TikTok star Alix Earle opened up about how difficult her childhood became upon learning about her father Thomas “TJ” Earle’s affair with Alix’s stepmom, Ashley Dupré.
“I remember the day very clearly,” Alix recalled during her Wednesday, September 20, interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “Paparazzi had shown up at my house, and my mom quickly kind of got me and my sister out of the house over to our cousins. We stayed there for a few days, and I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know they were paparazzi. I thought news broadcasters were interviewing the neighbors.”
The 22-year-old social media influencer revealed she was in fourth grade at the time.
“I didn’t know the severity of what had happened between my parents because my mom was super, super mature about it and didn’t speak to us about it, and didn’t put that stress that she was going through onto us,” she emphasized about her mother, Alisa. “I kind of figured it out myself and then I proceeded to deal with it myself.”
However, Alix then “started to kind of hear commentary from people, and [she] had an iPad at the time,” which led her to research her family.
“I see that the past two years of my life had been a lie,” she said. “My dad had an affair with someone who was well-known for her job having sexual relations with high-class people, and one of them was even the governor of New York. She was very well known from that, and in turn, my dad’s affair became a very public situation.”
Alix’s stepmother, Ashley, had an affair with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer in 2008. TJ and Ashley got married in 2013.
“When my stepmom started to hang around with my dad after he had moved out, she came into his life, and we were introduced to her, which was super weird,” the TikTok star noted. “And I was told that I had to be respectful to this woman, and we had to be nice to her. I wanted to rip her head off. It was very weird because I felt like I was a 10-year-old having to be more mature than someone 20, 30 years older than me.”
The “Hot Mess With Alex Earle” podcast host then remembered how her peers and even a teacher didn’t make life any easier for her.
“My teacher in high school was talking about this governor’s affair and said exactly what had happened — who it had happened with — and, like, looked me in the eyes while this was going on in class,” Alix claimed. “I remember my classmates looking at me and, like, laughing because this was about my family. And this was something he was literally teaching in history class. … I left school bawling my eyes out. I was so embarrassed.”
Nevertheless, Alix and her blended family found a way to support each other. In August, the New Jersey native told ELLE that she and Ashley are now “super close” and are at “such a good point.”