In 2008, Hirschberg created ''Lynn Hirschberg's Screen Tests
for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. The Screen Tests
were a series of short black and white videos featuring close ups of celebrities answering questions Hirschberg had posed. In 2010, Hirschberg left T
to work at W
Magazine and carried over her Screen Tests'' series. In 2015, Hirschberg began a new video series, again for
W, called
Birthday Stories featuring actors, models, and designers discussing their birthdays. In 2020, Hirschberg began a new podcast for W Magazine, 5 things with Lynn Hirschberg, in which she asks high-profile celebrities about a person, place, thing, and two experiences that have affected their lives.
Controversies Hirschberg has been the subject of ire from several of her interviewees. In 1992, she wrote a piece for
Vanity Fair about
Courtney Love, who was then pregnant with her daughter
Frances Bean Cobain. The article contained six factual errors, in addition to misrepresenting the medical implications of Love's past heroin usage, but it caused Cobain to be removed from the care of her parents by
Child Protective Services shortly after her birth while an investigation was launched. It is also credited for unfairly turning public opinion against Love and Cobain for years to come, as well as incurring enormous legal fees from them. In response to the article, Love left Hirschberg a threatening message on her answering machine. Love also recorded and released a bootleg song called "Bring Me the Head of Lynn Hirschberg" and blamed Hirschberg in part for Cobain's suicide. In January 1996, Hirschberg wrote an article in the
New York Times alleging that
Faith Evans cheated on her husband,
Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace, with Wallace's friend and rival
Tupac Shakur, something Evans has consistently denied. In 1997, she wrote a piece about
Jamie Tarses for
The New York Times Magazine. A year earlier at age 32, Tarses was named president of entertainment at
ABC, the first woman ever to serve as a network's top programmer, and the second-youngest person to be the lead programmer of a network (after her mentor
Brandon Tartikoff, who was 31 when he took over at
NBC). Tarses had been hired by ABC because she had brought success to NBC: she helped develop
Friends and shepherded
Mad About You and
Frasier; worked on the development of
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,
Wings, and
Blossom, and at the beginning of her career, monitored scripts on
Cheers. (Her father wrote for
the Carol Burnett Show; her brother is a writer.) ABC was "a snakepit" at the time. Hirschberg observed Tarses' hairstyle, way of sitting, and her stress and wrote about "a nervous girl." "Women are emotional, and Jamie is particularly emotional," she wrote quoting an anonymous male. "You think of her as a girl, and it changes how you do business with her." In 2010, Hirschberg interviewed rapper
M.I.A. for
T: The New York Times Style Magazine. In the piece, she contrasted the rapper's luxurious lifestyle with her political viewpoints in unflattering ways, leading to criticism from M.I.A., who would later release her own audio of the interview as well as releasing Hirschberg's telephone number through
Twitter. In response the editors of
T issued a statement clarifying that some of the quotes were taken out of context and published out of order. ==References==