‘They could see how skinny and sad I was’: Lily Allen praises school mums for their support during ‘traumatic’ marriage collapse as she addresses David Harbour’s ‘infidelity’ and open relationships in candid ELLE UK spread

It’s usually during the darkest of times that you know who your friends are. 

For Lily Allen, those times represent the final months of her short-lived marriage to actor David Harbour, the dramatic impact his alleged infidelities would have on her physical health and, further forward, a recording career that some of us assumed was all but over.

But it would also lead to the mother-of-two finding support in the most unlikely of places, notably the tight-knit band of school mothers she befriended through her daughters Ethel, 14, and Marnie, 13 – long before the surprise release of last year’s break-up album, West End Girl. 

‘They were there when I was in a really tough spot – they could see how drawn I was and how withdrawn I became and how skinny I got and how sad I was,’ Allen, 40, told ELLE UK. 

‘They’d come and pick up their kids from play dates and I wouldn’t come downstairs. I’d be in my bedroom crying. 

‘And so I think this album came out and they’re all happy for me.’ 

Released without prior notice and described as a “brutal, tell-all masterpiece”, West End Girl laid bare the complexities of her relationship with Harbour across 14 searingly honest tracks – and confirmed Allen’s return to music after an eight year absence. 

‘I was processing things that were happening at quite a traumatic period of time,’ she recalled of her writing process while working on the album. 

‘I don’t think that it’s a particularly self-aware record. It’s a really angry record. And it’s a lot more about rage directed towards other people. It’s not really about self-reflection.’ 

Indeed, with lyrics focusing Harbour’s alleged fecklessness, her emotional reaction to the declining state of their marriage and the challenges that arise when dating in your 30s – Allen became romantically involved with the Stranger Things star when she was 35 – the album has plenty to be angry about. 

It also prompted a wider debate regarding polyamory and open relationships – a subject she says she had no experience of prior to marrying Harbour in 2020. 

‘It’s really f**king prevalent, and for some people it’s really enjoyable and exciting and for other people it’s not,’ she said. 

‘I have a lot of queer friends, and when my relationship started to change my gay friends in New York said, “Oh, I didn’t know straight people were doing this!” I was like, “Neither did I!”

Allen exchanged vows with Harbour in Las Vegas before relocating to the actor’s New York City townhouse with her two children – notoriously referred to as the ‘p***y palace’ on her new album.

‘I wanted things to feel relatively normal,’ she said of her moved to the United States. ‘I was happy in the sense that I was doing what I wanted to be doing for my kids. 

‘Whether I felt creatively fulfilled or not is another thing completely. I didn’t manage to find the balance between the two’.

The singer is set to embark on the 46 date Lily Allen Performs West End Girl tour, starting at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on March 2 before working its way across England, Ireland, the United States, New Zealand and Australia – where she will perform a final show at Perth’s RAC Arena in November.    

‘[The live performances] will feel more like a Broadway-esque one-woman show, with really interesting set design,’ she said. 

‘There’ll be no band and no dancers.’ 

Allen’s first tour in seven years, it will give the singer a unique opportunity to interact with the millions of cheated women who instantly connected with the eviscerating lyrics on her new album. 

‘It is f*cking insane,’ she said. ‘In my Instagram DMs, I get loads of women telling me really graphic stuff. Literally like, “My husband will be f**king me in the a*s while he is texting other women.” 

‘It makes me feel so sh*t. All I can do is write some music that hopefully they identify with and makes them feel less alone.’ 

She added: ‘I don’t know if it’s great for the soul, but it’s good for the ego.

‘When I wrote this album, I spent about eight months being absolutely terrified of what was gonna come back at me.’ 

Sober for the better part of six years, Allen will have the added advantage of greater self-awareness and maturity when she takes to the road this spring, a marked difference to her notoriously debauched behaviour as a rising star in the 2000s. 

‘I wish I’d had the life experience that I have now the first time around, as I would’ve been able to handle it better,’ she said. ‘But that wasn’t the universe’s plan for me. I was 20 years old and I had no idea who I was. 

‘You’re trying to figure out who you are and then there are very loud voices going, “No, you are this. You are this person and we are going to tell everybody that this is who you are.” 

‘Those voices were much more powerful than mine was, and that felt quite suffocating.’ 

The cathartic decision to turn her private life into a hugely successful – and highly lucrative – art form has also helped the singer find an outlet for the disappointments that preceded her separation from Harbour. 

‘I think that if I’ve learnt anything about myself from it, it’s that rage is powerful and necessary, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to express,’ she said. ‘In fact, repressed rage is arguably more damaging.’ 

The March issue of ELLE UK is on sale from February 5.