*In her first interview since filing a civil lawsuit against actor Shai LaBeouf, singer FKA twigs is speaking out about their abusive relationship.
Speaking with CBS’ Gayle King this week to discuss the lawsuit, twigs recalled some of the abuse she suffered. Despite seeing red flags from the very beginning, she still committed to her abuser and allowed him to break her spirit.
“He would just start having an argument with me in the middle of the night and start accusing me of doing all sorts of things [like] planning to leave him in my head,” twigs said in a clip from the interview released on Wednesday. “He’d wake me up to tell me I was disgusting, that I was vile.”
She continued, “It’s a tactic that a lot of abusers use,” she said. “It’s this constant availability and everything centered around them. And I think, you know, that’s why I wanted to come out and talk about this. Because the signs really are there from the beginning.”
READ MORE: FKA Twigs Opens About About Abusive Relationship with Shia LaBeouf [VIDEO]
When asked if there was one moment when she fully realized that Shia had a problem, twigs explained… “There wasn’t one set moment. It’s very subtle. That’s the thing about domestic abuse, domestic violence. It’s a really gradual step-by-step process to get somebody to a place where they lose themselves so much they accept or feel like they deserve to be treated in that way. It’s not one thing. It’s loads of tiny little things that get sewn together into a nightmare.”
The full CBS feature will be out on Thursday.
Meanwhile, email correspondences between the New York Times and LaBeouf are cited in the twigs’ suit.
“I’m not in any position to tell anyone how my behavior made them feel,” he said in one email, per the Times. “I have no excuses for my alcoholism or aggression, only rationalizations. I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I’m ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say.”
In another email, LaBeouf said “many of these allegations are not true” but that he “owed” twigs and Pho the “opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done.” He also said he was a “sober member” of a 12-step program, but that he is “not cured” of alcoholism.
“But I am committed to doing what I need to do to recover, and I will forever be sorry to the people that I may have harmed along the way,” he said.