Whitney Friedlander

Whitney Friedlander is an entertainment and culture reporter who lives in Los Angeles with her husband, screenwriter Alex Woo, and their four children (two of whom are feline). A former staff writer at Variety and Los Angeles Times, she's also freelanced for InStyle, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, and Emmy magazine.

A graduate of the University of Missouri's journalism program with an emphasis on magazine reporting, Whitney was born in Orange County, CA, but grew up mainly in Little Rock, Ark. She is interested in how pop culture impacts daily life and history. This means she wants to know how people, trends, and content have sticking power that will keep them around longer than a news cycle or a social media take-down. Some of the stories she's most proud of include a profile for Salon about Adriana Caselotti, the woman who was the original voice of Snow White and who decorated her house as a totem to the part, a deep dive into the "not great, Bob!" Mad Men meme for Vulture, and a look into the real-world implications of dating that rom-coms tend to ignore for InStyle, and a deep dive into why 1999 was the ultimate year for teen movies for Rotten Tomatoes. She's written celebrity profiles for Marie Claire, Cosmopolitian, Los Angeles Times, InStyle, Vanity Fair, and more.

She hates coffee but once won a year's supply of Diet Coke. While she doesn't understand why people think she looks like actress Teri Hatcher, she's happy to have any connection to the most important fictional female journalist: Lois Lane.