Emily Brill Writes In About Her New Start Away From Dad
Emily Brill, daughter of publisher Steven Brill, wants everyone to know she is not spoiled or benefitting from her parents' wealth, despite her recent yacht trip to St. Barth's. In fact, while chatting with a hot cockswain in the Caribbean shallows, she decided "my parents are out" and she's going to basically blog for a living, including about her "intimate meals with George Clooney," "exotic trips," "the Ritalin," and the "Manhattan event circuit." She's quit her job for NBC Universal in 30 Rock. And no one had to peek in her Facebook profile to find out — Brill wrote it up on her new website and emailed us twice about it in the course of an hour. After the jump, Emily Brill's Virgin Islands transformation, her alienation from her family and how she's "striking back."
Brill, 25, writes of a tortured decision during her trip to step away from her family, which includes her famously acerbic father, profiled briefly but ably by Michael Wolff 10 years ago. She opens up to a "beautiful" yachtsman piloting her around in a small boat.
I wanted to tell him absolutely everything - even things about my parents and my relationships with them that I was only beginning to come to grips with myself.
"I can't go back," I said under my breath, doing my best to maintain a lighthearted tone. [The yachtsman] couldn't have know that "going back" referred to not only my current job situation, but also to my entire way of life... and particularly to the extent to which I could no longer allow my parents and their values to stop me from experiencing life the way I was meant to experience it.
A close friend encourages Brill to follow her gut and push forward with her decision to make a break with her family. By the end of the trip she had decided, "My parents are out."
I realized on that boat and under those stars that this is what I want to do. I am not declaring myself unwilling to work but rather, unwilling to be conventional. I've been working non-stop on this site and will continue to work non-stop. This is my life now.
Brill writes that she's "striking out ... and striking back" and "going public." As of Friday, that means jumping into New York Fashion Week at an event later in the day, possibly with her friend Devorah Rose, editor of Social Life Magazine.
In a sense, Brill is following in the footsteps of her father, who parlayed his larger-than-life personality and skills as an inside player into American Lawyer and, more lucratively, Court TV. But unlike her father, she's either not the sort to lash or too smart to do so. Brill writes that Gawker's previous coverage took "my private life public," but ends that the post "gave me exactly what I needed: a good kick in the ass to get going. Finally."
