In her new book, My Body, Emily Ratajkowski opens up about allegedly being groped by Robin Thicke while filming his “Blurred Lines” music video.
While Emily revealed that she felt fine with the content of the video (both the explicit and unexplicit versions) Ratajkowski said that quickly changed when Thicke “returned to the set a little drunk to shoot just with me.”
“Out of nowhere, I felt the coolness and foreignness of a stranger’s hands cupping my bare breasts from behind,” she continued.
“I instinctively moved away, looking back at Robin Thicke. He smiled a goofy grin and stumbled backward, his eyes concealed behind his sunglasses. My head turned to the darkness beyond the set. [The director] Diane Martel’s voice cracked as she yelled out to me, ‘Are you okay?’”
Ratajkowski added, “I pushed my chin forward and shrugged, avoiding eye contact, feeling the heat of humiliation pump through my body. I didn’t react — not really, not like I should have.”
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Diane Martel, the video’s director, corroborated Ratajkowski’s story to The Sunday Times.
“I remember the moment that he grabbed her breasts. One in each hand,” she said. “He was standing behind her as they were both in profile. I screamed in my very aggressive Brooklyn voice, ‘What the f*** are you doing? That’s it! The shoot is over!’”
Martel added, “Robin sheepishly apologized. As if he knew it was wrong without understanding how it might have felt for Emily.”
The director added that he would not have done it “had he been sober”.
Ratajkowski stated that she did not reveal the allegations earlier as she did not want to think about it. In addition, she also wanted to protect the workplace environment Martel fostered on set with the other models. In fact, it was Martel who convinced Ratajkowski (who previously admitted “wasn’t into the idea at all at first”) to join the project.
“We just connected personally, she’s smart, she’s really culturally sensitive, and she talked to me about her ideas and how the women would be in the video,” Ratajkowski wrote per Yahoo!.
My Body is due for release November 9.
Thicke and ‘Blurred Lines’ collaborators Pharrell Williams and T.I. were sued by Marvin Gaye’s family in 2015 over the controversial song. The Gaye’s claimed the 2013 song copied their 1977 single ‘Got To Give It Up’. And while an attempt to appeal the verdict failed in 2018, it did clear T.I. of charges.