Vanity Fair and Olivia Nuzzi announced on Friday that they have agreed to go their separate ways following a flood of new revelations about her romantic relationship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including allegations of journalistic ethics breaches.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the breakup between the magazine and Nuzzi.
Nuzzi, who signed a short-term contract with Vanity Fair earlier this year to be its West Coast editor, released a statement alongside the magazine on Friday declaring that they had “mutually agreed, in the best interest of the magazine, to let her contract expire at the end of the year.”
During her time as New York magazine’s Washington correspondent, Nuzzi wrote a profile of Kennedy and then began a predominantly online affair with the now-Health and Human Services secretary. After that relationship was exposed in late 2024, New York dumped her following an investigation into her work for the publication.
Nuzzi, meanwhile, stormed back into the public limelight last month with a glitzy New York Times profile announcing her new book, American Canto. The memoir, which she said she wrote while on a self-imposed exile in Malibu, detailed her affair with Kennedy – whom she just named “The Politician” throughout the book.
However, following that profile and the publication of a book excerpt in Vanity Fair, Nuzzi’s ex-fiancé, Ryan Lizza, published a series of scorching Substack posts accusing Nuzzi of having romantic affairs with other well-known politicians and of acting as a political operative for Kennedy during his 2024 independent presidential run.
Nearly a year after she departed New York magazine amid the scandal over the Kennedy affair, Nuzzi was brought on by new Vanity Fair chief editor Mark Guiducci to be the magazine’s so-called West Coast editor. At the time she was hired, the outlet said she would focus on “events, industries, and culture of the Pacific region, as well as writing for the magazine.”
In his Substack series, Lizza – a former chief Washington correspondent for Politico – claimed that while they were together, Nuzzi cheated on him with one-time presidential candidate Mark Sanford years before her affair with Kennedy. He also went on to allege that while she was working for New York, Nuzzi served as a media relations colnsultant for Kennedy and helped him get ahead and damaging stories.
Nuzzi, for her part, has lashed out at her scorned ex and accused Lizza of publishing harmful “revenge porn” in recent weeks. “Telling the truth is not harassment,” Lizza told The Independent.
American Canto, which was published on Tuesday, has been absolutely skewered by book critics and sales have been extremely disappointing, if not outright embarrassing. (As of publication, her memoir was languishing at #6,049 on the Amazon hardcover best sellers list.)
“You shouldn’t write a memoir unless you are willing to make yourself look foolish and pathetic. Nuzzi breaks this cardinal rule, flattering herself by admitting to only the chicest kinds of disintegration,” the Washington Post’s Becca Rothfeld wrote in her review.
Amid her media blitz to promote the book, which included an uncomfortable podcast interview with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, it was reported that Nuzzi’s job with Vanity Fair was in jeopardy and that executives were likely to just let her temporary contract expire.
