Richard Lawson

Richard Lawson (born May 31, 1983)

Career Lawson began his writing career at Gawker in 2007. Initially hired onto Gawker's ad sales team, Lawson secretly began participating in Gawker 's active comments section under the handle LolCait, where his writing gained the attention of the editorial staff. After revealing his identity, he began providing editorial content for the site, first by selecting the week's best comments, and eventually becoming a full-time editor. His posts were the most popular on the site, where they garnered 2.4 million viewers each month. He left in July 2009 to work at TV.com for five months, before returning to Gawker. Lawson left the site for the second time in late 2011 to work for The Atlantic Wire as a senior entertainment and culture writer. Four months later, he was hired as the magazine's TV and film critic. In March 2018, he became Vanity Fair 's chief critic. In August 2025, he was laid off from the magazine.

Lawson's debut novel, All We Can Do Is Wait, was released on February 6, 2018 under Razorbill. The book is a YA novel that centers on a group of teenagers in the waiting room of a hospital after a bridge collapse. All We Can Do Is Wait received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road (USA, 2015) 2. Phantom Thread (USA, 2017) 3. Dawson City: Frozen Time (USA, 2016) 4. Melancholia (Denmark, 2011) 5. Parasite (South Korea, 2019) 6. Get Out (USA, 2017) 7. Eden (France, 2014) 8. Force Majeure (Sweden, 2014) 9. Weekend (UK, 2011) 10. Princess Cyd (USA, 2017)

Best of the Year Since becoming a film critic for Vanity Fair, Lawson has marked these films as the best of the year. 2013: Nebraska 2014: Love is Strange 2015: Mad Max: Fury Road 2016: The Meddler 2017: BPM (Beats per Minute) 2018: Roma 2019: Parasite 2020: The Nest 2021: The Worst Person in the World 2022: Tár 2023: May December 2024: I Saw the TV Glow

Personal life Lawson was raised in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston, and attended Boston Latin School and Boston College, before moving to New York City.

Lawson wrote an article that went viral about the personal significance of openly gay Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon during the 2018 Winter Olympics.