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Talulah Riley has opened up about her love for tech billionaire Elon Musk, whom she married and divorced twice, and pleaded with to buy Twitter to “fight woke-ism”.
Speaking about the polarising figure, who recently faced backlash and calls for a travel ban for allegedly stoking the flames of the UK’s far-right riots, she questioned mainstream media narratives about the tech billionaire but conceded that she cannot remain unbiased because of her love for him.
“I loved/love the guy, so I’m incredibly subjective in my opinion, cannot be unbiased and shouldn’t be expected to be either. I’m sure, well… You know what being in love is, right?” she said in an interview with The Times.
The 38-year-old St Trinians actor first met Musk in 2008 at a nightclub in London, and was instantly intrigued by the innovator’s “sweet” and “shy” demeanour.
The pair went on to marry in 2010, before Musk petitioned for a divorce two years later. Remarrying in 2013, Musk filed for a divorce again in 2014, but later withdrew the request. But after a brief separation, Riley eventually ended the marriage in 2016. Earlier this year, she married Love Actually star Thomas Brodie-Sangster who she met on the set of Pistol in 2021.
Riley made headlines when text exchanges between her and Musk were released in October 2022, in which she appeared to beg him to buy Twitter. Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform was initiated in April 2022, later being finalised in October 2022. He bought a 9 per cent stake in the company for a reported $44bn (£32.2m).
“I honestly think social media is the scourge of modern life, and the worst of all is Twitter,” she wrote in the messages.
“But it’s very easy to exploit and is being used by radicals for social engineering on a massive scale. And this shit is infecting the world. Please do something to fight woke-ism.”
Asked if she was responsible for the purchase, she said: “I can’t speak to that actually”.
Riley previously told The Independent, that she shares a “very deep love and connection” with Musk who she has also called the “perfect ex-husband”.
“He’s a great friend. He looks out for me. We are in a happy place now, where we’re good to each other, which is really nice. I have the utmost love for him,” she said.
Commenting on their on-again off-again relationship, and the decision to remarry, she said “I suppose the reason to get remarried was just because it felt silly to be together unmarried after having been married. You know, it’s like a habit.
“We were saying ‘this is my husband.’ ‘This is my wife.’ ‘Oh, wait, no, we’re not that anymore. We better be that again.’ You know, it felt silly to go back to ‘this is my boyfriend’ when we’ve been married. So, we just got married again.”
