FKA Twigs On Shia LaBeouf's 'Controlling' Behavior: 'I Wasn't Allowed to Look Men in the Eye'

Last month, FKA twigs filed a lawsuit against actor and ex-boyfriend Shia LaBeouf, accusing him of sexual battery, physical assault, and emotional distress over the course of their relationship in 2018 and 2019. She’s been open about the details of the alleged abuse in the weeks since—clearly hoping to raise awareness, and with real success—Sia came forward soon afterward with similar accusations from her relationship with LaBeouf, and twigs was recently featured in a recent New York Times piece about state-level legislation in the U.S. combatting “coercive control” as a tactic of domestic abuse.

In a new interview on BBC Radio 4 podcast Grounded with host Louis Theroux, Twigs claims LaBeouf grew so “jealous and controlling” in their relationship, he would request she stopping making eye contact with men. “I genuinely felt it was impossible to leave, I felt so controlled… it was completely overwhelming,” she said. “For me, it was being nice to a waiter or being polite to somebody that could be seen as me flirting or [wanting] to engage in some sort of relationship with somebody else when I’m literally just ordering pasta and being polite. I was told that I knew what he was like, and if I loved him I wouldn’t look men in the eye. So that was my reality for a good four months towards the end of the relationship, that I wasn’t allowed to look men in the eye.”

She said LaBeouf also set a daily quota of affectionate gestures: “He said that his previous partner met this number very well and I was inadequate… it was 20 touches, 20 kisses a day, reinforcements of my devotion for him and me being committed to him, which is exhausting because you can’t be natural.”

She also said that he grew very paranoid very fast: “He would wake me up in the night to accuse me of all sorts of things. Accuse me of staring at the ceiling and thinking about ways to leave him, he would accuse me of masturbating… [accuse] me of wanting to be with somebody else—but it would be, always, I’d say between like four and seven in the morning. For a long time, anything that woke me up in the night, even if it was just my dog, or a noise outside, or just needing to go to the bathroom, it could trigger a really intense panic attack.” [Page Six]

In a new interview on Facebook Watch’s Peace Of Mind With Taraji—that’s Taraji P. Henson—actor and author Gabourey Sidibe opened up about her struggles with depression and bulimia:

“I did cry a lot in school, elementary, junior high, high school, but when the anxiety started coming full force as I am on my way to college, so like, I would have to get to school early so I could really clean myself up, because I would be sweaty, I would be crying, my clothes would genuinely be wet with my tears. And one day I was crying so much and so hard I threw up. I just physically… I threw up, and the second I was done throwing up, my tear ducts dried. I wasn’t sweating anymore. I’d stopped crying. And I thought ‘I found the button, this is it.’ I realized that if I throw up it’s going to stop, what is going on…

It wasn’t about losing weight, it wasn’t about controlling my appetite, it truly was about how it stopped me from crying. It felt like I was controlling my emotions—I was not, I was out of control. I was getting worse. Being depressed is one thing, if you add an eating disorder to that, that’s a whole other monster that you have to fight. I didn’t know when I was hungry anymore.”

Sidibe also made it a point to highlight that, hello, disordered eating isn’t only an ailment that affects skinny white women and girls. Everyone is at risk. “I also think that bulimia is like, that’s just for skinny girls,” she added. “Like only skinny, skinny people but that’s not true because a lot of the time these eating disorders are not necessarily about weight, it’s not about appearance, a lot of it is about control. The weird thing about getting over an eating disorder is that it is not like crack. You can stop doing crack, it might be tough, but you can stop it and get crack out of your life, but you have to eat to be alive, and so for people with eating disorders, food may never not be a source of trauma. And so, it will never really be gone, but I would love to learn to do that. I remember my record was six of seven days without eating. I felt so accomplished.”

Watch here. [Bossip]

• Charo, like you and me, finds this Hilaria Baldwin thing hilari-ous. [Page Six]
• Emily Ratajkowski says she did not get lip injections while pregnant, OK? [Glamour]
• Glenn Close kept all of her Cruella de Vil costumes from 101 Dalmatians. “When they found out how expensive they were, they were unhappy that it was in my contract,” she said during a conversation for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series. “They wanted to make another copy, another set, for me. I said no.” You bet your ass! [People]
• During covid, Angelina Jolie is loving trips to Target. [Hollywood Life]