Back in the ‘90s, there weren’t many singers bigger than Fiona Apple. The young musician has a voice that’s very unique and her songwriting shot her to the top of the charts. And it appears that the celebrity status got her involved in quite a few sordid Hollywood tales, including many with her then-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson.
In a New Yorker profile, Apple goes into detail, for the first time, about her relationship with Anderson, as well as a word of caution for anyone that finds themselves locked in a private movie theater with Anderson and Quentin Tarantino.
One of the more unsettling pieces of the profile comes when Apple paints the picture of what her relationship with Anderson, which began in the late-‘90s, looked like and it’s not a very fun picture, at all:
“But, as Apple remembers it, the romance was painful and chaotic. They snorted cocaine and gobbled Ecstasy. Apple drank, heavily. Mostly, she told me, he was coldly critical, contemptuous in a way that left her fearful and numb. Apple’s parents remember an awful night when the couple took them to dinner and were openly rude…In the lobby, her mother asked Anderson why Apple was acting this way. He snapped, ‘Ask yourself—you made her.’”
The piece also detailed times when Anderson allegedly shoved her out of a car when he was dropping her off at U.C.L.A.’s occupational-therapy ward. The filmmaker also reportedly would “hiss harsh words in her ear” while the couple attended parties. Anderson and Apple would eventually work together, years later, on the music video for “Hot Knife” in 2011.
During her time with Anderson, the singer said the couple would visit the home of Quentin Tarantino, where copious amounts of drugs would be involved. Enough drugs to scare an addict straight.
READ MORE: Paul Thomas Anderson Gave John Krasinski The Best Life Lesson
“Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with Q.T. and P.T.A. on coke, and they’ll never want to do it again,” she said jokingly.
Now that she mentions it, that does sound a bit like hell. You can read the full profile (which is incredible) over at New Yorker.