Cazzie David Interview: Regrets About Her New Book
Cazzie David
Cibelle Levi
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This isn’t Cazzie David’s first time releasing a deeply personal work to the public. In 2020, she published No One Asked for This, in which she wrote candidly about her struggles with panic attacks and her breakup with Pete Davidson. She also co-wrote and directed an indie film about toxic relationships, I Love You Forever (2024). And yet, true to form, neither of those experiences has helped to soften the blow of releasing another book. “I’ve been struggling to find ways to talk about it,” she says of Delusions: of Grandeur, of Romance, of Progress, which muses on turning 30 and all the existential crises therein. “It’s hard to describe a book of essays. This is so harrowing. If someone doesn’t like this book, it’s not just them saying they don’t like my writing. It’s ‘I don’t like your personality.'”
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David, now 31, is also grappling with the realization that her book may very well find an audience — an audience who will read stories about her life that she wrote without fully considering the fact that they would go public. “When the time comes to turn the manuscript in you’re like, ‘Wait, I haven’t decided if all this is going to be in the book!’ But I think that about everything in the book, so they take the whole thing. They basically kidnapped this from me and I have no choice.”
Some of the essays are benign and well-documented; tales of her own neuroses, and her obsessions with the health of her father, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David. Others are more pointed; her recounting of an attempt to make a new friend and the disastrous dinner party that ensued, a nightmarish experience on the set of an (unnamed) indie movie set, a nightmarish experience becoming a member of an (unnamed) celebrity and influencer gym in Los Angeles. “Please don’t say the name of the actual gym, even though it will be pretty obvious to anyone who reads it, but I’m not looking forward to dealing with the aftermath,” she says. “This gym was very convenient for me and I don’t think I’ll be allowed back there. So I will have to mourn the places that I used to go and the people I used to see.”
The fact that Los Angeles has a gym that is invite-only for influencers and celebs, and is free to use in exchange for posting on social media, and everyone at the gym wears the clothing owned by the brand — it’s such perfect fodder for a humor essay that I can’t believe you’re the first person to call it out.
Yeah, I was surprised no one had and I’m glad I got to. Again, it will impact my life deeply to do so. Any time I’m writing about someone else, whether relationships or career stuff, I’m really scared for anyone to see it. It’s funny because when you read something, or watch a movie, about something real, it doesn’t really occur to you that the person who wrote it might not back it 100 percent. I’m in no way ruthless, I’m not writing this stuff like, “Fuck that.” I’m questioning myself the whole time. It’s the braver choice to write this stuff, and I’m by no means a brave person but I try to justify it as my job as an observer of my own life. And if someone does something ridiculous, you can also tell yourself it’s their fault. I also try to make it about my experience in it; I’m not sharing something personal about someone else.
You did an interview with your dad recently, and he said that with Curb Your Enthusiasm, he is inspired by real-life interactions he has but he changes so much that no one recognizes themselves in it; that can’t be true, can it?
I don’t think that’s true, either. When he said that, I was like, “OK.” I think he’s really only been confronted about something in the show once, and he thinks he’s making little changes. But also, people are so self-involved that they can watch or read something blatantly about them and it wouldn’t occur to them.
Do you give the people in the essays a heads up that you’re writing about them?
If someone I’m close to, or someone I used to be close to, is in it then I’ll reach out and tell them even if it’s not very identifiable. But also, a lot of what’s in the book is made up for comedic purposes, or fo