FAME MACHINES THEN AND NOW: LAURENCE LEAMER’S WARHOL’S MUSES REWRITES THE SCRIPT

We had the chance to sit down with author Laurence Leamer over lunch at Café Milano—hosted by Franco Nuschese and Hollywood on the Potomac—and talk not just about his brilliant new book Warhol’s Muses, but about what it means now. About how Andy Warhol wasn’t just painting soup cans—he was building the prototype for the algorithm.

Because Warhol didn’t just make art. He made content. He made fame. He turned people into product—packaged, polished, and left behind. And Leamer’s new book puts that under the microscope, exposing the original influencer economy for what it was: messy, raw, and exploitative.

Warhol’s Muses tells the stories of ten women who orbited Warhol at the height of his Factory fame machine. Edie Sedgwick. Candy Darling. Viva. Nico. Warhol called them his “superstars”—but what Leamer shows, with incredible clarity, is how quickly the light faded once the cameras turned off. The Factory was the content mill before social media existed. And Warhol? The original platform.

Leamer, the New York Times bestselling author of Capote’s Women and The Kennedy Women, has always understood power. But this book hits different. It doesn’t just expose the cost of fame—it connects it to right now. To a world where going viral is the new velvet rope. Where being seen is currency. And where too often, it’s still women—still muses—being curated, captioned, and chewed up by systems they don’t control.

That’s why mtf.tv's meet the future is paying attention. Because you can’t talk about tomorrow’s media, tech, and identity without reckoning with where it started. Warhol’s world was modern. He predicted the 15-minute fame cycle, but he also created it. His superstars were the blueprint for the influencer economy. Leamer pulls back the curtain—and asks the harder question: who profits from attention? And who disappears?

We left Café Milano thinking less about nostalgia and more about systems. About how the Factory never really shut down—it just moved online. And about how, in 2025, the future of storytelling demands we do better. That we center the voices that built the culture—not just the ones who monetized it.

So yes—read Warhol’s Muses. Not just for what it reveals about the past, but for what it teaches us about the future. Because the machine still runs. But thanks to writers like Leamer, more of us are finally learning how it works.