Mention the name Jill Kargman, and you’ll get one of two reactions: “Who?” or “Oh my God, she’s hilarious!” The Upper East Side multi-hyphenate is a journalist, novelist, essayist, satirist, TV personality, actor, social media influencer and lifelong summer resident of Nantucket, and if you’re one of those people who don’t know who she is, you’re missing out on some serious laughs.

Before her TV show, Odd Mom Out, began airing on Bravo in 2015, Kargman was already a known quantity within certain circles, having amassed an impressive collection of bylines in magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and having written such irreverent pop-lit novels as Wolves in Chic Clothing and The Right Address, both with Carrie Karasyov, and The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund, Arm Candy and The Rock Star in Seat 3A on her own.

However, the cult success of her TV show catapulted her into the select and subversive kind of pop-cultural stardom enjoyed by the likes of Amy Sedaris and Billy Eichner. Kargman has also been compared to other “voices of their generation,” like Lena Dunham and Pamela Adlon, who share a similarly fish-out-of-water, irascible but lovable ingenuousness.

When faced with the suggestion that she is, in fact, a bit of a big deal, Kargman responds: “I’m a middle-aged woman on basic cable.” This sardonic quip is characteristic, and her deft hand at exposing herself and her milieu in magazine articles and essays or on TV, without coming across as affected or self-involved, is the secret to her success. Years ago, she published an article in Town & Country about spending the holidays in Sun Valley, Idaho, with close family friends Teresa Heinz and John Kerry. Around the same time, she chronicled the process of decorating her Upper East Side townhouse for Elle Decor. In both articles, she managed to be laugh-out-loud funny without coming across as obnoxious.

When I tell her this, her response is “Thank God. There’s nothing worse than sounding like a douchebag.” Despite her snarky-saturnine persona, Kargman insists, “I’m actually really smiley. Humor comes before all the other stuff. My aesthetic might be gloom and doom, but humor comes first. I think I appreciate life more because I come from such a morbid family. Appreciating death makes you enjoy life more.”

Odd Mom Out was based on her novel Momzillas. On the show, which ran for three seasons, Kargman played a fictionalized version of herself named Jill Weber, who marries into the sort of snobby family that thinks it’s desperately important to tack a “von” onto their last name. Kargman’s wit surgically burst the bubble of the absurdly coddled, cannibalistically competitive Manhattan elite. It was more realistic than the Real Housewives (although they do share some common DNA) and infinitely more entertaining.

Part of what makes Kargman such a keen observer of that world is that she grew up in it but has never really been of it. Her father, Arie Kopelman, was the president and chief operating officer of Chanel, and her mother, ironically named Coco, is an admired figure in New York’s philanthropic and social circles (hence, their daughter’s elevated, unerring fashion sense and unique style). Picture Fran Lebowitz, only beautifully dressed. Kargman is a fashion royalty princess crossed with a disaffected thrash-metal rocker. She attended the elite, all-girls Spence School and then Yale, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in art history. Her senior year, she was at a dinner party with then Vogue editor Amy Astley (now editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest). “She was talking about that kid who had gotten caned in Singapore, and how no writers wanted to go there to do a story she needed done,” Kargman recalls, “and I said, ‘I’ll go.’ That was my first magazine assignment.”

This macabre back story is exactly the kind of detail Kargman relishes. “Growing up, everybody always compared me to Wednesday Addams,” she says. “Personally, I think it’s way more of an Edward Gorey vibe.” No one would disagree that her aesthetic leans toward the Gothic, which makes her unalloyed adoration for Nantucket something of an anomaly. “I don’t like the beach, or sunshine, or sports, or waking up at 5 a.m. to go see whales or whatever. I love the fog, the history, the cobblestones. The lanterns on Main Street. The soul of it has a very strong New England vibe that’s inherently spooky and charming. It’s the dream horror movie set,” she says, adding gleefully, “My whole childhood, there were three competing ghost tours!”

Her paternal grandmother had been a visitor to the island, and her parents bought a house there when Kargman was twelve or thirteen. “Before that, we stayed at the White Elephant,” she says.

“Any island, particularly with a history of whaling, and the sea, and loneliness…there’s something so darkly romantic about it,” Kargman rhapsodizes. “I love rainy days. When it rains on Nantucket, everybody’s bitching, and I’m doing a jig in my Wellies. The only happy people are me and the shopkeepers, because the rain forces people into town.”

Yet she owes a lot more to the island than a lifetime of gloriously gloomy days. It’s where she met her husband, Harry, a digital advertising entrepreneur, originally from Boston. “Our grandmothers played bridge together for fifty years,” Kargman explains, “and they did a bridge weekend on Nantucket. They set us up on a blind date.”

Unlike most such matches, theirs ignited and stayed lit. “Harry also grew up going to Nantucket, and we were at all the same bonfire parties, in the same line for Steamboat Pizza. We were in the same place at the same time but never met. Our third date was on Nantucket, walking on the beach. It was so romantic. Our fifth date was in Paris. It moved pretty quickly.” Twenty years later, the couple have three children: Sadie, 18; Ivy, 15; and Fletch, 14, who adore Nantucket for all the reasons wasted on their mother.

“They live for it,” Kargman says. “Nantucket’s their happy place. They love the beach, surfing, swimming, tennis, sunshine—normal people things.” So what does she do while her kids are off catching waves or swinging at tennis balls? “Power walks with my dad, wandering all the little streets, breaking an ankle on the cobblestones. I love the Whaling Museum. I’m also a big eater, so the restaurants are major to me. Black-Eyed Susan’s, Proprietors, Chanticleer. Proportionally, Nantucket gives New York a run for its money.”

In August 2021, Kargman presided at the wedding of her brother, art consultant Will Kopelman, to Vogue fashion director Allie Michler, at a much-publicized wedding on the island. (Kopelman was previously married to, and has two daughters with, Drew Barrymore. Tellingly, Kargman remains close to Barrymore, appearing on her daytime talk show, and Barrymore, for her part, proclaimed herself president of Michler’s fan club on the Howard Stern Show, saying, “The #NoEvilStepmother is the greatest blessing I could have hoped for.”)

As for the new direction Kargman’s career is taking? During COVID lockdown, her satirical Instagram character Danielle (pronounced “Dzanyelle,” with a thick Great Neck, Long Island, accent) got her 222,000 followers with hilarious takes on speakeasy hair salons, hiding out in the Hamptons, the depredations of high-end takeout and other indignities foisted on entitled New Yorkers. More recently, she filmed a role in an independent film set in a vintage clothing store in Southampton, and she’s currently working on a play. This fall, Kargman is executive producing a movie shot in Boston called Guardian about a stand-up comedian struggling to raise two nieces whose mother is dying of cancer. The combination of death and comedy couldn’t be more on brand for Kargman.

“It’s so funny,” she reflects. “I was in a no-man’s-land in my career when Odd Mom Out happened. I wanted to write essays, but my publisher was pushing me to do more fiction. Instead, I got a job at an ad agency doing copy, and these brilliant directors, Daniel Rosenberg and Tim Piper, encouraged me to work on a TV show. They set up a meeting with Andy Cohen at Bravo. I think he wanted me to do Real Housewives, but somehow, we convinced him to do a scripted comedy. He introduced me to Lara Spotts, and we developed it together. I didn’t start acting till I was forty. So who knows?”

There’s one thing she’s certain of, though: She’ll be buried in Nantucket’s cemetery. “My dad bought us all plots a while ago. My parents toured graveyards the way other people tour colleges. He found a plot that had a ‘great view,’ and once, when I called, he didn’t pick up because he was looking at gravestone fonts. So, I might be a 2-1-2 girl at heart, but my final resting place is in the 5-0-8. I was so psyched when I found out I’d be a worm buffet there.”