Lily Allen is opening up about the demise of her marriage to actor David Harbour — and how the split has impacted her two daughters.
“I stay out of it,” Allen, 40, told The Observer in an interview published on Saturday, December 5, after she was asked if her two daughters stay in contact with her ex. (Allen shares two daughters, Ethel Mary and Marnie Rose, with her first ex husband, Sam Cooper. The pair also shared a son, George, who was delivered stillborn in 2010, six months into Allen’s pregnancy.)
“But they’ve both got phones,” Allen continued of her two daughters. “They all text each other.”
Allen has famously turned her pain into power by singing candidly about her marriage and breakup woes. In her latest album, West End Girl, central themes include infidelity, jealousy and getting older — all in what the singer says is an ode to her failed relationship with Harbour. (The pair announced their split in early 2024 after four years of marriage.)
“[The album was] inspired by things that happened in my recent marriage,” Allen told the outlet, before declining to say whether she signed an NDA pertaining to her previous relationship.
“I thought, because I’m ‘outspoken’ — I hate that word, ‘outspoken’ — I have felt the wrath particularly of middle-aged, white, heterosexual men for expressing things that I don’t think are particularly controversial,” she continued. “And I thought, going into this record, that it was probably the most controversial thing I’d done in terms of my creative expression, but I didn’t anticipate anything, really. And if I did anticipate anything big happening, it was going to be the nail in the coffin, it was going to be, like, ‘Right, now it’s time to kill her once and for all!’”
David Harbour and Lily Allen Getty Images
The opposite happened, of course — Allen’s 14-track album was a massive success, and the hit song “Madeline” kicked off a fury of online speculation as to who the “real Madeline” was.
“I made this record in December 2024 and it was a way for me to process what was happening in my life,” Allen told British Vogue in an interview published October 17 of her inspiration behind the song. “There are things that are on the record that I experienced within my marriage, but that’s not to say that it’s all gospel. It is inspired by what went on in the relationship.”
Allen went on to tell The Times of London in an October 25 profile that the song’s character was fictional — a mashup of people instead of one specific person.
Lily Allen unveiled new merch inspired by her latest album, West End Girl — and one item references the headline-making track “P**** Palace.” Allen, 40, announced the “limited” drop on Wednesday, December 3, via Instagram, sharing a photo of herself holding the item in question, which appeared to be a butt plug. “Limited merch drop, […]
“Intimacy is inherently messy. There are usually agreed-upon boundaries in relationships, but whether those boundaries are adhered to or not is becoming a grey area all of a sudden,” Allen said at the time. “Dating apps make people disposable and that leads to the idea that if you are not happy, there’s so much more to choose from right in your pocket.”
She continued, ‘I just feel we are living in really interesting times — in terms of how we define intimacy and monogamy, people being disposable or not. The way we are being intimate with each other is changing as humans. Lots of young women are not finding the idea of marriage or even a long-term relationship that attractive any more.”
Harbour, for his part, has refrained from publicly commenting on the split.
“I’m protective of the people and the reality of my life,” Harbour told GQ in April. “There’s no use in that form of engaging [with rumors] because it’s all based on hysterical hyperbole.”
