Julia Fox's character arc has seen more twists and turns than the final episode of The Traitors. Despite entering the public consciousness as a meme ('I was his muse for Uncut Gahhhhms'), she is increasingly earning her stripes as the People's Princess. In her latest move, the actress took fans on a TikTok tour of the NYC apartment she shares with her two-year-old son Valentino. And it's not all that!
'I never thought in a million years that I would do this,' she started, 'but I do believe in maximum transparency and so I'm gonna give you guys an apartment tour.' MTV Cribs might not have been mainstream since the early noughties, but we'll never say no to a house tour. Seeing how celebrities live behind closed doors – whether they leave their clothes in a big pile on a chair or decant their cereal into obsessive little glass jars – is simply irresistible.
We're used to rolling our eyes at the number of bathrooms a single 24-year-old woman could possibly need, judging the artwork they've picked out for their cinema room or wondering why they've chosen rattan furniture for the garden when they could definitely afford something nicer. But not Our Julia. The 32-year-old actress' apartment is surprisingly modest and she claims to be showing us so that 'maybe someone can watch this and be like "okay, maybe I'm not doing so bad"'. It's messy and normal, and she's even got mice who she lets 'rock out and help clean up the crumbs'.
She has one bedroom-slash-sitting room, with a designated area for her son to play in. There are piles of stuff scattered on the floor, mismatched furniture and her bed looks like she actually sleeps in it. She then takes us along the corridor to a 'very tiny' bathroom with toys in the bath and products spilling over on the sink ledge, a small kitchen that sits opposite Valentino's play kitchen, and his bedroom – which is by far the nicest room in the apartment. There are pots on the hob, opened boxes that she hasn't recycled yet and two sparse little plant pots labelled 'basil' and 'mint' with nothing growing in 'because we don't know what we're doing'. She's one of us!
There's nothing 'hey AD' about this tour. It's a far cry from the Architectural Digest homes we've been shown by celebs like Emma Chamberlein, Kendall Jenner and Vanessa Hudgens, whose homes have been immaculately curated by a team of designers, who collect art worth more than our parents' houses and whose chopping boards have never felt the sharp end of a knife. Homes are just for aesthetics, of course!
This is why fans have praised Julia for showing us that not all famous people are incredibly wealthy, not everyone who's been on TV lives in a mansion and some people actually clean their apartments themselves – when they have the time. And most importantly, that it's not normal to have six bathrooms, eight cars and a basketball court in your garage. She says 'I know it's really messy and I have shoe boxes in the kitchen, which is really common for New Yorkers' but she doesn't understand why people have such big houses 'when there are so many homeless people in this country'. Realistically, this apartment is still likely to be worth an extortionate amount of money. New York is the most expensive city in the world and the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,700 per month, let alone a two-bed.
Haters will say she's virtue signalling, but it seems like she is genuinely trying to break down barriers between fans and their occasionally warped perceptions of fame. Julia posted an intimate video of her domestic space to make people feel better about their own circumstances, which in many cases, might not look that different to hers. And people in the comments can't get enough, with some saying 'she's just like us fr' and 'ugh this is beautiful'. While others have jokes that there's 'no way Kanye went there' and 'I find if I name the mice we all get along better'.
Julia's TikTok is fast becoming a pinboard of refreshing and relatable content, with this video alone racking up more than six million views in a day. She's making a targeted effort to prove her normalcy, and it's working. If Julia sticks photos on the wall with blutak, so can you! If Julia uses her hallway for storage, so can you! Though if you share her mouse problem, we do recommend calling pest control.