“Truth is stranger than fiction. That’s a known thing for a reason,” says Dakota Fanning. We are speaking a few days before the premiere of Last Looks, a series on Quibi that looks at real-life crimes in the fashion industry for which The Alienist star is both narrator and executive producer. (It is also produced by Refinery29.)

The show is made up of 18 episodes, with five(ish)-minute installations dedicated to covering the stories of six women. Subjects range from Anna Delvey, a faux heiress who swindled thousands of dollars from New York’s upper class (while decked out in Celine and Alexander Wang), to Patrizia Reggiani, who went from being called “Lady Gucci” to “Black Widow” after being convicted of arranging to kill her ex-husband and Gucci fashion brand heir, Maurizio Gucci, in 1998. Their stories are told through recreations and by people familiar with each case.

“Even though the shows are quite short, I think that you do get a full picture of who these people are. It’s not a one-dimensional look at each person, you really do get to see all sides,” says Fanning. “I think the show does its best to delve into their psyche and try to understand why they do the things that they do.”

The other stories include the tragic cases of Vicki Morgan, model and the mistress of Alfred S. Bloomingdale, heir to the Bloomingdale’s fortune, who was murdered in 1983; Christa Worthington, a fashion writer who was killed in Cape Cod in 2002; Ruslana Korshunova, a Russian model who died by suicide in 2008 shortly after joining a cult; and Sylvie Cachay, an aspiring fashion designer murdered in 2010.

Below, we speak to Fanning about what led her to join the project, the current fascination with true crime, and the dark underside of fashion. Continue reading  »