Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl’ on Hulu, A Documentary About The Socialite Scene of Aughts-Era NYC

Nostalgia is all the rage right now, and the newest Hulu documentary taps into the real life high societies that we became familiar with via tabloids and TV shows. With commentary from the socialites themselves, does Queenmaker add anything to the conversation?

QUEENMAKER – THE MAKING OF AN IT GIRL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The early 2000s was the heyday of socialite culture in New York City—so much so, it spawned fictional versions like Gossip Girl and a docuseries The City. The women at the center of it, like Olivia Palermo and (eventual RHONY staple) Tinsley Mortimer, had to play nice with the new crop of blogs and tabloids covering them. Most of those bloggers were public facing, but one anonymous blogger is the last person you’d expect. Queenmaker unveils them and checks in with them today, discussing how their life has changed in the years since.

What Will It Remind You Of?: The first half of Queenmaker — not to be confused with the recent Netflix K-drama Queenmaker — plays up the fabulous lives of the rich and famous, reminiscent of films like Born Rich or The One Percent. When the film turns, it taps into Disclosure territory, which discusses how culture intersects with trans identities and experiences.

Performance Worth Watching: Tinsley Mortimer is the socialite with the talking head with the most screen time and the documentary is most centered on her journey as it relates to the anonymous blogger. Mortimer, who is now just a reality star instead of the resident “it” girl, comes across as approachable and down to earth despite her wealth and fame.

Memorable Dialogue: “We exist outside of whatever boxes people put us in,” the unveiled blogger says in the present day, reflecting on a life battling the boxes of society.

Sex and Skin: Nothing NSFW.

Our Take: At the heart of Queenmaker is a story about belonging. The documentary is rooted in nostalgia, specifically focused on the era when New York City party girls reigned over celebrity, with faces like Paris Hilton and Tinsley Mortimer splashing every tabloid in sight. Zackary Drucker’s newest film plays with the making of these high-powered women through the eyes of celebrity blog sites that popped up in the early 2000s, like Perez Hilton and Park Avenue Peerage. But Drucker is really using this facade to try to get at something deeper: how did those who don’t fit the tall, blonde, white and wealthy confines find a place for themselves in this world?

In pursuit of an answer to that question, the documentary abruptly shifts focus to the blogger behind Park Avenue Peerage, a trans woman named Morgan Olivia Rose. There is a deeply moving story at the heart of her journey—from someone who didn’t fit the mold at all to someone who has altogether rejected that life, even when it beckons her back—but there’s a disconnect between what the documentary sets out to do and what the final product is, and the film’s title exacerbates that divide by indicating a different focus than the story at hand.

The beginning of the film has a lot of fluff about the power players of the industry, namely publicists, who provide color about the cutthroat nature of the times. Much of the first half is dedicated to depicting the rise of the socialites and tracking some of their eventual downfall, like an aside about the Johnson & Johnson heir Casey Johnson’s sexuality and eventual death. But all that really does is diverge from Morgan’s story as it focuses on how Tinsley Mortimer became Tinsley Mortimer instead of focusing on the film’s ultimate message. There’s a jarring voiceover that initially reads like a starlet’s diary about the downsides of the limelight that later seems to represent Morgan’s inner thoughts. It doesn’t fully make sense until late in the film and takes audiences out of the film instead of pulling them into the central struggle.

Morgan’s story is imbued with humanity and interest, but Queenmaker doesn’t thread the needle to pull everything together coherently.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The documentary tries to tell too many stories and ends up not telling any of them completely.

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Paste Magazine, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.