Talulah Riley urged ex-husband Elon Musk to buy Twitter and promised to fight against ‘wokeism’

Talulah Riley asked her ex-husband Elon Musk to ‘buy Twitter then delete it’, saying it had become a ‘scourge of modern life’ and bowing to join him in the fight against ‘wokeism’, texts have revealed. 

Riley, who was married twice to the billionaire, was among a group of celebrities who contacted Musk in April after he announced plans to buy the company. 

The texts were revealed in recently filed court documents that were part of Musk’s legal battle with Twitter. 

On Tuesday, he proposed to buy the company again for $44billion after trying unsuccessfully to back out of the deal. 

Riley wrote: ‘Can you buy Twitter and then delete it, please!? America is going insane.

‘Or can you buy Twitter and make it radically free=speech? So much stupidity comes from Twitter.’ 

Musk replied: ‘Maybe buy it and change it to properly support free speech.’ 

Talulah Riley has revealed the chat-up line that Elon Musk first used to get her to stay in his hotel room

Talulah Riley has revealed the chat-up line that Elon Musk first used to get her to stay in his hotel room

Elon Musk's texts with his ex-wife, Talulah Riley. She begged him to buy the site in April, and said she would do 'anything to help fight wokeism'

Elon Musk’s texts with his ex-wife, Talulah Riley. She begged him to buy the site in April, and said she would do ‘anything to help fight wokeism’ 

Talulah, who was saved in his phone as TJ, responded: ‘I honestly think social media is the scourge of modern life, and the worst of all is Twitter because it’s also a news stream as well as a social platform and so has more real-world standing than TikTok etc. 

‘But it’s very easy to exploit and is being used by radicals for social engineering on a massive scale. Andf this s**t is infecting the world. Please do something to fight woke-ism.

‘I will do anything to help! xx

The St Trinian’s star, 37, married Musk in 2010 after a whirlwind ten-day romance but they divorced two years later, before they remarried in 2013.

The billionaire filed for divorce in 2014, then withdrew it. Two years later, Riley filed for a divorce which was finalised later that year. 

The couple met at London nightclub Whisky Mist and Musk wooed her by talking about rockets.

Riley said of their first meeting in the new BBC documentary: ‘My first impressions were that he was very sweet, he seemed quite shy. 

‘He said “may I put my hand on your knee” and I said, “OK go on then”, I thought it was quite sweet that he asked.’

She continued: ‘He said I don’t usually do this but I’d love to see you tomorrow can we meet for breakfast. So we had breakfast. 

‘And at the end of breakfast he said would you come and have lunch with me so we went for lunch. And then he said would you come for dinner.

‘And then one evening I remember he said would you like to come back to my hotel room so we can look at rocket videos.

‘And I thought, hmm okay I’ll come back.

‘And we did get into his hotel room and he did just show me rocket videos.’

The first episode of the documentary will air on October 12 in the UK on BBC 2.

The actress, who started dating the Tesla billionaire in 2008, opened up about their turbulent relationship (pictured with his children Griffin and Xavier

The actress, who started dating the Tesla billionaire in 2008, opened up about their turbulent relationship (pictured with his children Griffin and Xavier

Musk's twins Griffin and Xavier he shares with his first wife Justine Wilson are pictured with Elon and his second wife, Talulah, in 2010

Musk’s twins Griffin and Xavier he shares with his first wife Justine Wilson are pictured with Elon and his second wife, Talulah, in 2010

Riley is now dating Love Actually star Thomas Brodie-Sangster after meeting on the set of Disney’s Pistol.

At the time of their second split, Elon said: ‘We took some time apart for several months to see if absence makes the heart grow fonder, and unfortunately it did not.’ 

Musk has had a long list of glamorous wives and girlfriends and last year, split from long-time on and off partner Canadian singer Grimes, with whom he shares two children X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl, who goes by Y.

The news of the split was only revealed in March 2022 when an interview Grimes had given to Vanity Fair before their break up was published. 

She had told the outlet she ‘would probably refer to Elon as her boyfriend’ but after publication took to Twitter to reveal that they had since broken up.

And after his second split from Riley, he was briefly linked to Amber Heard after she split from Johnny Depp in 2017.

Previously, he was married to his first wife Justine Wilson, now 50, after meeting while they were both attending Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and they tied the knot in 2000. 

The world's richest man also shares two children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl, who goes by Y, with Canadian singer Grimes (pictured together in May 2018)

The world’s richest man also shares two children, X Æ A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl, who goes by Y, with Canadian singer Grimes (pictured together in May 2018)

Elon Musk shares Xavier with his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, (pictured together) as well as four other children including Xavier's twin Griffin and 16-year-old triplets Damian, Kai and Saxon

Elon Musk shares Xavier with his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, (pictured together) as well as four other children including Xavier’s twin Griffin and 16-year-old triplets Damian, Kai and Saxon

Talulah first tied the knot with the Tesla architect in 2010. However, their first marriage ended in 2012, when she reportedly walked away with $16 million as part of a divorce settlement.

‘It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day,’ he tweeted at the time. 

By the following summer, they had remarried. But then, in December 2014, she filed for divorce a second time, only to withdraw her lawsuit the following year. 

In March 2016, Talulah requested a divorce a third time, and the pair split for good; the couple did not have any children together. 

Musk told Forbes at the time, ‘We took some time apart for several months to see if absence makes the heart grow fonder, and unfortunately it did not.

‘I still love her, but I’m not in love with her. And I can’t really give her what she wants.’

He also called her ‘a great woman’ and said he will ‘always be friends’ with her.

At the time, he said he had no interest in marrying again for a while, adding, ‘I think it would be extremely unwise for me to jump into a third marriage without spending considerable time figuring out if the third one will work.

‘It was never my intention to have a short marriage. Essentially I’d want to be super sure before getting married again, but I certainly would love to be in a relationship. For sure.’

Why the world is all aflutter about Elon Musk’s love life: How multi-billionaire revealed he’s fathered TEN children after having twins with an executive at one of his companies AND ditched his $44bn deal to buy social media giant Twitter

By Tom Leonard in New York for the Daily Mail in July

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is pulling out of his $44 billion (£36.7 billion) bid to buy the social media giant: a huge blow to the financially struggling company that it has promised to fight.

Several of his tweets have been about one of his favourite hobby horses, the world’s declining population.

‘Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,’ he intoned. ‘A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilisation faces by far.’

He added: ‘I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!’

The 51-year-old Tesla tycoon is famously enigmatic — but, on this occasion, it wasn’t hard to work out what he meant.

It has now emerged that, last November, he quietly welcomed twins with a senior executive at one of his companies.

Furthermore, they arrived just a few weeks before Musk had a second child via surrogate with his on-off girlfriend Claire Boucher, alias Canadian pop star Grimes.

Musk is pictured with first wife Justine. The couple had six children together before an icy split

Musk is pictured with first wife Justine. The couple had six children together before an icy split

It has now emerged that Musk welcomed twins in November with executive Shivon Zilis, 36

It has now emerged that Musk welcomed twins in November with executive Shivon Zilis, 36

No wonder then the maverick businessman would boast about his baby-production record — to date he has fathered at least ten children.

Last December, he solemnly told a business conference that people needed to start breeding like rabbits if civilisation wasn’t to be doomed to extinction.

‘There are not enough people,’ he declared. ‘If people don’t have more children, civilisation is going to crumble — mark my words.’

Musk poses on a red carpet in 2012 with actress Talulah Riley. The couple had two children together - and were married twice

Musk poses on a red carpet in 2012 with actress Talulah Riley. The couple had two children together – and were married twice

His interviewer asked him if that explained why he had so many children himself. ‘I try to set a good example,’ he quipped. ‘I like to practice what I preach.’

Quite so. Grimes has described their relationship, in which they live separately but ‘see each other all the time’, as ‘very fluid’.

South African born Musk is a man of contradictions and one of the most glaring is how such a relentlessly successful businessman and innovator can have such a jaw-droppingly outlandish private life.

According to court papers obtained by the news website Insider, he had the two most recent children with Shivon Zilis, 36, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a dystopian-sounding Musk-owned company that develops implants to connect human brains directly to computers.

Insider deleted the twins’ first names to protect their privacy but history suggests they may be a little exotic. Musk’s two children with Grimes — who appears to be even more eccentric — are two-year-old son X Æ A-Xii (pronounced ‘X-Ash-A-12’) and seven-month-old Exa Dark Sideræl. They are known as X and Y for short.

The latter’s existence was also kept quiet, only to be revealed after a Vanity Fair journalist was interviewing Grimes at home and heard a baby wailing in the house.

Musk met Grimes in 2018 — on Twitter. He was planning to make a joke about artificial intelligence and found she’d made it already.

Two years ago, Grimes announced that she was selling a percentage of her ‘soul’ as part of her first online art show — and explains her daughter’s name has ‘Elven’ roots.

Musk also has five children with his first wife, Canadian author Justine Musk.

A sixth child, their first, died of sudden infant death syndrome aged ten weeks in 2002, prompting them to use in vitro fertilisation. Then Justine gave birth to twins — Vivian and Griffin — in 2004, followed by triplets — Kai, Saxon and Damian — in 2006.

Musk appeared at the 2018 Met Gala with his most recent partner Grimes, who had two kids

Musk appeared at the 2018 Met Gala with his most recent partner Grimes, who had two kids

While others who have clawed their way up to occupy the top slot in the global fortune stakes, from the priapic oil baron J. Paul Getty to the nerdy Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, have generally shunned publicity, Elon Musk craves the limelight and has a reputation for a sort of buccaneering insouciance.

Some have been asking when he’ll call time on his reproductive urges but, given he is estimated to be worth about £186 billion, it won’t be because he can’t afford it. Critics say his compulsion to spread his seed is typically arrogant.

But while other Silicon Valley tycoons swan around in super yachts and sink their fortunes into quack scientific research to try to find how they can live to be 200 years old, Musk — at least —voyages towards horizons that extend far beyond his own vanity and self-indulgence.

His ambitions to colonise Mars and save humanity may seem far-fetched but his reuseable SpaceX rockets have given cash-strapped NASA transport up to the International Space Station.

Musk didn’t invent Tesla cars but, thanks to his business expertise, he has made the company the front-runner in weaning motorists off petrol vehicles.

He’s also fighting global warming by researching how to store renewable energy in batteries.

And in Ukraine, he answered a request from the embattled government and sent hardware allowing the country to connect to Starlink, Musk’s satellite internet communications platform that uses more than 2,000 satellites orbiting Earth to provide internet access. The Ukrainians say it’s been a godsend, allowing them to do everything from hold Zoom meetings to call in artillery strikes.

If the Russians withdraw support for the International Space Station, Musk says SpaceX could step into the breach.

And his attempts through Neuralink to find a way of connecting our brains directly to computers isn’t just a sci-fi gimmick. He says it will not only enable paralysed people to use, say, mobile phones but will prevent Artificial Intelligence from one day destroying humanity, as he fears may happen.

And just as he often does what he says, Musk tends to say what he thinks — without much of a filter.

He has been lauded for fighting global warming, reinvigorating space travel, providing Ukraine with a satellite lifeline and promising, until he walked away from the deal, to strengthen free speech on Twitter,.

But Musk has been lambasted for calling a British cave diver trying to save trapped Thai children a ‘pedo guy’, for rejecting the most basic Covid precautions, for getting into silly name-calling spats with fellow billionaires and for shamelessly cosying up to the Chinese Communist Party.

Now some say that in starting a romance with a corporate underling he may have fallen foul of the U.S.’s strict codes on workplace relationships.

Ms Zilis’s online biographies, which have reportedly been edited or removed completely since news of their twins broke, show she has worked at a trio of Musk-connected companies, including artificial intelligence company OpenAI and Tesla.

She previously worked for IBM and studied machine intelligence at Yale University where she was goalkeeper for the women’s ice-hockey team.

According to court papers, Musk and Ms Zilis share a $4 million home in Austin, Texas, even though Musk, in 2020, said he was getting rid of all his homes and possessions, and moved into a cheap and tiny prefabricated house.

Insider this week said he and Ms Zilis met in 2016 while she was working at OpenAI, where she is now the youngest member of the board of directors.

Musk is famously laid-back over staff behaviour at his companies — although they’ve been inundated with complaints about harsh working conditions and sexual harassment — but most large U.S. companies prohibit romantic relationships between colleagues who are separated by at least two levels in the chain of command.

There was speculation in the technology world yesterday that news of his relationship with Ms Zilis and her possible preferential treatment as a result would damage morale at Musk companies where she worked.

Tesla has been snowed under by lawsuits brought by staff and there were suggestions Ms Zilis herself could take those companies to the cleaners if the relationship sours and she claims Musk abused his position as chief executive. She will already surely know that dating a centibillionaire has its catches.

Musk says his engineer father treated him brutally and he was mercilessly bullied at school over his Asperger’s Syndrome. He retreated into his first passion, computers.

Like many at the top in Silicon Valley, his inter- personal skills are not strong.

He likes attractive women who share his passion for science and technology. But first wife Justine compared his wooing technique to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s killer android — he just wouldn’t stop, she said.

She also recalled that, during their first dance at their 2000 wedding, Musk told her he was the ‘alpha’ in the relationship and, if she were one of his employees, he would sack her.

Justine says their marriage collapsed acrimoniously because he was an icy, domineering figure determined to force her into the role of blonde trophy wife. She also accused him of behaving ruthlessly in the divorce settlement.

Their eldest child, Vivian, 18, recently filed a legal request to change her first name to reflect that she is transgender and her last name to signal she doesn’t want ‘to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form’.

Musk, who has in the past made disparaging remarks about transgender pronouns, describing them as an ‘aesthetic nightmare’, has yet to comment on Vivian’s desertion of the Musk name.

He says he’s a devoted father but has admitted he hasn’t played a prominent role in his children’s lives when they were young, insisting there was ‘not much I can do’.

His relationship with second wife Talulah Riley, a British actress who was educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and starred in the rebooted St Trinian’s films, was hardly smooth either. When they first met, his idea of flirtation was to show her photos and videos of his SpaceX rockets.

They married and divorced twice, amid reports that Ms Riley found life with Musk and his young children in his almost empty 20,000 sq ft Bel Air mansion somewhat challenging.

And Musk’s romance with another actress — Amber Heard — in around 2017 after she became estranged from Johnny Depp was revisited in Heard and Depp’s recent toxic court battle, over her allegations Depp was a wife beater.

Musk, who was rumoured to have had hair transplants to overcome a thinning thatch, later admitted he was ‘really in love’ and it ‘hurt bad’ when she broke up with him.

He’s no stranger to lawsuits himself. In May, it was reported SpaceX paid a company flight attendant $250,000 (£208,000) in settlement after she alleged Musk exposed himself, rubbed her leg and propositioned her for sex — offering to buy the keen rider a horse — after she gave him a massage on a private jet flight to London.

Musk denied her claims and insisted he didn’t have flight attendants when he flew.

Oafish with women, thin-skinned, immature (he smoked a cannabis joint in an interview, challenged Vladimir Putin to a fight and loves sharing puerile online memes) and such a workaholic that he works up to 90 hours a week, Musk is in many ways the archetypal sci-fi nerd-turned-technology baron.

However, one area where he diverges from nearly all the rest — and where Silicon Valley and other Left-wingers cannot forgive him — is coming out as a Republican. Since announcing earlier this year that he was buying Twitter and — horrors! — planned to deal with its knee-jerk Left-wing bias, the tech world has turned on him.

In the end, although he carried out his threat to walk away from the deal because he believed Twitter is hiding a vast number of fake accounts, he’s made perfectly clear his contempt for Silicon Valley’s hypocrisy and Left-wing virtue-signalling.

His admirers say the antipathy to Musk in his industry, not to mention his own unhelpfully anti-social behaviour, overshadows the considerable good he does in the world.

He may be an odd fish, they add, but which Silicon Valley visionary hasn’t been?

‘I don’t think you’d necessarily want to be me,’ Musk told a podcast host in 2018. ‘It’s very hard to turn it off.’

Some say Musk’s lonely and difficult childhood has spawned a desire for world domination. If so, an army of his own children should be a step in the right direction.