It’s Friday, and unless your arch-nemesis is about to play the halftime show just one week after winning Record of the Year at the Grammys for a song about how you’re a creep and your whole life is a lie, you’re probably looking forward to the Super Bowl. Here at GQ.com, though, we’ve been tackling big stories and throwing culture-news touchdown passes all week. Some highlights below; check them out while we pour a well-deserved bucket of Gatorade over our own heads.
First, the sports-adjacent stuff: ESPN NFL Live analyst (and host of GQ’s first-ever GQ Bowl event, which streams live from New Orleans this Saturday on GQ.com!) Mina Kimes talked to Rembert Browne about following Beyoncé on Netflix’s Christmas Day football broadcast, her route from Gilbert, Arizona to what they used to call “national television,” the out-of-body experience that is meeting Steve Harvey, and whether or not we should all quit Twitter. Tres Dean ran down the 51 greatest fits in Super Bowl history, from Joe Namath’s fly leather car coat to Post Malone’s $50 Wranglers. And Matt Damon and David Beckham answered Rob LeDonne’s questions about their new Super Bowl ad—in which they play long-lost brothers; just go with it—and whether Damon’s role in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is really happening (Damon’s response: “I didn’t grow this beard because I like the way it looks.”)
Tangentially sports-adjacent: Cult character actor turned bona fide leading man Walton Goggins (who played a little triple-A ball in Major League 3: Back to the Minors, easily one of the three best Major League movies) talked to GQ about his emotionally harrowing role in the new season of The White Lotus. Plus, in both the story and the accompanying photo shoot, he rides a horse, which is a sport—the sport of kings, we’re pretty sure. Unless that’s falconry. Or beagling. Or Boxbollen. Any kings reading this, please advise.
In non-sports news, except in the sense that the Oscars are a horse race: Molly Lambert interviewed Mikey Madison about her star-making, pole-dancing, Best Actress-nomination-getting tour de force of a performance as the title character in Sean Baker’s Anora, and The Brutalist’s director Brady Corbet talked GQ’s Jack King all the way through his Oscar-nominated film, from its instantly-iconic and meme-able opening shot to its end-credits song—the year’s most Curb Your Enthusiasm-worthy needle-drop-as-mic-drop, if you ask us.
Plus: Joe Gross talks to director Ondi Timoner about the expanded 20th-anniverary cut of Dig!, her instant-classic 2004 doc about future indie-rock also-rans The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols and their feuding frontmen Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor-Taylor. And Pulling Weeds columnist Chris Black recommends the album he can’t stop listening to: Heavy Metal by Cameron Winter, a 22-year-old who lives with his parents, plays with musicians he found on Craigslist, and records at Guitar Center, unless he’s lying about one or all of those things, which is possible. Good record, though. —AP
