Julia Fox has made a name for herself for reasons ranging from acting roles (notably including Uncut Gems opposite Adam Sandler) to her modeling gigs to her fashion forays, including recently sporting nothing but the bare essentials for Milan Fashion Week and carrying a human-sized handbag. Some might know her better as Kanye West’s ex from their brief relationship back in early 2022. Early this year, she generated some buzz for a very different reason than what she wore and who she dated: admitting via TikTok that she has mice in her apartment. Now, weeks later, she has responded to those who criticized her for it.
The reveal about Fox having mice in her apartment came via Fox herself in a three-minute apartment tour video on TikTok. While most of the video was her showing fans around her apartment and explaining why she doesn’t want to upgrade to something bigger, she ended by acknowledging a mouse problem, but saying it’s only a problem “depending on how you look at it” and she likes that they come out at night and clean up crumbs dropped by her two-year-old son Valentino.
Now, weeks after she posted the TikTok back in January, Julia Fox spoke with ET about the criticism that she received for having mice in her apartment and not seeming to care about it. She said:
I feel like a lot of people outed themselves for never having been to New York when the outrage about the mouse happened, because it's like, everybody has mice here! It's when you have rats that you need to regulate. [That's a] very important distinction.
Mice may be a problem that need to be dealt with ASAP and/or send the more rodent-phobic up on top of chairs to avoid them in other parts of the world, but according to Julia Fox, New Yorkers don’t worry about mice, and that’s not hard to believe. After all, would Katie Couric have fallen for the text hoax about a rat last year if rats weren’t the bigger problem in NYC? Sure, they’re not rats on par with the Stranger Things rats, but definitely grosser than the mice that Fox apparently has in her apartment!
In all seriousness, it’s safe to say that the majority of Fox’s 1.7 million followers on TikTok don’t live in New York City, so I’d say that a little bit of confusion about how little she cared about having mice is fair. The actress/model went on to share how her attitude toward having mice has changed over the years as well, and her comments are worth a laugh:
When I was little, I used to have so much fun catching them and releasing them. But now, it's like, I'm tired and, like, do I wanna go catch a mouse after a 16-hour day? No, I'm just gonna convince myself that the mouse is a pet.
Julia Fox doesn’t seem to be taking the backlash against her mouse confession too seriously, and it’s worth noting that mentioning the mouse was just a small moment from her TikTok tour of her apartment, which painted a picture of a life that one might not expect of the woman who jumped on the pantashoes craze after the end of her relationship with Kanye West (which she says hurt her career) and creates outfits out of leaves. Just take a look:
@juliafox Come with me on a very underwhelming apartment tour! also to clarify I have only ONE mouse and he’s cute 🥰
♬ original sound - Julia fox
Honestly, the apartment tour leaves me more with questions about how many shoes she has in her kitchen than about the mouse in her house, and she did speak about her “cathartic” experience of packing up old clothes when she started dating Kanye West. But hopefully her clarification about mice vs. rats in New York City will quiet some of her critics on this particular issue! If you want to hear more from Julia Fox, you can find her Forbidden Fruits podcast streaming now.
