Welcome to Mastermind 17
Kaia Gerber and Adam Scott star on the covers of Mastermind 17, an issue bursting with interviews and features examining performance and perception – alongside exceptional fashion photography.
Photographed by Craig McDean
For Severance fans — and Reddit knows there are a lot of them — Mastermind’s new issue may shed some light on the countless unanswered questions posed by last week’s season two finale. Appearing on one of issue 17’s two covers is Adam Scott, who plays Mark Scout in the AppleTV+ series which has become a cultural phenomenon.
Mastermind 17 is available for online pre-order now, and will arrive on shelves worldwide from early April onwards.
For Scott, the role is a culmination of decades of performances in film and television hits. “This role is everything I’ve always wanted to do, and I knew it would take everything I have – everything I’ve learned over 30 years – to do it right,” he says.
Questions of performance also reverberate through the magazine’s second cover story featuring Kaia Gerber. Already established as one of her generation’s leading models, Gerber has made a promising leap to the world of cinema and television.
“Having worked since I was a kid, I’ve always felt a sense of performance – performing as an adult or performing as maybe smaller than I actually am to make everyone else feel comfortable,” she tells director Halina Reijn — who, as a former actor, is no stranger to questions of performance herself.
Filmmakers take a central role in issue 17. Alongside Reijn, the magazine features Ava DuVernay, David Cronenberg, Costa-Gavras, Jeanne Herry and Lina Soualem, as well as several actors who have stepped behind the camera: Rebecca Hall, Hiam Abbass, Sandrine Kiberlain and Ariane Labed. All these conversations remind us that behind each film we see is a visionary deciding how we see it.
Another chapter dedicated to the five senses further interrogates the ways in which we perceive the world. It features five impressive figures who make sense of things through their sense of taste (chef Alain Ducasse), hearing (musician Jamie xx), sight (makeup artist Peter Philips), touch (artist Dahye Jeong) and scent (perfumer Olivier Polge).
Throughout all this, Mastermind 17 boasts pages and pages of new fashion imagery that are by turns artistic and experimental (David Sims), tender and romantic (Jody Rogac), bold and timeless (Craig McDean), daring and otherworldly (Julien Martinez Leclerc).
In Severance, workers are offered the chance to disconnect from their lives, if only while at work. Mastermind promises the opposite. This issue is an invitation to engage, deeply and thoughtfully, with reality, so you may better understand our world’s riddles, mysteries and enigmas. Are you in?
Pre-order Mastermind 17 now. In the first image, Kaia wears T-shirt and trousers by Bottega Veneta, sweatshirt by Carhartt WIP and jewelry by Tiffany & Co.