Former Bravo star Jill Kargman has long skewered the gilded bubble of the Upper East Side of Manhattan — despite having grown up there, very much a creature of privilege, and she totally understands people’s enduring fascination with the center of affluence.
“It’s like a particularly rarefied world,” she told Page Six. “You can walk down Park Avenue right now with the tulips and there is that aspirational quality. But there’s also a train wreck aspect to it.”
Even as an insider, she understands that “people like peeking through the keyhole and seeing that rich people can be miserable, which I think is always a theme of my work.
She says she has never worried about alienating any of the modern Ladies Who Lunch.
“I don’t give a s–t,” she said. “My stuff has always pissed some people off. I don’t care, I’m not, like, running for office. I don’t need a majority vote.”
Kargman has turned her gimlet eye on her neighborhood once again with the new movie “Influenced,” which she co-wrote and stars in as an influencer named Dzanielle, who is on a quest to crack one million followers on Instagram while navigating “black card-swiping, Ozempic s–tting, workout-addicted Upper East Siders.”
The “Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund” novelist, 51, comes by her knowledge of the one percent honestly.
Her late father, Arie L. Kopelman, was the former president of Chanel; her mother, Coco, is a socialite and American and School of American Ballet board member. Karl Lagerfeld himself sketched the design of her wedding gown. She attended Spence School, whose alumni include Georgina Bloomberg and Kargman’s good pal Gwyneth Paltrow, who makes a cameo in “Influenced.”
Kargman’s husband, Harry, is the CEO of the advertising firm Kargo Global, Inc., and their three children, Sadie, Ivy and Fletch, all attended private schools.
She admits that she and Harry almost didn’t get together because, “On our second date, [he] said, ‘I don’t know if I could ever raise kids in New York.’ And I just was like, ‘Check, please. This date’s over because I’m never leaving, because I will wither on the vine and die.’ Because I don’t know how to drive, and I can’t live anywhere else.
“I’d rather, you know, die of stress than die of boredom.”
Kargman still lives on the UES but, having grown up there and seen what it can do to people — an echo chamber she satirized, complete with faux fundraisers for NACHO (New Yorkers Against ChildHood Obesity), in her 2015-2017 Bravo sitcom “Odd Mom Out” — she was determined her kids would know there’s life beyond the East River.
On the one hand, that has meant “we volunteer a lot as a family at a food pantry in Queens, and we are very into raising the kids with values.”
But it’s also meant explaining to her brood why she didn’t wear shoes with red bottoms — the subtle giveaway of pricey Louboutins — unlike the other mothers at school, and why the family wasn’t “lame” just because they didn’t have a home in the Hamptons. (Mommy doesn’t drive and she doesn’t like the countryside.)
And, even though it might have been more convenient, she did not give them credit cards.
“They have friends who literally can swipe their black card and do whatever they want,” Kargman said. “But [the kids] just know that that’s not how we roll. You just have to keep teaching it. It’s kind of a lesson that never ends.”
The mom-of-three has Andy Cohen to thank for making the leap onto screens.
NBC Universal had optioned her 2007 novel, “Momzillas,” but it lay dormant until a mutual friend introduced her to the Bravo honcho. Cohen got the premise right away.
“Like Larry David of the Upper East Side?” Cohen asked — to which Kargman replied, “Exactly!”
Indeed, there are scenes in “Influenced” that feel like spiritual cousins to “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Before arriving in theaters, the movie premiered at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, and Kargman highlights her Judaism in the film — with her character’s twins preparing for their bar and bat mitzvahs — just as she has in all her work.
In real life, she’s outspoken about her concerns for the city’s Jewish population.
After Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, Kargman posted on social media, “I feel like last night’s NYC election result is like a spiritual Kristallnacht. It proved Jew hatred is now OK.”
She told The Post, “It’s been so heavy for all of us since October 7th, and just really dark with all the hatred.”
But, she said of her movie, “it’s good to have Jewish joy out there and have levity and have something light … it’s bubblegum. It’s meant to be light and fun, and we deserve it.”
In it, Kargman sports a thick Long Island accent, even thicker blonde tresses and va-va-voom cleavage, which resulted in the actress being cat-called — something she says she’s never experienced as a dark brunette.
Normally, “no one hits on me. I’m like a middle-aged vampire,” Kargman said. “I dress like George Washington. My mom says I dress like a Sicilian widow. I always have Edwardian collars.”
Her wig was made and styled by “Saturday Night ” makeup-and-hair department vets, and Kargman says it was so incredibly realistic that a friend of 40 years didn’t recognize her when they bumped into each other on the street.
While she didn’t attend the Met Gala this year, in 2024 she upcycled her Chanel wedding dress for the event. And despite her high-fashion upbringing and life as a regular at society events, Kargman insists that, unlike her character, she has never cared how she looked.
“I don’t feel pressure because I also feel lucky that I’m from here. So New York doesn’t intimidate me. Whereas, I feel like, if you’re from some rectangular red state in the middle, you might have this notion of, like, everyone’s Carrie Bradshaw walking down the street looking perfect. But I never felt like I had to.”
Not even around her close friend and former sister-in-law and Drew Barrymore, who was married to Kargman’s younger brother, art consultant Will Kopleman, from 2012-2016.
Barrymore, like Paltrow, appears in “Influenced” along with real-life Kargman pals Jenny Mollen, Jason Biggs, Matt Damon and other recognizable names.
Kargman admits that, while she sees a lot of “transactional” friendships on the UES, “my five best friends are the five bridesmaids still from my wedding 24 years ago.”
The “Odd Mom Out” alum says there is one major difference between the Upper East Side of yore and now — and that can be attributed to social media, the very thing she is skewering in the flick.
She grew up “with some of the daughters of the Gordon Gekko types, those titans of Wall Street …They had stretch limousines driving them to school, but they always got dropped off two blocks away because they were embarrassed to pull up.”
Nowadays, “it’s just the opposite. People are photographing and posting the telltale oval windows of their private jet … [Decades ago] There was an embarrassment of wealth and a subtlety about it, and now I feel like everyone is trying to be fabulous.
“And with social media there doubling down on their fabulosity because they can traffic in it.”
She wants none of it, thank you very much.
“All that matters to me is human connection,” she continued. “We’re all going to die. You may as well feel connected to people on a real level, and you’re not doing that if you’re spinning social plates and air, kissing everyone and trying to sound like your life’s perfect, because that’s just bulls–t.”
