting impact. There’s her speed, of course—but also her style. In those ten seconds, she’s a flash of green, purple, or pink hair.

In the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Fraser-Pryce tells editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike what her hairstyles mean to her—and how they actually help her win.

The Jamaican sprinter starts planning her look well in advance of competitions. “I’m knowing where I’m going. I’m knowing the color of the flags. I know what color I did the year before and that I don’t want to do anymore,” she says. “It gives you this excitement.”

But it’s not just about debuting a new look. “It forces you to kind of take your mind off the competition,” the 38-year-old explains. “Because it can help you to really just settle the nerves and not make the competition the sole focus.”

Fraser-Pryce says some runners prefer to be completely locked in—and that’s fine. But for her, “then everything becomes the competition. And then you find that if you constantly do that, then it makes the moment too big—that you feel like you can’t fit in the moment.”

“I want to make sure that I’m enjoying the moment,” she adds. “So for me, I plan my hair. I ship my hair, if I have to. I buy the color. Sometimes I do it myself.”

There’s another layer to her hair choices: representing where she’s from. “I’m from an inner city, right? So they’re known for styles—like big earrings, gold teeth, different wigs and colors. That’s how they represent,” says Fraser-Pryce, who grew up in the Waterhouse area of Kingston.

Early in her career, she worried about “representing that way,” because people assumed that if “you had a gold filling on your tooth, or you had colored hair, or those big hoop earrings with your name in them, they kind of think you’re ghetto.”

“But for a lot of persons in my inner city or from Waterhouse, it’s making a statement. It’s like, ‘Hey, I’m here.’ You know, showing up. It’s representing that boldness and just standing out... Being able to honor that heritage in our culture is truly wonderful.”

It makes sense, then, that her haircare line, AFIMI, means “it’s mine” in Jamaican patois. “It’s really making sure that you take ownership of just who you are and how you want to show up—and how that helps you to be you and to be your best.”

For more from Fraser-Pryce—including her early life in Kingston, the upcoming World Championships in Tokyo, and why she chooses harmony over balance when it comes to motherhood and career—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

If you need relationship advice, just ask Kamie Crawford. On her podcast, Relationshit, the 32-year-old fields questions from callers and Instagram DM-ers about dating, friendships, and family—and offers her signature BFF-style guidance in response.

On this week's episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk", Crawford gives listeners a taste of that wisdom and opens up about her career, from Miss Teen USA to TV host. One topic she doesn’t hold back on? People who put “rich” at the top of their dating wishlist.

Crawford says that financial imbalances in relationships are "difficult, very difficult. This is why I tell everyone to stop manifesting a rich man, because that's not going to do anything for you."

Instead, the former Catfish host encourages people to manifest something else entirely. "There are a lot of rich people who are very cheap and very close-fisted and will not buy you a damn thing—and will actually put you on an allowance. I’ve seen it happen. So, I tell everyone to manifest a generous partner."

And generosity, she adds, isn’t just about money.

"Generosity is like—who is this person when I'm six months pregnant and I want an Oreo McFlurry? He's going to go out there and source it for me,” Crawford says. “He's going to drive 45 minutes, if that's where the next McDonald's is, and he's gonna go get it for me. … Generosity is: I'm folding my laundry, but I'm gonna fold yours too, because it's right here."

Of course, generosity can also mean material gifts (beyond McFlurrys). But Crawford warns that if you’re only focused on a partner’s income, you might not end up with the kind of thoughtfulness you actually want.

"Sometimes they’re getting you gifts that they like for you. Doesn’t mean it’s something you actually want,” she says. “Doesn’t mean they’re actually paying attention to what you like."

While Crawford doesn’t believe in manifesting a rich partner, she does think it’s fair to look for someone financially responsible.

"I've also dated people who were frivolous with money that they maybe didn't have, and you don't want that either," she says. "You also don't want the person who's been working on their business plan for the past 30 years and hasn't made it happen."

Crawford learned a lot about relationships during her six years as the co-host of the MTV docuseries Catfish, and from countless conversations with her five sisters and close friends. She sees Relationshit as a natural extension of those chats.

"I love to yap. I'm a yapper by nature," the Ex on the Beach presenter says. "I love to talk about these things, and I'm not here pretending like I'm some expert in every single facet of relationships. I didn't study it in school. This is not something that I have a degree in. But the messages that I get from people—all kinds of different people from all different walks of life—saying that listening to you has made me realize my worth, has made me leave that bad relationship, has made me leave that toxic job. I couldn't have imagined that I would have that impact on someone."

For more from Crawford—including her advice on making friends as an adult and what competing in pageants is really like—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Even if you aren't one of Katie Sturino's 800K Instagram followers, you've probably come across the body acceptance advocate before—whether through her viral series #SuperSizeTheLook, where she recreates celebrity outfits in plus-size fashion, or through her cult-favorite beauty brand, Megababe. Now, Sturino is diving into not one but two new ventures: her debut novel and the swimsuit line it inspired.

Sturino is this week's guest on the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk". She joined editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike to discuss her book, Sunny Side Up, and how it led her to bring the swimsuits designed by her fictional protagonist to life.

"You know, I've done a lot of things in my career, and this is something that is new for me," Sturino says of her novel, which hit shelves June 24. "It's so scary to have that kind of first time thing happening."

She started writing the book after her divorce, when she couldn’t find the kind of inspiration she was looking for. "Someone who was, like, not telling me just to lose weight and get on a dating app," she explains.

"I wanted to write the fiction book that I needed when I was going through my divorce," Sturino continues. "Sunny Side Up is a very fun beach read, and it really is, like, a how-to manual for getting back to yourself and embracing your female friendships—because they’re really what get you through most of those hard times."

In the romantic comedy novel, the main character, Sunny Greene, designs her own swimsuits after struggling to find one in her size that she actually loves.

"Sunny decides—as she's shopping at [Bergdorf Goodman] and has a total breakdown in the fitting room, as so many of us have—she's like, 'You know what? Eff this. Why are there no swimsuits for curvy bodies like mine, for plus-size bodies?' And she decides that she's going to make a swimsuit line."

And Sturino decided that she was going to do the same.

"As I was writing the book, I was like, I want to wear these suits. So, I approached Kitty and Vibe, which is a small woman-owned brand that does size-inclusive stuff. It's slow fashion." The brand was into the idea "so we made the suits from the book."

The line includes a shimmery green one-piece, tomato-print swimwear in multiple styles, and a colorblock long-sleeve swimsuit.

“You can wear the suit from the book, read the book at the beach... the whole thing,” Sturino says.

For more of Sturino’s favorite size-inclusive fashion picks, her secondhand shopping hacks, and how she copes with the “cringy” side of posting online, check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.

It's a simple fact that wearing sunscreen is important, but picking one out can be complicated. Mineral or chemical? Will it leave a white cast? What’s safe and what’s not? Beauty expert Charlotte Palermino dives into the science of sunscreen and other products in her popular TikTok and Instagram videos—and puts that science into action with her own skincare brand, Dieux.

While some creators shy away from the topic, Palermino also talks politics on social media—not just because it’s important, but because she sees it as deeply intertwined with beauty and skincare.

"I'll start with why I love talking about sunscreen. It's because I love talking about politics, and because I think that politics impacts beauty, and women are told to not talk about politics because women are told to make people comfortable," Palermino shares on the latest episode of the Marie Claire podcast "Nice Talk" with editor-in-chief Nikki Ogunnaike.

"Politics makes people very uncomfortable very quickly, because it is a reflection on your values and also how you economically want to lie in the social ladder," she continues. "I love talking about politics and sunscreen gives me an excuse in a really palatable way."

That includes breaking down how the FDA regulates sunscreen as a drug rather than a cosmetic, posting about how the U.S. has not approved certain sunscreen filters that are widely available in other countries— paired with a selfie featuring AOC, by the way—and calling out misinformation in both skincare and politics.

Palermino says she doesn’t get “too much blowback” these days for her political posts—which cover everything from immigration, to Palestine and Israel, to RFK Jr.—because her followers already know what to expect. She contrasts that with friends who began speaking out and received a “vitriolic” response.

Over time, she’s also developed a thicker skin. "I've been to enough therapy where when somebody's telling me you're wrong, you're evil, like all the things—for me talking about how it is a civil offense to be undocumented in this country, and it's the same thing as throwing somebody in jail for having a parking ticket, which is very concerning for the rule of law—and then coming at me with the fire of a thousand suns, I'm like, That's a you problem," the 38-year-old explains. "You seem to have some deep-seated issues, and I hope you stay safe, because a lot of Americans are not right now."

On the podcast, Palermino also shares why she got Botox the day after the 2024 election—"I need to make it through the next four years, and I don't want to be seeing it etched on my face"—why Kylie Jenner opening up about her plastic surgery is a recession indicator, and, of course, what to look for when you’re shopping for sunscreen.

For all of this and more, check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk". The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.