Kase Wickman

Kase Wickman covers how pop culture, celebrity, and politics intersect, treating entertainment stories as windows into contemporary society. She is Vanity Fair’s culture and society reporter and a frequent contributor to the magazine. Her work centers on the narratives that form around famous people, online rumor mills, and the cultural industries that shape how those stories are told. She is the author of Bring It On: The Complete Story of the Cheerleading Movie That Changed, Like, Everything (No, Seriously), and her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, New York magazine, Cosmopolitan, The Boston Globe, and The Awl. She is the cocreator of Shop Your Feelings, a project that blends emotional themes with e-commerce.

Taylor Swift, Sports, and Spectacle

Wickman returns often to Taylor Swift as a way of charting the mechanics of modern fame and the crossovers between entertainment and sports.

In her piece on the theory that Swift and Travis Kelce could marry at Madison Square Garden, she treats the arena as both a logistical puzzle and a symbolic stage, outlining security, scheduling gaps, and the “Wife Era” narrative as part of a broader examination of what it means to stage a celebrity event at that scale. She weighs fan skepticism against the practical advantages of the venue, focusing on perimeter control, guest access, and the ways a public arena can function like a private island for ultra-famous figures.

In coverage of Swift’s presence at the US Open alongside Brittany Mahomes, she tracks how a single courtside embrace becomes a story that touches on sports alliances, internet discourse, and even proximity to political figures such as Donald Trump. Her Emmys piece on Swift’s surprise appearance with “both Olivia Bensons” uses the cameo to show how television, music, and fandom collide in a live-television setting, keeping the tone sharp but grounded in observed details from the broadcast.

Red Carpets, Festivals, and Hollywood First Looks

Red-carpet coverage is another core strand in Wickman’s work, but she treats these events as character studies and cultural signals rather than simple fashion write-ups. Her reporting on Zendaya at the 2026 Emmys red carpet focuses on how the star’s styling and presence extend themes from her work, using the look to explore the evolving persona of one of Hollywood’s most watched figures.

At the Vanity Fair Oscar party, her piece on Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie situates a newer set of names within that same ecosystem, paying attention to how they are introduced to a wider audience through the prestige of the event. She also handles film coverage, as in her first-look story on Babies, Lauren Miller Rogen’s personal film starring Seth Rogen and Anna Kendrick.

That article shifts from red carpet to creative process, drawing out how real-life questions about parenthood and will-they-won’t-they dynamics inform the movie’s story and its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Politics, Rumors, and the Conspiracy Economy

Wickman’s beat stretches beyond entertainment into political rumor and the culture of conspiracy, especially where it overlaps with high-profile public figures. In her coverage of persistent divorce rumors about Barack and Michelle Obama, she traces how unfounded claims circulate in MAGA-aligned spaces and what those narratives reveal about the obsessions of that audience. Her story on Barack Obama’s diss track aimed at Donald Trump, created with help from Eminem, frames the piece as a pop-cultural artifact that still operates within the context of contemporary politics and online combat.

With RFK Jr.’s cooking show, she leans into the strangeness of the project, showing how a political figure’s attempt at lifestyle content results in something more bizarre than straightforward image management. When writing about the Savannah Guthrie case and the historic Lindbergh baby kidnapping, she uses nearly century-old true crime to contextualize a current apparent abduction, connecting media coverage then and now to show why such stories remain haunting. Across these pieces, she tracks how rumor, spectacle, and nostalgia for past scandals feed a modern conspiracy economy.

Pop Culture, Advertising, and Celebrity Branding

Wickman often writes about the commercial side of fame - advertising, branding, and how celebrities are used to sell products or ideas. Her piece on Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad breaks down why the campaign fails not due to controversy but because it is “just…boring,” arguing that the creative choices dull the impact of a star who otherwise commands strong audience attention.

In coverage of Aaron Rodgers’s ayahuasca documentary, she treats the project as a “mind-bending” exploration of altered states that doubles as a rebranding exercise for a major sports figure, examining how wellness rhetoric and visual style help recast his public image.

Her interview with Zendaya on having kids, Tom Holland, fame, and being a “27-year-old angsty teen” centers on how a huge star narrates adulthood, relationships, and self-perception, turning a celebrity Q&A into a broader story about growing up under constant observation. The same concern with emotion and consumption that underpins her Shop Your Feelings project echoes through these pieces, as she pays close attention to how feelings are packaged, marketed, and monetized in contemporary culture.