In her new book, Emily Ratajkowski is claiming that Robin Thicke grabbed her naked breast during the “Blurred Lines†music-video shoot. The Sunday Times obtained an early copy of Ratajkowski’s memoir, My Body, which covers the video shoot and the assault that allegedly took place. Ratajkowski writes that the part of the shoot with all women was pleasant. But Thicke got unruly as the day progressed, which led her to believe he had gotten drunk. “Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt the coolness and foreignness of a stranger’s hands cupping my bare breasts from behind,†The Times quotes Ratajkowski as writing. “I instinctively moved away, looking back at Robin Thicke.â€
Ratajkowski then said the video’s director, Diane Martel, shouted at Thicke and wrapped production on the spot, which Martel confirmed to the Times. At the time, both the song and music video came under fire for sexism, with even Pharrell rejecting the song as chauvinist in 2019. When asked if the song was “rapey†by BBC 1, Thicke said it was “ridiculous.†That was shortly after he’d said in GQ that the video was degrading to women and “what a pleasure it is to degrade a woman.â€
Update October 6: Speaking at the New Yorker Festival, Ratajkowski decried the leak of her memoir and discussed her mixed feelings of “Blurred Lines†shoot as a whole. “I’m a little disappointed simply because it’s not that I spoke out about this situation because I wanted some kind of political feeling or consequences for this person. It’s just a part of an essay which really sort of demonstrates the awakening that I had,†she said in conversation with Amy Schumer and Michael Schulman. “And Blurred Lines is a perfect example of that because, as people will read in the essay, it was actually a really empowering experience in many ways. There was mostly a female crew on set, there was a female director, a director of photography who I’d worked with before.â€
Ratajkowski said that she’d never spoken on what negative experiences there were on the set, because they “sort of went away.†She also lamented that the product of a woman-dominated shoot would always be tainted. She said she “felt protective of the women who had strived and tried so hard to make that video something that it ultimately couldn’t be, because of the world we live in.â€