Julia Fox is already a mom to a 2-year-old — and claims dating Kanye West was like having a second baby.
The 33-year-old actress — who gets candid about her relationship with the rapper, 46, in her new memoir, Down the Drain — told Drew Barrymore on Tuesday, October 17, that she quickly knew they would not last as a couple. (Fox and West, who met on New Year’s Eve 2022 in Miami, announced their breakup one month later, on Valentine’s Day 2022.)
“I only could do it for so long because ultimately I think he needed a full-time person and I just couldn’t be full-time,” the Uncut Gems star explained. “I had my son [Valentino] and then he’d wanna talk on the phone a lot, like, I’d have to change diapers so I bought a pair of AirPods so I could keep it in while I was doing mom stuff. It was just — it was so overwhelming and so unsustainable.”
Fox, who refers to West as “The Artist” in her memoir, recalled how needy the Grammy winner was in their romance — even though Valentino was her priority. (Fox shares her son with ex-husband Peter Artemiev, whom she divorced in 2020.)
“Ultimately I cannot put anybody else first,” Fox told Barrymore, 48, on Tuesday. “My son has to be first. It just became too much. I didn’t sign up to have two babies. I couldn’t do it. It felt like two babies.”
Fox recalled mistakenly thinking her relationship with the “Hurricane” rapper would not become public.
“When I first met him, I literally thought nobody would ever hear about it, because a lot of the time you date these celebrities but they’re very hush-hush and they’re like, ‘Don’t post a picture in my bathroom.’ So I kinda just thought it would be a secret,” she told Barrymore. “So when it suddenly got mysteriously leaked, it wasn’t me, I really was just not expecting that at all, and then I just embraced it. I was like, ‘OK, I’ll do the fashion, I’ll wear the clothes. I’ll do what he says.’”
During their short-lived romance, West was going through his high-profile divorce from Kim Kardashian, with whom he shares four children. Fox remembered that the Chicago MC loved seeing her name in the headline.
“He did want me to be bigger. He did, like when I’d be getting a lot of press he was thrilled,” Fox said. “That’s the thing about him when he has a vision for someone, he gets very obsessed with the vision, and it becomes almost like his little project, his little masterpiece in a way.”
After the whirlwind of publicity, Fox is happy being single for now.
“I have, like, sworn off men. I just — if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” she said.
West, for his part, finalized his divorce from Kardashian, 42, in November 2022. He wed Bianca Censori one month later.
“Kanye and Bianca were legally married last year when they had their private ceremony in Beverly Hills, it was real and legal,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly earlier this month, adding that the couple decided to get married “because of religious reasons.”
The duo wanted to “be intimate,” the insider noted, though they chose to knot because they are “also in love.”
“Kanye calls her his muse and loves dressing her up,” the source said.
As for West’s thoughts on his ex’s memoir, Fox told Andy Cohen on Sunday, October 15, that she hasn’t heard from him.
