Dr. Fauci, Medicine Man?
The COVID czar was one courted for Hollywood stardom, according to his diary entries newly released by a Republican senator and adversary.
Fauci’s suitor: Ari Emanuel.
The WME chief for a time was calling the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director and President Biden chief medical advisor “once every several weeks,” apparently to woo him as a client. Emanuel would regularly tell Fauci that the doctor was leaving money on the table by not producing more books, giving more speeches and consulting on or starring in more TV shows and films.
It is unclear how much Fauci indulged the overtures. Fauci already had been the subject of a film treatment, a 2021 National Geographic documentary looking at his career dating from the AIDS crisis into early COVID. He would later be the subject of a 2023 American Masters on PBS that examines the fallout once his COVID tenure turned political and in 2024 published the memoir On Call, about his decades as a health-care specialist working in government and policy.
The Emanuel nugget comes from Fauci’s diaries released by Kentucky senator Rand Paul, a sharp critic of the medical expert; Paul chairs the Senate’s Homeland Security committee and has initiated an investigation of Fauci’s COVID response policy and subpoenaed the longtime scientist. Laura Ingraham’s former executive producer Tom Elliott amplified the entry on social media.
In the diary entry c. 2021 Fauci laid out Emanuel’s overtures. “Got a call from Ari Emanuel today – He told me that he will be coming to Washington DC in the next month and wants to come over the house for dinner to explain to me how naive I am and not fully appreciating just how much money I can get from book deals films and speeches. Ari has been calling me about once every several weeks to just check in on me and see how I am doing and to maintain the connection. He is very obviously hot to be my agent when I step down from the United States government.”
Fauci will testify this week before the Homeland Security Committee chaired by Paul. As his presence on the Hill involves both celebrity and COVID vaccinations, expect plenty of Republican grandstanding and right-wing online trolling. The diary also describes the Instagram Live appearance Fauci made with Julia Roberts during the pandemic and his contact with an approving Matt Damon and Trevor Noah, among others. These are the kinds of associations conservative critics of Fauci like to cite, even though all they really suggest is that a health-care official recognized the power of Hollywood to get his message out.
Despite unspooling a long and accomplished career, Fauci might have faced headwinds trying to carry out Emanuel’s plan. The doctor of course became a lightning rod to parts of the conservative and anti-vax constituencies who used him as a punching bag for all their bete noirs about COVID policy. And the population that likes him — pro-science people across the political spectrum — were starting in 2022 looking to move past that dark chapter.
Fauci stepped down from his NIAID post at the end of 2022 and segued to a lecturing job at Georgetown. He never signed with Emanuel.
