In this special episode (a live event at the Streicker Center!), Zibby is joined by #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner to discuss THE GRIFFIN SISTERS’ GREATEST HITS, a deeply moving family saga set against the glitz and chaos of early 2000s pop stardom. In front of an enthusiastic audience, the two discuss the novel’s themes of fame, secrets, sisterhood, and the price of talent, delving into the dark side of celebrity culture. Jennifer also reflects thoughtfully on music, body image, motherhood, neurodiversity, women’s experiences, and her Jewish identity.

Transcript:

Zibby: Hi everybody. How excited are we to be here with Jen Weiner today? Oh my gosh. So this is so great 'cause the book is all about fame and audiences and performances, and here we are on stage. So I'm just gonna pretend that we're the Griffin sisters. What do you think?

Jennifer: I won't ask who's which one. 

Zibby: Okay. 

Don't ask me to sing. Can you sing? 

Jennifer: Very like I like a three note range. I sound good from like middle C to like D and that's it. 

Zibby: You wanna try it now? 

Jennifer: No, nobody wants that. 

Zibby: Oh. Oh my gosh. Okay, so Griffin Sister's Greatest Hits came out April 8th. Tell everybody, has anyone read it yet?

It just came out. Okay. I'm impressed. I'm impressed. 

Jennifer: Oh, wow. Yeah. 

Zibby: What's this book about? 

Jennifer: The Griffin Sister's greatest hits is the story of two sisters, Cassie and Zoe Grossberg as they start things and they're, go through the name change. They are pop stars in the early aughts. So we get to revisit that wonderful time.

Is it for me? It's okay. That the wonderful era of Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson and Wilson Phillips and, the not so great ways that women were treated back in the day. And then we encounter the Griffin sisters in the present day where we know that something terrible has happened. The band has imploded. One of the sisters is living in Alaska, off the grid. The other one is a housewife in Haddenfield, New Jersey. She's a mom and her daughter is trying to break into the industry. So her daughter goes looking for fame and fortune and for answers as to whatever happened to the Griffin sisters.

Zibby: Interesting. So where did this come from? Were you really curious about music or you just wanted to be on American Idol? 

Jennifer: Our yes and yes, but our story begins in Alaska. My husband and I went on vacation about three years, it'll be three years ago this summer, and I'd always wanted to go. And it's, if you haven't been to Alaska. 10 out of 10 recommend. It's beautiful. 

Zibby: And who here has been to Alaska. Oh my gosh. 

Jennifer: Did you all go together? Was there, was.. 

Zibby: This crazy? 

Jennifer: Was there a cruise that I missed? Like wow. I wanted to do a cruise add to list. I wanted to do a cruise, but my husband is like anti cruise. And so he set up this lake.

We, we went to Seward and we went to Homer. And we did all of the things we kayaked in the glacial lakes and we hiked up icebergs and saw all the sites and and then of course I'm eavesdropping, which is what novelists do. And what I'm realizing is that a great many people in Alaska seem to have left some prior version of themselves behind.

I don't know how many of you guys remember this, but there was very briefly a dating show set in Alaska. It was called Bachelorettes in Alaska. Looking for love and they took a bunch of young women from the big city and shipped them to Alaska where there are many more men than women. And the thing they kept saying on the show to these women was, the odds are good.

But the goods are odd. And I, as I'm listening to people talk, I'm like, huh. So I started to think about a woman who ends up in Alaska and I could picture her in this oversized parka, trudging around carrying cleaning supplies. And I started to think, okay, who is she? How did she end up here?

Like what is she running from? Who did she used to be? And then it was the, I've always wanted to write about the music industry. I've always wanted to write about American Idol and shows like that, and so that's. 

Zibby: The off to the races. 

And how did you do your research? I saw that you read a lot of books by Pop, former Pop Star.

Jennifer: Yes. Many pop star memoirs. Many episodes of total requests live on YouTube. They're all there. I think my tips like frosted themselves, I watched so much.. 

Zibby: This was all one big excuse for you to watch all this stuff youtube? 

Jennifer: Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. Carson Daley. Boy, and I got a chance to revisit Jessica and Che's reality show and the great question that has played our times is Chicken of the Sea chicken or Fish. 

Zibby: Yes, indeed. 

Jennifer: We all remember that. 

Zibby: Got applause. That's great. 

Jennifer: Yes. And I ha one of my sister-in-laws works for a record label, so I got to pick her brain about like how you would break out a star in the early aughts. And I'm like so they would just they would cut a single and it would be released and you'd send it to radio stations and she's oh, my sweet summer child.

That is not how it happened. And how it happened was you would get some young label executive to drive the artists from radio station to radio station. When terrestrial radio was a thing, they would go to the stations, they would do like a little tiny desk concert, and then they would get back in the car and go to the next radio station, and my sister-in-law was the one who did this with Sarah Barres.

Back in the day. So she had Sarah Baris in her car and I got to hear all about that. And then I reached out to Diana De Garmo, who was one of the OG American Idol, got very far in the competition. And I asked her about like the audition process and the process of getting on the show and then being on the show.

And she told me that when they have those those huge cattle calls in each city where like 10,000 people show up. They try, they edit it to make it look like it happens over one day, but in reality, it happens. It takes three or four days for them to get who they want to go on to the next round. The contestants are told they have to wear the exact same clothes for three or four days in a row, for continuity.

So I, I'm asking Diana Degara what did you do? And she's I was 16, so I was with my parents. They had rented a, an apartment and we had laundry facilities. I'm like, what did everybody else do? And she's they stunk so lovely. Re research. 

Zibby: So the trappings of the novel are very. Fun, right?

The music industry and fame and all of this, but the book is about some deeper themes and some darker moments. We have loyalty and betrayal and mother-daughter fractured relationships and just all this stuff of life. Tell me a little bit about how you went there.

Jennifer: I am always interested in relationships between women, whether it's mothers and daughters, sisters friendships and it just seems like when you start reading pop star memoirs or even just talking to your friends, like it's never easy. It's never smooth sailing the whole way through, and that sister relationship I think is particularly fraught. So I am the daughter of a mother who had one sister.

I myself have one sister and I'm now the mother of two daughters. And I remember my mom would always say, when my second child. My daughter, Phoebe came along. Phoebe is gonna be Lucy's best friend for Lucy's entire life. Like Lucy will never have a friend like Phoebe. And so far it's been true, even though it hasn't always been easy for the two of them.

I remember when Phoebe was like eight years old I looked at her computer and I looked at her like Google history and it was all like how to tell if Sister is bullying and being bullied by sister, what to do. Sister is big bully and I was just like, I'm not seeing any of this. So evidently I missed a couple things, never easy.

Zibby: Wow. Do you mind if I read a little bit? Go for it. There's just a section I found so interesting and as I'm reading, it's all about what music does for us and how it's really answering a conversation. And I feel like you could substitute music with books. So think about that. It's really quick. Don't worry.

I won't take up too much time. Let's see. So Russell, who is one, one of the leading characters in the book says, I think popular songs get popular because they're saying something true, something that feels real, that resonates, even if it's just a song about partying and having fun. And the best ones combine that with music that strikes a chord, so to speak. And Zoe says, so where do we start? And Russell says what do you two wanna talk about when you sing? What do you wanna say? Zoe asks, you mean like a message? Not exactly a message. Russell said more like a conversation with the audience, with give and take.

Zoe frowns, but we're performing and they're listening. She said, so how is it a conversation? I'm condensing all this. Cassie spoke up. People have questions. Songs are the answer. 

Jennifer: Yeah. Poor. Zoe is just so far out of her league with this she thinks that, she wants to be famous, right? So Cassie is a prodigy, Cassie is incredibly talented, has all of this ability but does not know how to deal with other people. And Zoe has very little talent, but she's beautiful and she has this will to power, like she wants to be famous more than anyone has ever wanted anything and she imagines that, you know this guy Russell, who's gonna be the band's songwriter, is just gonna show up and give them a song and they're gonna sing it and it's gonna be a hit.

And she doesn't understand that there's like a process to it. 

Zibby: So if the question that. Cassie ends up answering, which is, how do you deal with loneliness? How do we get through the world and deal with love? What is the question you are asking and answering with this novel? 

Jennifer: I think it's a question. There's lots of questions, but I think it's like, what is the price of having a gift?

I think that's one of the big ones that the people in this book are wrestling with, because Cassie has, like I said, she has all of this talent and when we meet her, she's run off to Alaska. She's not performing, she's not writing music. She's left that world behind and the question that she struggles with is.

What is the obligation that this gift has given me? Like if I have a gift, do I have respon a responsibility to use it? So I think that's one of the questions. I think it's how do we heal generational trauma, right? There's mothers and daughters and mothers and daughters, and everybody's screwing up in a variety of interesting ways, and it's like, how do we fix it?

How do we move past it? How do we stay connected to the people that we love? And how do you work through the balance of love and envy that is a sister relationship sometimes. 

Zibby: So interesting. Oh my gosh. So in the book, obviously these are Jewish sisters, and here we are at the Stryker Center. Hope you all had a good Passover.

Very excited. My, I'm like, I will never have more bread than I've had in the last, like 20 in a couple hours. But anyway. In the book, you mentioned briefly that they changed the name at the advice of the manager from the Grossberg sisters to the Griffin Sisters, and Cassie has all these reflections on her dinners with her aunt and the brisket and all of that.

Tell me about how Judaism affected the story and were they always gonna be Jewish? Tell me about that. 

Jennifer: So first of all, I just would like to acknowledge that I dodge the terrible bullet of the Passover birthday. My birthday is March 28th, and so every once in a while I'm faced with the sad reality of the Matza meal, birthday cake, and there's nothing worse.

There's nothing sadder than that. It's just, it just should not be,.. 

Zibby: I'm so sorry. 

Jennifer: It's just one of those things that like should not exist, but yet there it is. And it's got frosting,.. 

Zibby: Ice cream cake. 

Jennifer: Ah, I don't know. I'm old. I'm old. I want cake. Okay. So Judaism, I, I don't think that the sisters were initially Jewish.

I think my editor actually said they should be Jewish. And I was like, and as soon as she said it, I was like, of course they should be Jewish because like I said, there is a grand tradition of Jewish artists who either hide their Judaism or downplay their Judaism or just pretend they're just New Yorkers instead of being specifically Jewish New Yorkers.

And of course Jews tell stories, right? And that's what the songs do too. So it, it felt like a very natural thing, and then it was just a question of okay, what holidays are they celebrating? What foods are they eating? Like how are they moving through the world as Jewish women?

Which is something with which I am intimately familiar. 

Zibby: So in today's climate, in this poked post-OC October 7th world, to have two female Jewish protagonists is this statement in and of itself, how do you feel about that? How has it been, I know the book's just come out, but how did you feel launching these characters into this world?

Jennifer: Yeah, wow. The way that I operate as an author is I really try to stay away from Good Reads and Amazon and any place that might have me on a list of do not buy this author, she's a Zionist or whatever. I just, people can say whatever they want and I, the older I get, the more I realize that other people's opinions of me are like none of my business.

I can't change them. I, so there's no point in having that information in my brain. I You're right though, like having Jewish protagonist is a statement and it probably would've saved me some grief maybe to have them not be Jewish. But, I am a Jewish woman. I've been open and outspoken about that for my entire career, ever since Good In Bed with Kenny Shapiro, who was very Jewish, and I feel Jews tell stories. That's how we've survived. As long as we have, we are people of the book and we are people who share our stories and our history. It was really important to me for them to be Jewish and I don't know.

If it's cost me some sales, if it's earned to me some grief, I think that's something I can live with okay.

Zibby: Feel like you're doing okay, right? 

Jennifer: You're too kind. 

Zibby: So interestingly, fame is part of the book and you are a famous author. You've been doing this forever.

Jennifer: I think a famous author is like being a famous potter.

Like a because you can go to the grocery store and like literally no one will bother me unless I've just had my hair done and I look like my author photo, like most of the time I can move through the world like totally incognito, which is really nice. And every once in a while somebody will be like, I love your books.

And I'm like, thanks. And when my kids were little they would be like, but I see you're with your children. Probably. 'cause Lucy was like giving them the stink eye, the scorching stink eye. Leave my mom alone. But So fame, yeah. I, 

Zibby: I don't know. Potters everywhere you're famous. Potters everywhere are celebrating.

They're mentioned in this broadcast, right? Uhhuh. But how do you feel, because in the book, fame is not a good thing necessarily. It is a monster that they have to contend with, and it what, to your earlier point, a consequence of exhibit using your gift to its fullest. How have you wrestled with that?

I know it's not the same as being a pop star, but it is. You do have a higher profile that you have to wrestle with. 

Jennifer: Huh. I, okay, so this book is haunted by the spirit of Carney Wilson. Okay, because I remember the video for, hold on and maybe you do too. And it was set on the beach. So Wilson Phillips, it's Kearney Wilson and Michelle Wilson and Chyna Phillips.

Chyna and Michelle are thin, stereotypically, conform beauty standard conforming, and they're on the beach in these like lovely, appropriate slip dresses. And Carney Wilson, who is, was plus size not even like tremendously plus size, just she was a bigger girl. And she was on the beach in a pants suit, which I would've found really shocking and upsetting even if I had not owned that exact same pantsuit.

I'm looking at this and I and then, in the course of this video, they are hiding her, like behind a grand piano, like also on the beach or behind like boulders or like they're doing these quick cutaways of just like this much of her face as if we would experienced terrible consequences if we actually saw a plus size woman.

And authors like we're not expected generally to look any kind of way. Like we, I, I once heard the National Book Awards described as like the Oscars for the lumpy and that really spoke to my soul, like I'm in the right line of work. Because you, nobody expects us to be especially attractive or especially polished.

And you spend 50 weeks out of the year in like pajama bottoms and ancient t-shirts. Music's different, right? Like these young women have to fit a mold, they have to conform to a beauty standard. And in the aughts that was a really hard thing to do. Like Jessica Simpson, you'll remember, got absolutely brutalized by the tabloid media for showing up in high wasted mom jeans on site.

People acted like she'd done something really terrible. And the terrible thing was like she'd gained a little weight since she played Daisy Duke in the Dukes of Hazard movie, and Britney Spears got bullied for like weight gain, weight loss, and she was in the process of having a breakdown, like in slow motion right before our very eyes.

And I remember just consuming that like it was gossip, oh my God, she's attacking the tabloids with an umbrella. She's shaving her head. She's, she had a quickie marriage in Vegas. What is going on with Britney not realizing? That, that it wasn't performance, that it wasn't for show and that the industry was really doing a number on her.

So I wanted to talk about that. And then I wanted to ask the question like, have things gotten any better? And I would love to say that they have, I'm not sure that they actually have, but I think the first part of finding a solution is admitting that you have a problem. And so I think that maybe what this book will do is make some people think about the way we spoke about those women, the way we treated those women, the way journalists covered those women.

And maybe try to do a little better for the next generation. 

Zibby: You've written so much about body positivity, and that is of course part of Cassie's character. How do you feel about today's pop stars who have lost a lot of weight, like Adele and Meghan Trainor and all that? 

Jennifer: So I, I know that what we're supposed to say is that any woman's decisions about her body are her own, like nobody signs a pledge of, I will remain a certain size to be a role model for this group of people. By the same token though, like when I saw Meghan Trainor. The woman who sang all about that bass, like showing up looking like one of the Barbie doll skinny bitches that she made fun of In that song, it felt like seeing another one of my friends being swept off the decks of the Titanic.

It's oh, we lost another one. There she go. Lizzo, Lizzo has lost weight. Adele has lost weight. Rebel Wilson has lost weight. And I get it like. I think it's really hard to exist as a high profile woman in a larger body, and you become a target for, like everybody is projecting all of their own issues, their own craziness, their own desires, their own fears onto the screen that your body becomes when you are a famous woman.

You know it. It's tough and I do, part of me is looking at this new class of weight loss drugs and wondering like in 20 or 30 years are we going to even have larger people anymore? Part of me remembers Fenden though, which was the hot diet drug of the nineties that, they thought that was the ozempic of then.

Until they realized that it was causing women to have heart attacks. And then the women didn't wanna give it up. They were just like I'll take my chances. I don't wanna gain my weight back. And I this world's messed up. That's all I got. 

Zibby: I will say. I'm on Manjaro. I'm very open about it.

I've lost like 30 plus pounds. And the thing that is the best not to make this an ad is not anything about my body, but my brain. That you stop thinking about off mute all the time, which is. 

Jennifer: Did you, did you see that weight Watchers filed for bankrupt? 

Zibby: I saw, I used to be a Weight Watchers' leader.

FYI, if any of you were ever in my groups. 

Jennifer: I rem the last time I did Weight Watchers, it was the fiber. That they were really pushing, like you could, that you weren't supposed to count your calories and you could have extra points if you were eating really high fiber foods. So I found these brownies that were like, they had so much, they were like, I mean you, you would spend a day and a half on the toilet, but it didn't matter.

'cause the brownie tasted delicious and it could work in your plan. But that is the other thing I think about, right? Like almond moms. Who were the daughters of Slim Fast Grandmas? Who gave birth to calorie deficit TikTok influencers. Are we losing like a language that women have been speaking to each other for years and years?

Once, because if Weight Watchers goes down, like that's the last bastion of this is all about self-control and willpower. Like when Oprah talked about taking Ozempic, Oprah was a stakeholder in Weight Watchers. That was the banner. Like it's not just about willpower and it's not a moral failing, like there's something like chemical going on in your brain.

I mean it's, we're living in interesting times. We really are. But yeah. But with daughters in my house, like I am very aware of I want my daughters to be happy in their own skin no matter what their size. I want them to be happy. I want them to be healthy. I want them to feel beautiful and I really do my best to model as well as I can, like how I want them to be.

And some days are better than others. 

Zibby: Absolutely. One other element of the story is Cassie, when she was younger, had she lived now, might have been diagnosed as Neurodiverse. 

Jennifer: Yes. 

Zibby: And yet, because of her age, she was not. And she's now coming out into the world again, into an environment where that's completely acceptable.

What would've happened had Cassie been born later? What if she was a teenager now? What do you think the story would've been? 

Jennifer: I think that we're still a little slower to diagnose high functioning women than we are boys who like trains a whole lot. They just, it's like there's your diagnosis, but a woman I think who's like on the spectrum somehow, it's.

You see sometimes on social media, like, where are all these autistic people coming from? We didn't have them when I was a kid. And it's yeah, you did. You just called them weirdos though. There wasn't this awareness of what's really going on here? So yeah, I mean I, I do think that Cassie probably would've had some kind of diagnosis and probably would've gotten some kind of support more than what she got, which was basically her parents telling her sister.

That it was her job to help Cassie navigate humanity, which really wasn't fair to either one of them when you think about it. 

Zibby: True. Okay. So what is coming after this book? Can we have a sneak peek? 

Jennifer: Oh, boy. Yes. So I am working on a book. So this book we dealt with pop stardom in the early aughts.

The next one, we have a character who was a supermodel of the nineties. Okay. And the book begins when our protagonist. Whose name is Ellie Wakes up and her phone is blowing up. And like everyone in her life, her best friend, her 20 something year old daughter, people she hasn't heard from in decades are like, did you know about this?

And she's did I know about what? And her friend, best friend is look at Instagram. And she looks at Instagram and discovers that her ex-husband is dating this former supermodel who was renowned as the most beautiful woman in the world. And she doesn't know what to do with that information because on the one hand, she's been divorced from this guy for a long time.

On the other hand, she finds herself feeling some kind of way about the two of them performing their romance on social media. So it's about. It's about the nature of love. It's about writing and stories, because Ellie and her ex-husband are both authors of very different kinds of books. It's about fame, it's about social media, it's about performance versus reality and what we portray versus how we really are all the things and there's a really funny.

Seen in a JCC changing room that I'm very proud of, where Ellie is accosted by somebody who's like your ex-husband. Did you see? And the woman is just, Ellie describes her as she's naked except for a few strategic puffs of talcum powder. And she's struggling to keep her eyes above the woman's neck as she's like being interrogated.

So I'm having fun. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. And you often write for the New York Times. Do you have an op-ed coming out soon? 

Jennifer: It's interesting, the weight stuff, like I want to talk about all of the formerly body positive women who have gotten very thin and what does it mean and Weight Watchers going down and also this the Blue Origin.

Astronauts who were all very glam, which I'm gonna give them a pass on because I feel like any woman who knows she's going to be photographed at in newspapers is gonna do some glam. But they were all, they all had, it looked like they all went to the same like hair extension place and the same eyelash extension place, and the same like sculpted makeup face.

Like there, there seems to be a kind of flattening going on in terms of the kinds of bodies we're allowed to have and the kinds of faces we're allowed to have, and I'm really interested in that. 

Zibby: Interesting. 

Jennifer: Yeah, so we'll see. 

Zibby: What advice would you give to someone who's starting out a writing career today?

Jennifer: Oh, that's a good question. For the longest time I would tell people I had this like pat answer. I'm like, get a job at a small newspaper in a part of the country where you've never lived before. I can't tell people that now because there are no more small newspapers in parts of countries where people haven't lived before.

And I'm like what am I supposed to do now? Tell 'em to go write quizzes for Buzzfeed. I think. If you wanna be a writer, you're gonna be a writer. Writer's write and you do it whether you have an agent, whether you have a publishing deal, whether you have any of those things. 'cause if you have a story to tell and you're a writer, you are gonna find a way to tell that story.

The advice I give to young people is just to read, because I don't think you can be a writer unless you are a reader and you love words and you love stories, and you love the whole process of creation. So I tell young people to read as much as they can and to write as much as they can. And I've got 25 pages worth of more specific advice on my website, which is jenniferweiner.com because I'm really creative, but I'm also like.

I'm running a fellowship in Philadelphia with this local literary nonprofit where we chose six women who are all in the process of writing either their first novels or their first short story collections, and we gave them some money and I have office hours once a month where they can like come pick my brain. I read their work. I give them feedback. I talk to them about the process of finding an agent and finding a publisher and how all that goes. So I really, now that I am middle aged and mid-career as they put it if they're being nice about it. I do think a lot about the next generation of women writers and like how I can leave the door open for them and leave things a little better than how I found them and make it a little easier than it was for me back in the day.

Zibby: Amazing. Thank you, Jen. 

Jennifer: Yeah, you're welcome.