SCORNED Lily Allen’s album West End Girl exploded into the public domain last Friday like the mother of all truth bombs.
The singer’s painstaking account of the end of her four-year marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour left no sordid stone unturned.
As I reported in Monday’s Sun, Lily mentioned it all: affairs, open marriages gone wrong, jealousy, betrayal, resentment, and a “p**sy palace” that housed all of her ex’s transgressions.
But just days later, questions about the validity of her no-holds-barred lyrics are emerging.
While the internet continued to turn on David, the American actor was spotted at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida this week with none other than Lily’s two daughters Ethel, 13, and Marnie, 12.
It suggests he still plays a role in his step-daughters’ lives and, perhaps, that the former couple have turned a corner since Lily wrote her album last December.
READ MORE ON LILY’S SPLIT
She seemed to confirm as much in a recent interview where she said the album was not intended to be “cruel” or about “revenge”.
It remains to be seen whether David agrees with that sentiment as he surveys the potential damage to his reputation.
The image that has been painted across the 14-song album is one that even the most wholesome A-lister would struggle to bounce back from.
She branded him a “sex addict”, a manipulator, a liar, a jealous “man child”, and an unfaithful partner.
Meanwhile, Lily describes a wife who tried everything she could to placate her husband — even agreeing to an open marriage.
She sings about the discovery that there had been an emotional affair between her partner and a woman named “Madeline” — breaking their “agreement” that he would only have sex with strangers for payment.
The details of their unconventional union were so shocking and explicit, they could have been the storyline of a Hollywood movie.
But we believed the bombshells in Lily’s first album in seven years to be true.
‘I have artistic licence‘
But as she flies around the world plugging West End Girl, Lily is playing down its veracity.
In an interview with The Times, she revealed: “I don’t think I could say it’s all true — I have artistic licence . . . But yes, there are definitely things I experienced within my relationship that have ended up on this album.”
She added that Madeline, the other woman in her marriage, was actually a collection of “fictional characters”.
Curiously, the identity of Madeline has since been “revealed” to be Natalie Tippet, a 34-year-old single mother from New Orleans.
She is said to have met David in 2021 while working in the costume department for his film We Have A Ghost. They are believed to have had a three-year affair.
Natalie has not denied the rumours, but told reporters at the weekend: “Of course I’ve heard the song. But I have a family and things to protect. I have a two-and-a-half year old daughter, and I understand this is going on. It’s a little bit scary for me.”
The last thing Lily would want is for her girls to suffer in any way. Her relationship with David is one thing — theirs is quite another.
Insider
But while it certainly seems she played a part in Lily’s marriage woes, she is not actually the sole phantom figure plaguing Lily’s insecurities in the album.
Lily covered her bases again this week in a new sit-down with Interview magazine, in which she said about the album: “Some of it is based on truth and some of it is fantasy.”
The word “fantasy” is telling — especially when we reflect on the title of the album. Lily is, for all intents and purposes, the West End Girl — aka the stage queen who’s putting on a show.
Yes, it’s based on the end of her marriage, but it’s dramatised. So, why are we taking it all so literally?
David and the girls were spotted at the theme park by a fan, who posted a video of them to TikTok.
So, what are we to make of this new development? It’s certainly a surprise, considering Lily’s non-committal response to any suggestion that her ex, whom she married in 2020 and split with last December, is still involved in her daughters’ lives.
When asked by Vogue last week if David still planned to honour his stepfather duties, Lily answered: “You’ll have to ask him.”
The fact that he’s so clearly still playing a part in his stepchildren’s lives throws a spanner in the works of the narrative that paints him solely as the villain, and Lily as the victim.
Again, it has given fans pause for thought, considering the immediate backlash aimed squarely at David the moment the album was released last Friday.
Taking to the TikTok post, one fan wrote: “So while she’s out there humiliating him, Harbour is on vacation with her kids? I can’t cope with this.”
Another weighed in: “So he’s there with Lily’s children while she promotes an album.”
Lily’s past transgression unearthed
Speaking to The Sun after the video went viral, one insider said it was a “complicated situation” but that, ultimately, Lily didn’t want to compromise her daughters’ relationship with David.
We’re told: “The last thing Lily would want is for her girls to suffer in any way. Her relationship with David is one thing — theirs is quite another.
“Although her own relationship with David has broken down, she knows that he has played a large part in the lives of her daughters, and it would be unfair of her to expect her girls to stop seeing him just because her own relationship with him has changed.
Lily’s hardly an angel. She gave David a totally false idea of what and who she is. She wanted the big house and the lifestyle and then she hated it.
Insider
“That’s not the kind of parent she wants to be.”
Yet in the aftermath of David’s outing with her daughters, more of Lily’s own past transgressions have been unearthed.
In her 2018 memoir My Thoughts Exactly, she told us in unflinching detail just how she herself has played the villain in the past.
She described cheating on her first husband, Sam Cooper, the father of Ethel and Marnie, and added that she’d hired female sex escorts while she was on tour.
She also said she’d plummeted down a dark path with drink and drugs before getting sober in 2019.
Interestingly, one anecdote she remembered in the book was the time she’d partied with actress Zoe Kravitz in New York, saying that the pair had ended up kissing.
This week, Zoe’s prior reaction to Lily’s confession reemerged, as she suggested it had actually been non-consensual.
Appearing on the talk show Watch What Happens Live in 2018, Zoe said: “If by kissing she means attacking, then yes, she kissed me.”
At the same time this week, reports have suggested that Lily is in financial straits — as she herself has admitted that, while she didn’t have to worry about money while married to David, she’s now working furiously to support herself and her daughters.
Her and David’s Brooklyn townhouse has since gone on the market for $7.99million. But — as yet — there’s no knowledge of who invested what, nor how they’ll end up sharing the money from its sale.
What’s more, it seems there’s still a $2.5million mortgage on the sprawling property, leaving little room for profit.
Naturally, the success of this album will help Lily, who — since splitting from David — has relocated to Notting Hill with her daughters.
But, again, it casts some cynicism on her album. Was it all a cathartic exercise to process her grief and move on from an abusive relationship, as she suggested in her recent interview? Or was it a cash-grab scheme?
The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. One insider told reporters: “Lily’s hardly an angel. She gave David a totally false idea of what and who she is. She wanted the big house and the lifestyle and then she hated it.”
They added: “Men find her hard work: there is something about her which makes them pull their hair out and run a mile. Same thing happened with her ex Sam Cooper.”
Of course, a lot of the anti-Lily rhetoric could be fuelled by people inside David’s camp, who are trying to do damage control.
In the wake of Lily’s album, we can see proof of his insecurities and resentment hiding in plain sight.
In 2021, he infamously sent her a note on the opening night for her play 2:22 A Ghost Story, which read: “My ambitious wife, these are bad luck flowers ’cause if you get reviewed well in this play you will get all kinds of awards and I will be miserable — your loving husband.”
At the time, fans thought the missive, which was shared to Lily’s Instagram, was tongue-in-cheek, but it could well have been the mark of a resentful man.
David was also described as acting “standoffish and cold” at the show’s premiere party and, when she was nominated for an Olivier Award in 2022, he told reporters on the red carpet that he’d done “100,000 plays and never been recognised”.
Until David decides to reveal his version of events, truth.
What we do know is that, while Lily continues to remind us she’s taken “artistic licence”, she’s also just as willingly leaning into all the praise heaped upon her break-up opus.
Despite describing it as part fantasy, she told Interview magazine this week: “I always strive to tell the truth in my art . . . It kind of took it all falling apart for me to find my authentic voice.”
As things stand, David does not appear to be taking legal action against Lily.
Yet it’s still early days, and — in less than a week — Lily’s opus has gone from an unfiltered and unflinching tell-all, to a piece of art that, though laced with reality, might be more fictional than we thought.
The tide might turn again, but, for now, all we know is that this West End Girl is giving us the performance of her life.
