Emily Ratajkowski has said that she hasn’t heard from Robin Thicke since her charges against him were leaked without her permission.
An extract from her new book, My Body, in which she claimed she was groped by the musician, was released in early October.
Ratajkowski remembered her experience on the set of the music video for Thicke’s 2013 smash song, “Blurred Lines,” in the extract, which was culled from a much lengthier essay.
Ratajkowski, who is recognized for her work as a model, author, and actress, catapulted to prominence after appearing in the massively famous music video for the controversial hit.
The song, which spent 12 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, features two associated music videos: one censored and another uncensored version in which Ratajkowski and two other models appear topless.
Ratajkowski writes in her book that while she was initially eager to shoot both versions of the video, she got uneasy when Thicke “returned to the set a little drunk to shoot just with me.”
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt the coolness and foreignness of a stranger’s hands cupping my bare breasts from behind,” Ratajkowski wrote about her experience on the shoot. I instinctively moved away, looking back at Robin Thicke.”
“He smiled a goofy grin and stumbled backward, his eyes concealed behind his sunglasses,” she goes on. “My head turned to the darkness beyond the set. [Director Diane Martel’s] voice cracked as she yelled out to me, ‘Are you okay? ’”
Soon after the segment was leaked, Ratajkowski’s assertions from the set were backed up by the video’s director, Diane Martel, who informed the Sunday Times that she witnessed the alleged encounter.
“I remember the moment that he grabbed her breasts. One in each hand,” the director recalled last month. “He was standing behind her as they were both in profile. I screamed in my very aggressive Brooklyn voice, ‘What the fuck are you doing? That’s it! The shoot is over!’”
Martel claimed that Thicke “sheepishly apologized” for his actions at the time, and that she did not believe he would have acted in that manner if he had been “sober.”
Ratajkowski stated two days after the excerpt was posted that she was “frustrated” that the claims were misconstrued without the context of the wider article from which they were taken.
“It’s been hard for me, I really like to have control over my image and I wrote this book of essays to share the whole story and all sides of it,” she said at a red carpet event in October. “I feel like it turns into a clickbait frenzy and all of a sudden words like ‘sexual assault’ and ‘allegations’ are getting thrown around rather than people reading the actual essay.”
Ratajkowski has now disclosed that she has yet to hear from Thicke, more than a month after her claims were originally made public.
Ratajkowski was asked by a fan on Watch What Happens Live on Thursday what she wanted people to know most about her experience on the set of “Blurred Lines,” given that her first comments on the shoot had been mostly taken out of context.
She began by emphasizing the importance of reading the entire essay to fully grasp the larger picture of her “complicated” situation, stating that “nothing I’m going to be able to say here is really going to sum it up.”
Ratajkowski went on to say that, despite her claimed interaction with Thicke, she had liked her time on the set of the 2013 music video, which was shot by an all-female crew of creatives and was designed with the intention of “subverting power dynamics” and empowering women, according to its director.
“I think it’s a really complicated picture, I had a great time on that set in many ways,” she stated before going on to explain the nuances of the larger piece from which the claims were extracted.
“It’s also really a picture of just like a young girl starting to model and be a working model and think about the prospect of money and success,” she said. “I just want people to read the whole essay.”
Andy Cohen, the show’s host, then asked Ratajkowski if she had heard from Thicke since the essay was published in its full earlier this month, to which she replied, “I have not. I have not, no.”
Cohen then inquired if she expected to hear from the singer, prompting the author to explain why she chose to share her story with the world.
“No,” she replied when asked if she expected a response from Thicke. “The essay wasn’t written as a gotcha moment. It’s about me sort of setting the record straight and sharing the whole truth and my experience with the world.”
She continued, “In that essay particularly I want people to kind of talk about power dynamics that I think are often shrouded on sets, but also just on dates and in the world in general.”
“I think when you’re 19 and, you know, you’re coming into adulthood as a young woman, you can feel like you’re the most powerful person in the room. And there’s some power, but attention, validation that comes with that, but it’s more complicated than that,” Ratajkowski added.
Unfortunately, her allegations being taken out of context were not the only issue Ratajkowski faced when her comments were exposed.
Speaking on the Table Manners podcast a few weeks ago, the actor discussed the ramifications of sharing her experience, revealing that she received “horrendous remarks” on social media after her claims were made public.
During a discussion on the release of her new book, Table Manners host Jessie Ware addressed Ratajkowski about the public reaction to her charges and speculated on how responses may have differed if she had spoken out earlier in her career.
“I don’t know what it would have been like,” she began. “2013 was a very different time, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to talk about that at that point in my life.”
“I’ve done a couple of interviews [after] this news was leaked where people were like, ‘What do you think the consequences will be for Robin Thicke?’ And ‘Do you feel morally kind of responsible for that?’ And you know, it was a big question for me,” she went on.
Ratajkowski mentioned the repercussions she endured shortly after her statements were leaked when discussing the prospective consequences Thicke may face.
“In the time since, I’m like: wait, my Twitter is full of horrendous comments saying, like: ‘Oh, she just wants to sell her book,’ and ‘Oh she was naked on set, what did she expect?’ Like those are the kind of things I’m getting,” she revealed.
“And I’m like, well there’s consequences… I understand why people don’t tell these stories, you know?” Ratajkowski explained, seemingly alluding to the wider issue of victim blaming.
“There’s real reasons [why people don’t come forward], especially when there isn’t the nuance of the essay behind it, it just becomes this clickbait media frenzy, where you know, people see one little, 10-word sentence and then they make up their mind in 15 seconds, shoot off a tweet and it’s a new thing the next day,” she added.
As of now, Thicke has not officially addressed Ratajkowski’s allegations against him. He did not react promptly to a request for comment.