FKA Twigs says it's 'pure luck' that she escaped her relationship with Shia LaBeouf
- FKA Twigs detailed the abuse she said Shia LaBeouf inflicted in a new interview with Elle.
- "It's a miracle I came out alive," she said. "It's pure luck that I'm not in that situation anymore."
- The singer filed a lawsuit against LaBeouf in December, citing emotional and physical abuse.
FKA Twigs detailed the abuse she said Shia LaBeouf inflicted in a new interview, calling it a "miracle" that she survived their relationship.
"I honestly wish I could say that I found some strength and I saw this light. I wish I could say, '[It is] a testament to my strong character,' or 'It's the way my mother raised me.' It's none of that," she told Elle. "It's pure luck that I'm not in that situation anymore."
The "Cellophane" singer described her ex's behavior as "calculated, systematic, tricky, and mazelike."
She recounted a cycle of "love bombing," gaslighting, testing boundaries, exerting control, and psychological harm.
"If you put a frog in a boiling pot of water, that frog is going to jump out straightaway," she told Elle. "Whereas if you put a frog in cool water and heat it up slowly, that frog is going to boil to death. That was my experience being with [LaBeouf]."
The 33-year-old British artist, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, filed a lawsuit against LaBeouf in December, claiming "relentless" emotional and physical abuse.
The former couple met in 2018 on the set of "Honey Boy," LaBeouf's semi-autobiographical film that explores the actor's troubled childhood and later struggles with PTSD and addiction.
Twigs told Elle that she tried to leave LaBeouf shortly after Valentine's Day in 2019, a particularly traumatic occasion that she also outlined in the lawsuit.
The singer said that she woke up to LaBeouf strangling her, and that he threw her to the ground. On their way home the following day, Twigs said LaBeouf drove recklessly and threatened to crash the car unless she professed her love for him.
"I was thinking to myself, 'I wonder what would happen to my body...if [we] smashed into a wall at 80 miles per hour?' I was looking for the airbag and I couldn't see the airbag sign, so I was thinking, 'If he doesn't have an airbag, will this car crush my sternum?'" she told Elle.
"I was thinking, 'Oh no, if I crouch like that, and the front of the car crashes into my head, will it snap my neck? Do I jump out of the car at 80 miles an hour?'"
Twigs told Elle that she tried to leave shortly after, but was foiled when LaBeouf found her packing and pinned her down. She ended their relationship for good in May 2019, just before her "Magdalene" world tour was set to kick off in Los Angeles. In her December lawsuit, the singer credited a therapist for helping her eventually leave the relationship.
In the new interview, Twigs also recounted allegations that LaBeouf wouldn't let her look men in the eye, knowingly gave her a sexually transmitted disease, and that he kept a gun next to his bed, which he bragged about using to shoot stray dogs.
LaBeouf's attorney recently said in a court filing that he "denies generally and specifically each and every allegation" in the complaint.
After Twigs filed the lawsuit back in December, the actor also apologized in a statement to the New York Times.
"I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years," LaBeouf, who's currently seeking help in a long-term inpatient treatment facility, wrote via email. "I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I'm ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt."
Representatives for LaBeouf did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
"I've given [LaBeouf] back his dysfunction now," Twigs told Elle. "I went on my whole 'Magdalene' tour holding that dysfunction - it was with me onstage, every time I did an interview, on every red carpet. I was not enjoying any of it. Because I was still holding it."
"But now I've given it back," she continued. "Now he gets to hold it. And everyone knows what he's done."