The model opens up to ET about her unfiltered and candid book of essays, ‘My Body,’ available now.
Emily Ratajkowski is ready to share her side of the story.
The 30-year-old model-turned-actress opens up to ET’s Deidre Behar about her unfiltered and candid book of essays, My Body, and what she hopes to accomplish with sharing her deeply personal stories and reclaiming her narrative. She also touches on her claims against Robin Thicke and the "Blurred Lines" music video, and an essay titled "Toxic," named after Britney Spears and the intense media scrutiny the pop star endured.
"As a model and an actress, you're always a part of someone else's vision, someone else's photograph, someone else's project," Ratajkowski says. "And it felt really amazing to become someone who was the creator."
"That being said, I've watched little things, information leak, stories leak, and things be turned into things they're just not," she continues. "And I know that the world consumes media in that way, but I'm really excited that the book's going to finally be available for people to have the even option and the opportunity to read things in my own words."
One of the hardest essays to write, Ratajkowski admits, was the one where she alleged Thicke groped her while on the set for the "Blurred Lines" music video.
"The one that I'm the most nervous to put out in the world, but it sort of already happened, is 'Blurred Lines' because I just didn't want to write it because I knew the headlines that were going to come out of it. That it would turn into this juicy bit of gossip," she shares. "And that the other more nuanced, or even just the nuance of that particular story, would be lost in the media frenzy."
A leaked excerpt of the essay, in which she writes about the alleged incident, was published by The Sunday Times last month. Ratajkowski wrote that she was initially comfortable on the all-female set, which was led by director Diane Martel, and claimed that Thicke cupped her bare breasts from behind without her permission. The singer allegedly apologized while on the set.
When asked how she is feeling about the headlines that emerged as a result of the leak (prior to her book being available), she candidly says, "I'm feeling OK now that the book's about to be available. I feel really happy with the way that people are talking about the book and I'm very much looking forward to the public having access to it."
As for the essay titled "Toxic," which centers around the intense media scrutiny the pop star endured early in her career, Ratajkowski admits she initially thought about omitting it. However, she ultimately decided to keep it in.
"At one point I almost was like, 'I have to take that part out of the book,' the Britney part, because I just felt like so many people were writing about her and talking about her," she explains. "And I didn't want to just jump on that kind of bandwagon. Then actually, interestingly, by the time I was finishing the book and it was going to be completed, I was like, 'Of course I have to talk about her now. She represents something in the zeitgeist.'"
While she doesn't personally know Spears, she hopes the pop star reads her book. "I know what it's like to be written about as something that represents someone else's life," she says. "And it doesn't always mean as much to you as it does maybe the person who's writing about it. So I hope she reads the book, but I also hope she is happy."
The I Feel Pretty star, meanwhile, dedicates the book to her 8-month-old son, Sylvester, whom she welcomed in March. Ratajkowski says she’s hopeful that he’ll learn a lot from her life story and subsequent lessons and wisdom.
"I dedicated the book to him because I wrote about these experiences to make myself the best version of a mother that I could be," she expresses. "And that, I think really, was about love and that's why I wrote the book. And I think that there's a lot that I hope he can learn from it, but again, he's such a baby right now. I'm just interested in keeping him safe and happy."
With My Body, she also hopes that both women and men can relate to what she's gone through, and what it means to be a woman.
"I hope that women in general feel like there are things in my experience that they can relate to about being a woman. About the kind of dance that women do to both feel beautiful, to sometimes cover themselves up, to really sexualize themselves, and how they can kind of get ahead, and also feel taken advantage of at the same time, and the way that they have to experience that," she states. "I want them to relate to that. I hope that, for men, they're able to feel some compassion and understand what it's like to be a woman."
My Body is out now.
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