Julia Fox Says She Was "Used as a Pawn" During Relationship With Kanye West
"I didn't want to be known for being someone's girlfriend."
Julia Fox is opening up about her past relationship with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.
“I regret that relationship so much," Fox said in a recent interview with The Times published on Saturday, Oct. 12. "I hate it! It was only a few weeks but enough to last me a lifetime.
"I was in probably the most uncomfortable position in my life and that’s saying a lot," she continued. "I don’t want to be known for being anyone’s girlfriend.”
Fox went on to say that it wasn't her idea "to go public" with the former pair's relationship shortly after they met in Miami on New Years Eve 2021. (Fox and West started dating after his very public split from ex-wife Kim Kardashian.)
“It wasn’t my idea for it to go public," Fox explained at the time. "If anything, I was like, ‘We should wait,’ and then boom, it was done behind my back. I realized pretty quickly I was being used as a pawn.”
Fox and West only dated for short period of time—a representative for the social media influencer confirmed the former couple's split on Feb. 14, 2022.
In her recent Times interview, Fox also touched on allegations she made in her memoir Down the Drain, in which she claimed West—who she referred to as "the artist"—offered to buy her a "boob job," requested she only wear clothes he approved of, and asked her to sign an NDA.
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“I really credit my son for being my grounding force," she said. "It was like, I can’t go down this spiral because no man, no matter how rich or famous, is worth one minute away from my child.”
Fox shares son Valentino, 3, with her ex-husband Peter Artemiev.
In 2023, during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Fox said that dating West was so demanding it was like having two children.
“I think I just realized very quickly it just wasn’t gonna be sustainable because ultimately, I cannot put anybody else first,” she told host Drew Barrymore at the time. “My son has to be first. It just became too much, like, I didn’t sign up to have two babies, you know?”
Fox went on to say that she even went so far as to buy a pair of headphones so that she could continue to talk with West while mothering her child.
“Like, I’d have to change diapers, and so I bought a pair of AirPods so I could keep it in while I was doing mom stuff. Like, it was just—it was so overwhelming and so unsustainable,” she recalled. “Ultimately, I think he needed a full-time person, and I just couldn’t be full time. I had my son, and then [Ye would] wanna talk on the phone a lot.”
Danielle Campoamor is Marie Claire's weekend editor covering all things news, celebrity, politics, culture, live events, and more. In addition, she is an award-winning freelance writer and former NBC journalist with over a decade of digital media experience covering mental health, reproductive justice, abortion access, maternal mortality, gun violence, climate change, politics, celebrity news, culture, online trends, wellness, gender-based violence and other feminist issues. You can find her work in The New York Times, Washington Post, TIME, New York Magazine, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, TODAY, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, InStyle, Playboy, Teen Vogue, Glamour, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, Prism, Newsweek, Slate, HuffPost and more. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and their two feral sons. When she is not writing, editing or doom scrolling she enjoys reading, cooking, debating current events and politics, traveling to Seattle to see her dear friends and losing Pokémon battles against her ruthless offspring. You can find her on X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook and all the places.
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