1. “i t ’s i n t e r e st i n g that we’ve come to
a place where people are expected
to just do one thing,” says Zoë Kravitz,
one warm, rainy afternoon at the end
of March when she is very much not
doing just one thing. The 26-year-old
model-actress-musician is holding court
in a room at Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel,
T-minus three hours from her band’s
first hometown show after two weeks
on the road. It is not entirely clear
what she is promoting today.
Which makes sense. In 2015 alone,
Kravitz will appear in the second
installment of the Divergent trilogy (she
wears black and beats people up),
in the completely insane Mad Max
revival (wears white; same), and as the
unattainable love interest in the Sundance
hit Dope. That’s on top of touring
the country with her band, Lolawolf,
stopping by South by Southwest, and
sharing the stage with acts as varied as
John Legend and Azealia Banks.
“You used to have to be a triple threat
to make it in Hollywood,” says Kravitz.
“Think about Gene Kelly and everyone.
You used to have to sing, you used to
have to dance. You were an entertainer.”
Kravitz couldn’t have a better role
model for that than her father, Lenny,
whose triple threat is musician/actor/
mesh-wearing sex icon. But she’s
put her own, generational spin on the
family trade: She isn’t just a model;
she’s proficient in the kind of Instagram-
based self-promotion that eludes most
people over 20 years old. And she
WHAT IS zoë kravitz DOING RIGHT NOW?
SHE’S TOURING THE COUNTRY WITH HER ULTRA-HIP BAND,
BLOWING UP INSTAGRAM WITH HER ULTRA-HIP FRIENDS,
AND STARRING IN NOT ONE BUT THREE MASSIVE MOVIES.
DID WE MENTION HER PARENTS ARE FAMOUS? THESE DAYS,
THAT’S THE LEAST NOTABLE THING ABOUT HER
doesn’t just play music; she plays
in an indie band—a function, she’ll
admit, of choice—whom she tours
with relentlessly. Today, she’s fresh
off fourteen days of sharing a tour
bus with nine dudes.
“It’s so much work,” she says. “But
let’s be real: I’m not doing this for
the money.” Kravitz, it should be said,
is not shy about the privilege that
comes with being the daughter of
Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet. She could
get a major record deal. She could—
let’s be realer—do nothing at all.
But she knows how the world looks
down on people who trade on status
they didn’t earn. She also has a
sixth sense for cool. She takes a sip
of tea, and I catch a glimpse of the
constellation of tattoos that runs from
her fingers into the drapey sleeves
of her robe-like shirt, the kind of random
assortment of shapes (a moon, a
tape cassette) that’d look affected on
anyone else. She knows how to walk
this walk. She didn’t invent it, but
you could say she has it in her DNA.
Three hours later, Kravitz marches out
in front of a sold-out crowd at Brooklyn’s
Music Hall of Williamsburg. “We’re
still in that phase of paying our dues,”
she’d said earlier, and tonight her band
is opening for a synth-pop sensation
called Twin Shadow. The place is
packed by the start of Lolawolf’s set.
Onstage, she wears the same thing she
had on that afternoon—no dramatic
pre-show costume change, no stage-
specific getup. Here, in her three-piece
indie band in front of her adoring
Brooklyn countrymen, Everyday Zoë
works fine. It is both the truth and the
product. “What’s going on, y’all?” she
says, and they scream, and then the
beat starts, and Kravitz, mike in hand,
dances around the glowing stage like
the music coming through the speakers
is being played only for her.—MARK BYRNE
Steven Pan
American
Woman
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