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Ashleigh Barty Was On Top of Her Game—Then She Quit


Ashleigh Barty is on top. After dominating the court at the French Open, she outpaced Naomi and Serena and Venus and Sloane to become the number-one female tennis player in the world. But three years ago she wasn’t even in the game.

Barty went pro at 14 and won the Wimbledon junior title at 15—the word prodigy often followed her name. She was quickly anointed as the next great Australian tennis player on her way to GOAT-status when, at 18, she unexpectedly left the game. “As professional tennis players, we are on the road for 30 weeks of the year. It can be tough when you love home as much as I do,” Barty says.

Mark Nolan/Getty Images

Professional athletes, for all their natural abilities, are serious workaholics. After all, to win championships you have to get into the office early and stay late. Every damn day. Given that she’d spent her teens as a perfectionist in a high-stress job, it’s no wonder Barty was burned out and wrestling with depression. So she quit.

In her time away from tennis, Barty sought treatment for depression and casually took up another pro sport: cricket. Refreshed after an 18-month break, she returned to the court, resuming her rise in the ranks and eventually earning a Grand Slam title and the number-one spot earlier this year. Had she not stepped away from tennis to take care of her mental health, there’s no way she’d be here, she told the New York Times. “It’s obviously a part of my life that I needed to deal with, and I feel like it was the best decision that I made at the time,” she said. “It was an even better one to come back.”

In being so open about her decision to step away, Barty has become a new kind of role model in sports—one who proves it’s not all about a breakneck rush to be the best. Now “it is all about balance for me,” Barty says. “I try to get home to Queensland whenever I can to see my family and friends—this is the most important thing for me.”

As much as her Grand Slam titles or her rankings, that will be part of Ashleigh Barty’s legacy. “I hope my legacy,” she says, “is to be remembered as someone who remained true to herself.”

Macaela MacKenzie is a senior editor at Glamour. Follow her on Instagram at @MacaelaMac and Twitter at @MacaelaMack.





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I Was at the Top of My Career. Then I Quit My Job to Travel the World for 13 Months


The logical part of me knew this feeling could just be part of “adulting,” the realization that the bloom can’t stay on the rose forever. But the voice inside me that I’d learned to listen to to get me the career I had said I needed a breather. I told my husband that night that I had to quit. My exact words were, “I need a break. I can’t keep this up. I just want to stop.”

“What happens after that?” he asked. I didn’t know. I’d never quit anything before.

His next question was, “Should we go travel?”

He had worked in the restaurant business his entire life. When he moved to New York from the midwest to be with me two years earlier, he’d taken a job that he didn’t love but that paid the bills. He put in long hours that were at the opposite end of my day. Weekends together were non-existent. As I finished at the office in the early afternoon, he would head into the restaurant. He’d get home around 2 a.m, an hour before I got up for work. Twice we had dates in that late-night-early-morning window: an after-work drink and dinner for him, an early morning coffee and breakfast for me. On one of those occasions we were sitting in a diner near our apartment around 3 a.m. He was eating pancakes and an ice cream sundae; I had a BLT. The TV on the wall suddenly played the all-too-familiar Special Report music and the graphics reserved for breaking news. William and Kate’s first baby had just been born. My phone started to buzz with emails, and the alerts rolled in. Date over. I kissed him goodbye and headed into the studio.

So that night, when he asked, “Should we go travel?” I didn’t hesitate. I pictured a year of uninterrupted dates and going to sleep at the same time.

Yes.

To be clear, I didn’t want to eat, pray, or love. I wasn’t in the dark days of a breakup, and my job hadn’t ended. I didn’t need to find myself. There was no crisis (yet), but I knew that a pre-emptive strike was needed. A pause for pause’s sake. It wasn’t so much an epiphany as that internal voice, telling me this was the right thing to do. It was the same voice that had guided my previous life-changing decisions—studying abroad, moving to New York, marrying my husband. It was always louder and clearer than the strains of fear and anxiety and confusion that often haunt big choices. When this voice spoke, it was never a matter of should we do this, but rather how soon can we?

Over the next few weeks we hatched a plan to leave New York and began to tell family and friends. Some people thought it was completely crazy, that we were being irresponsible. Just as many said they wished they were doing the same. I gave my bosses 10-weeks notice. It was by far the scariest moment of the entire process, not because I had doubts, but because once I uttered the words, I knew there was no going back. (I spent the moments before the meeting panicking in a bathroom stall.) The first executive reacted in disbelief, then said he understood that I might need a break and asked if I wanted to take off a month or two or even six, as a sabbatical. He suggested that he could find a different spot for me at the show, with different hours. I was honest and direct with him: I wanted a year off to travel, and my last day would be mid-January. I think he mistook this announcement as a whim. He ended the meeting encouraging me to think it over. But I’d made up my mind.



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Ellen Pompeo Says the 'Toxic' Environment on Grey's Anatomy Almost Made Her Quit


Ellen Pompeo has spent 14 years (and counting) on Grey’s Anatomy, but in a recent interview she revealed she almost cut her time on the hit show short because of a “toxic work environment.” Speaking to Taraji P. Henson for Variety’s Actors on Actors series, Pompeo revealed there were once “serious culture issues” on set. (Pompeo has played the show’s lead character, Meredith Grey, since the medical drama premiered in 2005.)

“It’s funny, I never wanted off the bus in the year that I could get off,” Pompeo says. “The first 10 years we had serious culture issues, very bad behavior, really toxic work environment. But once I started having kids, it became no longer about me. I need to provide for my family.”

She goes on to explain that she focused on making lasting changes on the show and seeing more results after season 10.

Pompeo as Meredith Grey

Byron Cohen via Getty Images

“After Season 10, we had some big shifts in front of the camera, behind the camera. It became my goal to have an experience there that I could be happy and proud about, because we had so much turmoil for 10 years,” she says. “My mission became, this can’t be fantastic to the public and a disaster behind the scenes. Shonda Rhimes and I decided to rewrite the ending of this story. That’s what’s kept me.”

What’s more, “Patrick Dempsey left the show in Season 11, and the studio and network believed the show could not go on without the male lead. So I had a mission to prove that it could. I was on a double mission.”

Ellen Pompeo talking to Kelly McCreary while directing an episode of Grey's Anatomy

Pompeo directing an episode of Grey’s Anatomy

Mitch Haaseth via Getty Images

Pompeo has spoken out about wage disparities in Hollywood before, which she knows about firsthand: She says at the beginning of the series Dempsey was paid almost double her salary. “He had a television quote. I had never done TV,” she explains.

“I didn’t even realize until we were renegotiating season three,” she says. “No one was offering that up.”

Last year Pompeo became the highest-paid actress on a TV drama when she inked a $20 million deal for the show’s fifteenth and sixteenth seasons. And she’s still focused on changing the culture behind the scenes. “I haven’t been challenged creatively at all,” she says of the show. “Every once in a while we do an amazing storyline. But for the last five years, I’ve had other milestones that we were trying to achieve behind the camera.”



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How to Quit Your Job and Stay Friends With Your Boss


When I first moved to New York City, I worked in book publishing, where I assisted two lovely women (Michelle and Jen, hi!). As clichéd as it sounds, we became like a little family during my year at the company. Once, they took turns cradling me in their arms when I showed up violently hungover to our office Christmas party. (I was 22, and it was the holiday season—what can I say?) Our weekly check-ins became like mini therapy sessions. We even exchanged framed photos from The First Wives Club, our favorite movie, with our faces photoshopped over those of Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton.

When I realized I was ready to move on from that job to pursue my dream of writing here at Glamour, I was a wreck about how to tell them—and petrified that leaving would break our bond. Before I quit, I spent a lot of time thinking about their communication styles and how I could make them feel valued. Gifts and notes were a big part of our relationships, so after I delivered the news face-to-face, I gave each of them a card. I peppered my note with anecdotes about the great times we’d had together, inside jokes, and how their mentorship had prepared me to take on my next role. Now they’re still my biggest cheerleaders. We have dinner at least every other month, they read all of my articles, and I stay just as caught up about their lives. It’s not always easy to let your boss know you’re ready to move on, but the very best ones will still be proud of you, as sad as they are to see you go.

We spoke to former employers and employees who still get happy hour drinks, share memes over DM, and go to one another for advice about how they were able to leave the nest, while still keeping their relationship intact.

Give Your Boss Their Due

“Before I became the editor-in-chief of Glamour, I was the head of social media and director of strategy at CNN. My boss was Meredith Artley, CNN’s editor-in-chief. We worked together for about three and a half years, and I don’t think I could be in this job right now if she hadn’t been my previous boss. When this opportunity at Glamour came up, I was actually really happy in my job—so it was surprising that I was leaving.

“When it came time to tell Meredith I was resigning, she was very excited for me. We both shed some tears, and we were mutually very excited as well as mutually upset that we were no longer going to be working together. But she saw it as a big move for me, because the best bosses are your biggest cheerleaders when you’re with them and when you go onto different, bigger, and better things. It was also really important to me to make sure Meredith knew I wouldn’t be getting this job without her. Don’t be shy about articulating how much this boss meant to you. If you’re leaving because your boss has helped you grow into a place where you can take this next job—like mine did—make sure you say that.

“If you want to remain friends with your boss, make sure it’s not just platitudes when you say you want to stay in touch. I reach out to Meredith all the time. I’m always chasing her for dinner and drinks, so don’t just say it—actually follow up. In my first few months at Glamour, I even went to Meredith for advice about some of the things I wanted to tackle in my new role. Make sure to keep them in your corner.” —Samantha Barry, editor-in-chief of Glamour

Be Real With Them

“I was a project manager at an agency in New Orleans for six months. I worked under the COO, and we were close. She was a great mentor, and I spent most of my days in her office working through problems. When I knew I wanted to leave, I had a conversation with her very early about what I was thinking about for my next step, and was honest that I was toying around with a few ideas. Although she didn’t want me to leave, she was able to give me great advice about following through on what’s best for me. She knew that I needed to spread my wings further and didn’t hold back on encouraging me to leave if I needed to. When I finally put in my resignation, she already knew it was coming. The conversation was mainly filled with advice and encouragement.



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Emma Thompson Quit ‘Luck’ After an Alleged Sexual Harasser John Lasseter Joined the Project


Since the Harvey Weinstein story broke in the fall of 2017, a steady stream of powerful (and often famous) men have been accused of sexual misconduct. But the era of #MeToo has also seen a cycle of redemption and comebacks for some of these accused men. Louis C.K. is back doing stand-up. Ousted CBS chief Les Moonves is already working on a new venture. Brett Kavanaugh is sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now Emma Thompson has reportedly quit an upcoming film project over the hiring of one such man: John Lasseter, the former chief creative officer of Pixar. Allegations about Lasseter first became public knowledge in November 2017, though claims of a “whisper network” surrounding him existed for much longer, after he was accused of “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes.”

Lasseter apologized for his behavior, saying, “I’ve recently had a number of difficult conversations that have been very painful for me. It’s never easy to face your missteps, but it’s the only way to learn from them.” Then, this January, he was hired as the head of Skydance Animation, which is set to produce the film Luck.

That’s where Emma Thompson comes in. The actress was slated to voice one of the characters, but Variety confirms that she dropped out of the project after Lasseter’s hiring. Skydance has not commented on the departure.

She may not have released a big statement about this decision, but it’s major that a Hollywood A-lister of Thompson’s caliber is walking away from what is likely a lucrative deal in response to the hiring of a man with sexual harassment allegations. This is one powerful way allies in positions of influence can show support for the survivors who have been brave enough to speak out about inappropriate behavior.

We hope to see more of that in 2019.



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Ruby Rose Quit Twitter After Getting Bullied About Her Batwoman Casting


Earlier this week, The CW announced that it had cast Ruby Rose as Batwoman in a new television special premiering this December and possibly for a forthcoming series that is currently in development. Because the modern incarnation of the character is an out lesbian, Rose, who identifies as a lesbian, could play the first openly gay superhero to headline an entire TV show. However, the news has also drawn a wave of backlash—and now the intense criticism seems to have driven Rose off of Twitter.

Rose was emotional as she shared the news of her casting on Instagram on Wednesday. Later, she went on The Tonight Show and got a little tearful talking about what the new role means to her in terms of LGBTQ+ representation. “I feel like the reason I kept getting so emotional is that growing up, watching TV, I never saw someone on TV that I could identify with, let alone a superhero, you know?” she said.

But shortly after the announcement got around, Twitter skeptics chimed in about the casting. Many noted that the Batwoman character—whose real name is Kate Kane—was actually reintroduced into the DC Comics world as being of Jewish descent, which Rose is not. Others questioned Rose’s acting skills, and some brought up one of Rose’s tweets from 2013 that seemed to out another entertainer. A #RecastBatwoman hashtag started circulating, with people also wondering why the role couldn’t have gone to a lesser-known LGBTQ+ actress in need of an acting break. Critics also accused Rose of not being a lesbian since she also refers to herself as gender-fluid (to be clear: It is 100 percent up to an individual how they define their gender and sexual identities—if they choose to define them at all).

It got to the point where Rose quit Twitter—something people picked up on on Saturday. She’d issued a last tweet on Friday: “Where on earth did ‘Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can’t be Batwoman’ come from — has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with ‘she’s too gay’ how do y’all flip it like that? I didn’t change.” Her Instagram is still active, but the comments have been disabled.

The CW hasn’t said anything about the controversy, but it did post a promo on its Instagram on Wednesday.

There were also plenty of supporters who had Rose’s back and sympathized with her.

Cyber-bullying is never OK, especially when it attacks someone’s identity as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Here’s hoping that Rose is taking the time and space she needs.

Related Stories:

We Asked Ruby Rose: Would You Rather Give Up Sex or Booze?

Ruby Rose Just Teared Up Talking About Her Batwoman Casting

Ruby Rose Has Been Cast as Batwoman, the First Openly Gay Superhero to Headline a TV Show





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