A Positive Influence
Jill Kargman’s latest movie,Influenced,hits the big screen
Written by Jonathan Soroff
Photography by Kit Noble and courtesy of Jill Kargman
Lifelong Nantucket summer resident Jill Kargman is known for skewering the rich and entitled in books and on television. Now, her debut feature film, Influenced, is enjoying a limited theatrical release and will be available for streaming on Amazon and Apple TV this September. Based on a character she developed on social media, the comedy features cameos by the likes of Drew Barrymore, Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, as well- as figures from New York’s fashion, media and social scene.
Kargman is a bundle of contradictions: The quintessential Upper East Sider, she’s deeply into heavy metal, and her taste might best be described as Edward Gorey chic. As the daughter of the late Chanel chief operating officer Arie Kopelman and his philanthropist wife, Coco, she was extremely well brought up, attending Spence, Taft and Yale, and yet she swears like a longshoreman and doesn’t hesitate to flip off cab drivers.2
As for Nantucket? She dislikes the sun, the beach and bright colors (other than a good red lipstick). What she loves about the Grey Lady is its greyness: moody weather, fog, board games and time to read. She also met her husband, Harry, on the island, and (thanks to her father) has a burial plot here. “I was so psyched when I found out I’d be a worm buffet on Nantucket,” she said.
Sardonic and surgical in her wit, she’s made a career out of highly intelligent snark. Twenty years ago, she started writing a series of popular novels that poke fun at elite Manhattan types: The Right Address, Wolves in Chic Clothing, Jet Set, The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund and Momzillas. She also penned a children’s book, Pirates and Princesses, with her daughter, Sadie, and the hilarious fangirl protagonist of The Rock Star in Seat 3A is a thinly fictionalized version of herself. But it was Momzillas that she eventually adapted into a TV series. Odd Mom Out, which aired for three seasons on Bravo, catapulted her into the pop-cultural stratosphere. The show made unsparing fun of status- and label-conscious, social-climbing, self-absorbed Manhattanites. The characters may have been caricatures, but they landed with a scorching accuracy familiar to anyone who’s ever gone shopping on Madison Avenue.
Today, Odd Mom Out is a cult classic (and well worth binging on Netflix), but her most popular character to date was inspired by the pandemic lockdown. “Dzanielle” is a spoiled, oblivious “momfluencer” with a thick Long Island accent, navigating the depredations of COVID from inside her highly rarefied bubble.
“There was nothing going on, and I was hunkered down in New York, just being silly, doing some goofy shtick for a friend to make her laugh,” Kargman said. “She told me to post them, and then one went crazy viral. It had a million views or something, which I never get. So, I was sort of surprised, but I guess people were starved for entertainment after watching Tiger King for the third time. Then Vogue did an article on Dzanielle, and here we are.”
In Kargman’s Instagram posts, Dzanielle conducts an online kaffeeklatsch where she obsesses over her twins, “Dzakota and Jjjared,” and takes the proverbial piss out of the Upper East Side women who were sneaking into speakeasy salons to get their hair colored or complaining bitterly about the difficulty of getting their favorite Peking duck. “When we meet her in the movie, six years later, she’s become a sensation with 999,000 followers, and she’s trying desperately to get to a million,” Kargman said. “It’s sort of holding a funhouse mirror up to influencer culture.”
Kargman acknowledges the irony that she’s the one to do it, since she attended the Met Gala three years in a row and pops up in pictures in The New York Times at the opening night of the New York City Ballet and similar swanky events.
“But I don’t monetize it,” she said. “I don’t get paid. I did two paid posts in the very early dawn of all that, and I felt like a prostitute. I said, ‘This is gross. I’m never doing it again.’ I’m talking about the people who make money and support themselves that way. A lot of them are [kissing up to billionaires] because they want a ride to Nantucket on the [private jet]. I would rather be on JetBlue with 200 strangers than have to kiss your ass and send you a case of wine. I don’t want to sing for my supper. I just want anonymity and my headphones, thank you very much.”
Always quick to call out hypocrisy and phoniness, Kargman said, “My friendships aren’t transactional. I’m fascinated when I see people air kiss and claim to be friends but not really know each other. It’s all about projecting perfection. I don’t do fake friendships, and I don’t traffic in small talk. I’m incapable of it. In fact, I probably have a version of Tourette’s. Truth serum is just baked into my DNA.”
As for the celebrities who signed on for Influenced, Barrymore was married to Kargman’s brother, Will Kopelman, and they’ve remained close, calling each other “sister-out-laws.” And Paltrow? “Gwyneth and I grew up together, so we’re old friends,” Kargman said. “And then Matt Damon and I have a mutual friend. I feel like the trailer is a little misleading. It makes it look like all these Hollywood juggernauts have major roles. They’re in it as five-second cameos. If you bend down for your popcorn, you’ll miss them.”
“We also have a lot of real New Yorkers, too, because the movie is this very hyperbolized, glossy, candy version of New York. In fact, Dylan’s Candy Bar is the bar/bat mitzvah theme in the story, and there are all these real New Yorkers peppered throughout, as Easter eggs that not everyone’s going to get, but the New Yorkers will.” What everyone will get is the main character, who’s wet-your-pants funny and played with a deadpan sincerity by Kargman. In fact, it’s not unlikely that within months, the name Dzanielle will become to overindulged Manhattan Moms what Karen is to white women who ask to speak to the manager.
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