Julia Fox opens up about Ye 'using' her, winning 'lottery' with 'Uncut Gems' role in new book
Julia Fox's debut book has arrived, and she's not holding back in recounting the past three decades of her life.
"Down the Drain" (out now, pp. 336, Simon & Schuster) finds Fox, 33, "reclaiming my body and rejecting the notion that I exist only to be visually pleasing" as she opens up about experiencing childhood abuse; parenting son Valentino with her ex-husband; and several friends, whom she considered family, dying in a short span of time.
Fox also gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at her high-profile relationships, including her whirlwind two-month romance with Ye.
"People ask me what it’s like to be this famous. Truth is, I’m not a celebrity and I don’t claim that title. I’m an artist in the role of a lifetime, playing Me. And nothing about my life has changed," she writes. "Being sexy had been my identity for so long, and I was consumed by it. I’m unlearning all the brainwashing and learning to love myself for more than just the way I look."
Read on for the biggest revelations from Fox’s “Down the Drain.”
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Julia Fox says Ye asked her to be his girlfriend soon after meeting
In the climax of "Down the Drain," Fox offers several details of what it was like to date Ye, whom she doesn't reference by name. From context clues, including a detail about the artist being on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and having an estranged wife, it's clear that she is talking about the rapper.
Fox also notes that she never signed a nondisclosure agreement, despite his multiple requests that she do so.
In chapter 12, Fox gets acquainted with whom she calls "a famous artist" after a friend asks if he can pass her number along to the man "who's been asking about" her.
After a text and dozens of phone calls in which the artist talks for hours while Fox occasionally chimes in, she feels "like he breathed a new life into me," she writes. They meet for the first time in Miami on New Year's Day in 2022 after he charters a jet for her and her friends.
They play Uno and highlight positive words in the dictionary the next morning, Fox writes, and within the day he's asking her to be his girlfriend and to go public with him. He also hires her friends to be her new stylists, and in the bathroom of Carbone in New York, she finds herself "effortlessly transitioning into my new role as the ultimate fashion girlie."
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Julia Fox felt like Ye was 'using me'
It doesn't take long for Fox to grow disillusioned with the fashion try-ons exclusively involving items approved by the artist. She recounts feeling uncomfortable after he casually offers to "get you a boob job" as she tries on a slinky top that doesn't fit right.
Eventually, as the artist seems to be soliciting more publicity for the two of them, Fox writes, "I feel like he’s using me in some weird, twisted game. It makes me feel dirty."
He asks her to write a blurb about how they met to run alongside a photoshoot they did for Interview magazine ("Date Night" by Julia Fox, with photographs of her and Ye taken by Kevin Leyva, published online on Jan. 6, 2022, to much fanfare). Unhappy with Fox's first draft, the artist sends over what she calls a "completely fabricated" story; they end up "landing somewhere in the middle" after she insists on making edits.
"I can tell the artist is elated by the amount of attention our relationship has been getting, but I feel vulnerable and exposed," Fox writes. "I’m spread so thin between my son and the demands of the artist that I don’t have time to enjoy any of it."
Fox and Ye break up over the phone after Birkin bag gift felt like 'a publicity stunt'
She describes a relationship with "never-ending phone calls and infinite texts" before they get into an argument while visiting Paris. The artist claims he's taking a monthlong "phone break" during which they take time apart, and Fox suspects he is seeing a new woman. They reunite for her birthday, when he gifts Fox and her friends Birkin bags.
"As we pose like puppets, I question his true intentions, feeling that this grand gesture is nothing more than a publicity stunt," she describes.
After Fox tells the artist that she's not having fun in their relationship anymore, she says he asks her to not leave him. As they speak on the phone one last time, he reveals he learned new information about Fox during a conversation with his soon-to-be ex-wife.
"I didn’t know you were a drug addict," he says. She responds that she told him so; after the conversation, she asks her publicist to send out a statement that they have broken up.
According to Fox, the breakup cost her a million-dollar deal with an Italian denim company that the artist had set up.
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Julia Fox opens up about landing 'Uncut Gems' role
In chapter 10, titled "Starstruck," Fox reveals that becoming a movie star feels like "my destiny" – "but I’m so afraid to be wrong. I’m so afraid of not being chosen."
For five years, co-director Josh Safdie had been telling Fox she'd be "perfect" for the part of Adam Sandler's lover in his crime thriller, "Uncut Gems." However, he found out that despite an "incredible" screen test with Sandler, "the studios want someone with a 'big name,' like Lady Gaga or Jennifer Lawrence."
"Sure, I’m somewhat of a hood celebrity here in New York, but I’m nobody in Hollywood," she writes.
When Safdie calls exclaiming that she got the part, Fox feels like she's "hit the life lottery."
Fox writes, "Getting this role is all the confirmation I need, and I got it by being my most authentic genuine self. Every morning, when they hand me the call sheet, my eyes scan the page for my name, checking to make sure I’m still number two, right below Adam Sandler and right above Kevin Garnett, the NBA legend who plays himself in the film. I’m in awe that little old me is sandwiched between these two masters of their craft."
She ends up getting high with Garnett and playing basketball with Sandler. Fox also confesses to "an underlying layer of darkness" as she and her close friend Gianna, who is a staple on the set, are "drug addicts." After a friend dies of an overdose, Fox quits "drugs for the remainder of the film."
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