Fran Lebowitz: ‘Trans rights is affecting no one except the people involved. So why do you care?’

The New York author and newly crowned Gen Z icon talks to Zoë Beaty about Trumpism, trans rights and why there’s no calm conversation in the internet age

Fran Lebowitz: ‘I judge every single thing... that’s how I observe the world’ (Netflix)

It’s rare that Fran Lebowitz is stuck for an answer. “It’s really pleasurable knowing everything,” the author, speaker and New York iconoclast said in Public Speaking, a 2010 documentary exploring her life and work directed by her close friend, Martin Scorsese. “Now, I’m sure that people think, she doesn’t know everything. But they’re wrong. I do.” Spend any amount of time listening to her speak, or reading her most replayed observations – “polite conversation is rarely either”, or “there is no such thing as inner peace, there is only nervousness and death” – and you’ll likely be convinced, too. So it comes as a surprise to find that, five minutes into our chat, we’ve stumbled across a phenomenon that has Lebowitz stumped.

“I have never, ever understood,” she begins. “Why do you – and I don’t mean you personally, but you as a member of your country – why do you keep voting the Tories in?”

Lebowitz, 73, now spends most of her time sharing her opinions on politics, or on why there’s too much writing in the world (“just because you can write a sentence or an essay, doesn’t mean it’s worth reading,” she tells me), why she loves living in New York, why she hates living in New York or the myriad things that annoy her. Her examinations of the world, delivered in fast-moving choleric comedy since she started out writing humorous columns for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine in 1971, have attracted legions of fans who queue up around the world to hear her speak. Since the 2021 release of Pretend It’s a City, a seven-part Netflix docuseries and sort-of sequel to Public Speaking, also directed by Scorsese, Gen Z have become the latest to idolise her. Still, Lebowitz thinks she’s often misunderstood.