Theater, television, film, novels, autobiographies, radio, documentaries—there are few facets of media and creative expression that Stephen Fry has not yet mastered. (What’s next, performance art?) After adding his considerable energies and talents to keeping the Honresfield Library, an important, newly discovered priceless book collection, off the auction block, Fry is now returning to television. In The Dropout, a new Hulu series reimagining the saga of Elizabeth Holmes, Fry plays Ian Gibbons, the chief scientist at Theranos, whose suicide attempt, which happened the evening before he was required to testify in a lawsuit, precipitated his death from liver failure. Here, Fry shares his key components to the good life. —Ashley Baker
Airport: One landing strip, one shed of a terminal, one baggage carousel, one customs officer.
Bag: Whatever the opposite of Louis Vuitton might be.
Bedtime: Nine p.m.
Birthday: Best forgotten by all, please.
Boyfriend/girlfriend: My husband will last me to the end, I reckon.
Breakfast, weekday: I make a damned fine flat-white coffee, topped with a latte art fern.
Breakfast, weekend: Eggs Benedict.
Building: The Pantheon in Rome.
Car: Porsche Taycan, lucky me.
Cocktail: A skinny bitch. It’s just vodka and club soda: your maximum alcoholic bang for your minimum calorific buck.
Couple: Nick and Nora Charles.
Date: Medjool.
Diet: Oh, Lord, don’t start. There isn’t one I haven’t tried and failed at.
Disguise: An N95 mask.
Dress: Whatever best hides the waistline.
Drive: England’s North Norfolk Coast Road.
Enemy: Myself.
Escape: There’s none. I’ve tried.
Excuse: “Filming overran. So sorry … ”
Family: The best people I know.
Flaw: That need to be liked.
Good-bye: “Tinkety tonk and down with the Nazis,” as the Queen Mother used to sign off letters during the war.
Hotel: The Carlyle in New York, 30 years ago.
Jacket:
Full metal.
Last Meal: Beans on toast.
Lunch, weekday: Fewer beans on toast.
Lunch, weekend: Beans on toast topped with two poached eggs.
Match: England versus Australia, at Lord’s Cricket Ground.
Movie: Destry Rides Again, but I’ll name another tomorrow, and another the day after …
Nonfiction book: Mimesis, by Erich Auerbach.
Novel: Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.
Pair of pants: To a Briton, that’s very intimate.
Pet: Cat.
Piece of advice: “Don’t scratch where it doesn’t itch.” —Richard Rorty, I think.
Restaurant: Mortimer’s on Lexington Avenue in New York has closed, as has Le Caprice on Arlington Street in London. Currently seeking replacements.
Saying: “How can I tell you what I think until I’ve heard what I’m going to say?”
SHOES: Skechers. My old age is dedicated to comfort.
Singer: Johnny Cash.
Spouse: “Like patience on a monument.”
Television series: John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. Fifty years old this year, still unsurpassed.
Theme song to your life: “All Right Now,” by Free.
Time of day: Early morning.
Toast: All ready for those beans.
Wake-up time: Six a.m.
Work of art: Any Rembrandt self-portrait.
Stephen’s Essentials
