FKA Twigs says she suffered panic attacks after her allegedly abusive relationship with Shia LaBeouf.
The British singer fully detailed for the first time the “fear and shame” she felt during her nine-month romance with the actor.
And she revealed that she only had the courage to leave LaBeouf after calling an abuse helpline.
In an interview with Louis Theroux on her BBC Radio 4 podcast “Grounded,” she said LaBeouf forbade her from looking at other men in the eye – and isolated her from friends and family.
She felt that she was “the worst person ever” – and thought that no one would believe her after passersby did not help when LeBeouf supposedly smothered her at a gas station.
“I really felt it was impossible to get out, I felt so controlled … it was completely overwhelming,” she said.
The duo met on the set of the film “Honey Boy” in 2018 and separated in May 2019.
In December 2020, Twigs announced that he was suing LeBeouf for sexual assault, assault and imposition of emotional distress.
She told Theroux that there was “an intense honeymoon period in the beginning” before LaBeouf’s behavior became abusive.
She said she gradually realized that he was becoming more “jealous and controlling” and realized the “little things you can do wrong that can take away happiness”.
“For me, it was being nice to a waiter or being polite to someone who could be seen as me flirting or [wanting] getting involved in some kind of relationship with someone else when I’m literally just asking for noodles and being polite, ”she said.
“I was told that I knew what he looked like and if I loved him, I wouldn’t look men in the eye. So that was my reality for a good four months at the end of the relationship, that I was not allowed to look men in the eye. “
The star said she started looking at the floor when the couple went out and started to isolate themselves from their friends and family, adding: “I was just living a very regimented and contained life that I felt was causing me less trouble.”
LaBeouf – who, as Page Six reported, was eliminated from all promotions for her latest film, Oscar winner “Pieces of a Woman” after the lawsuit – also expected her to meet a daily quota of affection, she said.
Twigs said: “He said that his previous partner answered that number very well and I was inadequate … there were 20 rings, 20 kisses a day, reinforcements of my devotion to him and my commitment to him, which is exhausting because you can’t be natural. “
“He woke me up at night to accuse me of all kinds of things,” she said. “Accuse me of looking at the ceiling and thinking of ways to leave it, it would accuse me of masturbating … [accuse] wanting to be with someone else – but it would always be, I would say between four and seven in the morning. “
She spent locked up in London trying to recover, as she admitted: “For a long time, anything that woke me up at night, even if it was just my dog, or a noise outside, or just needing to go to the bathroom, can trigger a really intense panic attack. “
She said she was “left with [post-traumatic stress disorder] from there, which again is just something that I don’t think we really talk about as a society just in terms of healing on leaving, and how much work must be done to recover, to get back to the person you were before. “
A “turning point” happened when she called a helpline and was taken seriously, she said, adding that she wanted to be able to tell her daughter that she handled the abuse.
LeBeouf told the New York Times that many of Twigs’ claims are not true, but said he owed her and Karolyn Pho, another woman whose claims appear in the process, “the opportunity to publicly disclose his statements and [for me to] accept responsibility for the things I did. “
In another statement, he added: “I am not in a position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel. I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, just rationalizations. “
He said he “has been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting those closest to me. I’m ashamed of this story and I’m sorry for those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say. “
Page Six contacted LaBeouf for comment.