NEED TO KNOW
Emma Rosenblum’s novel Mean Moms is a satire about a trio of wealthy TriBeCa moms.PEOPLE’s Executive Director of Special Integrated Projects Andrea Lavinthal sat down with the author to chat about the characters, her inspiration for the book and the behavior of rich women.The mystery thriller is available everywhere now.
Whether real or fictionalized, rich women behaving badly is a formula that never fails to deliver (see exhibits A, B, C: Real Housewives, Desperate Housewives, Mormon Wives). The latest show to feature a group of women with big bank accounts and small morals, The Hunting Wives, has been a huge hit and the talk of every mahjong group, book club, and girls’ night out this summer thanks to its spicy sapphic love affairs and “whoa, they really just went there” sex scenes.
After I crushed the season in one weekend, I needed something to fill the void. What I found didn’t have as many homicides, but what it did have was something far more believable (no one is solving a mystery via a tampon), and therefore way scarier. It had mean moms.
Mean Moms, the new novel by Emma Rosenblum (author of Bad Summer People and Very Bad Company) is a satire about a trio of wealthy TriBeCa moms — Frost, Morgan, and Belle — whose kids attend the prestigious Atherton Academy. On the surface, they seem like the three best friends that anyone could have. They laugh, love and latte together, but in reality their relationships are as authentic as an Amazon dupe. When a mysterious (and extremely hot) mom from Miami shows up at their private school, chaos ensues.
As a mom myself who lives in Greenwich, Conn., (the setting of, Sex/Life, another show about rich ladies behaving badly), the gossip, back-stabbing and general bitchery in Mean Moms hit close to the hydrangeas. So it’s no surprise that the book has become a must-read here.
Over a few rounds of skinny spicy margs, my friends and I talked about the parallels for the Belles, Frosts and Morgans in our own lives. We laughed over what felt real (the WhatsApp chat throughout the book could have been lifted from my phone) and what was almost too wild to believe (could the nicest mom you know be a total psychopath?!).
They, like many other readers, were also dying to know the real-life inspirations for the characters and if that many people are really cheating on their husbands. To get answers, I interviewed Rosenblum via Zoom (she dialed in from her beachfront home — the ultimate mean mom flex!) about her new book and her next project, which is set in, wait for it: Greenwich.
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Emma Rosenblum.
Nyra Lang
What was the inspiration for Mean Moms?
I was having a conversation with a mom at my kids’ school, and she was so nice, like dripping with kindness and so supportive, and because I have a bit of a screw loose in my brain, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be funny if she was actually like a serial killer?” Like it was all a front for some kind of and she’s actually psychotic? After that little spark, I was like, that would actually be a very funny book idea if within the group, because, you know, there’s all these different types of moms in every group. Within the group, one of them was actually nefarious. And again, to set it in this world of privilege and heightened competition.
Who inspired the characters? Belle felt very Nell Diamond-coded.
The characters are a mix of the kinds of women that live in New York. There are certainly public figures that I have been inspired by loosely. Their lives are very Instagrammable and they’re public figures, so I don’t think that anybody is hiding their lifestyle. They’re happy to display what they do every day and how they live. And also I do live in that world. So it wasn’t a far reach for me to sort of recreate this semi-real world of downtown characters, but throw in lots of details about different people.
And it is fun for me, because I kind of want people to think it’s them too, because why not? And to me, to be a character in a book, and to be satirized, that would be like the greatest thing of all time for me.
Which of the three main characters was your favorite to write?
I loved writing Belle the most because she goes through the most change in the book. She’s an aspiring designer who’s from familial wealth, but she really wants her own thing. I found that to be very endearing about her, and she actually suffers the most throughout the book and comes out the most changed. I know people find her slightly annoying, but she was just delicious to write. I felt for her throughout the journey that she went on, and I just loved her so much.
I know a few Belles and I’m not sure what they’re so unhappy about.
I’m not asking people to feel bad for these women because they have everything. But there comes a point where your self-worth is… it’s difficult to find what, who you are and what you want to do. If you have so much money that you have to do nothing, you can flounder a little bit in that. I know people like this, and again, I somewhat envy them because I’m not in that position, but it is a real thing and it doesn’t mean that they’re not feeling that pain and feeling that existential crisis, even though they have all the money in the world. Belle really wanted to prove herself as a person who didn’t have to just be the rich daughter of a rich person or the wife of somebody. I think that’s a real thing within these kinds of wealthy communities for sure.
What’s your research process like? Did any of these crazy scenarios in the book actually happen in real life? Also, you must hear the best gossip!
It’s more a desire for drama than I think the actual drama that I witness in my real life. I have always loved gossip. Everybody does as much as they don’t like to admit it. I love hearing stories. I used to pretend to be asleep on the beach and listen to my mom and her friends gossip about their friends.
A lot of the details of my books are not untrue. I am not part of the scene, but again, close enough to know. The actual world building the houses and the parties and the amounts that people spend on things, that’s all real. It’s not exaggerated.
We have a lot of theme parties in Greenwich but the ones in your book were insane. What’s with the over-the-top events?
I don’t think it was quite as big before the pandemic, and I think it has exploded, and I think the pandemic really sort of shifted how grownups in certain circles acted, like people started doing more drugs, people started going to these crazy parties and decorating their homes. It was like a sort of social scene shakeup and people were like, let’s go wild because for two years we were not allowed out of our homes.
And so then it has just become more the norm for these communities to have crazy parties and it’s documented on social media, so people can see. People like a reason to celebrate and spend money. It doesn’t matter that you’re throwing these enormous parties because you have all that money to spend anyway.
‘Mean Moms’ by Emma Rosenblum.
Flatiron Books
Why do we love rich women behaving badly?
I love when something is dramatic and crazy and it makes it even more fun if it involves this level of privilege because it’s like a train wreck that you can’t look away from. I think it’s why people love The Real Housewives and shows like that, because how is this level of craziness happening to you? Just sit and enjoy your money, but people can’t. They just love to fall upon themselves and mess up their marriages and be mean to their friends. Also, it takes us out of our own quotidian problems. Most of us are worried about the real things so it’s a guilty pleasure to watch the drama of people who don’t have to worry about the little stuff that I worry about.
Your next book takes place in my own backyard-ish. What can you tell me about it?
It’s set in at a country club in Greenwich on a busy Saturday morning. There’s going to be a wedding that night for the 20-something son and daughter of the two royal families of the club. Early in the day, someone falls off the beautiful clubhouse and dies on the front lawn, and the club gets shut down, the police come and it becomes a crime scene.
It’s actually drawn from real life because I heard a story that this had happened in the Hamptons. Someone had sadly committed suicide, but the detail that struck me, where I was like, I could write a book about this, was that the person telling me the story said all the people were so annoyed that they couldn’t leave the club. Like the pervading sentiment was not like, “Oh my God, someone died at our club.” It was like, “This is such an inconvenience to my life because I need to leave to go to get my hair done or pick up my kids from camp.” And I thought that’s actually very funny. (Author’s note: That totally tracks for Greenwich.)