FKA Twigs.
Photo: David M. Benett / Dave Benett / Getty Images for Burberry
In December, FKA Twigs filed a lawsuit against her ex-boyfriend, actor Shia LaBeouf, outlining a pattern of physical and emotional abuse that she says she experienced in the year they dated. In a recent interview with BBC Radio 4 podcaster Louis Theroux, the singer detailed some of the ways in which LaBeouf allegedly kept her trapped in the relationship and at home.
In the beginning, she said, he cultivated “an intense honeymoon period”, establishing “how bright things can be … if you behave well”. And from there, he supposedly became extremely controlling: when it came to displays of affection, “I had a quota that I needed to meet, that would change,” Twigs told Theroux. “It was like touching, looking or kissing,” a specific number of gestures supposedly defined at LaBeouf’s discretion. “And I had to get the right touches and kisses. But I never … knew exactly what the number was, ”she continued. “Your previous partner apparently met that number very well, so I was inadequate.” When she fell short of her subjective standards, Twigs said, “He would start an argument with me, scold me for hours, make me feel like the worst person ever.”
Twigs also remembered LaBeouf’s (supposed) jealousy: “Being nice to a waiter, or being polite to someone, can be seen as me flirting or wanting to have some kind of relationship with someone else, when I’m literally just asking for noodles”, 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. 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. “
Her daily life has become intensely “regulated” in other ways as well, she explained. Twigs told Theroux that LaBeouf used to wake her up before 3 and 7 am simply to punish her for a litany of imaginary offenses, such as “looking at the ceiling and thinking of ways to leave it,” she said. “He would accuse me of masturbating … [accuse] wanting to be with someone else. “For months later, waking up in the middle of the night” would trigger an intense panic attack, “said Twigs.
Much of what Twigs discussed in this interview, she also mentioned in her process. There, she noticed cases of physical violence: the time that LaBeouf allegedly threatened to crash their car if she didn’t say she loved him and strangled her when she left to go out; how she avoided using the bathroom at night, for fear that he would mistake her for an intruder and shoot her with the loaded gun he supposedly kept by the bed; how he supposedly drove shooting stray dogs to get into character for a role. Responding to a New York Times report on the case, LaBeouf said that while “many of these allegations are not true”, he is “in no position to tell anyone how [his] the behavior made them feel. “
“I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, just rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me, ”he said. Times. “I’m ashamed of this story and I’m sorry for those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say. “
And in fact, Twigs is not the only partner in LaBeouf’s past who has attested to these types of behavior. Costume designer Karolyn Pho added to the process her experiences with the actor’s physical violence and her alleged drunken threats to kill her. Sia later called LaBeouf a “pathological liar”. And in 2015, LaBeouf was caught in a video yelling at his then girlfriend, Mia Goth, for allegedly getting involved with “the kind of shit that makes a person abusive”, and then huffing about like, “If I had stayed there, I would have killed her ”after the fact.
“I never thought anything like this was going to happen to me,” Twigs told Theroux, explaining his reasons for suing LaBeouf. “When I’m older, if I have a daughter, I want to be able to say, ‘It happened to me. And I handled it. ‘It’s a great thing to heal publicly and have to do it in front of everyone, but I can do it. I’m a big girl and I can do that. “