When Julia Fox debuted her single, “Down the Drain,” at Charli XCX’s Boiler Room DJ set last February, there were essentially two reactions: 1) wait, Julia Fox is making music now?, and 2) of course Julia Fox is making music now.
Not only is Julia Fox making music now (and not only does it kind of slay), but she also just dropped the video for “Down the Drain,” exclusively debuting on Rolling Stone. Directed by cowriter and producer Ben Draghi, the video is a showcase for all of Fox’s personae, from actress to designer to memoirist to muse to Mother (both literal and figurative).
There’s latex. There’s leather. There’s whips. There’s chains. There’s a terrified sub in boxer briefs, tied to a wall with an apple stuffed in his mouth like a Christmas pig. There’s a kidnapping subplot featuring Fox’s longtime BFF and collaborator Richie Shazam, who has to be rescued by Fox and two comely dommes-cum-superheroes (played by Fox’s friends and fellow downtown fixtures Sara Apple Maliki and Alexandra Harris). And it opens with Fox, in a baseball cap and rhinestoned sunglasses, dropping off her cherubic three-year-old son Valentino at school.
BDSM, boxing with a tattooed behemoth while wearing a thong, zooming around the Tristate area in a Power Ranger mask — it’s all just another day in the life for the multihyphenate and Uncah Jams muse. “For me the video is like a mirror of my own life,” Fox tells Rolling Stone. “I drop my son off in the morning and live a thousand lives until it’s time to pick him up again and then I’m back to being ‘mommy.’ I think a lot of moms can relate to that, having to play so many different roles throughout the day.”
Fox says the single and the accompanying video can, in many ways, be viewed as a companion to her memoir, also titled Down the Drain. Released last October, the book documents her iterant childhood on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as well as her history of drug abuse, her struggles with mental illness, and her abusive relationships with controlling men, including, most famously, Kanye West, whom she briefly dated in Jan. 2022 (and who is referred to as “the Artist” in the book).
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The “Down the Drain” video was shot in the dominatrix dungeon where she worked at the start of her career, a period she documents at length in her memoir. “I spent so much time down there, coming of age and laying the groundwork for who I am today so it’s only right to pay homage to it,” she says. “I embrace my past. I’m not ashamed of it because it’s the reason I’m here. [And] a big theme in my book is that you can be who you want to be and you can change your mind and be someone completely different at any given moment.”
With its droning, trance-like, spoken-word refrain “I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a mother, I’m a whore,” Fox’s first foray into pop music is part Crystal Castles, part RHONY‘s Countess Luann — not that there’s anything wrong with that. “I don’t want to be a pop star. I am a pop (culture) star,” Fox says. “In all seriousness, music was my first love and I’ve always wanted to do it but I got discouraged by mom at a young age so I’m just healing my childhood wounds and making my lifelong dreams come true. [I’m] not trying to get rich off music or win Grammys. I have realistic expectations.”
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Even if pop stardom doesn’t pan out, Fox is plenty busy. She’s working with writer and director Joey Soloway on a TV series adaptation of Down the Drain, and she’s currently in New Mexico, shooting an untitled psychological thriller about football directed by Jordan Peele. She also cowrote a movie about two college girls who accidentally kill their sugar daddy, which will start filming in the fall; and is working on an unspecified project with Addison Rae, the TikTok-star-turned-pop-girlie who also made an appearance at her Boiler Room event.
“I love her so much. She is such a pure genuine soul. She inspires me. She’s my muse currently,” Fox says of Rae. “I’m working with her on something but I can’t say just yet. But I will say that it’s going to be a cultural moment for the herstory books.”
