A Comprehensive List of Everyone Ari Emanuel Puts on Blast in His New Book

In his no-holds-barred memoir, the Hollywood superagent has choice words for Donald Trump and Michael Eisner, among many others.GQ; Getty ImagesAri Emanuel makes a lot of calls.For nearly four decades, the Hollywood superagent—best known outside Tinseltown as the inspiration for Ari Gold on Entourage—has made a career out of it. “On a typical day in November, I might roll a hundred calls,” he writes in his new memoir, the aptly titled Roll the Calls. During TV hiring season: “Now it’s three hundred.” During Endeavor’s IPO, his “normal three hundred calls a day increases by another hundred.” Extrapolate those numbers over his decades-long career and you’re somewhere in the millions of calls.Emanuel’s book—written with J.R. Moehringer, the ghostwriter behind Andre Agassi’s Open and Prince Harry’s Spare—keeps up the count. He calls Larry David 50 times trying to sign him. Oprah gets at least eight. His future first wife, Sarah, gets a call “every day for the last eight months”—roughly 240—while she is still “almost engaged” to someone else. Sometimes it’s love at first call: Emanuel rings Mark Wahlberg, they meet, hit it off, and he signs him “on the spot.”If the phone is Emanuel’s tool, rage is his fuel. It’s also the first word of Roll the Calls—”every story starts with rage,” he claims, making reference to The Iliad—and a theme Emanuel returns to throughout the book. But so is another four-letter R-word: “read.” Emanuel has difficulty reading, the 65-year-old reveals, which he attributes to his dyslexia. A school bully taunts him: “RETARD can’t READ.” And at a Passover seder, his mother implores him to recite the Four Questions. Later, his brother Rahm—former Mayor of Chicago and Chief of Staff to Barack Obama—takes the joke public by announcing on stage that Ari “can’t read anything more than two hundred pages.”All of this makes the length of Roll the Calls somewhat sadistic. So, for anyone who'd just rather jump on a call than endure the book’s 417 pages, what follows is a selective call sheet of the famous and powerful people Emanuel praises, insults, threatens, flatters, represents, fires, and, well, calls.BEVERLY HILLS, CA - SEPTEMBER 15: Agent Ari Emanuel and writer/director/producer Michael Moore arrives at Overture Films' LA Premiere of "Capitalism: A Love Story" held at AMPAS Samuel Goldwyn Theater on September 15, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Overture)Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesAri EmanuelOn his morning routine: “Upon waking, drink two bottles of mineral water, do forty minutes of stretching, do ten minutes of dynamic warm-ups, do a regimen of extremely difficult breath work, then dive into the sauna, then twenty minutes of meditation, then ten minutes in the ice plunge, then twenty minutes of infrared light therapy, then a protein shake with coffee and vitamins, topped off with a cup of live worms, to eat the bad bacteria in my gut.” Self-care or self-own?Jeremy PivenThough Emanuel had met Piven only once, he’s startled by the accuracy of his Entourage portrayal: “God knows, I do hold my BlackBerry like that. Fuck, that does look like one of my hand-stitched Domenico Vacca suits.” His review: “Not what I’d call a flattering portrait.”Vince McMahonEmanuel and McMahon hit it off immediately over wrestling and rage. “Wrestling without rage is just cuddling,” Emanuel declares. “Business without rage, same deal.”Michael OvitzWhen Emanuel quits CAA, Michael Ovitz, one of the agency’s cofounders, tells him he’s finished in this town.” Emanuel hoists a chair over his head and says, “I’m going to destroy this motherfucking office.” He concludes, “You can plan for a lot of things, but you cannot plan for crazy.”Tom CruiseA young Emanuel encounters Cruise while interviewing at CAA: “Tom Fucking Cruise.” He describes him as “yoked,” with a stomach “like a sheet of iron,” looking as if he’d been through “some kind of celebrity firming-fluffing-pumping machine” and glowing “like the aurora borealis mixed with a disco ball.”WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA - MARCH 02: (EXCLUSIVE ACCESS, SPECIAL RATES APPLY) Ari Emanual and Larry David attend the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Graydon Carter on March 2, 2014 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/VF14/WireImage)Kevin Mazur/VF14Oprah WinfreyEmanuel is a fan: “So gracious, in fact, you risk forgetting how damn smart she is. The world is full of gracious people who don’t know shit.” Trying to woo her as a client, he, of course, makes several phone calls, eventually escalating his methods when he sends a full-length mirror to Winfrey’s house with a card: “Take a good long look at yourself.” She signs.Taylor Swift“She fired us,” Emanuel tells his Swiftie personal assistant after WME acquired IMG and Swift insisted on keeping her representation unchanged. For once, Ari takes no for an answer. “Even though she was a kid, accompanied by her mother, Swift radiated power,” he gushes. “Few people have that. Oprah. Obama. Tom Cruise. Short list.”MadonnaEmanuel calls Madonna “a good actress, okay?” Still, when his client Peter Berg wants to suggest his then-girlfriend for American Beauty, Ari repeatedly warns him not to bring her up. Berg does anyway. His report? “They all leaned away from me, Ari. In their chairs. Like, in unison. They all leaned away.”Larry DavidOfficiating Emanuel’s wedding, David calls the groom a “mutant,” a “freak of nature,” and a “cunt,” which Emanuel’s mother amusingly mishears as “count.” But David concedes that, in spite of all this, he loves Emanuel dearly. The cunt count climbs: “No matter how bad things are, I say to myself, I have the Cunt. The Cunt will fix it.”Michael MooreTheir relationship begins with aspersions cast at a bar in Aspen: “Michael Moore! You fucking antisemite!” Not long after Moore becomes his client, Ari sends him a treadmill desk because, he explains, “I wanted him to take care of himself.”HOLLYWOOD, CA - NOVEMBER 17: Actor-producer Mark Wahlberg (L) and talent agent and Co-CEO of William Morris Endeavor, Ari Emanuel attend the premiere of "Patriots Day" at AFI Fest 2016, presented by Audi at The Chinese Theatre on November 17, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for AFI)Michael Kovac/Getty ImagesMark WahlbergEmanuel calls Wahlberg after Boogie Nights, describing him as “handsome, charismatic, funny” and capable of “one million sit-ups.” In one memorable scene, Wahlberg orders several bottles of Pétrus—“somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000” each—and charges them to Harvey Weinstein. “Revenge,” he says, raising his glass.Harvey WeinsteinIn an early meeting, Weinstein answers the door with his “shirt covered with crumbs and stains.” Emanuel notes that, whenever he sees the disgraced superproducer, “he’s been eating something and wearing chunks of it.” The whole thing, he says, is “a master class in slovenliness.” Years later, he refers to Weinstein as “the town’s most prolific sexual predator, trapping people in his suite at the Peninsula and barging into ladies’ rooms at Cannes like the fucking Kool-Aid Man.” Oh, yeah!Michael EisnerEmanuel recalls a grumpy Eisner “violently stabbing at his Caesar salad” in a Mickey Mouse necktie while warning him to stay away from Fahrenheit 9/11. After fighting over the film, Ari discovers he’s “banned. Permanently. From Disney.” His conclusion: “Ergo, Eisner’s a dick.”Jim WiattOn his former boss at ICM: “I know Wiatt thinks his blue blazer makes him look sporty, yachty, suave, but it’s less Cary Grant than Captain Kangaroo. In addition, the lapels are always coated with a layer of white flakes.” Elsewhere he calls him a “motherfucking dim bulb.” And when Wiatt’s departure is said to have created a power vacuum: “Vacuum? I mean, the guy sucks, I guess that’s a vacuum?”Nikki FinkeEmanuel describes Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke as “a troll with her own website,” one she runs out of a “one-bedroom apartment, which, she never leaves” and where “her deputy editor is her cat.” Despite her “abrasive, psychotic personality,” he concedes that Deadline is “a fucking force.” Adding insult to injury: “She’s deeply cruel; nothing makes her happier than ruining someone’s day, unless maybe it’s ruining someone’s career.”Harvey Weinstein and Ari Emmanuel (Photo by J. Vespa/WireImage)J. VespaJeffrey KatzenbergEmanuel introduces Katzenberg by describing his “giant head” and recalling that someone called him Michael Eisner’s “golden retriever.” He later calls him a “glad-handing phony” and groups him in with Harvey Weinstein. They're “just fucking bullies,” he declares.Barry DillerHe notes that Diller’s lawsuits against him “went nowhere, much like Diller’s career in the last decade,” then calls him “a smug, pedantic bureaucrat” who’s little more than “a mélange of old farts and bad ideas.”Mel GibsonAfter Gibson’s 2006 arrest, Emanuel describes him with “breath like a dragon, eyes like two fried eggs, bottle of tequila sitting on the shotgun seat of his new Lexus,” and dismisses his subsequent apologies as “one bullshit, the other horseshit.” Years later, after WME inherits Gibson as a client, Emanuel finds him “respectful, contrite,” until more recordings emerge. They drop him.Kanye WestAfter West posts that he’s going “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”—“whatever the fuck that means,” Emanuel writes—Emanuel publishes an essay in the Financial Times calling on the entertainment industry to stop working with him. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by and let Kanye make antisemitism cool again,” he announces.Barack ObamaAt the White House, Emanuel pitches Obama on his post-presidency, telling him he’ll make him “a fucking billionaire.” But Obama is more starstruck by Mark Shapiro and interrupts Emanuel to tell him, “You want to know my favorite show in the world? Pardon the Interruption. On ESPN!”BEDMINSTER TOWNSHIP, NJ - NOVEMBER 20: (L to R) President-elect Donald Trump shakes hands with Ari Emanuel, co-CEO of William Morris Endeavor, following their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, November 20, 2016 in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesDonald TrumpTrump calls Emanuel out of the blue after hearing about the deal he got Conan O’Brien, complaining that NBC shows him “no respect.” The two begin working together. After Trump wins the presidency, he wonders if, now, he’s officially Emanuel’s biggest client. “Not even close, Mr. President,” he shoots back, and drops him. “I tell him I’ve never dropped a client with such ease. And I tell him that I didn’t vote for him.”Benjamin NetanyahuWhile accepting an award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 2024, Emanuel recalls delivering “the most withering rebuke I can” of Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza as members of the audience hiss, boo, and walk out. “I’m a self-loving Jew, who loves Israel to my core,” he insists. “But I also love the children of Gaza.”Elon MuskIn 2008, Emanuel is over his Prius but feels guilty about going back to gas, so he cold-calls Musk after reading about Tesla and eventually buys “the eleventh car that rolled off his assembly line.” Musk later attends Emanuel’s wedding and even flies to Mykonos to spend a bromantic day with him on his honeymoon. He concedes, however, that he “didn’t foresee him taking a hard turn to the right.”Jeff BezosAt a Hollywood party, Lauren Sánchez—then married to Emanuel’s partner Patrick Whitesell—excitedly points out Bezos. Emanuel, furious over an Amazon deal that had fallen apart, responds, “Fuck that guy.” He confronts Bezos, who pleads ignorance. The two later make peace, forcing Emanuel to reconsider “Kill Jeff Bezos” on his to-do list.Patrick WhitesellEmanuel spends much of the book praising his longtime partner as “the Black Mamba of Agents.” But things sour after Emanuel attends Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s engagement brunch on the Amazon exec’s yacht. Soon afterwards, their decades-long partnership implodes, with Emanuel accusing Whitesell of planning to “knife me in the back.” His contribution to the company, Emanuel determines, amounts to “nothing. NOTHING.”Sign up for Manual to receive useful advice on style, health, and more, six days a week.