The Monday Media Diet with Grace Dougherty

Grace Dougherty (GD) writes Jelly Sandwich.

Tell us about yourself.

I was born in Baltimore, Maryland and currently live in Los Angeles by way of New York City. I’m an actress, but professionally people know me as a stylist and writer. I published a book of poems in 2022, and this spring I started a newsletter called Jelly Sandwich which was inspired by an Ed Ruscha. I write about living in Hollywood but loving and longing for New York and about being a girl who’s sober but loves going to parties where other people are doing drugs. In short.

Describe your media diet. 

I’m online a lot, especially via Instagram. Stories have officially replaced feed posting, so I watch everyone’s besides the people I have muted. That list is coming soon to a paywalled newsletter. The best people to follow in New York are @_paulena_ @krissy_jones @kathleensorbara @frynaomifry @tanyaposternak @zposternak @_lauren_schofield @gutes @alisha.b1 @tessadotgourin @donetodeathprojects @deankissick @melzy917 @arnoldfriend6 and @sentfrommyblackberry.

For LA @devonleecarlson @harmonytividad @treaclychild @harley_justice_w @analuisacorrigan @thepatriksandberg @negance (the mayor of Hollywood) @morgan.maher @themjeans @sophiebuhai @brookecallahan

I don’t partake in Twitter much since it became X, not for any specific reason other than I’d rather be on TikTok. However, I used to be hysterical and unhinged on there when I was going through my last breakup. 

I read Feed Me and anything Emily Sundberg says. On Substack I also enjoy FosterTalk, thank you, ok, Ways To Take Care by Rachel Day, Natasha Stagg, Arielle’s Affection Archives, and Alice Bell’s astrology newsletter (I pay). Alice has predicted multiple life events for me since I started speaking to her in 2019 (her readings are currently closed). I also read her British Vogue horoscopes every Tuesday. For cooking I follow Paris Starn’s playing with food, and I subscribe and pay for Alison Roman’s a newsletter, Claire de Boer’s The Best Bit, and Carter’s Cookbook. 

I subscribe to AirMail, Puck (especially Lauren Sherman’s Line Sheet), Artnet’s Wet Paint (though I miss when it was written by Nate Freeman, now at Vanity Fair), and receive The Paris Review and the New Yorker in print to my home address. 

I buy Apartamento, Neptune Papers, Holiday, Bill Magazine, Middleplane, MARFA Journal, and occasionally I will buy i-D, but mostly I buy old magazines from various sources I won’t disclose here.

What’s the last great book you read?

A Year on Earth with Mr. Hell by Young Kim. I first saw it on Kaitlin Phillips Instagram stories and was immediately interested (everything Kaitlin posts is something noteworthy). It was hard to find in New York at the time I was looking for it (I don’t think it still is, McNally had a large stack last I was there a few weeks ago) so I had to borrow a copy from a friend while I tracked it down at a random home goods store in Union Square (a place I never go). Apparently the owner is friends with Kim’s publisher. I read it all in one sitting and messaged Kim after hopeful that her next release will be about her relationship with her late partner Malcolm McLaren. After I read the book I wanted to know more about her so I read her New York Times profile and subscribed and paid for Bret Easton Ellis’ Patreon so I could listen to the 2 hour podcast featuring her as a guest. 

What are you reading now?

I’ve been reading Ask The Dust by John Fante which was written in the late 1930’s. The writing is some of the most beautiful, plus it’s set in Los Angeles which is always a plus for me. Here’s a somewhat famous quote that I love:

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. 

Fante was called God by Bukowski. Last spring while nursing a Shirley Temple at the Musso and Frank bar, I spoke with Sonny, my bartender who'd been around these haunts for 50 or so years. He told me that Bukowski used to come in, get wasted, walk out the backdoor, and sleep by the dumpster. There’s always a lot of lore in places like these, and I choose to believe all of it.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

Depends what it is. If it’s a fashion magazine I leaf through until something catches my eye and rinse and repeat until finished. If it’s The New Yorker or The Paris Review et al I look at bylines and who wrote what and read from there. 

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

The Cape Cod Times and Alissa Bennett.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone? 

I just deleted my three summertime apps. The Lime app (London), the Sharktivity app (Cape Cod & The Islands), and the Mr Softee truck app (New York City). 

In Los Angeles, I love Maps (Apple, not Google). I still use directions to get downtown where I am a lot of the time doing pickups for work. Also for the flower market. I like to have the directions read to me outloud because I don’t have a phone cradle for my dashboard, I think they are tacky. For some reason, my Siri is an Australian man. I don’t know how it got that way and I don’t care to change it. It always sparks up a funny conversation if I am driving someone around, which for some reason I often am.

Plane or train?

I wrote about how much I hate flying in a recent Jelly Sandwich letter. I have been taking Amtrak trains up and down the east coast since I was a child. When I was 10, I went with my father from Baltimore to New York. It’s the one time in my life I’ve stayed at The Ritz Carlton. I remember the pillows. 

Trains are nostalgic and I don’t mind the time it takes. I’d rather be on the ground than in the air with a fat chance of crashing to my death and extreme claustrophobia. Planes are absolutely vile and perhaps the driest place there is besides the literal desert. No amount of water is enough. Even with extra leg room I am smushed (5’10”, can’t sit still). Unfortunately, now that I live in Los Angeles I am forced to take flights more than I’d like to. Instead of taking my preferred 3.5 hour train up the coast, I now have to fly 6-8 hours, staring at the flight map the entire journey.

What is one place everyone should visit? 

French House Pub in London. Schedule a booking at the restaurant upstairs. Something Natural on Nantucket Island. Get the peanut butter and jelly on Portuguese bread. Big Sur Bakery in Big Sur. Get the blueberry strudel. The David H. Koch Theatre in Lincoln Center. Chateau Marmont in Hollywood.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

The history of Chateau Marmont and the Actor’s Studio crossover in the early 30’s. I’ve been a student of The Method for almost a year now and have since done a lot of research on some of the original students of its practice. You know them– Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Joanne Woodward, James Dean, Al Pacino, Ellen Burstyn, the list goes on. 

Earlier this year while reading The Castle on Sunset by Shawn Levy I unearthed something so crucial to my own existence in Los Angeles:

“Virtually every important performer associated with the first wave of Method acting checked into the Chateau on his or her initial sojourn to lotusland, and they were often quite frank about preferring it above all over hotels because it made them feel as if they were still in New York and hadn’t yet succumbed to the intoxicating luxuries associated with the movies.”

All the more reason to spend my leisurely days there. You can read more about it in Jelly Sandwich here.

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN) & Grace (GD)

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