Aoki Lee Simmons addressed her decision to call out her father, Russell Simmons, earlier this year. The 21-year-old had posted videos and screenshots of their interactions and said his behavior had been taking a toll on her mental health. The revelations came to support her mother Kimora’s accusations of verbal abuse from Russell.
“I don’t regret it,” she told Teen Vogue in an interview. “Part of it was already out there. There were reasons I thought it was reasonable to publish because it was playing out in, like, a silent bubble.”
Speculations started circulating after Russell was left out of a celebratory Father’s Day earlier this year. Aoki then posted videos showing her father yelling at her over FaceTime and text messages. The Def Jam Recordings executive had apologized to her after she took her grievances to social media. Aoki received backlash from her father’s supporters afterward.
“I only see one bitter mess in a DM between a 40-plus-year-old male stranger yelling at me about ‘all the bitter Black women’ I represent,” she had said on social media at the time. “And it’s not the 20-year-old on the receiving end.”
She told Teen Vogue that logging off social media helped her cope.
“If you don’t look at it, it’s not at all real,” she said of social media.
Aoki also received support from an unnamed celebrity who experienced a similar situation around the same age.
“[That celebrity was] like, ‘Oh, I saw your thing. I did the same thing when I was, like, 20, and it was fine,’” she said.
Before the situation was made public, Russell filed a lawsuit against Kimora, accusing her of transferring 4 million shares of the energy drink Celsius to her accounts. The suit was dismissed, and Russell was made to pay her legal fees.
The 21-year-old also declined to comment on the rape and sexual misconduct allegations against her father. Russell has denied all allegations in the past.
