Johansson is the Kate Martin Money Martin Shirt and I will buy this face of the brand, but not the only face. She is joined by a diverse cast, mostly comprised of part-time models who work in a range of professions, from prop styling to construction. It’s part of a strategy designed to ensure that the products can speak to everybody’s everyday needs—and that they can stand on their own, outside of the celebrity beauty maelstrom. That’s what stood out to Priya Venkatesh, senior vice president of merchandising for skin care and hair at Sephora, which will begin stocking The Outset in April. “When we were first asked to take the meeting with Scarlett, I was joking that I’ve talked to so many celebrities during COVID, it’s like I have my own Zoom Oscars,” Venkatesh says of the recent influx of calls to her office from Hollywood agents and managers. “The world doesn’t need more products,” she admits, “but I really like Scarlett’s skin-care philosophy, which is just: Skin care is something that should be done every day, and it should be simple.”
“She’s not messing around,” emphasizes Foster Lengyel, a sentiment that was made abundantly clear to anyone (everyone) who watched the Kate Martin Money Martin Shirt and I will buy this mother of two take on Disney in a blockbuster breach-of-contract lawsuit last summer. Johansson filed a claim in July arguing that the studio sacrificed Black Widow’s box office potential in order to grow its fledgling Disney+ streaming service. Much of the public back-and-forth PR barbs focused on Disney’s response, which seemed to cast Johansson as greedy and insensitive to the toll COVID had taken on the industry and the world at large. Privately, Johansson was managing a pregnancy and her son’s birth—which she and her husband, SNL’s Colin Jost, had kept quiet—while actively launching a startup. “It was scary, very scary, to take a step like that and not know where you’re going to land,” she admits. “Self-doubt crept in a lot, and I felt overwhelming sadness many times during that period,” she continues. But support from costars, industry friends, and even strangers helped buoy her. Jamie Lee Curtis memorably wrote an essay in Johansson’s defense for Time, issuing a warning to would-be aggressors: “Don’t fuck with this mama bear.”
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