Joanna Coles dishes on upcoming projects at Cannes Lions

Creative producer, Joanna Coles, who is perhaps best known for her work as Cosmopolitan Magazine’s editor-in-chief, stopped by Stagwell’s Sports Beach Monday morning to talk about her latest projects and her obsession with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his fiance Lauren Sanchez.

Q: You are a bit of a media jack of all trades. What are you doing while you’re in Cannes and what kinds of conversations are you looking forward to having during the festival?

A: Right now, I’m working on waking up from a very late dinner last night at Hotel du Cap, which was extraordinarily fun. The whole of Cannes is like a sport, isn’t it? If you can get through to the end of it you deserve a medal. 

Q: I know. I think I need another coffee after this. It’s quite early. I wanted to ask you about some of your current projects. I know you’re doing production stuff. Tell me how you got into that. I know you have a big editorial background. What was your path?

A: I was a journalist for a long time and then I was an editor for a long time and now I’m more entrepreneurial. I am buying up or optioning all sorts of material to turn into a variety of TV shows, podcasts, and different sorts of media outlets depending on the material. I’m particularly frustrated by the writers’ strike at the moment.

It’s hard not to be on the side of the writers but I have a wonderful project with Amazon that I’m very excited about. It’s a big psychological thriller. It is starring Priyanka Chropa. Of course, like everyone else right now we are in this nightmare limbo period. We delivered the pilot script the day of the beginning of the writers’ strike but hopefully, it will get resolved and negotiations will resume and we will be able to pick up where we left off. 

Q: How did you get into this part of editorial or production with your magazine background?

A: Magazines are a wonderful vehicle for stories. If you’ve been a journalist all your life like I have–literally I started at the age of 10–you’re always scouring the land for stories you think will speak to people. What’s important is the story…a good story is a good story and it can show up wherever–except as a tweet. Too short and maybe not on the current Twitter. 

Q: I know you are working on a book. What is it about?

A: I’ve done a couple of books before. I’m actually working on a novel and I’m halfway through at the moment, which is really fun. I never did a novel before–I never had the opportunity to have the time before– and I do at the moment. It’s about a group of friends. It’s set in the Bay area and it’s set in New York and it’s set in Kenya. I’m super excited. I’m halfway through and I told myself I have to finish it by the end of the year.

Q: How much of it is autobiographical?

A: Almost everything that has happened in it has happened. I sort of molded it all together and the characters are disguised but it’s such fun writing something where you can make it up. By the way, I’m hoping we are going to see Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez walking behind us on the beach in their magnificent worked-out bodies. I think I got a glimpse of them yesterday. I’m very much hoping they appear behind us. 

Q: I hope we see the yacht and a helicopter touching down for us to go on there. 

A: Exactly and I want her to be piloting obviously, and if they do come behind us on the beach, I’m quite happy for people to not hear what we are saying. 

Q: Let’s talk about your magazine background. The pandemic really crushed magazines. Do you see a white space developing? What do you think is the future for magazines?

A: I am not sure the pandemic entirely crushed them. I think Google and Facebook had a hand in it, too. To be fair, really the moving of pretty much everything online and the arrival of the phone, which is an extraordinary device for delivering content–very hard not to be on it most of the time. As much as I love magazines– for me when I was growing up, they were real voyages of discovery– the phone is now that voyage of discovery.

What I miss is the anticipation of something arriving once a week or once a month, that would be this exciting trove of ideas but now the phone has taken over from that. So now magazines feel less necessary and the cadence feels out of keeping with the very modern world that we live in. The thing I’ve noticed is that we don’t relax anymore. Every moment is taken up by the scrolling or listening to something. A magazine used to be a wonderful way to relax and to open your brain up to new ideas and that’s gone. 

Q: What happened to women’s magazines? I’d expect in the women’s magazines to be exploding in the #MeToo era but many have gone out of print. Why is that?

A: A lot of them have gone online. I don’t think women aren’t talking to each other. They are. They’ve just gone online and I’m actually working on a new women’s brand at the moment. I don’t have too much to say about that but I’m excited about it.