Barry Diller has solely simply began his guide tour, however he’s already making an attempt to sneak away.
“I’m shortening the tour half,” the 83-year-old mogul mentioned just lately in his sonorous baritone, the “Killer Diller” voice that intimidated and intrigued Hollywood for greater than half a century. “I’m not up for interrogation on features of my private life.”
As we sat on cappuccino-colored couches in his attractive Artwork Nouveau aerie within the Carlyle lodge, I reminded Diller concerning the bewitchingly candid first paragraph of his bildungsroman, “Who Knew”:
The family I grew up in was completely dysfunctional. My mother and father separated usually and got here a day wanting divorce a number of occasions earlier than I used to be 10; my brother was a drug addict by age 13; and I used to be a sexually confused holder of secrets and techniques from the age of 11.
And there it was, Hollywood’s worst-kept secret spilled: Barry Diller is homosexual. Or quite, bisexual — or bi with Di, since, as he writes, “Whereas there have been an excellent many males in my life from the age of 16, there has solely ever been one lady.” The sultry Princess of Wrap, Diane von Furstenberg, swept him away again within the Studio 54 days. She’s happy with being the primary lady he ever slept with, in a torrid romance that later unfurled into an extended, blissful, sexually liberated marriage.
Von Furstenberg and Diller’s buddies are watching, wide-eyed, as Diller talks publicly for the primary time about his unorthodox non-public life. The gruff, point-blank government is thought, because the Netflix chief government Ted Sarandos mentioned, as “one of many only a few who doesn’t care what individuals suppose in a city full of people that do care.” That’s true in enterprise. However for many of his lifetime, Diller did care about what individuals considered his sexual orientation.
“I needed to inform the story,” he mentioned about his alienated childhood and dazzling profession. “And I knew if I instructed the story, I needed to inform the reality.” That doesn’t make it simpler. He’s stored his non-public life shrouded for therefore lengthy, it’s onerous now to tear off that shroud.
