James' World 2

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In 2016, Lauren Sánchez, then 46, was flying high. The daughter of an aviation specialist, she had a helicopter pilots’ license but had found herself wanting more. She wasn’t tight on cash — she was married to Patrick Whitesell, a Hollywood superagent known for helping launch the careers of such talent as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — and she purchased an Astar chopper, a famously tricky aircraft, nicknamed the Squirrel because of how dodgy it feels to land. Then she sought out Steve Stafford, an Astar expert, for advanced training. Stafford had never before encountered a woman who wanted to fly the Squirrel. Learning the proper techniques was grueling work, but Sánchez was unfazed. “I really couldn’t believe her energy level,” he said. “She just never ran out of gas. I mean, if she could take a helicopter and fly it to the surface of the moon, she’d do that.”

Back on land, Sánchez would soon prove similarly unshakeable. Sometime in the coming months, she would began an extramarital relationship with Jeff Bezos. By the summer of 2018, when Bezos had become the richest man on earth, Sánchez’s estranged brother, Michael, was in conversations with the Enquirer, arranging to publish private text messages between the illicit couple. When the lid finally blew off, that January, Sánchez appeared steady and smiling. She and Bezos leaned headfirst into the attention, and this is the way the pair has lived since: publicly, proudly, and with pomp, as though to get ahead of their own tailwind.

When the affair first came to light, Bezos was still married to MacKenzie Scott, the brainy and discreet Princeton alum with whom he shared four children, who’d helped him get Amazon off the ground back in 1994. Sánchez, who had three children of her own — two with Whitesell and one with her ex-boyfriend, the former NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez — was a sharp pivot. A broadcaster and a glitzed-up woman about town in Hollywood, she was an easy target for anyone prone to slinging gold-digger accusations. Amazon shareholders were spooked by news of the scandal, and the company’s stock price fell 5 percent. The whole thing seemed likely to be a short-lived, tawdry incident.

In 2016, Lauren Sánchez, then 46, was flying high. The daughter of an aviation specialist, she had a helicopter pilots’ license but had found herself wanting more. She wasn’t tight on cash — she was married to Patrick Whitesell, a Hollywood superagent known for helping launch the careers of such talent as Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — and she purchased an Astar chopper, a famously tricky aircraft, nicknamed the Squirrel because of how dodgy it feels to land. Then she sought out Steve Stafford, an Astar expert, for advanced training. Stafford had never before encountered a woman who wanted to fly the Squirrel. Learning the proper techniques was grueling work, but Sánchez was unfazed. “I really couldn’t believe her energy level,” he said. “She just never ran out of gas. I mean, if she could take a helicopter and fly it to the surface of the moon, she’d do that.”

Back on land, Sánchez would soon prove similarly unshakeable. Sometime in the coming months, she would began an extramarital relationship with Jeff Bezos. By the summer of 2018, when Bezos had become the richest man on earth, Sánchez’s estranged brother, Michael, was in conversations with the Enquirer, arranging to publish private text messages between the illicit couple. When the lid finally blew off, that January, Sánchez appeared steady and smiling. She and Bezos leaned headfirst into the attention, and this is the way the pair has lived since: publicly, proudly, and with pomp, as though to get ahead of their own tailwind.

When the affair first came to light, Bezos was still married to MacKenzie Scott, the brainy and discreet Princeton alum with whom he shared four children, who’d helped him get Amazon off the ground back in 1994. Sánchez, who had three children of her own — two with Whitesell and one with her ex-boyfriend, the former NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez — was a sharp pivot. A broadcaster and a glitzed-up woman about town in Hollywood, she was an easy target for anyone prone to slinging gold-digger accusations. Amazon shareholders were spooked by news of the scandal, and the company’s stock price fell 5 percent. The whole thing seemed likely to be a short-lived, tawdry incident.

The couple, however, doubled down, announcing their respective divorces and setting out on a world tour of PDA and aggressively good times. There they were, enjoying burgers and pizza together in the West Village. There they were, canoodling behind the royals at Wimbledon. There they were, in

the prime-center orchestra seats of Hadestown on Broadway. The couple became so ubiquitous that by 2020, they could go to happy hour at Tribeca watering hole Weather Up and enjoy drinks without attracting much of a fuss.

Next week, the Sánchez-Bezos scandal will finally be reborn as a blessed union. The exact location of the ceremony has yet to be confirmed, but it will reportedly take place in the vicinity of the San Giorgio Maggiore Island in Venice — where, according to local news, the two have booked dozens of the city’s water taxis, as well as its most lavish hotels, including the Gritti Palace and Aman.

Some see it all as a coup for Sánchez. “This seems, to me, to be the pinnacle of a long career of social climbing,” said Matt Belloni, the Hollywood reporter behind the podcast The Town and the entertainment newsletter “What I’m Hearing,” from Puck. “She did it. She made it.”

But Sánchez is not just any arriviste. She is, by many accounts, an untamable force: her drive met by equal charm, sociability, and intelligence. One Hollywood producer I spoke with compared her and her ex-husband, Whitesell: He was “charming … but as vapid as you can get.” Sánchez, on the other hand, well, “I would go to basketball games with her, and think … Okay, she can hang out. She could talk.”

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Photo-Illustration: Joe Darrow/Source Photographs: Getty Images

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