Nuzzi began her writing career as a teenager in 2011, as a monthly political columnist for the
triCityNews, an
alt weekly based in
Asbury Park, New Jersey. During her brief stint, she was hired as a staff writer by
NSFWcorp and described her experiences as an intern on the Weiner campaign in a blog post on July 28, 2013. In it, she asserted that Weiner referred to her and another female intern as "Monica," that an unnamed source told her that Weiner had lied to his campaign manager, who had quit as a result, and that the manager was one of a "series of staffers who have fled the campaign." that became a July 30, 2013, front-page story. Morgan later apologized to Nuzzi, and Nuzzi accepted the apology.
Presidential campaigns and national correspondent Nuzzi was hired by
The Daily Beast in May 2014 while still attending Fordham. Nuzzi left school before graduating to take the job. She has also written for
Politico,
GQ,
Esquire, and
The Washington Post. In early 2018, Nuzzi admitted to entering the home office of
Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, without permission, and taking a photo, while Lewandowski accused her of also taking a photo album of his. Nuzzi said, "You know, I just walked into the house, because nobody was answering at the door." She left the home after texting her boyfriend. Nuzzi said he advised her that "it probably wasn't legal and that I should leave. I was like, 'Fuck.'"
Television In 2022,
AMC announced that Nuzzi would write and executive produce
A Message from the State, a
black comedy, with Gina Mingacci, the executive producer of
Killing Eve. Nuzzi also made an appearance playing herself in the
Showtime series
Billions. Nuzzi produced a documentary for
MSNBC,
Four Seasons Total Documentary, about
Rudy Giuliani's botched attempt to contest the 2020 election results. In April 2023, Nuzzi began hosting the companion podcast for
HBO's
White House Plumbers miniseries. In 2024, Nuzzi hosted
Working Capital, a six-episode interview series on
Bloomberg Television, featuring conversations with politicians and businessmen.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scandal In September 2024, former
CNN media reporter
Oliver Darcy reported in his newsletter
Status that Nuzzi "engaged in an inappropriate relationship" with presidential candidate
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she had covered in a profile story in November 2023. Nuzzi was put on leave from
New York after acknowledging being in a non-physical "personal relationship" with Kennedy. Darcy said that Nuzzi's actions constituted a "
conflict of interest," saying Nuzzi was "one of the most high-profile journalists in America, and she arguably wrote one of the most consequential pieces of the 2024 campaign, which was about what she called the conspiracy of silence to protect
Joe Biden. And given that readers did not know that this relationship was ongoing with RFK, it raises questions about conflict of interest, because RFK has been an active participant in the 2024 campaign." A spokesperson for Kennedy said he "only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece."
Vanity Fair and American Canto In September 2025, Nuzzi was announced as the new West Coast Editor for
Vanity Fair. Two months later, publisher
Simon & Schuster announced the upcoming publication of Nuzzi's memoir,
American Canto, described as "a mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade as Donald Trump has risen to dominance—from a participatory witness who got so far inside the distortion field that it swallowed her whole." While not mentioned by name, Kennedy was understood to be a subject of the memoir when it released in December. It was excerpted in
Vanity Fair. Later in 2025, Nuzzi's ex-fiancé
Ryan Lizza then claimed that in 2020, she had an affair with presidential candidate
Mark Sanford while covering his campaign. Nuzzi's lawyer issued a statement: "In
American Canto, Ms. Nuzzi discusses the only instance in her long career as a journalist in which she had an improper relationship with someone she was covering." (Lizza wrote that Nuzzi said the affair took place after she published her profile of Sanford.) After Lizza's post,
Vanity Fair announced that it was reviewing its relationship with Nuzzi. In a second post, Lizza also claimed that Nuzzi had
de facto acted as a political operative for Kennedy by running
catch and kill operations on his behalf that shared
opposition research and information from confidential sources with his campaign. Nuzzi described Lizza's claim as harassment and an attempt to damage her reputation. Sales of
American Canto, were lower than expected, with CNN reporting it hit Number 6,709 on Amazon's bestseller list. ==Recognition==