Fran Lebowitz Explains Why She Won't Visit Australia Again

Fran Lebowitz is smoking one cigarette after another as she tells me why she never intends to visit Australia again.

At 75, the celebrated American critic, writer and documentary star is chatting with me in a designated outdoor smoking zone before we're due on stage together, where I'll interview her in front of a live audience.

We're mere minutes away from showtime, but Lebowitz is already lighting another cigarette before finishing her first one.

Because of Lebowitz's tobacco dependency ("an addiction", she concedes while shrugging), she says the crushingly long flights from her beloved New York City to Australia are akin to torture.

When her manager and I remind her she said something similar when I last interviewed her in Australia, several years back, Lebowitz arches an eyebrow and shrugs, as if to say: So?

When our conversation digresses to other drugs, we discuss how people are increasingly micro-dosing MDMA and psilocybin to manage conditions like PTSD.

Lebowitz blinks in confusion.

"Excuse me, why are they doing this again?" she asks.

"They're managing mental distress," I say.

Lebowitz lets out a trademark withering laugh — a laugh made famous by two Martin Scorsese documentaries on her, a myriad late night talk show interviews and, now, social media memes.

Fran Lebowitz is a singular figure in American culture. She is a critic, but does not have a regular column. She is an author, but hasn't published a book since 1994. She is funny, but not a stand-up comedian.

Yet people across the English-speaking world, and plenty of non-English speaking ones too, flock to Lebowitz's live speaking tours to hear her offer quips, bon mots and scathing take-downs of New York's peculiarities, poor etiquette and young and old people alike.

No-one emerges unscathed.

However, given the times, she is particularly appalled about the state of US politics.

"No-one could have imagined Donald Trump," she says on stage. She also describes the "moral squalor" of institutions designed to keep presidential powers in check, like the US Supreme Court.

"It never occurred to the founders of the country that the people who would get to the Supreme Court would need ethics rules," she says.

Lebowitz famously also shuns modern technology, having refused to engage with technology since the landline phone and colour TV.

Needless to say, she doesn't own a smartphone. It's not that she hasn't kept up, she clarifies. It's just that she's just not very interested in it.

"When they invented the kind of computer you have in your house, a friend of mine who is a screenwriter said, 'You have to come and see this,'" Lebowitz recalls. "So I went and I said, 'This is just a very fast kind of typewriter.'" She scoffs at the memory now.

On stage, I ask Lebowitz to explain to us how she even arrived at Melbourne's Hamer Hall for this event without a smartphone. After all, how does one travel internationally in 2026 without digital maps, email or rideshare apps? Without missing a beat, Lebowitz says: "I have an agent."

She is not exactly enamoured with other people's use of smartphones either. "On the subway — but also at the airport, and also everywhere — everyone is looking at their phones," she observes. "I'm pretty sure if I did [have one], I would never think to look at it while I was trying to cross Seventh Avenue."

One might suspect young people would consider Lebowitz out of touch. After all, this 75-year-old American critic rose through the ranks of legacy print media, was hired by the late Andy Warhol as a writer for Interview magazine and does not access the internet. How many millennials or Gen Zs would recognise a 70-something public figure like Fran Lebowitz anyway?

Plenty, it turns out. When Pretend It's a City — a seven-episode 2021 Netflix documentary by Martin Scorsese on Lebowitz — was released, it coincided with global Covid lockdowns. With a literal captive audience, Lebowitz was introduced to entirely new generations without even needing to catch an aeroplane.

Locked-down, grumpy and misanthropic, audiences tuned in to watch a similarly cantankerous person — albeit an acerbically-funny Jewish New York lesbian in her 70s — cheerily point out everything that was wrong with the world. No matter what their generation, gender or backgrounds, people saw themselves reflected in Lebowitz, albeit with a wink back, a trademark laugh and a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Fran Lebowitz on:

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani

"A lot of my friends who are my contemporaries say, 'Don't you think he's too young?' He's 34. I have to explain to my friends: 'We are now so old that you can be much-much-much younger than us and still not be young.' So he's not too young to be the mayor, not at all. My concern about him was though is he's a little delicate looking. He looks like a piano student."

Death

"I do think about it sometimes. I don't want to die, but sometimes when I hear certain things in the news I think, 'Well, don't worry, you'll be dead.' But I have to tell you, I have terrible seasickness. If you ever are seasick, here's what you notice: There are people dying of awful, painful diseases and they want to live. If you're seasick? You want to die."

Polyamory

"It doesn't appeal to me. I know it's a thing; I know people think it's new. It's not new. Maybe this doesn't sound nice, but I don't care what other people do. I have almost no interest in it. Do whatever you want, except make noise. Four lovers? Sixteen? I don't care, but do it quietly. I live in an apartment building, so I don't really care what's going on next door upstairs. Just sshh."

Trad wives

"This is all part of an unbelievable regression. These same people point out how horrible it is for women in very traditional Muslim countries or for observant, crazy Orthodox Jews, but it's exactly like this. Regular Jews like me call those Jews 'crazy Jews'. Gentiles are always upset when you do that, but it's all the same stuff. What all these extreme versions of religions have in common is oppressing women. These women say they like it, but they don't get around that much."

Legacy

"People often ask me, 'What do you want your legacy to be?' I don't care. What do you want people to think about you after you die? I don't care now. Some people really care about it, especially rich people, with their names over all these buildings. I always think every time they do that, 'Well, that's nice, but you're going to die anyway.'