Kate Hackett
In December 2020, musician FKA Twigs filed a lawsuit against Shia LaBeouf. In it, she states that he abused her and gave her an STD.
In January of 2021, she went on Louis Theroux’s podcast, Grounded, and said that LaBeouf would not let her look other men in the face, demanded a physical touch “quota”, and would “berate [her] for hours” if she failed to meet that demand.
In an Elle interview, Twigs revealed even more.
She said that LaBeouf began keeping a gun in their bedroom in November of 2018. That scared her so much, she was afraid to use the bathroom in the night for fear that he may take her for an intruder and shoot her. She sent a photo of the gun to her manager.
“I thought to myself, ‘If he shoots me, and then if there is some sort of investigation, they will put the pieces together. I need to leave little clues.'”
Twigs said LaBeouf would frequently wake her at 4 a.m. with wild accusations; that she was masturbating or planning to run away from him. She said he forced her to sleep in the nude nightly.
“I was very intimidated living with him. He had a gun by the side of the bed and was erratic. [I never knew what would] make him angry with me.”
LaBeouf, according to Twigs, bragged about shooting stray dogs to get into character for his part in The Tax Collector.
“I said to him, ‘That’s really bad. Why are you doing that?’ And he was like, ‘Because I take my art seriously. You’re not supporting me in my art. This is what I do. It’s different from singing. I don’t just get up on a stage and do a few moves. I’m in the character.'”
Twigs said she was isolated from friends and family because of LaBeouf’s jealousy.
“One time, he heard me laughing on FaceTime with my friend. He came in and had a massive argument with me because he said he doesn’t make me laugh like that. So then I had to hide laughing with my friends. It’s [about] isolation, so I don’t talk to my friends. He hated that I had an experience to myself [with] something that didn’t involve him, a memory that gave me joy. He made me feel like I wasn’t allowed joy, basically. That’s what it boils down to: I wasn’t allowed joy unless it directly revolved around him.”
In January 2019, they both went to Sundance to promote Honey Boy. Twigs said she reached out for help, but there was not any. “There [were] people who have worked with Shia that I openly spoke to about the abuse that I was going through. The reaction that I got [from his team] was pretty much, ‘Okay. Well, it’s Sundance.'”
“I was genuinely made to feel that Honey Boy was more important than my physical and emotional well-being,” she said. “At what point does Hollywood stop looking at money and start looking at people’s safety? It’s a miracle I came out alive.”
The full Elle interview is here.
