Dawn O’Porter was an “uncool” 11-year-old when Amanda de Cadenet presented The Word, but now they’re firm friends. As Amanda returns to our screens, Dawn interviews her for Stylist

Photography: Steve Schofield Words: Dawn O’Porter

Forget, for a second, cycling shorts and 2 Unlimited and you can’t deny the Nineties had an edge. It was, after all, the decade that saw fashion channelling heroin chic and Madonna branch into er, sex, and it was all epitomised on a TV programme we weren’t really allowed to watch called The Word. It was the show where Kurt Cobain once declared Courtney Love “the best f*** in the world” and people licked strangers’ sweaty belly buttons because they’d “do anything to get on television”. But perhaps the most fascinating thing about this cult show was its female presenter, a girl called Amanda de Cadenet, who got the job aged just 17. By the time the show was taken off air in 1995, Amanda had married Duran Duran’s John Taylor (she was 19), given birth to their daughter Atlanta and decamped to Los Angeles. She then got divorced, dated our ultimate nostalgia crush, Keanu Reeves, and became the face of the Nineties’ wild child, with every teenage girl living vicariously through the tabloid version of her life.

One of those teenage girls was Dawn O’Porter, who despite being “young and particularly uncool” at the height of The Word’s success, 20 years later found herself becoming good friends with the new Amanda; a 41-year-old woman who is more homemaker than hedonist, re-married (albeit to The Strokes’ guitarist Nick Valensi) and mum to seven-year-old twins Ella and Silvan, alongside 21-year-old Atlanta. After meeting through work, Dawn and Amanda formed a close bond over a full English (Dawn) and an egg-white omelette (Amanda) and, in a surreal twist, a naked spa date. “We sat around and chatted with our boobs and fannies out,” laughs Dawn. “It was brilliant.”

There’s no nudity this time, but their friendship meant it made sense that Stylist sent Dawn to interview Amanda – now a high-end music and fashion photographer as well as executive producer (alongside Demi Moore) and presenter on The Conversation, a successful TV show that is about to come over to the UK. It’s seen Lady Gaga and Gwyneth Paltrow discussing everything from addictions to their favourite sexual positions. So if she’s comfortable asking those questions, surely she’ll be comfortable answering Dawn’s version of them…

When Dawn met Amanda