FKA Twigs recently opened up in a series of candid interviews about the abuse she says she’s suffered at the hands of ex-boyfriend Shia LaBeouf. Now the singer-songwriter is recalling another troubling celebrity relationship in which the abuse she suffered wasn’t from her significant other, but instigated by his fans.
In 2014, FKA Twigs née Tahliah Barnett, started dating actor Robert Pattinson, and their relationship lasted for three years, with reports of an engagement around April 2015, according to Elle. Throughout the course of the relationship, Pattinson’s fame was still soaring in the aftermath of the popularity of the “Twilight” movie franchise. With thousands of admirers, of both Pattinson and his previous romance with co-star Kristen Stewart, the backlash from the news that FKA Twigs was dating him hit hard.
FKA Twigs recounts being swarmed with angry, abusive online harassment that was often blatantly racist. She spoke to Harper’s Bazaar about it at length.
“It was really, really deeply horrific,” said FKA Twigs. “It was at a time where I felt like I couldn’t really talk about it. If I was going through that now, I feel like I’d be able to talk about it, and do some good with it. But I don’t know whether it was because of my age or whether it was because of the social climate or whether it was because being Black and from Cheltenham and from a low-income family and having to genuinely work twice as hard as everything I do to get a seat at the table–because that is true.”
She continued, “People talk about Black excellence, but that is because we have to be excellent to be considered average. I’d worked so, so, 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 and horrible names under the planet.”
FKA Twigs did speak out against some of the brutal language in 2014, language she recalls noticing toward the beginning of her and Pattinson’s relationship. Outlets such as Dazed reported that as soon as news broke about the two dating, trolls took to racist tweeting vitriol at her official account and posting directly on her Instagram page.
“I am genuinely shocked and disgusted at the amount of racism that has been infecting my account the past week,” she wrote in a Twitter post. “Racism is unacceptable in the real world and it’s unacceptable online.”
Dazed described disgruntled users as Kristen Stewart fans and “Twilight obsessives who’d rather see Robert Pattinson back with his old co-star.” In now-deleted posts they wrote insulting comments calling her a “monkey.”
“Kristen our queen, @FKAtwigs you’re a monkey abortion,” and “Is it really impossible to believe that Rob out with this monkey @FKAtwigs,”, “Yeah even the monkey is more beautiful than fka twigs,” and “I HATE FKA TWIGS!! Beautiful Monkey & Beautiful Snow white.. Sorry I Just don’t like her guys,” people wrote, according to Dazed and Wear Your Voice Magazine.
Another user insulted her looks under a link to a black and white Instagram photo of the star. “You’re talentless & ugly that’s why people call you that, you’re the one who’s racist for blaming your skin,” they said.
FKA Twigs told Harper’s Bazaar that she summed this behavior up to a desire of Pattinson’s fans to see him with a woman of another race.
“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 monkeys.”
Though she publicly condemned them, all of the abuse eventually began to affect her. “I used to think it was really hurtful but really stupid,” FKA Twigs said. “I remember it had this massive, dysmorphic effect on me for about six months to a year, where every time I saw my pictures and photographs I would think, ‘Gosh, I look like a monkey, and people are going to say I look like a monkey.
So I need to really try and hide this monkey-ness that I have, because otherwise, people are gonna come for me about it.’ … Obviously, I know now that’s completely ridiculous. But it is essentially bullying, and it does affect you psychologically. It’s really sad.”
However, the performer insists that she is now in a better place, and has learned to ignore the racist harassment, and grown to love herself instead.
“I now love how I look and I’m very confident and I feel really good, but it was deeply unfair at the time that I was made to feel so self-conscious and so ugly,” she said.
FKA Twigs filed a lawsuit against LaBeouf in December for the “relentless abuse” she endured during the progression of their relationship.
