Lily Allen has revealed she opened up about her ‘very promiscuous and experimental’ liaisons with female sex workers during the breakdown of her first marriage to ‘make people feel better’.
The 39-year-old was promoting her Sheezus album when her relationship with ex-husband Sam Cooper was deteriorating. She revealed the encounters in her book, My Thoughts Exactly.
Now, on the Miss Me? podcast with Miquita Oliver, the mum-of-two explained she feared the encounters would be shared in news articles. Lily explained opening up herself meant she could ‘reclaim the power’ while talking about her experience in a ‘non-shameful’ way.
Lily explained: “During the breakdown of my last marriage I was very, very promiscuous and experimental and I had sex with female prostitutes.”
She later added: “I wrote about it in my book because I lived in a state of perpetual fear at that time, because I always felt like I was about to be got ya’d.
“I knew this thing existed and that I had been behaving this way and I thought it was going to be revealed, so I thought, to take a little bit of the power back, I would reveal it in my book.
“I did that for two reasons; one, to try and reclaim a little bit of the power where that conversation was concerned, but also because lots of other people have done the same thing, and I think that when they hear someone like me talking about their own experiences in a non-shameful, matter of fact way, then it makes people feel better about themselves.
“And I’m always wanting to do that. I want to do that with my music and to me that is what art is, that is what creativity is, helping people come to terms with their own behaviour that society sometimes looks down on, but we’re all just humans.”
Previously, on The Jonathan Ross Show, Lily explained she was feeling ‘lonely’ and had been ‘drinking a lot’ at the time. She also recalled she had been reading a book about addiction and shame.
She said: "I'd just been reading a book about addiction and shame and it introduced me to the idea of sex addiction, so I thought, Why not give this a go?"
Host Jonathan asked if she was looking for "companionship, sexual gratification, or just not to be alone," to which the singer answered: “A bit of all of the above. And curiosity.”
Lily is now married to Stranger Things star David Harbour. The pair began dating in 2019 before marrying in 2020, with the service being officiated by an Elvis Impersonator in Las Vegas, People.com reported.
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