LIFE
Machine Gun Kelly Details Therapy Experience and Past Drug Use In Candid Interview
With Megan Fox by his side, Machine Gun Kelly is finding clarity.
On the heels of a hit new album and in the midst of a blossoming romance, the 30-year-old is having a special year—and one of self-improvement. As he shared in a recent chat with Dave Franco for Interview, Kelly, born Richard Colson Baker, has recently started therapy and is focusing on happiness instead of rebellion.
“I came from a father who was extremely religious and extremely strict, and wouldn’t even let me hold my pen the way I wanted to hold my pen,” the rapper, who shares 12-year-old Casie with ex Emma Cannon, explained. “That made me rebel completely, and cut off communication completely, because I didn’t want to have any common ground with him. I don’t want to have that with my daughter. Honesty is the key to that relationship.”
During the interview, the singer also spoke candidly about his Adderall addiction and the impact it had on his artistry. “I think I watched myself believe that drugs were how you attained a level, or unlocked something in your brain, and I’ve seen the pros and cons of it,” he described. “Adderall was a huge thing for me for a long time. And I went from orally taking it to then snorting it, and then it became something where I was scared to ever go into a studio if I didn’t have something. I wouldn’t even step out unless there was a medicine man who was going to visit me and give me what I needed. And that’s where it becomes a problem.”
Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly: Romance Rewind
The musician eventually realized how much power he had given the drug. “You’re telling yourself you can’t do this without that, when really it’s in you the whole time,” he said. “If that pill did that for you, then everyone who’s taken that would just be making albums and writing songs. And so that limited me.”
However, Kelly made it clear that’s no longer the case. “As I grow, that same person who I was when I was 25 isn’t who I am now,” he said. “Currently, my drug of choice is happiness and commitment to the art, rather than commitment to a vice that I believed made the art. I’m taking steps.”
One of those steps is professional help. “I had my first therapy session last Thursday,” he revealed. “That’s the first time I ever went, ‘Hey, I need to separate these two people,’ which is Machine Gun Kelly and Colson Baker. The dichotomy is too intense for me.”
While the musician’s therapy journey has only just begun, he acknowledged, “the willingness to finally be happy with my own self has invited a much more vibrant energy around us than before.”
He also has supportive shoulders to lean on thanks to friends like his Tickets to My Downfall co-producer Travis Barker and, of course, Fox. “When you have a partner, mine being Megan, sitting there with you on those dark nights when you’re sweating and not being able to figure out why you’re so in your head,” he told Franco, “to help you get out of your head and put it in perspective, that really, really helps.”
The Rogue actress shared a similar sentiment in a recent interview with Nylon. “There’s never an attempt to control him on my end,” Fox, who recently filed for divorce from Brian Austin Green, said. “It’s more that he looks to me to avoid his own self destructive tendencies. And that’s where I’m useful because on his own and left to his own devices I don’t know how much interest he has in caring for himself.”
Drew Barrymore is stepping down as host of this year’s MTV Movie & Music Awards, due to be held on Sunday, in solidarity with the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). The actress has agreed to host the ceremony next year instead, Variety reported.
Although the MTV awards are set to go ahead without a host, Variety said that arrangements for the show are in constant flux as producers are unsure which of the presenters, nominees, and guests will be willing to appear.
Organizers have already scrapped the red carpet as well as interviews that were supposed to take place before the ceremony.
In a statement quoted by Variety, Barrymore said she had “listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike.”
The actress added that “everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their [writers’] creation,” and revealed that she is “choosing to wait” until a solution is reached on fairly compensating writers for their craft.
Although Barrymore will not be present at the live event in Santa Monica, California on Sunday, she is likely to appear in several pre-recorded short films created for the telecast.
Unions representing writers working in Hollywood and beyond officially began a strike on Tuesday. The move comes amid a dispute with major studios such as Paramount and Universal over working conditions and the shift brought about by the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.
Hollywood writers go on strike
The WGA has complained that its members are being “devalued” and have received reduced pay despite significantly more movies and TV shows being in production than ever before thanks to streaming.
Aside from increased pay, the WGA has issued a list of demands to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Hollywood’s major studios. Among them is a request for guarantees that scripts would not be generated using Artificial Intelligence, and that writers would not be asked to edit or rewrite screenplays generated by such technology.
The current strike is the first work stoppage in the US entertainment industry in 15 years. The previous writers’ strike in 2007 lasted for 100 days and ultimately cost Hollywood an estimated $2.1 billion.
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