Inside Elon Musk and first wife Justine Wilson’s murky marriage: their trans daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson just ditched his name for her mum’s, but what was their pre-fame relationship really like?
- Wilson spoke about being the Tesla CEO’s ‘starter wife’ in a 2010 essay for Marie Claire; Musk got engaged to British actress Talulah Riley right after the divorce
- The pair share five children together – Griffin, Vivian, Kai, Saxon and Damian – but Wilson said Musk treated her like a staff member and called himself the ‘alpha’ in the relationship
Two years after their bitter split, with a financial battle looming, Wilson gave the whole world a look into her marriage to Musk. Here are just some of the revelations she discussed in an essay she wrote for Marie Claire in 2010, as well as other surprises from Musk’s first marriage.
The obsession with blonde hair
Wilson said that, during their relationship, Musk pressured her to change her hair colour to blonde. She said when she first met him while they were studying in Canada, she was not blonde. During the course of their marriage, he pushed her to get highlights and even to “go platinum”.
By the end of their marriage, Wilson said she barely recognised herself. In the Marie Claire piece, Wilson said she had become “very thin” and “very blonde” during her marriage. She admitted she had turned into a trophy wife and it was never a role she fitted into.