Margaret Qualley walks into Clark’s, a diner in Brooklyn Heights, carrying her little dog, Smokey, in her arms and is immediately intercepted by an employee who tells her she can’t have a dog inside. “I’ll be back in 10 minutes” is the first thing she says. She lives nearby with her husband, the musician and producer Jack Antonoff. I suggest taking a walk. “Do you want to just come over?” she asks. I had wondered what the actor who so often portrays an unassuming allure would be like stripped of the mediation of the screen. But I can tell as the words are coming out of her mouth, she’s already changing her mind about having a writer see the inside of her home. “I can have my husband meet me downstairs. It’s a mess.” When Qualley returns, she appears effortless—she’s wearing a hoodie and Uggs and orders hot water with lemon.
She seems reluctant to talk about her relationship with Antonoff, whom she met at a party in 2021, other than saying, “I’ve always been very love-oriented. I’ve always been looking for my person, and I met Jack.” They wed in the summer of 2023 on Long Beach Island, New Jersey, where they have a home. The area was mobbed with fans looking for a glimpse of Taylor Swift, who attended, along with Channing Tatum, Zoë Kravitz, and Cara Delevingne. Qualley wore a Chanel dress and flats and danced all night. She also doesn’t wish to share anecdotes about any of those boldface, fairly private guests, such as Lana Del Rey, who sang at the wedding, or Del Rey’s own wedding, which she attended.
Will Qualley and Antonoff have kids? “Yeah, for sure,” she says. I jokingly ask if she has names chosen. “If I did, I wouldn’t talk about it,” she says. She’s similarly circumspect on the topic of her mother, the actor Andie MacDowell, the Groundhog Day and Four Weddings and a Funeral star (who appeared on two Vanity Fair covers before Qualley was born). “She gives me little nuggets of advice,” she says. On what, she trails off…. Qualley is a good actor but not so talented that she can hide her reluctance to talk about MacDowell. I didn’t even get into her past relationships with Shia LaBeouf and Pete Davidson, as she was already squirming visibly.
She understands our collective curiosity, even if she doesn’t love being the focus of it. “I do not look down on gossip,” she says. “I think gossip is cavemen. Gossip is survival.” Her social life is visible enough that when photos behind the making of Kendrick Lamar’s GNX album were published, Antonoff was shown in the studio and Qualley could be seen hanging out. She looks like a fun person to be friends with. But she is also a sort of forceful body, the kind that fuels the life of an omnivorously creative celebrity but stops short of being a regular on Page Six. Perhaps she wants to be a household name with boundaries, or treated more like a renowned male actor of the Leonardo DiCaprio blueprint. For now, Qualley is content to pursue a high-wire act of keeping her personal life unexplored and remains an enigma to the public.