Shia LaBeouf, for the first time, talked openly about the abuse allegations brought against him, calling himself on Friday’s Jon Bernthal podcast “Real Ones” a “pleasure-seeking, selfish…human being.”
“No matter what the case is, my job as your friend is to, in whatever way you allow me to or you allow me to be a part of that process is to make sure, 1) you never do it again,” Bernthal said to LaBeouf. “2) that you’re in a healthy process and number three, that I’m a support system for why you’re going through that. For people who support you and love you. What do you want to say to them?”
“I hurt that woman,” LaBeouf said in a snippet of the podcast posted to Instagram. “And in the process of doing that, I hurt many other people, and many other people before that woman. I was a pleasure-seeking, selfish, self-centered, dishonest, inconsiderate, fearful human being.”
He added, “I f—ed up bad. Like crash and burn type s—. [I] hurt a lot of people, and I’m fully aware of that. And I’m going to owe for the rest of my life.”
He didn’t name musician FKA Twigs, who brought allegations against him in 2020.
She spoke out about her former boyfriend’s sexual battery and fostering of an abusive relationship in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles as well as an interview with the New York Times. LaBeouf dated FKA Twigs for a year after the pair met on the set of “Honey Boy” (2019) in which he starred.
The lawsuit, obtained by TheWrap, accused LaBeouf of “relentless abuse” and of inflicting emotional distress on the musician, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, as well as knowingly giving her a sexually transmitted disease while they were in a relationship between 2018 and 2019.
Both the lawsuit and Barnett in an interview with the Times described an incident when, while driving through the desert, LaBeouf sped down the highway, removed his seat belt and threatened to crash the car unless she professed her love for him. Barnett then described LaBeouf pulling over at a gas station and assaulting her, throwing her against the car and shouting in her face before forcing her back into the vehicle.
LaBeouf sat down with Bishop Barron recently to discuss acting, his upcoming role in “Padre Pio” and his conversion to the Catholic faith, which he said has brought him to address this part of his past.
“I walked into this – my life was on fire,” LaBeouf said of his taking the role of Padre Pio in the Abel Ferrara’s film. “I was walking out of hell. It wasn’t like I willingly came in here on a white horse singing show tunes. I came in here on fire, and I didn’t want to be an actor anymore. My life was a complete mess, and I had hurt a lot of people. I felt deep shame and deep guilt. I didn’t like to go outside much.”
