Bunnie Xo and Jelly Roll’s love story began in Las Vegas.
As she recalled on Bussin’ With The Boys, she met the singer in August 2015 when he performed at the Las Vegas Country Saloon. This was before Jelly Roll was famous. At the time, he was living in a van, and he estimated about 20 people were at the show.
Instead, their spark took center stage.
“When I met him, I tell everybody it’s the most f–king cliché s–t, but literally my soul was like, ‘There you are,'” Bunnie said on the podcast in 2023. “And he’s not my type. I’m not his type. He loves Taylor Swift. That’s his type.”
Still, a romance didn’t form right away. Bunnie was in an unhealthy relationship, she continued, and Jelly Roll was doing his own thing. But in October 2015, they reconnected. And as Bunnie put it, she was “just smitten.”
After her ex went to prison, she added, she told a friend to give Jelly Roll her phone number. Bunnie said the musician would call and text her for advice on his daughter Bailee from a previous relationship.
However, Bunnie noted her bond with Jelly Roll shifted from platonic to romantic in July 2016 when he returned to Vegas to film some videos and they slept together.
“We’re like s–t-faced drunk,” she remembered. “I’m trying to get it up, get it in, get it on and get it out, and this guy was like, ‘What’s your five-year plan?'”
So, they discussed their goals, and Bunnie recalled Jelly Roll saying, “OK, cool. Let’s do it.”
And they did.
“We got married a month later,” Bunnie added on Bussin’ With The Boys, sharing she wed Jelly Roll at Las Vegas’ Stained Glass Wedding Chapel in August 2016, “and f–kin we did the five-year plan. Literally finished it all the way through to the fifth year. The last thing was buying our own house.”
Another one of Bunnie’s goals was to launch her own podcast.
“When she came out of the sex working industry, I’m sitting down with her and I’m like, ‘Well, what are you passionate about?’ Jelly Roll said on The Howard Stern Show in June 2024. “She’s like, ‘I’d love to do some kind of a talk show.'”
Bunnie left the sex work industry in 2019 and debuted the Dumb Blonde podcast later that year. And she used the money she had made to help fuel Jelly Roll’s dreams.
“I invested in his [2017] Addiction Kills album,” Bunnie said on Sofia Franklyn’s podcast Sofia with an F. “I helped him with that. He needed custody of his daughter, I helped him with that.”
Jelly Roll’s daughter Bailee was born in 2008.
At the time, he was in prison for drug dealing.
“My daughter saved my life,” Jelly Roll said in his 2023 documentary Jelly Roll: Save Me. “She wasn’t old enough to even know it.”
Bailee said in the doc her dad entered her life when she was 2, when he was in the early stages of his music career and living in his van. And while Jelly Roll admitted he was a “very less-than-present father” at the time, that changed when he sought full custody of Bailee amid her mother’s battle with addiction.
Though Jelly Roll and Bunnie were in the early stages of their romance, he revealed on the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast that she paid for a lawyer and “bankrolled the whole s–t.” The two also re-evaluated their lives.
“Who was I, us, to take her from her mom and bring her into our house if we’re over here just popping pills and doing the same thing? What makes us better?” Bunnie said in the doc. “I was just like, ‘This is it. I’m done.’ And I literally never touched a pill again.”
She also stepped into a maternal role.
“Thank you Papa Roll for giving me the chance to be the mom I never had,” Bunnie wrote for Bailee’s Sweet 16 in 2024. “But most importantly—Thank you to the sweetest, sassiest 16 year old for teaching me the most healing life lessons ever these past 8 years & letting me be your mama.”
In August 2016—about a week before Jelly Roll and Bunnie wed and while he was seeking custody of Bailee—he welcomed son Noah.
“God Bless this Child to be everything I am not!” the “Need a Favor” artist wrote on Facebook after the birth. “Noah Buddy DeFord! I pray he nor Bailee ever have to pay for their father’s sins.”
Over the years, Jelly Roll and Bunnie have kept much of Noah’s life private. However, they’ve shared a few glimpses into his world.
In July 2023, for instance, Bunnie posted a TikTok where she asked Noah questions like what’s his favorite sport (soccer) and what does he like to do at the beach (play in the water)? Still, she made it clear she’d asked his mom for permission before posting the video, writing in the comments “always mama approved first.”
In fact, Bunnie and Jelly Roll are on good terms with Noah’s mother.
“She’s one stand up chick & we couldn’t imagine our lives without her,” she wrote in a 2023 Facebook post, “she holds it down for baby Noah & us especially because we are on the road so much.”
And Bunnie loves being his stepmom.
“Nothing brings me more joy then getting to watch my bonus babies grow up,” she wrote on Instagram in October 2024 after Noah attended one of his dad’s shows. “I’m not one to get emotional but just being in this little boy’s life since the day he was born is such a privilege. Thankful for his mama as well.”
Two years after Jelly Roll and Bunnie wed, they separated. While they haven’t publicly confirmed the reason for their split, he admitted to cheating on her.
“I don’t talk about this publicly at all, but one of the worst moments of my adulthood was when I had an affair on my wife,” Jelly Roll said on the October 2025 premiere episode of the Human School podcast. “Because it was the first time that I was like, ‘I really can’t get this right at all. Like, I know I’m in love with this woman.’ It just really, really, really blew me back.”
Still, the couple determined they wanted to make their relationship work and rekindled their romance later in 2018.
“I did a lot of work to repair that relationship,” he continued. “The repair has been special, man. We’re stronger than we could’ve ever been. I wish our story would’ve went in the way that it never had an affair, and I’m in no way glad it happened, but, man, I’m proud of who we are today.”
And they remain committed to each other.
“Who knew that us breaking up in 2018, me moving back to Vegas & you coming to get me back – would have put us on this wild journey called life,” Bunnie wrote on TikTok in February 2023. “We finally committed to each other & did everything we promised each other the first night in 2016. Our castle in the sand had to crumble so we could rebuild on solid ground. I yuh you so mushhh.”
In 2023, seven years after they first tied the knot, Jelly Roll and Bunnie renewed their vows.
Looking back at their first walk down the aisle, the podcaster recalled in a tribute how the Grammy nominee, “grabbed my hands & looked me straight in the eyes & said, ‘Bunnie, our lives won’t always be like this. You won’t have to do what you do for much longer, we’re going to figure this out. I promise you.'”
And he made good on that promise.
“I had no idea what the world had in store for us, but I didn’t care as long as I had you by my side to conquer it,” Bunnie added in her September 2023 message. “These past 7 years have been a whirlwind dark fairytale. Nothing we have accomplished as lovers & friends was easy. We fought to become the people we are, to break the childhood traumas we were ‘blessed’ with & learn to love in a healthy way. To right all our wrongs & create a home to raise Bailee in that she can be proud of. No matter what life has thrown our way we walked thru the fire together, hand in hand w/ a smile.”
And they’ll continue doing just that.
“You are my missing puzzle piece,” Bunnie noted to Jelly Roll. “My safe space. The man that makes me dance in my feminine energy. My best friend, my hero & the greatest man I’ve ever known. They don’t make ‘em like you anymore Jason DeFord.”
And they continue to live in harmony. In fact, Bunnie has inspired some of Jelly Roll’s songs, including “Woman” and “Kill a Man” to name a few.
“She’s the best, man,” the country music star said while speaking about the latter track to Entertainment Tonight. “I have attempted to write 1,000 love songs, and I thought all of them were a little corny. So I was like, ‘How do I write a love song and keep my manliness but I also can completely open myself to how in love I am?'”
He added, “I don’t see any other woman on Earth but her, and I wanted to write a song that reflected that and was vulnerable.”
Jelly Roll and Bunnie also co-starred in the music videos for “Wheels Fall Off” as well as “Lonely Road” featuring Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox.
Whether in the audience or at home, Bunnie is always cheering for Jelly Roll.
“My sweet husband the visionary. The maestro of misfits,” she wrote in a tribute in honor of his 2024 CMT Music Awards. “You are not an overnight success story, this has been 20 years in the making.”
That journey, Bunnie continued, has included “days where we thought no one was listening to the music, & nights that turned into filled arenas.”
“I’ve watched you pour your soul into a pen & write therapeutic hymns for the broken only for those hymns to pour straight into their hearts,” she added. “Therapeutic music that kisses the cracks of their souls & even if just for that moment- they kno [sic] they are understood & seen.”
And their commitment to each other through it all is music to fans’ ears.
“Papabear your voice is an instrument of healing & the world is your choir,” Bunnie continued. “I LOVE YOU IN THIS LIFETIME & EVERY OTHER ONE IM LUCKY TO BE BY YOUR SIDE IN.”
Of course, Jelly Roll roots Bunnie on, too.
“Watching what you have built on social media and with your podcast is amazing,” he wrote in part of a message for their eight anniversary. “To see the way you inspire people especially other women makes my heart want to explode with joy.”
But make no mistake, Bunnie Xo isn’t going to send hugs and kisses if you come for her man.
The social media star slammed hurfult online comments Jelly Roll received about his weight before his more than 200-pound loss.
“My husband got off the internet because he’s so tired of being bullied about his f–king weight,” she said on an April 2024 episode of Dumb Blonde. “And that makes me want to cry because he is the sweetest angel baby.”
And while Bunnie said Jelly Roll doesn’t show how these comments affect him, she noted they do take a toll.
“The internet can say whatever the f–k they want about you, and they say, ‘Well, you’re a celebrity. You’re supposed to be able to handle it,'” she continued. “No, the f–k we’re not.”
Bunnie then reminded listeners that this type of behavior is never OK.
“Don’t bully people,” she said, “because you never know where they are mentally.”
And Bunnie made it clear she won’t let bullies’ remarks slide.
“I’m sorry, I’m going to stand up for all the f–king underdogs,” she noted. “You’re never gonna bully me. You’re never gonna lie about me and my family, and I’m going to fight ’til the end.”
Her husband, meanwhile, has continued to be nakedly honest about his journey, revealing he was struggling with low testosterone and other health concerns. As he put it on a December 2025 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, “I could feel myself dying.”
Jelly Roll and Bunnie have been open about their efforts to grow their family.
After the “Son of a Sinner” star revealed they’ve discussed having a baby, his wife shared the steps they’ve taken.
“We had planned on doing this privately, but decided our IVF journey needed to be shared because we’ve always been so open,” Bunnie wrote in a June 2024 Instagram post, “And w/ all odds stacked against us, it’s already been hard & we have only just begun.”
Still, they remain hopeful.
“We have been meeting w/ IVF doctors & exploring all our options to add to our family,” she continued. “J & I are SO excited & scared all at the same time. We genuinely never thought we’d want to add to our family but something changed this year & we both just want a piece of us together to add to our already perfect family with Bailee & Noah.”
And they’ve spoken about their experience with surrogacy. “We don’t have a surrogate for any other reason besides the fact that I just cannot carry a child myself,” Bunnie said on a March 2025 episode of her podcast Dumb Blonde. “There’s too much risk.”
The road has definitely been a challenge, “but at the same time it’s like, you just put it in God’s hands,” Bunnie said on a November 2025 episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast. “If it’s meant to be it’s meant to be. And if not, we can always adopt.”

Justin Baldoni’s lawyer is hoping both Baldoni and Blake Lively can “move on” from their contentious “It Ends With Us” legal battle.
Days after U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman ordered that Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios must pay Lively’s attorneys’ fees, Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman said he decided to release the full settlement agreement with Lively to provide clarity.
According to the settlement agreement, it ends the parties’ litigation, bars future claims related to the dispute and includes a joint public statement, while leaving Lively’s request for attorneys’ fees and damages under section 47.1 for the court to decide.
Judge orders Justin Baldoni to cover Blake Lively’s legal fees
Freedman, who spoke with Megyn Kelly on “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Monday, said that he’s publishing the settlement agreement “to allow people finality,” he said.
He went on, “To allow them to have peace. To allow Justin to have time with his family, unmitigated time where his mind is elsewhere. To allow him to continue moving on with his career.”
“And frankly and honestly, the same for Ms. Lively,” Freedman continued. “To allow her the dignity to move on with her life and put this all behind everyone, and frankly you know, I don’t know if people are getting tired of it — I imagine that they are and it’s time to move on and it’s time to learn from it all and I’m sure people would have made other choices had they considered this in hindsight.
Freedman added, “But the truth is, when you settle, you should settle. Wish the other party the best and move on.”
ABC News has reached out to representatives for Lively.
Lively and Baldoni’s legal battle kicked off in December 2024, when Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Department alleging “severe emotional distress” after she said Baldoni and key stakeholders in the film — which Baldoni also directed — sexually harassed her and attempted, along with Baldoni’s production company, to orchestrate a smear campaign against her.
Baldoni followed up the action by filing a lawsuit against the New York Times for libel and false light invasion of privacy on Dec. 31 after it published the article about Lively’s California complaint.
Lively subsequently formalized her complaint into a lawsuit against Baldoni in New York, also on Dec. 31.
Baldoni responded by filing a civil lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, and others, for, among other things, extortion and defamation.
The suits were consolidated into one lawsuit in January 2025.
In June last year, Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against Lively, Reynolds, and the couple’s publicist Leslie Sloane, as well as Baldoni’s defamation suit against the Times, was dismissed by Liman.
Lawyers for Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni speak out as settlement details revealed
A federal judge in New York gutted much of Lively’s case against Baldoni in April of this year, including claims she was subjected to sexual harassment on set.
The judge determined in a ruling at the time that Lively would be allowed to pursue certain claims of retaliation against Baldoni’s public relations team over alleged harm to her reputation.
In May, after reaching a settlement in their protracted legal dispute, the two actors issued a joint statement via their respective legal teams, saying, “We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments. It is our sincere hope that this brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace, including a respectful environment online.”

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Boston sports broadcasting pioneer Eddie Andelman remembered through archival footage
Eddie Andelman, a Boston broadcaster for more than four decades, is being remembered for his indelible impact on sports talk radio and the Boston landscape. Andelman’s death at age 89 was announced Monday by the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame and Phantom Gourmet, which was created by his three sons. The Dorchester native and two other fans created the long-running interactive sports show, Sports Huddle, in 1969.”Some call him the godfather of sports radio. He certainly changed and elevated the sports radio game,” his sons wrote. Video below: Andelman’s tough words for Red Sox”The show became a model for similar programs across the country. As the audiences grew, the show expanded from a weekly Sunday night feature to a prime-time weekday series and was a precursor of the all-sports radio format stations that we know today,” according to Andelman’s biography on the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame.He participated in approximately 13,000 radio broadcasts and more than 1,200 television commentaries, including several on WCVB. Video below: Andelman’s take on sports magazinesAndelman was a graduate of Boston University with an MBA from Northeastern University. His honors included Jimmy Fund Man of the Year, Joey Fund Man of the Year, and Jewish Big Brother Man of the Year. He raised millions of dollars for the Joey Fund-Cystic Fibrosis through his Hot Dog Safaris. “Eddie Andelman lived a truly incredible life,” his sons wrote. Video below: Andelman joins Chronicle for a hot dog tasting
Eddie Andelman, a Boston broadcaster for more than four decades, is being remembered for his indelible impact on sports talk radio and the Boston landscape.
Andelman’s death at age 89 was announced Monday by the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame and Phantom Gourmet, which was created by his three sons.
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The Dorchester native and two other fans created the long-running interactive sports show, Sports Huddle, in 1969.
“Some call him the godfather of sports radio. He certainly changed and elevated the sports radio game,” his sons wrote.
Video below: Andelman’s tough words for Red Sox
“The show became a model for similar programs across the country. As the audiences grew, the show expanded from a weekly Sunday night feature to a prime-time weekday series and was a precursor of the all-sports radio format stations that we know today,” according to Andelman’s biography on the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
He participated in approximately 13,000 radio broadcasts and more than 1,200 television commentaries, including several on WCVB.
Video below: Andelman’s take on sports magazines
Andelman was a graduate of Boston University with an MBA from Northeastern University. His honors included Jimmy Fund Man of the Year, Joey Fund Man of the Year, and Jewish Big Brother Man of the Year.
He raised millions of dollars for the Joey Fund-Cystic Fibrosis through his Hot Dog Safaris.
“Eddie Andelman lived a truly incredible life,” his sons wrote.
Video below: Andelman joins Chronicle for a hot dog tasting

The third album from a major commodity in mainstream music is a massive test. A breakthrough debut introduces an artist’s character and pet sounds that, with luck, get refined on a sophomore album. If their next outing doesn’t keep carefully evolving, they can get branded a one-trick pony, but pushing the envelope too far can alienate day-one fans. Celebrity Skin (1998), Hole’s third studio album, neatened up Courtney Love’s sound and image after her Golden Globe nom for The People vs. Larry Flynt, exchanging the guttural shrieks and tattered garb of her early-’90s oeuvre for sleeker pop-rock hooks and chic threads. Fans and critics met her pivot with begrudging respect, thanks to the strength of the album’s melodies. Olivia Rodrigo is a student of Love and her ilk who has been riding high off the one-two punch of 2021’s Sour and 2023’s Guts, chart-toppers dually indebted to modern pop and ’90s grunge. You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love, the 23-year-old singer’s latest, dodges the third-album conundrum of whether to embrace sweeping change. Rodrigo delicately rearranges the ideas that animated her first two albums.
Sad doesn’t ditch the balladry and brusque rockers that yielded hits like the hushed “Drivers License” and the harsh “Brutal.” Instead, it bakes the usual ingredients of a Rodrigo work — fluttering vocals, feelings of abandonment, occasional fuzz tones — down into a more cohesive confection of bittersweet, maximalist pop-rock that largely borrows from the ’80s. It’s an autobiographical concept album about the thrills and chills of life with a partner who turned out to be a mismatch. Less reliant on abrasive rock tones, her sound loses some urgency, but she fights to make up for the album’s more restrained approach with laser-guided storytelling. Sad may not reach the heights of her previous projects, but it is a ferocious showcase of her strengths.
Rodrigo admitted in a recent interview that she wasn’t excited by rock in a “traditional” sense this cycle, after sparking controversy for wearing baby-doll dresses at one of her concerts and on Sad’s album cover. Accused of courting Loli creeps, the singer stressed she was paying homage to forebears like Love. Grunge and riot grrrl vets were merchants of social commentary, steeped in a typically ’90s disdain for subtlety, on having to grow up too quickly to navigate a world of predatory men. That Rodrigo’s tribute to these pioneers went over as an act of titillating horny anonymous men shows how male agency takes priority over other perspectives even when people think they’re behaving in a woman’s best interest. It also shows how, as effusively as Rodrigo advertises her admiration for the likes of Hole and Weezer, she is still understood as a pop property and Taylor Swift successor. Sad’s sonic points of reference notably aren’t “kinderwhore” staples like Hole or Babes in Toyland, so any critique and defenses of Rodrigo’s right to (or obligation not to) engage in sporadic Courtney Love cosplay now look funny in the light of Sad’s softer scope. And Rodrigo’s poise comes off like a coping mechanism for the think-piece storms set off by her every movement; this third album is an evolution too delicate to ruffle many feathers but nevertheless caused a stir.
Sad balances piano-pop pomp, extravagant alt-rock, and cinematic serenading. With a craggier vocal, the boisterous lead single “Drop Dead!” could pass for Arcade Fire. The Montreal unit’s polyphonic overload is useful to Rodrigo lyrics about being overwhelmed by attraction, to the head rush of a kiss and the swirl of possibilities it could lead to. Elsewhere, the tender “Honeybee” lays a precious, Lorde-like delivery on too thick to re-create starry-eyed pillow talk — “Shooting stars, racing cars / Everything I own just feels like ours” — and the elegant breakup ballad “Less” takes after Disney Princess songs, using regal, ascending notes to wish the dream guy didn’t fall for her. Sad’s louder, leaner songs land as grating in their company: “My Way” and “Expectations” crank up the angst and distortion, but both tracks seem perfunctory and inessential to the main story, as though her heart really isn’t in shredding right now but she still had to satiate “Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl” fans. The most exciting thing “Expectations” has going for it is a chunky bass tone that recalls the ’70s masterworks of New Wave titans Ric Ocasek and Gary Numan.
Sad’s narrative, seemingly inspired by Rodrigo’s two-year romance with English actor Louis Partridge, is alluring. It plays with our image of the singer as the jilted flame and plaintiff of “Drivers License,” “Traitor,” and “Vampire,” a person awful things continue to happen to despite noble intentions. Here, Rodrigo accepts some responsibility for a broken bond by setting up impossibly giddy and borderline irrational paeans to stalking a crush and obsessing about him through the day. She slowly lives to regret such behavior, coming to terms with the reality that her beau is not the prince who was promised. Songs in which love is fizzling challenge the wisdom of songs about the chase. “The Cure” reckons with problems a boyfriend can’t fix — “But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore / It will never be the cure” — before the closer “Cigarette Smoke” suggests their failure to live up to storybook ideals. The latter song’s chorus — “I thought that we played the perfect couple / ’Til you didn’t want the part” — can be read as a fuck-you or as a wounded reappraisal of the scatterbrained glee of earlier cuts like “Maggots for Brains,” an upbeat take on the Cure’s “A Forest” that can’t wait to paraphrase Sex and the City’s Miranda Hobbes: “And everything that’s funny, I wish I could tell to him.” Rodrigo is so spellbound in the bustling “U + Me = <3” that you almost sense her smirking at herself and listeners, like, Bad idea, right? Do we really want what Miranda and Steve had?
Cuts like “Maggots for Brains” and “U+ Me = <3” highlight Rodrigo’s adjustments to her approach to rock and roll. The guitars are ever present but not necessarily the focus; at the chorus, “Maggots” surrounds Rodrigo with a hail of synth-and-string bells and whistles, then “<3” does the same with stacks of electric and acoustic guitars. The two tracks salute the maudlin pop instincts of the Cure but tiptoe too closely to the source material. “<3” is the “In Between Days” to “Maggots”’s “A Forest.” The happy Cure-type beats are cozier fits for Sad’s traditional pop-star fare (like the shouty, wordy, Swifty third single, “Stupid Song”) than Guts’s disorienting mix of snarling slacker-rock excellence and sorrowful cooing. Rodrigo gets that the Cure’s catalogue is home to countless formidable pop songs, but “Maggots” and “<3” are undermined by a distracting reverence to what they’re trying to re-create. You don’t have to craft Head on the Door simulacra to honor goth romantic Robert Smith; his other admirers include Chino Moreno of Deftones and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, who don’t much sound like Smith or each other. Circling Smith’s ’80s work keeps Sad on trend with 2020s pop’s forever fixation on Reagan-era musical real estate. Sad is an across-the-pond rejoinder to Plastic Hearts, Miley Cyrus’s 2020 ode to Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks, or a London-in-the-’80s alternative to the Paris-in-the-’80s pining on Doja Cat’s 2025 full length, Vie. Sad is better than both those albums, but by hook or by crook, we find our way back to 1980-something.
Deep in Sad’s volley of pure-pop reverie and New Wave period pieces, “What’s Wrong With Me” delivers a shining exercise in the reflexivity that has endeared Rodrigo to young fans and rock elders. The actual Robert Smith guests on the song after mutual words of admiration and surprise collaborations at Glastonbury 2025 and Primavera Sound 2026. “Wrong” is a cartoonishly forlorn, disconcertingly peppy duet that tracks the disintegration of a relationship in tinny programmed drums and synth notes. The vocalists check off a list of possible sources of a malaise until they land on her significant other, serving desolation in the aesthetics of wedding-singer routines. You could totally slip “Wrong” onto a Cure album in the era that produced the strutting “Let’s Go to Bed,” but it doesn’t want to be “Let’s Go to Bed.” The song is a study in subtlety and irony, a coming-of-age story with an old soul’s flair for decades-old sounds. It contains wholesome ’60s girl-group lyrics — “Went to the doctor and she said I was fine / But every movie that I see makes me cry” — rendered in kitschy ’80s production behind ’90s-themed album art. Pairing time-displaced tastes and dour earnestness is distinctly Rodrigo.

President Donald Trump’s administration has made it a mission to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government, and those efforts have had a trickle-down effect across corporate America. So much so that it’s cost Laverne Cox approximately 90 percent of her income over the last few years.
Cox, a high-profile transgender star who rose to fame thanks to an Emmy-nominated turn on Orange Is the New Black, made the reveal in a new interview with The Guardian while promoting her first book, a memoir titled Transcendent.
“This regime has threatened to defund any colleges and universities that promote gender ideology, DEI,” she said, adding that she’s even lost teaching opportunities. “Even though I’d be teaching a graduate acting class, it could be perceived as promoting trans ideology. These are the realities. I’m not complaining — I’m very blessed. The important thing to note is that if Laverne Cox’s income has gone down significantly, what about all the other trans people who are not as privileged and as blessed as I am? There are material consequences for this kind of discrimination and scapegoating.”
The interview echoes earlier statements she made to Attitude. “I’ve lost so much money because of this administration, the past year,” Cox told the publication. “I managed to stay busy with acting and branding work, as well as speaking engagements. But I never thought college speaking gigs would dry up.”
Because of the impact on her bank account, Cox said she’s been forced to dip into reserves to stay afloat. “The past year or two, I’ve had to dip into savings and my retirement fund. So, the blessing is that I finally have the privilege to have a retirement fund to dip into, but you don’t really want to do that. If it’s affecting me, then it’s definitely affecting other people.”
And not just financially.
“If we don’t wake up and don’t understand, trans people will be exterminated,” she also told The Guardian. “People’s rights are being taken away, people are losing their jobs, people are losing healthcare, people are being de-transitioned in prison, gender-affirming care is being attacked, not just for children but also for adults. It’s never been about protecting women — it’s always been about creating a permission structure to scapegoat trans people, to dehumanise trans people, to take away our rights and to eliminate us from public life.”