The Baron of Botox · Imperative Entertainment

Origin Story | Chapter 2

January 14, 2020·32 min·2 clips

Stefan Kalou, who found Dr. Brandt's body in the garage when arriving for their morning yoga session, describes his first reaction as trying to keep everyone together rather than grieving.

The episode opens with a clip of Dr. Brandt speaking about art: how he looks for pieces that evoke feeling rather than morbidity. Host Justine Harmon then introduces Stefan Kalou, the current CEO of Dr. Brandt Skin Care, whom she interviews at a sound studio in Coral Gables. Kalou describes his 16-year history with the company: starting in regional sales, becoming national sales director, and eventually being named president and CEO in 2012. After Brandt's death in 2015, Kalou bought out Brandt's longtime assistant Maggie Maloney as co-trustee and took sole control of the business. Kalou reveals he was the person who found Brandt's body when he arrived for their scheduled yoga session and opened the garage. He describes his immediate reaction as trying to hold the group together, and says it took over a year and a half before he began to grieve. He notes that the bank cut the company's credit line immediately upon Brandt's death because the business was built around one individual. Kalou denies a romantic relationship with Brandt but acknowledges he loved him. On the question of the art collection sale — more than 200 pieces sold at auction six months after Brandt's death — Kalou says it was a financial necessity driven by undisclosed debt. Celebrity hairstylist Garen, interviewed separately, says he is completely certain there was no sexual relationship, and frames it instead as Brandt constructing a surrogate family around Kalou's wife and children. Colleague Dr. Jolie Kaufman, now running Brandt's former Miami practice under a new name, declines to discuss Kalou on the record. The episode then shifts to Brandt's origins. Author and critic Daphne Merkin frames his Newark upbringing as a Philip Roth-adjacent story without Roth's family warmth — suggesting Brandt felt lonely and underconnected from an early age. The narrator provides biographical facts: born June 26, 1949 in Newark, second son of candy store owners Irving and Esther Brandt; father died of diabetic complications when Fred was 15. High school friend Alvin Felsenberg describes Brandt as brilliant and driven, but private about his family even as a teenager. Childhood neighbor Roberta Abramson offers a warm counter-narrative, calling his parents loving and hardworking. Brandt's nephew Micah, son of estranged brother Paul, met his uncle only once as a child after writing him a pen pal letter for school. The subsequent visit to Miami included evenings watching laser discs and ordering pizza. Micah expresses regret at not maintaining the relationship given his own mental health struggles as a teenager. The episode ends with a neighbor's description of the tiny apartment behind the candy store — and the contrast with how far Brandt went from there.

As heard by us

A spare origin story shaped by loneliness and family distance.

Origin Story | Chapter 2 stays close to Frederick Sheldon Brandt's early years in post-World War II Newark, with the family candy store shared by Irving and Esther Brandt giving the story its setting. The episode works best when it settles into the loneliness of that home life.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want the man before the myth.

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