Luke Leifeste’s Excellent Adventure
Luke Leifeste is feeling contemplative these days. A bona fide member of New York City’s elite creative class, this 20-something’s near non-stop hard work over the last decade has allowed him to cross a heady number of items off his bucket list in relatively rapid succession. His is an excellent adventure story of natural talent and incredible opportunities … plus plain old, Oklahoma-style good manners and elbow grease.
The Tulsa native left home for New York University in 2011, and his career took off almost immediately—probably to the surprise of no one. Leifeste, a proud graduate of Booker T. Washington High School, is after all in possession of the senior superlatives “most involved” and “most likely to become president.” He was also senior class president, Key Club President, Mr. Hornet (AKA homecoming king), earned an International Baccalaureate Program diploma and a member of the varsity swim team.
High school was a wonderful, formative time for Leifeste. ““I feel truly blessed to have been given the opportunity to attend Booker T. and experience that school’s rich history and academic and athletic excellence," he says. "The diversity and tapestry of that school is just incredible, and so meaningful to me. Nothing could've better prepared me for college in New York City, and the real world in general. I'm super grateful to my parents for guiding my path to BTW.”
As a youngster he and his little sister Lauren spent their free time making movies with a hand-held camera. Looking back, it all makes sense. “My sister is actually visiting right now, and she often harkens back to all the shows and home movies I made her be a part of,” says Leifeste. “She was always my sidekick and creative partner. My parents gifted me with a little camera when I was very young and I started making little film projects, rallying the neighbors and putting on programs in the basement. I’ve always kind of had that creative juice, I guess.”
Leifeste is a natural-born connector of people, ideas and places. He’s a calm person, a Libra, who speaks in a slightly measured, relaxed-yet-intentional way. “I like connecting the dots with projects at work, but also with people—and I guess maybe I have a gift of being able to see where those connections can take place and thinking up bigger things to come out of those.”
For the past two years, he’s worked as the entertainment editor for Architectural Digest and GQ, a kind of Conde Nast double agent, as he puts it. It’s a big job. Leifeste and his team serve as a sort of central casting and scheduling for the two titles, booking celebrity talent, running the production on-site at photo shoots and making sure everyone is happy with the results.
“One of the most gratifying aspects of my job is being a part of a story from the ideation phase through the booking through the production—and then finally when it’s out in the world and you get your hands on a physical copy, or you see it hit the internet, and you can watch the audience respond in real time and, every once and a while, spark a little cultural moment and allow people to experience that. It’s pretty neat.”
Does he get ever nervous around celebrities? After all, he’s worked with everyone from Lil Nas X to Megan Fox. Turns out, he remains sanguine. “I’m always excited to meet the individuals we have the opportunity to work with, but I realized pretty quickly that everyone is just a human being. The sheen of fame sort of falls to the side at some point. The gift is in meeting and interacting with people as people.”
Like many creatives, Leifeste enjoys the craft and collaborative nature of print magazine work. “It’s all about relationships, which I love,” he says. “We’re responsible for maintaining relationships with Hollywood publicists, record labels, TV networks, sports agencies, and then being able to work with those people to book their talent. My team is on the ground for every major print shoot to liaise with talent and their reps and ensure that everything goes smoothly. During the pandemic, we were producing some shoots completely remotely and were sometimes unable to have people from our physical team on the ground, which was challenging, but we made it work.”
He spent the first year of the pandemic back home in Tulsa, making things work from his parents’ dining room table. Now he divides his time between NYC, Los Angeles and Tulsa. The slower, weirder pace of the pandemic, which has called into question the relevance of geography, has also left Leifeste with a bit of a big “Now what?” Intriguing.
Leifeste just returned from a trip to T-town, where he visited the Woody Guthrie Center and toured the soon-to-open OKPOP Museum. He loves that it will allow Oklahoma to celebrate some of its pop-culture swagger. “It will be an ode to all things Oklahoma, pop-culture related … I always love connecting with that history and legacy,” he says. “it’s really neat to think about the influences that Oklahomans have had on the larger culture. You think about someone like Woody Guthrie, similar to Will Rogers, who was just an Oklahoma boy with humble roots who went on to become a global phenomenon—it’s crazy to think about.”
Like most of us who call it home, Leifeste gets that there’s something magical about Oklahoma. “My friends in New York and L.A. like to joke about how often I bring up Tulsa and Oklahoma, but I do think there’s something special our state and my hometown. I don’t know what it is; it’s hard to put your finger on. It’s a culmination. Oklahoma, in so many ways, represents the fabric of America.”
Leifeste, once again anchored in New York, is now a denizen of the ultimate cool-kid neighborhood: NYC’s infamous “Dimes Square,” a Lower East Side neighborhood which prompted this from Interview Magazine: “The area of Lower Manhattan that sits at the intersection of Canal and Division Street, named after the eponymous restaurant, is a place many New Yorkers love to hate … But to some, Dimes Square is the epicenter of a certain strain of New York’s downtown creative class.” It’s even got its own self-parodying newspaper, The Drunken Canal.
Dimes Square is a trendy area that’s been profiled—and lampooned—much like other “it neighborhoods” of the past. When he mentions that’s where he lives, you can hear the amusement in his voice and see it on his face. He’s in on the joke, and is clearly entertained, but perhaps not too impressed. In a way, it’s exactly that brand of awareness and mirth that makes him so successful. Of course, we know what it is: It’s the Oklahoma in him.
Bucket List: Leifeste Style
Working at NBC: “My dream was to be an NBC Page and to work on Saturday Night Live, and that ended up being my first job out of college. A week after graduation at NYU I started at NBC, and I was the real-life incarnation of Kenneth the Page from ‘30 Rock,’ bangs and all.” Leifeste had the chance there to work across various NBC broadcast properties including “The Today Show” and “Saturday Night Live,” and he worked in the NBC News Election Unit throughout the 2016 election.Of his time at SNL he says, “Everyone from Ryan Gosling to Adele to Donald Trump passed through during my time at the show, but one of the biggest highlights was working closely with the SNL cast members who put the show on their back week after week.” Fun fact: his first week at SNL he crossed paths with fellow Oklahoman Wayne Coyne, frontman for The Flaming Lips.
Met Gala: “I worked it a few years ago with GQ and covered the red carpet—that was quite an experience for sure, to see that up close. I will say my legs were really hurting after posting up on the cement steps for four hours, but it was worth it!”
Working for Conde Nast: “It's very fun and oftentimes surreal working in the fast-paced editorial environment at One World Trade Center, which we like to call 'The Content Tower.' All the brands under the Condé Nast umbrella--including Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, in addition to GQ & Architectural Digest--are under one roof there. My job sits under a central talent booking group but we are embedded within our respective brands on a day-to-day basis, and work directly for our Editor in Chiefs. We are responsible for managing anything that touches celebrity talent with our brands, we are owning those relationships, negotiating throughout the booking process, securing the talent and also running point on the production of shoots, whether that be a global print cover, an inside feature, a web piece or video content.”
Hanging out with Wes Studi: “I had the chance to work with Oklahoma native Wes Studi last summer on a really incredible 10-page GQ fashion spread. It was an icon profile celebrating Studi’s legendary career—and it was amazing to share that with a fellow Okie and one of the foremost Indigenous actors. We also brought on Tommy Orange, the acclaimed author and Pulitzer finalist who also has Oklahoma ties, to write the story, which was awesome.”