If you love gossip, this one’s or you.
Stephanie Kiser, 32, worked as a nanny for three Manhattan millionaires—two on the Upper East Side—and is now spilling the beans about the outlandish requests, long hours, and celebrity encounters she experienced along the way.
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Kiser grew up in North Providence, RI, and moved to East Harlem after she graduated from Emerson College, where she studied film and TV writing. Her book, Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America, covers her navigations in nannyhood from 2014 to 2022. During that time, she also did a trial nanny gig for a New York billionaire, spending a weekend in the Hamptons watching his 18-month-old. Kiser recounts running behind their golf cart, which chauffeured the father and son to their docked yacht.
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“‘The boat’s down there,’ he says to me. ‘You just follow the path to the water. Just run behind and meet us there,’” she writes. The billionaire reportedly had a staff of 50, including a chef, sous chef, servers, and a butler, all of whom had to be present during every meal at his home.
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Kiser criticizes Robert De Niro, 80, as crotchety and impatient while picking up his second youngest daughter, Helen Grace, from school. Helen is the daughter he shares with his ex, Grace Hightower. “He did not wait in the line. He waited across the street and his driver would get out of this massive SUV and open his door. And they would let him go in first and he would skip the line. Maybe he was just grumpy. You weren’t going to say hi to him,” she told The New York Post. Kiser also said that De Niro’s nannies had to wear uniforms—pink polos and khaki shorts—so you knew they were nannies and not part of his family. “His nannies were formal nannies,” said Kiser. “They were just doing their job.”
According to Kiser, Drew Barrymore was “by far the best” when picking up her daughters, Olive and Frankie. “She was an angel … I just remember so clearly one day, walking in behind her to the school, and she was stopping to say hi and wave and hug every person that works there.”
Steve Martin kept to himself and was more low-key when waiting for his little girl, Mary. “Honestly, I think he thought he was a regular guy. He was very cute. He always had like a little satchel and a little hat. He was really quiet,” she said.
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This all took place at The Episcopal School on the Upper East Side, a private school for children ages 2 to 5.
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The first and third families Kiser worked for both lived on the Upper East Side and had three kids each, ranging from newborn to 6 years old. The second family, located in Tribeca, was just a short stint; she didn’t last long there. They had a 5-year-old son who still pooped his pants, so she quit after five months. The worst job Kiser had was hand washing the son’s soiled underwear “who sh*ts his pants nearly every day, not accidentally, but spitefully,” she writes.
Kiser experienced sticker shock at the price tags on the children’s ensemble. One child, four-year-old Ruby, wore a $425 Oscar de la Renta dress to school. “Ruby, probably in my two years I worked there, owned fifty $400 to $500 dresses, which, why? She didn’t fit in them very long,” she said.
Extracurricular programs, like the $500-an-hour Upper East Side reading class or the $13,000-a-day camp in the Hamptons—where Lin-Manuel Miranda sent his son as a fellow camper—also raised her eyebrows.
Kiser reveals some of the outlandish requests her nanny pals would get from their bosses. “One nanny has to disinfect every toy that’s been touched, down to each individual building block,” she writes. Another had to replace everything they used. “If she used diaper rash ointment, she would take another container and scoop it out and smooth it out so it looked full … [or] she was reprimanded.”
Kiser also notes red flags in job postings. “‘Looking for a nanny who can fade into the background’ [means] they want someone who essentially is absent of personality,” she said. “They want a servant; they don’t want anything more.” She observes that American-born and educated nannies are treated differently compared to those from the Caribbean, South America, and Asia. For example, one mother in a building playroom Kiser frequented only ever spoke to her, ignoring the other nannies, who told her, “She talks to you because you are white.”
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“A young, sort of fit, educated nanny on the Upper East Side just gets paid in a whole different way than a career nanny from Nepal. It’s sort of ridiculous because they knew way more about kids than I did,” she said. One of Kiser’s closest nanny friends lamented about a father who wouldn’t let her and another nanny eat what the rest of the party was having at his barbecue.
“We reach for the steaks, but Mr. Bruce yelled for us to stop. He brought out two tiny pieces of meat. He told us the big steaks are for everyone else,” the nanny told her.
Now, Kiser lives in Astoria and works as a senior executive assistant at an ad-tech company. She said it was hard to leave the children she nannied after growing to love them, adding, “Oh my God, I’ve had breakups that went smoother. For the last family, I was sick in bed for a couple days after leaving.”
“But I still see them. Their moms send me updates all the time.”
Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America came out on August 6.
