Lana Del Rey says ‘death wish’ comment was coerced, reporter releases original audio
Lana Del Rey’s recent comment that she “wishes she was dead already” was concerning to many of us. Turns out she was coerced into making such a sure-to-be-viral statement — or so she claims.
“I regret trusting The Guardian. I didn’t want to do an interview but the journalist was persistent. Alexis was masked as a fan but was hiding sinister ambitions and angles,” she tweeted of the British newspaper that published the interview. (Tim Jonze wrote the story about the death comments; Alexis Petridis wrote a review of Lana’s new album.) She added, “Maybe he’s actually the boring one looking for something interesting to write about… His leading questions about death and persona were calculated.”
The now-deleted tweets. Screen-capture from MTV.
Earlier today, Tim Jonze shared his response in a new story.
It’s not pleasant asking a pop star if she thinks the idea of dying young herself is attractive – it’s a dark question, but it’s not a leading one. She has every opportunity to say no. And she can hardly complain about the subject matter: she’d been talking about her icons all dying young, she named her debut album Born to Die and had spent much of the 50 minutes previous to this point telling me how miserable she was.
He also shared the audio from the part of the interview when he asked whether she believes early deaths are glamorous… It shows there was some discrepancy in his original story, in which he wrote she said, “I don’t know. Ummmm, yeah. I wish I was dead already.” As the audio reveals, Lana’s response was actually longer and seemed more hesitant.
However, the audio also proves Lana did indeed say she wishes she was dead already. For that reason, Tim claims, she really can’t criticize him: “She’s not alleging that I made up her quotes… She seems annoyed by the fact I wanted her to say interesting things and asked questions that caused her to do so. Well sorry, Lana, but that’s just me doing my job.”
Do you think Lana had a right to be upset by the interview? Or is she digging a deeper hole?
