Elon Musk and ex-lover Grimes believed she was an IMAGINARY character created to be his ‘perfect girlfriend’, doc claims
THE on-off romance between Elon Musk and Grimes has had some bizarre twists and turns – including a secret surrogate baby and twins born to another woman at the same time.
Now a BBC documentary has revealed the Tesla boss thinks she is a figment of his own imagination – and she agrees.
In The Elon Musk Show, which continues on BBC2 on Wednesday, Vanity Fair journalist Devin Gordon says the Canadian singer revealed the wacky theory in a recent interview.
“She told me repeatedly that Musk has this theory of her that she’s not real, that she’s a simulation who was created by him and exists in his cerebral cortex as sort of the perfect companion to him,” he says.
“Which sounds a little crazy and maybe even a little creepy, except, she agrees with it. She said she does feel like this simulation which was perfectly created for him.”
The three-part documentary, which began this week, interviews former colleagues and family members, including mum Maye – who spills the beans on his “violent” childhood.
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First wife Justine reveals she found out her husband was divorcing her through a message left with their marriage counsellor.
And Brit star Talulah Riley – who wed the billionaire twice – reveals intimate details of their relationship, including how he chatted her up by inviting her to a watch rocket videos, as well as revealing the softer side of the hardworking CEO.
“He has a real innocence to him. What I mean by that is he feels with incredible purity the emotion he’s feeling at the time, whatever that emotion is,” she says.
“He feels things incredibly deeply. I’ve heard it said that he’s cold and emotionless. That could not be further from the truth. He’s the most emotional person I know.”
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Barefoot in snow to prove love
Talulah, then 22, met Musk in London’s Whisky Mist in 2008, just weeks after he split from first wife Justine Wilson.
After a whirlwind romance of just 10 days, he told her: “I don’t want you to go home. I want to marry you” and she moved into his LA apartment, becoming an instant stepmum to his five small children.
At the time, the businessman was on the verge of bankruptcy, having ploughed millions into Tesla – which was struggling to produce a mass-produced electric car – and the rocket company SpaceX.
Court documents revealed he was using emergency loans from friends to pay for divorce costs and living expenses.
He was working 20 hours days and suffering night terrors and, in episode two of the documentary, Talulah reveals her fears for his health.
“It was really awful…He was under incredible stress,” she says. “I was worried he was going to have a heart attack. I just kept thinking god I’ve just got to keep this guy alive.”
She also reveals a touching story that reveals the more romantic side of the workaholic tech geek.
“It was one of the bad Christmases. He’d forgotten to get me a Christmas present,” she says. “We were in Boulder, Colorado, so there’s loads and loads of snow.
“We were in bed and he said, ‘It’s not that I don’t love you, I really really love you, it’s just that my brain is exploding.’
“He got up in the middle of the night and disappeared. He came back two hours later. He’d gone outside in his T-shirt and shorts, barefoot, and he’d dug in the snow and picked flowers.
“He’d gone all over Boulder, and he came back with this little bouquet of picked flowers’ and said ‘I just wanted to show you how much I love you.’”
Hovercraft and eels
Talulah says he was supportive of her career and, when she had to return to the UK, to film St Trinian’s 2, he sent a truckload of flowers to the set as well as finding the names of every female on the set, and treating them to flowers, chocolates and champagne.
“I remember at the premier [of St Trinians] he came along and he was holding my umbrella for me while I was doing signings, and no one knew who Elon was,” she recalls.
“He was very sweet and lovely and very supportive.”
The pair wed in 2010, in Scotland’s Dornoch Cathedral, and says Musk was happy to wed in the UK.
“I said is there anything you want at the wedding and he said, ‘yes I want a hovercraft and eels.’ So we had a hovercraft and eels,” she says.
“We went to Paris for our honeymoon for a couple of days – he took some meetings while we were there – but it was really nice.”
The couple divorced two years later before remarrying, in 2013. A year later, Musk filed for divorce again, before withdrawing the petition. The pair finally split in 2016.
In the documentary, Talulah explains the reason for the marriage split, reunion and final split.
“I found LA really tough from the moment I landed there,” she says. “It was an incredible culture shock. I just wanted to come home and I kept trying to come home but also I do really love Elon as well so it took quite a few years of us figuring that out.”
The pair remain close and she says, although she didn’t understand his vision, she believes he may one day achieve his ultimate dream – to build a human colony on Mars.
“He could kind of see the way the world was going in a way I just did not understand, and I love having that perspective and I’m grateful for every part of that.
“I hope he gets humanity to Mars because I think that is his reason for being more than any of it.”
Bond over AI theory
After a brief relationship with Amber Heard, Elon Musk first met Grimes in early 2018 through Twitter – and bonded over a hi-tech gag.
“They both made a similar nerdy joke about a scary AI theory of the future called Roko’s Basilisk, which I don’t really even get,” says Devin. “And her interests are all the same as his and her music is very technologically oriented.”
On the rebound from a brief romance with Amber Heard, Musk fell for the Canadian singer, who is 17 years younger.
In May 2020, they welcomed their first son but instantly caused controversy with the choice of name – X Æ A-12 – and were forced to change it to X AE A-XII by Californian authorities because it contained symbols not included in the alphabet.
A year later, Musk said the pair had “semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently, and are on great terms.”
Despite living apart, the couple used a surrogate to give birth to their baby daughter, Exa Dark Siderael – also known as Y – who was born in December.
They kept her birth a secret, only admitting she existed when a journalist heard a baby crying upstairs at their home in March.
When pressed, she admitted she had a daughter and explained that serious complications in her first pregnancy meant they didn’t want to risk a second.
Court documents recently unveiled by Insider also revealed he has twins with colleague Shivon Zilis, who were born a month before Y.
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Explaining their on-off relationship, Grimes added: “There’s no real word for it.
“I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid. We live in separate houses. We’re best friends. We see each other all the time…. We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it.”
Episode 2 of The Elon Musk Show airs on BBC2 on Wednesday