Laura Brown & Kristina O'Neill Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from New York City. Today's guests are two of my favorite people, truly: Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill. You might know them from their incredible runs in the world of magazines. Laura was the editor-in-chief of InStyle Magazine, and Kristina was the longtime editor-in-chief of WSJ, the Wall Street Journal Magazine. Well, despite their accolades, awards, achievements, and the respect of their peers, they were both fired from their jobs. Kristina and Laura have taken their experience and, as the saying goes, turned some really sour lemons into an amazing pitcher of lemonade. They teamed up to write a book titled “All the Cool Girls Get Fired: How to Let Go of Being Let Go and Come Back on Top.” The book just dropped last week and features their personal stories, plus interviews with famous folks who have been fired, like Oprah, who knew, and lots of advice on how to deal with being fired. Kristina and Laura have started a long-overdue movement and are helping remove the shame around being fired. Whether you've been laid off, let go, canned, whatever you want to call it, “All the Cool Girls Get Fired” is an amazing guide for dealing with it. I learned a lot reading it, and I wish I had a book like that earlier in my career. Anyway, Kristina and Laura are great pals of mine and former colleagues, and I couldn't be prouder of them, so go by their book and stay tuned for my chat with Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill.
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Now let's check in with today's guests. Laura Brown, Kristina O'Neill, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Laura Brown:
Hey, thanks-
Kristina O'Neill:
Hi, Kerry-
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, you two. I swore we weren't going to just tell insider stories because that will get boring for everybody really fast, but Laura came up with my Instagram handle so many years ago. I was like, you know what? Somebody took my name, I'm not going to join Instagram. And Laura goes, "Just call yourself Kerry Bombe." That Laura Brown magic.
Laura Brown:
Where's my fee? It's been years.
Kerry Diamond:
All right, let's get started because you two have started a movement. I want you to tell our listeners how all this started and Laura, it started with you. Tell us what happened at InStyle that fateful day.
Laura Brown:
So well, number one, Kristina and I have been ... We've known each other for almost 25 years. We worked together for eight years at Harper's Bazaar. I had a long-term friendship and working relationship that we kind of ascended at the same sort of level at Harper's Bazaar, and when Kristina was hired as editor in chief of WSJ Magazine a few years before I became editor in chief of InStyle, so we both are on this sort of staggered, similar track. And so cut to February, 2022 and myself and my whole, what they referred to as the print team of InStyle were all laid off on Zoom one day because they were closing down the print as they referred to it, and received the HR script from the HR representative. And that was that.
Went off and one, tried to instantly reassure my team and said to them that even at the time that your value lies in you, this hasn't been taken away by this. Don't give them the power. A lot of things that showed up in this book, actually. That happened February, 2022, and then cut to the end of April, 2023, and Kristina was fired from her job and she's a special, special girl. So it was just her, 14 months after me. And at the time I was in South Africa on a trip with RED who I do work with, and I got this text from Kristina and it said, because I was seven hours ahead and she said, "Getting the boot. Call me." For a minute, I was like buying some boots. What? No, getting the boot. "Call me when you open your eyes." And I was like, "Oh shit. Okay."
Next morning, I texted her back and she was getting let go from that role and just asking me stuff because I was 14 months ahead, I was a bit up the path. I had some sort of flashlight on. I was doing okay, I was doing well. And so it was a bit like, can I phone a friend I guess, can I get some help in this situation? So I was texting her from there and then I came back from South Africa and as all pro-active professionals do, we went to a bar and on the way down to the bar I just was like, okay. And I texted her and I said, "Here's what we're doing. We're going to take a picture of ourselves, we're going to look so cute and we're going to post it on Instagram and the caption is going to be 'All the cool girls get fired or all the coolest girls get fired,'" it said at the time. And Kristina, who is a bit more reserved out of the two of us, but at the same time was like, "Okay."
And so we did that that night and greeted by just an absolute deluge of responses from women that showed, it was just one of those tink, tink, tink tink, comment, comment, comment that just showed that we'd sort of pulled open some sort of psychological door. "Oh wow. They just said it. Oh well no one truly just says ... Oh actually, wow, that's cool. Oh, that's brave, or that's this and that and the other." Oh and a couple of squeakers like, "Well, it kind of happened to me too actually," or Monica Lewinsky saying, "If I hadn't been fired from the White House, I wouldn't have ended up at the Pentagon with Linda Tripp. Sometimes it doesn't work out as well as you think."
But the next morning, so we're just sitting there and just going to bed dwelling on it and Kristina, the next morning, we were both in the place where most powerful decisions are made, the bathroom, texted me and said, "This is a book, number one." And then she was savvy enough as well to even notice at the time, 2.5 years ago now she wrote also tens of thousands of people are getting laid off all the time now and they need this. So that was the inception, May, 2023.
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina, how did you know this should be a book so quickly?
Kristina O'Neill:
We’re editors, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
Good answer.
Kristina O'Neill:
Listen, the book is everything we wish we had at our fingertips when it happened to us. There's so much information that you don't know you need to know when you get fired. Part of it was just sort of born out of the frustration of not having a single resource where all of the information that I wanted to know in one place at my fingertips. And so that was the sort of service part. There was so much crap I was Googling, you're on these government websites trying to decode, things like trying to understand unemployment, COBRA, our a very complex healthcare system in this beautiful country. And then basic things like do I need a lawyer? Or shit, I haven't done my resume in a decade, so there was just a lot of stuff that I wanted quick and easy. I found that there was not anything out there that was quick or easy.
Kerry Diamond:
When you posted that Instagram, like you mentioned, people just don't come out and admit that they were fired. It's sort of like the last wall of shame. What is it about you two that collectively you were able to push past that and be like, "You know what? We're just going to tell everybody the truth."
Laura Brown:
Self-belief that we knew we were good, and we happened to get fired for whatever reason our bosses would ascribe it to, and we don't have the exclusive on that. There are thousands of people, multiple thousands, tens of thousands of people who are good and also get fired. Look at 2025 in this country. There was something about that stubbornness and that desire, and a bit of ego, bringing ego into it as well to go, no, no, no. Being fired doesn't mean you've screwed up. It doesn't mean you're shitty. It just can happen sometimes. And so there was never any second-guessing on it and I think that that's sort of what we're trying to do with this book as well is because-
Kristina O'Neill:
We cut to the chase. I wanted to skip all the ... Like what happened? I got fired. There's no sugarcoating it. To this day, I don't know why I was fired. I was told that she wanted to go in a different direction, but...
Kerry Diamond:
She, being the new boss?
Kristina O'Neill:
The new boss, but I think you don't rest easy just being like, "Oh, I totally understand it. She just wants to go in a different direction." You are out there wondering what?
Kerry Diamond:
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Anybody who knows Laura knows that Laura is good at getting people to bend to her will and you can be a little bit more reserved. You were fine with putting it out there publicly.
Kristina O'Neill:
I was totally fine with it because when I was being fired, they did give me an opportunity that I think if I was a different type of person, some people take this opportunity, which is I wasn't marched out of the building the day it happened. I was given a little bit of time. I think it ended up being about six weeks where I probably could have gathered my things up, gone back to my desk, acted like nothing happened, and three weeks later have announced in the middle of June I'm going to be stepping down to go do what? I don't know because there was clearly nothing else. I do think, and whether this is to their credit or to mine, I don't know, but there was an opening that if I wanted to take it, I could have created an alternative narrative than the one that we ended up stepping into.
And instead, in the moment I said, "Nope, we're going to tell my team tomorrow that you're firing me. I will let you know if I'm going to stay until the date that you're offering once I can go and sort of regroup and decide if that works for me because I know it works for you, but I want to make sure it works for me." I just couldn't square what I would say to people, this was my dream job and I couldn't figure out a version. Jobs don't fall from the sky. There was no version of something better or more interesting or more exciting landing on their timeline, and so I just sort of figured out, literally Kerry, it was so black and white to me. I was like, "Nope, you're firing me. That's on you. You guys are going to go and tell everyone and I want a press release. I want these people quoted in it." I was very clear about how I wanted the communication to roll out.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm amazed you had the presence of mind. I've had a few layoffs and things that maybe were firings. I don't know if I quit or I was fired, but I remember being at Yahoo when they laid us all off en masse, I think maybe a few hundred of us, and they brought the editors in chief into a conference room and no one knew what was going on and they told us that they were closing everything. This whole thing was over. And I looked around the room, and I could tell that no one knew what the HR people were telling us and I said, "What time do have to be out of the building?" And they said three o'clock, and people burst into tears and that you had the presence of mind to be like, "I'm not accepting this narrative. I'm going to take control of this,” really is remarkable and says a lot about you, Kristina.
Kristina O'Neill:
Thanks. I mean, it's such a shock and I think that we talk a lot about shock as armor and I do think, I mean I was clearly in shock, but I do think it just gave me a little ... It sort of forced me into saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I know I can't ... There's not a version where you fight to stay in the job. I was going to remove myself from the situation with as much dignity and decorum that I could muster and in order to move on, I knew I had to be honest about what was happening.
Kerry Diamond:
Laura, you weren't given the luxury of time, they were just pulling the plug immediately?
Laura Brown:
And I probably wouldn't have taken it honestly. I mean it was different because again, remember I was sort of thinking of doing my own thing and both of our situations were wildly different. I'd also worked for three different owners during that time and I was kind of a bit ... Remember that old Instagram She Has Had It. I was a bit like that. No, we were done by the end of the day. It was like, and we were all-
Kristina O'Neill:
Was your email turned off while you were in the meeting?
Laura Brown:
No, it was turned off.
Kerry Diamond:
Your email was shut down in the middle of them telling you?
Laura Brown:
No, at the end of the day.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow-
Laura Brown:
... Group text, like, "How do you download contacts? How do you do the ..." Yeah, no, we were just sort of done and dusted then and there. Yeah, one, there was no option to extend. I mean, look, hindsight's 2020. I don't think it would've taken it but who knows? But also we weren't working in an office, I was working from home. A lot of that routine that some people, that is even more traumatic that you lose, I didn't sort of have because I literally ... If you move one meter around this table, I got fired there.
Kerry Diamond:
One difference though, is your entire team was fired.
Laura Brown:
My entire team.
Kerry Diamond:
And having been one of your columnists, I knew how much you loved your team and still do to this day. I mean half of them were at your book event the other day.
Laura Brown:
Love my team.
Kerry Diamond:
So that you had that pressure on you that it wasn't just you, you were talking about dozens of people. How did you handle them?
Laura Brown:
It was like 35 people, and I think that the first thing I did was go as as statesman-like as I possibly could, which was just like, okay, after we got the verbiage and the HR language and da, da, da, da, I just was like, "Everyone, let's get back on this link in five minutes." Everybody got back on and then I started into this sort of speech that is very much the spine of the book, which is, "The value lies in you. They didn't take it from you, they don't control you. Everything you've learned is yours. You can take it somewhere else." It was just like the whole mission of this book is reminding women of that or whomever of that, don't give your value away. You know what I mean? So if you give your value away, you're even more thrown when this shitty thing happens to you.
So I was just very dead set on reminding and especially the babies. I had a lot of babies on my team who it was kind of their first job or whatever, and you're like, what do you mean? It was a great job. To have your first job be so fun and then to lose that is so shocking. And then you're like, oh, and it's not always going to be like this is it? Just trying to build them up to stand as tall as they could. Again, there's the stubbornness. I was stubborn about my skills and that they were valuable and I was stubborn about that on behalf of my team too.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, I have to congratulate you too because I really think this is the last taboo and you are really helping smash it. When I put something on my Instagram about your book a few months ago when the galleys came out and got tons of comments, but got an equal number of DMs of women saying that they weren't ready to go public yet, but that they were so happy that this book existed and they couldn't wait to read it. What are you hearing? You must be getting an avalanche of responses from women.
Laura Brown:
Yeah, we're getting, and it is been so wonderful since the inception of this book we've had ... The latter part of the book is made of about 30-something women who wrote our email address and said, "Actually, this happened to me." And then we asked permission of them if we could include it. So we featured those women. But no, all the entire way through this process has been almost like letting this valve out, of people downloading what happened to them, but what's happened in there ... And we would get all these questions, "When's the book out? I really need it. No, this happened to me." And so we would give little bits of it out that would be helpful, but now that it is out three days later, we're getting so many messages, LinkedIn, and I'm getting so many women connecting with me. I'm just going, ding, ding, ding, ding saying that, and this is the most touching one.
I mean there's so many, but there's one woman a few days ago who said, "Reading this book has given me the bravery to admit that this happened to me," which was absolutely wild and one that came in yesterday from a woman who was an inspector general of a huge government agency who was one of the many layoffs that happened. Remember that one-line layoff that was in there? It was like January when the administration came in and she said, "It was extremely jarring for me. I was attached to that. I'm going to do my own thing." But then she signed off her name and then she wrote underneath it, Cool Girl. That's it. That is subverting this entire bullshit paradigm of bringing the shame onto yourself when it's not yours and there's something to be ashamed about and no one cares. And then flipping it and going, "Oh yeah, I'm not alone. I'm part of innumerable women and men and most of the time, 99% of the time, it's circumstantial." You don't have to be exclusive. It's nothing to do with you. So why would you bring all this shame onto yourself?
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina, what are you hearing from people? It's got to be the same, just these incredible stories.
Kristina O'Neill:
Yeah, lots of DMs, a lot of gratitude for us, I think, like Laura said, sort of opening that psychological door, it has been really reassuring ... One of the lovely things I heard from a woman last night was that actually her stepdaughter had fired the day after we came out and she had the book already, and so she said it was such a gift to just be able to hand this to her and her stepdaughter burst into tears and was like, "Oh my god, I'm not. I'm now part of this club." If this can be a shortcut, a really kind of quick and easy way to cut through the bullshit and just get people on their way and take all the complicated things that come at a time when you're already so vulnerable out of the equation then I think this is why it's here. This is why we did it.
Kerry Diamond:
I was reading the book. I was struck by how it's still so raw for a lot of these women, things that happened to them decades ago. And take someone like Oprah, one of the most famous women in the world, you think you know Oprah's entire story, she poured her heart out to you about something she's never really even talked about. Tell us about the Oprah ... Well, also you guys got to hang out with Oprah. We'll talk about that too. But first, tell us what happened to Oprah.
Laura Brown:
It's funny. What we realized is that everyone has this sort of photographic memory of their firing. It's like this muscle memory. And Oprah could tell down to the drink that the guy who was firing was drinking, and Oprah was 22 years old, she was a news anchor in Baltimore and she sort of number one entered into a boys club, older man's boys club. There was all this racist overtones and she got canned from the news anchor position and sort of thoroughly demoted to doing the cut-ins, which is like five minutes here, five minutes there or ambulance chasing or doing that kind of stuff. And it was absolutely miserable, and after she got fired, this is what's so crazy, you can see this scene. I actually saw Gayle King the other day and she gets down from the office and she's working with Gayle in 1977.
She's like, "Gayle, meet me in the bathroom." And we're like, "What happened, what happend?" And she's just going through all these motions and then what happened? She sort of did this crappy job for about a year and I think a new manager came in or a new programmer and said, "Oh, we're starting a talk show. Would you be interested?" And then she says, "The minute I sat down and I was talking to the Carvel ice cream guy and whatever it is, I knew it was my calling," but she was absolutely humiliated. She had been welcomed into this job with a whole lot of fanfare and then-
Kristina O'Neill:
A lot of marketing around Baltimore. They had put posters of her everywhere. It's very public. And her father at the time, I think she said, was working two or three jobs. One of them was a janitorial role at Vanderbilt University, and she identified that having to tell her dad what had happened was the part that she just couldn't overcome. That for her was the hard conversation that she just couldn't have because she was so embarrassed and it was the first time she felt like she'd been good at what she did. I think Kerry, you identified one of the things that I think really struck me in all of our conversations was just that total recall that all these women had, and you really want to believe that time and distance from it heals all. And I was really surprised by every single woman who we spoke to could bring us back to that room on that day, however many years later and however much success they've had.
And I think on some level, I found that really reassuring because when we started this book, I really still was at WSJ when turned the proposal into our agent. So that's how quickly we moved on this. So to say that things were still a little raw, it's like an understatement. It was like therapy talking to these women for me and everyone's firing was so varied. I think that was also really important to us was to include very sort of traditional corporate firings. I think I had a pretty traditional corporate firing. I got fired. Here's your paperwork, here's your package, off you go.
But we included women like Angela and Margherita Missoni who brought investors on, who pushed them out of the company that their last name is on. Agent who gets fired by clients all the time, not the company that actually pays the W2, but the clients. Then talking to actresses, I think we're all kind of like, "Oh, it's our industry. Everything's morphing, everything's changed." When you're an actor and you're fired, they are firing you. When they say they want to go in a different direction, it literally means we don't want you in that direction.
Kerry Diamond:
You can't say media isn't a free fall. That story was so amazing, Lisa Kudrow's, because talk about, I don't know, blessing in disguise to have been fired from Frasier, which none of us can even imagine her having been on to then have Friends be the thing that happens because you got fired from Frasier.
Kristina O'Neill:
Unbelievable. And also just shows you, I think Lisa really talked so plainly about the time after she got fired. She really had nothing going on. She walked every day to get a chocolate croissant, I think it was at the nearby pastry shop. She said she did a lot of walking. She said it helped lighten her up both that rhythm and get that routine. Had she not had the courage to go and audition for Friends, to be in the room with the guy who fired her from the last show she was on, it just shows you how much courage she had and how hungry she was to create an opportunity, what came next?
Kerry Diamond:
I want to talk about some practical things from the book, but before we do that, like I said, you got to hang out with Oprah at her home and her gigantic backyard, which looked like a national park, it was so big and somehow you three were all in matching clothing. What was going on that day?
Laura Brown:
This is important, and I think I'm going to do this whenever we socialize together going forward, Kerry. She very kindly offers to match what the guest is wearing.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, she does?
Laura Brown:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Were you and Kristina matching on purpose?
Laura Brown:
I mean, well, we're always kind of of a piece. Kristina will often wear more black than me or whatever, but no, we were like, okay, I'll wear this and I'll wear this, and then you send her a picture of it and then she matches. So she matched me. So crazily, not deliberately. We both had sort of the same trousers on and we were like Team Navy. It's really considerate, it's very novel and just that sort of-
Kristina O'Neill:
But I think it does show that just how thorough the Oprah enterprise is and just how smooth and well run she and her team are. I mean, everyone was so lovely and it was such a seamless, perfect experience, a circumstance that is quite intimidating and it was a big deal. So she really puts you at ease and I was just grateful that I had to decide three days before we recorded what I was wearing because it just meant, okay, and that's it. She signed off. It's going in the suitcase. I'm not bringing 37 outfits and having a meltdown before you head to her house.
Laura Brown:
Normally, lurching around the night before going, okay, this is clean.
Kristina O'Neill:
It takes all ambiguity out of it. You're like, okay, this is what I said I'm wearing. I'm wearing it.
Kerry Diamond:
Laura, I know you've spent a lot of time with Oprah. You've interviewed her, you've put her in all the magazines you've worked on, but what was it like having her give this project her seal of approval?
Laura Brown:
Yeah, it's funny. Now I'm thinking that Oprah is obviously peerless, but you feel like a peer. I feel like I'm contradicting myself, but she's obviously inherently brilliant at what she does, but she's very smooth and we knew because we'd sort of had this conversation with her about how this affected her. So we sort of burrowed into that headspace already, so I didn't feel intimidated because she's there because she's interested and she throws herself behind it and she enlists other women in the segment as well to discuss it. And she again, openly discussed what happened with her and then when she gets behind it and they release it, they get behind it to the tune of 12 social posts. It's the most extraordinary vote of support that you can have. So sort of knowing that takes away a lot of the nerves because it's like we wrote something that has value and that she saw the value in. So we were just so happy to be there to talk about it and as three women, in again, vastly different spheres we live in, but three women who'd been through it.
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina, tell us about the gift you brought and what that saying was and what that has to do with everything we're talking about.
Kristina O'Neill:
Oprah is obviously brilliant at boiling things down in a single sentence, complicated and disruptive is getting fired into a single sentence, and what she said in the book when we interviewed her was, "The setback is a setup." And so that for us kind of became ... I mean literally the quote on the back of the book because that is it that. If everyone comes through something like this and can acknowledge that it is the thing that unlocks whatever comes next and hopefully something brilliant and even better. But what we brought to Oprah that day was a Lingua Franca sweater that we had embroidered with that quote on a navy sweater, which felt appropriate since we were all Team Navy that day and she was very grateful and held it up on when we were filming some stuff for social.
Kerry Diamond:
That's such an important statement to have in your head. I mean it certainly does feel like a setback in the moment, but you all have to know that it really ultimately is not. Let's talk about some practical things. The book is filled with so much ... Even the interviews are filled with so much practical information about how each person handled the situation. I want to divide it into pre, during, and post because it really is three different phases. It's not just being brought into HR, lured there under false circumstances and then told that you no longer have a job. But it's how to prepare for it maybe happening one day, it's how to act when it's happening and then it's what to do once it has happened. And I think people need to think in those stages and given the world we live in today, you can't just go into a job and magically think this will never happen to you. Each of you tell me what is one thing you think someone should do to just prepare for this may be happening to them one day?
Kristina O'Neill:
We think that every person who who's securely ensconced in a job should create some insurance policies for themselves. So whether that is going into LinkedIn every couple of months and just making sure the way that you're writing about what you're currently doing remains fresh and relevant, whether that's updating skills, projects you're proud of, things that you're accomplishing along the way. It's really hard to think back on 10 years if you've never done that. And that was sort of the case. Every piece of advice in this book, it's the things that we didn't do. So I think Laura and I were not, it wasn't like we had a beautifully scripted LinkedIn ready to go. Someone asked me for my resume two weeks after I'd been fired and I was like, "My resume?" So I hadn't done that in many, many, many years.
Download your contacts, read the room. Just be very conscious of how your industry is morphing and changing and are you keeping up with the skills and the things? It is now, especially in media, it is a given that anyone you're going to hire is going to be trained and adept in certain skillsets that maybe weren't the skill sets that were relevant when we started our jobs 10 years ago. So you have to keep up with the way that the tides are turning in whatever field you work in. So yeah, really it's that. And then I think once it happens, we say go on a doctor tour literally before that healthcare runs out, get into every single doctor you've ever seen, ever want to see before that.
Laura Brown:
Don't sign anything in the room. If they push you a pile of papers and you're feeling intimidated, you don't have to do it. You could take and say, "I need some time. I'm going to go home." Because they need you to sign those papers so actually, the ball's in your court and that tiny little bit of control, you've lost 90% of your control, but a bit of that control is yours and then take it, review it, have someone look at it with you. It could be a family member, a friend who's a law student, whatever it is, and then ask for stuff. Ask for everything you can. Who cares if it's obnoxious, what are they going to do? Fire you?
So you have nothing, zero to lose. So cut all that off. They can only say no, but you'll feel prouder of yourself that you didn't just let them roll over you, like this is a dated reference, “A Fish Called Wanda.” You know what I mean? That you had some sort of agency and control in that moment and then go on the doctor tour and use, and especially if you have insurance that can be extended, if you have to have any procedures, do those and really make sure you're getting everything out of your former employer that you're entitled to.
Kerry Diamond:
When should someone call a lawyer? I mean, we've all had other high-profile friends who've been fired and sometimes it seems really unfair or it seems related to ageism or sexism. I'm sure people told you two to hire lawyers immediately. How do you know when or if you should do that?
Laura Brown:
If you feel you have grounds or even if you have, as Bucky Keady, the HR rep, says in the book, not everyone is going to hire L.A. law lawyer at $1,000 an hour. You don't need to do that. You can ask someone like I was saying, a student or whatever, but oftentimes lawyers, and this is what we didn't know either, work on contingency. Take your case, you pay them if you win. So it's not like you have to shell out in the first instance, but yeah, oftentimes you might think your firing was unjust and they're mean and they suck and everything, but maybe you can't legally fight it, but it still sucks if that conclusion is reached, but at least you involve an expert to give you that advice so you don't ... Again, it's the same thing of pulling of the things that you can get some information and control over and know that when you've lost the job, but you've asked all the questions you can and you've made all of those right inquiries, I think makes you feel sort of cleaner about the whole thing and stronger.
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina?
Kristina O'Neill:
Yeah, I agree. I also think if you work in a place where if it's not a small workplace and there has been several rounds of this, I do think a lawyer can bring some heft to your individual case and can kind of advocate for you in a way that you sort of fighting with the HR guys, the last thing you want to do is be negotiating your own terms of your exit. And I just felt like, great, over to you guys. Work it out and let me know. Then you can kind of rant to them about all the things that you want and they advocate your behalf and go in high, like Laura said, ask for everything. What can they do? And at the end of the day, they become your sort of bullhorn and your champion.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about what you two are doing now because you are both doing incredible things. Laura?
Laura Brown:
I work on all different projects, but I have two big babies. One is this book, which we've been very dedicated to over the last two and a half years, but especially in the last year, finishing it and getting out there in the world and one, ensuring that it does well. And two, seeing how we might build a platform on the back of that and pushing into that next year and really giving that real focus and diligence, which has been really edifying to be able to do that actually. And not just our editor jobs and just running around trying to placate everyone and be everywhere, and it's nice just to kind of be able to sit with something.
My second big baby is RED, the HIV fighting nonprofit that Bono and Bobby Shriver launched 20 years ago next year, which is more needed than ever given the cuts to federal funding that have happened to USAID, for example, it no longer exists. They asked me to chair a newly formed creative council and I've also joined their big board. So it's up to me to propel RED back into the culture to get that support there via through the arts and fashion and entertainment and push on through the anniversary year to remind everybody that HIV ain't done. If it's in danger of coming back there because of this erosion of funding, it will skip borders and we'll have to face it globally again.
Kerry Diamond:
You've been doing a great job, Laura, with the collaborations and with bringing attention to it, so well done.
Laura Brown:
Thank you very much, Kerry Diamond.
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina, what are you up to?
Kristina O'Neill:
Yeah, so I'm now the head of media at Sotheby's and I'm editing the Sotheby's magazine and like Laura said, my side hustle is Cool Girls.
Kerry Diamond:
And Sotheby's just had big restaurant news. Will you be involved in that at all?
Kristina O'Neill:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us.
Kristina O'Neill:
Oh, it's so exciting. The restaurant at the Breuer, where we moved in almost three weeks now, three, four weeks will be helmed by the geniuses at Roman and Williams and the restaurant will be called Marcel, which was announced this week. Robin and Stephen have done the most beautiful job of bringing this sort of brutalism beautiful period into a sort of warm and inviting restaurant, and I can promise you it's going to be a gorgeous, gorgeous space.
Kerry Diamond:
It's supposed to open in spring, 2026, and folks who've been to La Mercerie know their work. They've designed some of the most beautiful restaurants and spaces around and that's going to be very exciting.
Laura Brown:
Kristina, it's not named after Marcel the Shell? That was my assumption. I'm so sorry if I've made an error.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's talk about your food lives since this is a food podcast. I seem to remember that you both have had jobs in food and maybe you were fired from them for all I know. Laura, were you a waitress at one point?
Laura Brown:
I was a waitress for donkeys. I waitressed from 14 to 19, all the way through high school and into college. Yeah, I was fired from a cafe called Ziegler's, my nemesis in college. I don't know. Someone thought I gave away a free cake or something. They were mean and I went to the local newspaper, I recall.
Kerry Diamond:
No?
Laura Brown:
Yes, and that was it. It was a country town scandal, but I was about ...
Kerry Diamond:
What was the country town?
Laura Brown:
Bathurst, New South Wales, and I was a bit like Norma Rae, but I was like, baby Norma Rae who didn't know anything. That was not my final waitressing job. I waitressed all the way until I was 19 years old. Everyone should waitress.
Kristina O'Neill:
Were you a good waitress?
Laura Brown:
Oh, fantastic.
Kerry Diamond:
Not surprised. Yeah. Do you guys work for tips in Australia? Do you have a tip culture?
Laura Brown:
I thought you were going to say now. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Laura's got the tip jar next to the microphone.
Laura Brown:
No, Australia, not as big of a tip culture as here. I mean, no, the servers are paid phenomenally well. It's great they pay well, but sometimes it's kind of funny. It's like, "Oh yeah, can I get this whatever," and then they'll go, someone will go like, "Oh, too easy," and then it just doesn't come, but people are chill, you know? What can I tell you?
Kerry Diamond:
And you are the daughter of a farmer.
Laura Brown:
Farmer Brown. Dairy farmer, he was, indeed. I do enjoy a dairy product.
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina, did you work at an ice cream place? What am I thinking? Did you ever work in food service?
Kristina O'Neill:
No. Kerry, I did not, but I folded shirts at the Gap.
Kerry Diamond:
That kind of counts. Were you good at that?
Kristina O'Neill:
I was great at it.
Kerry Diamond:
Mickey Drexler era Gap.
Kristina O'Neill:
Yeah, late 90s.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, very funny. How did you avoid having a food service job like most kids?
Kristina O'Neill:
I always worked retail. So retail was this sort of ... I think you either worked in the food industry or worked in retail, I don't know what you were thinking of that I might've worked. I love the idea of an ice cream parlor, but no.
Kerry Diamond:
Maybe I imagined it-
Laura Brown:
... Your tips. Let's work it in. Let's work it into our book tour. Let's put a little tip jar.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you cook, Kristina? I know Laura cooks. Not really. No, you don't cook.
Kristina O'Neill:
I can follow a recipe. I really like to make the Cherry Bombe banana bread from the cookbook. That is probably my most bent open page in any cookbook I own is that banana bread.
Kerry Diamond:
That's a great banana bread. Laura, you don't really cook at all, do you? No, is she not answering-
Laura Brown:
... If I'm being artful, like yeah, I am cooking an Augustan spaghetti and my new favorite pasta sauce: Sauz. It's delicious.
Kristina O'Neill:
I really want to try the Alison Roman pasta sauce.
Laura Brown:
Excuse me, I'm going on about Sauz. Lemon and tomato in a-
Kristina O'Neill:
Lemon?
Laura Brown:
It's a little bit citrusy.
Kerry Diamond:
Lemon and tomato. Okay. It's called Sal's. S-A-L'S?
Laura Brown:
No. S-A-U-Z.
Kerry Diamond:
S-A-U. Sauz? Okay. We're going to check that.
Kristina O'Neill:
Sauzed.
Laura Brown:
And then they have a hot honey one and it's like, oh-
Kristina O'Neill:
Hot honey sounds good.
Laura Brown:
And then what I do is I stir in the pasta and then I put Parmesan cheese on it. It's a miracle. This guy.
Kerry Diamond:
Sauz. I never even saw that. Summer lemon marinara. Okay, I'm going to check it out.
Laura Brown:
That's me being high chef. High chef.
Kerry Diamond:
Since you two weren't big home cooks, let's talk restaurants because I know you both love restaurants. Laura, want to name a few of your faves here in New York City?
Laura Brown:
Barbuto, Barbuto, and there's a great one called Barbuto. My spiritual home in New York City is breaking news to Jonathan Waxman's Barbuto. I've been going there for over 20 years. If I lost all my money and could not feed myself, I feel like they would feed me. I really enjoy just using a fork. Point being, I love pasta. I love salad. You know what I mean? I'm not a tasting menu person. I'm not like a, here's the six-month-long story about how this thing got to my plate person. I think farm to table is hilarious because doesn't everything come from a farm to your table? Which is something a Cherry Bombe does not do, and you're so great at. But I think you're so straightforward and positive. I think there's a lot of pretension in the food business, as I'm sure you agree.
So I like an unpretentious, good serving of food, great glass of wine, and a really homey atmosphere. I like for also in that way or a comfortable warm atmosphere, Balthazar, which is so reliable and has had a sense of occasion now since the 80s and is being newly celebrated because of Keith's memoir and everything. I love reading the evening reports on Instagram. Everyone has different tastes, but I like somewhere where you're made to feel at home and could be sort of glamorous but not pretentious.
Kerry Diamond:
I could never see you standing online, like one of those TikTok lines for something trendy.
Laura Brown:
Oh God, like a West Village girly TikTok line. No, I'm too old. The Corner Store. No, I'm like, no, no, no. God bless.
Kerry Diamond:
Kristina, what's your version of Balthazar and Barbuto?
Kristina O'Neill:
Yeah, well, we moved from Fort Greene to Brooklyn Heights, and I have to say, our food, the options around us sort of declined dramatically.
Kerry Diamond:
They just opened up Barbuto up the block, though.
Kristina O'Neill:
In the 1 Hotel, no?
Kerry Diamond:
1 Hotel, yeah.
Kristina O'Neill:
Yeah. I have not been there yet, but maybe Laura Brown will come to Brooklyn to try the Barbuto on the water.
Laura Brown:
I'll consider it.
Kristina O'Neill:
I loved the restaurants in Fort Greene. My God, we were spoiled and that was a lovely little intersection. I think we had three or four of the best restaurants in all of the city.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait. Name-drop. Name-drop.
Kristina O'Neill:
Well, Sailor, Romans, I love Evelina. I miss Bittersweet. Like our little coffee spot. Here in Brooklyn Heights, we have 4F, which is phenomenal. But again, there's a line. I love Inga's. I could eat the mortadella at Inga's five nights a week. The burger there is great. But in terms of those, I love a New York City institution. I'm like, Laura, take me to Balthazar. I love a good Upper East Side kind of J.G. Mellon kind of moment. Working at Sotheby's, we have Sant Ambroeus in the lobby. I love a simple Sant Ambroeus sandwich. Yeah, I would say the last year and a half just done a lot of simple home cooking and kind of less sort of going out there because we've been kind of home every night, working on this book. I'm letting my restaurant kind of swagger slip a bit. I like Commerce Inn, the one in the West Village. There's like three Commerces. I mean, I love anything that Riad and Lee do. I think Le Veau d'Or.
Laura Brown:
Wait. Where do you think get the turkey sandwich delivery from that I've had when I come out-
Kristina O'Neill:
Poppy’s?
Kerry Diamond:
Poppy’s. Poppy’s is great.
Laura Brown:
I don't know about a turkey sandwich.
Kristina O'Neill:
But what's fun about going on a book tour is that we are going to be in these other cities for a hot second. Today I'm asking my foodie friends, where should we eat in Dallas? And it's like Tex-Mex or bust. So we've got the three Tex-Mex restaurants. We're going to Manetta tomorrow night in D.C., which will be fun because we've heard so much about that from the sort of resurgence of Keith in D.C. which is cool. I love going to L.A. and eating out in L.A. I love the food scene in L.A., so it'll be fun to use the book tour as an excuse to kind of pop up in other places.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us about the book tour. Where will people be able to see you on the road?
Laura Brown:
So after Monday we will be in Los Angeles for a hot second and we're having a lovely party there with Tory Burch, which is very kind and gorgeous. But after that we're going, public facing stuff. We're going to Godmother's in Montecito on the 25th. Then we go to S.F., I think straight to Palo Alto for an event, then back to S.F. and we're doing something with Benefit Cosmetics. And then we're doing something at the St. Regis Hotel, which I think is on the 28th. It's all on our Instagram. And then we come back, we do the PAC Center, Paramount Art Center here on the 1st of November.
Kristina O'Neill:
It'll be fun.
Laura Brown:
That'd be so great.
Kristina O'Neill:
Icons of culture.
Laura Brown:
Yeah, that's us, ha ha. And the icons of culture and us. Anyway. And then we go to Dallas on the 5th, I think of November. Then we go back to L.A. on the 6th to do a Chief event. And then we come back and then we do a couple events in New York, and then we go to London for about five, six days, and we do something called The Trouble Club and a bunch of press there. Then we go to Business Fashion Voices for two days. Then we do some more stuff in London. Then we come back and then we have a few more things early December in Palm Beach and a couple more events in New York. But I mean, the blessing of it's all one. That's the blessing of it. This tour exists, number one. But the blessing, double blessing is we sort of get to boomerang in and out in between, so we're not just on some crazy ass long haul. We would go crazy ass-
Kerry Diamond:
... What are you doing to train for this marathon?
Laura Brown:
I'm a bit off the sauce actually, but that's just like what happens to me is hormones, which are just being disastrous. But I'm trying to, I mean, not that much, but I'm just reintroducing myself. You know what I've been making? Just like a sparkling water, like a Perrier, something which is some roses, lime. We have a really great lime cordial from Australia and some ice, and I actually really like it and it feels like it hits that sort of same taste zone as a glass of wine does. And so I'm having wine once a week, but I'm not really missing it at the moment. I'm sure I will soon.
Kerry Diamond:
We're Pellegrino girls, so try it with some Pellegrino.
Laura Brown:
I'll try it with some. You know what I would love? I'm going to mix, I'm going to take a Pellegrino out of the fridge, and I'm going to put lime in it and ice and there's no better sparkling water than Pellegrino.
Kerry Diamond:
You tell them. Kristina, how about you? How are you getting ready for this marathon?
Kristina O'Neill:
Trying to sleep when I can. I think we've been really kind of burning it at both ends, like up early on emails and up late. So yeah, sleep and trying to see my family and have a few laughs along the way. It was really nice. My parents were here last week for the 2 New York events that we did at the 92nd Street Y and our book party, which was just nice to have my mom and dad who are so generous and want to take care of me. At my old age, that's a luxury. That was really nice. And tomorrow we go down to Vital Voices in D.C., which is going to be great. And we get to spend 24 hours and sleep at my parents' house, which will, again, it's moments like that. I think that's the real thing. From the minute we got fired until now, my family has been just so amazing-
Laura Brown:
... Proposal on their couch over-
Kristina O'Neill:
... And there for us. Yeah, exactly. The proposal was banged out at my dad's 70th birthday party. We were down for Memorial Day and Laura and I just literally sat on the sofa for three days in a row of these six eight hour chunks where my dad's passing us a pitcher of margaritas. So we're like, yes, da da da da da. But yeah, so my family's been great supporters, so it's nice that they've been able to pop up in the tour as well.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, you two have started a movement, so protect yourselves because we need you both.
Kristina O'Neill:
Thanks, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
And I know everyone is cheering for you for the book tour and excited to see where you take this because you've really tapped into something. So thank you both and congratulations.
Kristina O'Neill:
Thank you.
Laura Brown:
You're the best.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Laura and Kristina. Make sure to pick up a copy of “All The Cool Girls Get Fired” at your local bookstore and visit @AllTheCoolGirlsGetFired on Instagram to learn more about their book tour. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Special thanks to CitiVox Studios in New York City. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu. Our editorial assistant is Brigid Pittman and our head of partnerships is Rachel Close. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.