Some people have jobs so cool we'd actually enjoy attending their marathon Zoom meetings. Even the ones that could totally have been an email.
Not to say we don't cherish our all-important responsibility of bringing you every last piece of need-to-know information about the casts of Bridgerton and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, but we don't have our own glam squad or a Rolodex filled with famous names, now do we?
But the impossibly cool people we'll be profiling in E! News' latest series totally do. Plus access to things like private drivers, designer garb and the type of professional titles we'd drop with wild abandon at parties, dinner dates or while chatting with the barista at Starbucks. Welcome to A Day in the Life...
Let's be real: Most first dates generate more can't-wait-to-tell-my-friends-about-this moments than they do success stories. But when beauty and fashion exec Kate Foster met with Scarlett Johansson in January 2020, it was whatever you would call the professional equivalent of love at first sight.
Having spent years untangling herself from previous endorsement deals and undergoing a crash course on the beauty industry, the two-time Oscar nominee was looking for someone experienced to help her launch her own skincare brand—a simple, but effective and clean, everyday system.
And fresh from selling her own startup, product recommendations platform SwearBy, Kate, an alum of beauty and fashion brands like Victoria's Secret and Juicy Couture, was contemplating her next move. So, "we started kind of, like, dating and seeing if we were a fit," she explains.
The result: As perfect a match as that foundation you barely need to blend.
"She is just such a great human and such a great person to work with and collaborate with," Kate raves of Scarlett. "And I think we complement each other in a lot of different ways. So it's really been a true professional highlight for me these last few years."
The apex came March 1 as the two released their baby, The Outset, a gluten-, nut- and cruelty-free prestige skincare line that's akin to "a perfect white tee or a pair of Converse that you can wear every day," explains Kate. "Something that you could dress up, you could dress down, plays well with others."
Ahead of their initial launch—a three-step, botanical-based cleansing regimen inspired by Scarlett's own routine, a night cream and an eye cream—Kate walked E! News through another "wild and frenetic" day at the office. "Really," she admits, "we are on The Outset. It is the beginning of something really exciting and very special."
7 a.m. (EST) Between her 10-year-old daughter, 7-year-old son and one-and-a-half-year-old "COVID rescue puppy," Kate very rarely needs her phone's alarm "because, reliably, at 7, the dog and the kids will be in bed and ready to go," she jokes.
On this particular Thursday, though, she's up and at 'em a bit earlier to have time to run downstairs, down her lemon water, arrange the kids' breakfast and let out the dog before heading back to her room for a Zoom workout session with fellow Brooklynite Morit Summers. "She's a body positive trainer," Kate raves. "With her it's all about strength and not a number on a scale."
8 a.m. As a cool-down, Kate shuttles her crew through their morning routine and school drop-off before swinging back around for her morning manna: A steaming hot cup of decaf coffee. "I don't drink caffeine ever—at all," she says. "It makes me super jittery and I just can't take it, but I love coffee. I love the flavor. And I just really want it every morning."
She pays with cash "because my son is collecting state quarters," Kate notes. And she is rewarded with a Massachusetts coin "which is a big deal. Now there's only 12 more that we have to get."
10 a.m. Back at her Brooklyn townhouse, Kate gets ready for work (including The Outset's three-step routine, obvs: "I am so proud of these products and feel like my skin has never looked better since I started using them last year," she raves) and hops on the subway ("I would just get antsy about being in a car and being in traffic," she explains of her go-to) to prep for the true, um, outset of her day.
Before heading into their very well-appointed office in Manhattan's Flatiron District, Kate rifles through emails ("I have to keep the inbox zero and the texts zero just so that I can keep on top of everything," she says, though admits "my personal email is a whole different story") grabs another coffee and a salad for lunch "before I've even had breakfast," she shares. "Because with our days, it's back-to-back."
12:45 p.m. Her greens stay stored away, though, as Kate powers through a marketing and creative meeting and sessions to look at merchandising for their April launch at Sephora.
With the briefest of openings in her schedule, she settles onto the leather Lulu and Georgia couch in their living room where she and the rest of the 10-person staff often gather for lunch: "It's a nice little hangout spot."
1 p.m. Break's over! Kate's afternoon calendar is packed with an interview as they prepare to staff up, a supply chain meeting ("The word of the year," she says, the timeline is even more complicated when you consider the lengthy product development process required when eliminating common allergens, committing to mindfully designed packaging and remaining cruelty-free) and prep for a board meeting the following week.
3 p.m. 'Sup Scarlett? Once Kate's partner arrives, they hit the conference room (home to the Black Widow actress' "gorgeous" old dining table and chairs) for a product development meeting centered around a formula in their fall launch.
"We've been testing them for weeks and polled people and we were really neck-and-neck with these two submissions," explains Kate. "So we did a blind test with Scarlett again to see if the one she liked before was the one she liked again. And it was, so we all felt very good."
Adding that to the win column, they hustle through an e-commerce meeting and prep for the next day's photo shoot before retreating to their shared office for more board meeting chatter.
6 p.m. Shot on iPhone: Back out in the living room, Scarlett—one of Dress For Success' newest global ambassadors—films some videos for the brand. "This idea of The Outset, where you begin again, we felt such alignment with Dress For Success in what they do to help women begin again and start anew," explains Kate. "So we're partnering with them as well as an environmental organization, One Tree Planted."
Then the real star arrives. When Scarlett's babysitter turns up with 6-month-old Cosmo, her son with husband Colin Jost, "Everybody comes away from their desk," says Kate. "He's just the cutest and so smiley and we're passing him around like a little football."
Kate snags some extra face time, walking Scarlett over to the restaurant where she's meeting up with 7-year-old daughter Rose for dinner. "She and I walked for blocks and blocks and just talked about, you know, the higher-level co-founder stuff," says Kate. "She's so collaborative and just as open to new ideas. And is just such an incredible partner. I couldn't be more fortunate."
7 p.m. A quick ride on the subway later (during which she texts with one of the college-aged aspiring entrepreneurs she mentors), Kate "high-fives" her baby-sitter and reconnects with husband Roger Lengyel for the evening wind-down.
One crucial element: A tequila and soda made with the rosado from her friend's newly launched libation Casa Rica. Settled together on the couch, they enjoy dinner and an episode or two of TV (The Simpsons is a fixture) before the kids' nighttime routine that includes reading her son a selection from the I Survived series, "these adventure books for kids that are rooted in actual historical events," describes Kate. "It's really fun because I've forgotten more about history than I can remember at this point. So I'm actually learning things while I'm reading to my kid."
10 p.m. The couple's nighttime routine looks pretty similar to a lot of duo's, two years deep into a global pandemic. Cracking open their laptops, they answer work emails while doing a quick state of the household. "My husband and I connect and kind of have our family meeting about, 'Oh, this is what the kids need,' or, ‘We need a new toaster oven!' All that kind of stuff," says Kate. "So it's just this mish-mosh of family stuff and work stuff. It just all blends together."
But when she's done, she's done, reading exactly one chapter of her current book before "I'm out like a light," she says.
Which is good, as these days her beauty sleep feels especially crucial as she readies herself to manage a brand that's in market and ramping up to future releases. "In a way, even though it's wild and frenetic, I do kind of appreciate that it's also a little bit civilized and a little bit calmer," she says of the pre-launch period. "Because once it's out, the train has left the station. There's no putting that genie back in the bottle."