Olivia Nuzzi Details RFK Jr. Affair in New Book

More than a year after losing her job at New York magazine after admitting to an alleged personal relationship with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., journalist Olivia Nuzzi is telling her side of the story.

In a profile published Friday, Nov. 14, The New York Times previews her new book, American Canto, which comes out Dec. 2, for the first time. Nuzzi, who was recently hired as the new West Coast editor at Vanity Fair, told the Times she wrote the book in secret in Los Angeles — where she says she retreated to after the scandal broke.

According to the Times, she writes that her romantic relationship with Kennedy began after she interviewed him for a long-form feature published in November 2023.

Kennedy has been married to actress Cheryl Hines since 2014, while Nuzzi was engaged at the time to fellow political journalist Ryan Lizza, whom she would go on to sue in September 2024 as their relationship dissolved in public view. (She eventually dropped her protective order against Lizza.)

American Canto documents the now-health secretary's alleged digital relationship with Nuzzi, as well as what she witnessed in "Trumpworld," according to the Times.

Nuzzi, 32, alleges in the book that Kennedy said "I love you" first, called her "Livvy," wrote her poems and promised to take a bullet for her. She also credits him with saying he wanted to have her baby, despite suggesting that she and Kennedy — who is 39 years her senior — never consummated their relationship, the Times reports.

Nuzzi reportedly writes that she and Kennedy chose their favorite parts of each other — hers was his nose, while his was her mouth — and they shared a "common language, common skepticisms, common ideas about what was beautiful, common beliefs about what was valuable," according to the Times.

It remains unclear how their alleged fling became public in September 2024, though Nuzzi blames Lizza, according to the Times.

She was fired in October 2024 after spending weeks on leave. The same month that she departed the publication, she filed her protective order against Lizza, alleging he had hacked into her devices to find personal information and tried to blackmail her back into a relationship after their engagement ended.

Lizza denied the accusations, calling them "defamatory lies." The Times reported in its story Friday that Nuzzi did not offer evidence to support her claims.

Nuzzi also writes that she and Kennedy disclosed personal details about their lives: He allegedly told her that he still uses psychedelics and smoked dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. She shared with him that she “liked uppers" and took Adderall, according to the Times.

She writes in the book that she provided him advice about how to manage campaign issues, but told the Times that she and Kennedy are no longer in touch and it's been a year since she last spoke with him.

When the scandal broke publicly last fall, before they cut off communication, she seemingly offered to help him get through the backlash, claiming in her book that he had said, "If it's just sex, I can survive it," according to the Times.