Now, she says, “that is definitely on pause. There is nothing coming in.” But the woman who embodies the art of staying out and up all night has still found a way to do just that, roaming through the empty, moonlit Big Apple. These pictures capture one such eve, when Fox and best friend–slash-photographer Richie Shazam logged 22,000 steps strolling the new, dystopian cityscape. “You can kind of do whatever you want outside because no one’s there,” she says, ruminating on her attire for this particular photo shoot.
Seeing her hometown deserted is “really something unforgettable, but I want to go back to the utopia that is Los Angeles,” says Fox, who speaks in a kind of cinematic slow-mo, turning “Los Angeles” into a stretch of sun-drenched gravel, a kind of vocal-fried onomatopoeia.
After trekking through Gotham, it’s back to her hotel, where she writes—she’s working on a podcast script and a book proposal—until darkness falls. She’s also getting into movies—like, watching them. “In my pre-quarantine life, I would watch maybe, like, TV here and there, but I would never really fully commit to an entire movie because I can’t really sit still for that long,” she says. “So now I can watch, like, four movies back-to-back, and I’m totally loving that.” Rather than curate some amateur film-fest of obscure whatevers (you poseurs!), she’s taking advantage of the glorious randomness of hotel cable programming: It’s “kind of like Russian roulette,” catching half of Charlie’s Angels today followed by most of Addams Family Values, and then the other half of Charlie’s Angels tomorrow. “It’s all kind of one big blur,” she says, that goes on until 7:30 or 8 in the morning, at which point she goes to sleep, wakes up around 3 p.m., and catches up with friends until it’s cardio time once more.
One night, “I saw a bunch of guys trying to break into an ATM,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is really fucking anarchy. No one gives a fuck.’ So every time I go out, I bring my mace with me.”
Fox has an impulse to search for a silver lining, and a sense, like a mystic hustler, that she must work toward bigger and better things. She is using her renowned powers of manifestation, previously applied to beat out hundreds of actors for the Gems role that was practically written for her, “to send my love and send help in some way to people that are sick,” and to keep herself productive. “I’m always a big-picture kind of gal,” she says. “I always think in the long term, and I like to see things through from beginning to end in my head.” Sounds like a movie—just where she belongs.
