MadameNoire
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If you ever wondered what it was like for singer and dancer FKA Twigs to be in a relationship with a teen heartthrob like Robert Pattinson, the answer is “horrific.”
And it’s not necessarily because of any of the actions of the Twilight actor. Instead, it was his legion of fans who bullied and harrassed FKA Twigs, born Tahliah Barnett, throughout the former couple’s three-year relationship.
“It was really deeply horrific and I think it was at a time where I felt like I couldn’t really talk about it,” she said during a recent interview on the Grounded podcast. “I feel like if I was going through it now I would be able to talk about it and do some good with it.”
The 33-year-old Brit said that she couldn’t understand the vitriol that came her way online, including to her Instagram page, where his so-called fans would make all sorts of remarks about her looks and leave racist comments.
“He was their white prince charming and I think they considered that he should definitely be with somebody white and blonde and not me,” she said. “Whatever I did at that time people would find pictures of monkeys and have me doing the same thing as the monkey. Say if I was wearing a red dress they would have a monkey in a red dress or I was on a bike they would find a monkey on a bike.”
It was something she, understandably, took to heart.
“I don’t know whether it was to do with my age or because of the social climate or being Black and from Cheltenham and from a low-income family, and having to genuinely work twice as hard at everything I do to get a seat at the table,” she said. “People talk about black excellence but that is because we have to be excellent to be considered average.”
She added, “I worked so, so, so, hard just to get a little seat at the table and then I got there and people just called me the most hurtful and ignorant names on the planet.”
This isn’t the first time she opened up about the difficulty of being with Pattinson. In 2019, she talked about how people tried to validate her beauty because of his interest in her.
“People thought I was quite odd-looking until a white male validated my beauty,” she told The Guardian at the time. “That’s frustrating and I still don’t accept it. But if I sing really well, you can’t question that. If I dance well, you can’t question that. If I express myself honestly, or if I’m pole dancing or wushu-ing excellently, you can’t question that. I’ve never felt more beautiful because I’ve never been more skilled. Everything else is ephemeral.”
The singer and Pattinson, as mentioned, were together for three years. It was announced that they were engaged in 2015, and by 2017. She most recently detailed abuse, no longer from fans of a partner, but from the partner. She filed a lawsuit against ex-boyfriend Shia LaBeouf for sexual battery, assault and inflicting emotional distress during their relationship from 2018 to 2019.
