Speaker
Cara Delevingne
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Cara stood 5'7.5" in an industry where runway models typically need to be 5'10", meaning she defied the standard physical expectation from the start.
Cara joined the Storm modelling agency at age 17 after dropping out of school, following in her sister's footsteps and needing a job as a condition of leaving.
Cara experienced suicidal thoughts as a child, recalling swimming into the sea intending to keep going until she drowned.
Cara's ketamine tolerance was so extreme that a dose she considered small would floor a 6-foot-5 man, which she initially wore as a badge of pride.
Cara overdosed — likely on fentanyl-contaminated cocaine — and had to be revived with Narcan by ambulance crew at her own home.
After paparazzi shots from her post-Burning Man airport arrival went viral showing her visibly unwell, brands quietly declined to renew her contracts.
Cara has been sober since 2022 and credits music as the creative outlet and emotional anchor that keeps her clean and sane.
Harvey Weinstein called Cara and told her she would never make it in the industry if people thought she was gay, which she says she took deeply to heart at the time.
Before modelling took off, Cara turned down a development deal with Simon Fuller — who managed the Spice Girls — because he wanted to cut her hair, dye it green, and rename her Spike or Spark.
A sober mentor told Cara he would buy her a kilo of cocaine after one year of sobriety, confident she would no longer want it — a bet she says proved correct.
Cara said she had to be medically weaned off GBL, describing it as probably the hardest substance to come off, requiring clinical supervision.
Cara disclosed that when she feels angry and unable to express it, the urge to physically hurt herself — punching walls, scratching, cutting — remains present even in sobriety.
Cara grew up checking whether her mother was still breathing before she could sleep, terrified of finding her dead in the night. Her mother's illness — physical and mental, including a near-fatal reaction to a monk's herbal tea — made Cara so focused on her mother's survival that her own needs simply didn't register. The anger that couldn't go anywhere else went inward.
Before modelling took off, Cara had a shot at a music career via Simon Fuller, the man behind the Spice Girls. He liked her songs but wanted to cut her hair, dye it green, and rename her Spike — or possibly Spark. She turned it down because music was too precious to hand over to someone else's vision. She always knew she'd do it, just not like that.
Cara says her current relationship feels like the first time she has ever truly been in love, because she is finally experiencing it without substances blurring the signal. In every previous relationship, drugs or work were always the priority. Now, if the relationship isn't okay, she isn't okay — and she's fully aware that might tip into codependency.
Cara revealed she had been previously engaged — and it wasn't publicly known. But the reasoning behind it was raw: she didn't believe in marriage, but engagement gave her one more hoop for a partner to jump through before leaving. It was about buying time against the inevitable abandonment she expected from everyone she loved.
Cara overdosed — likely on fentanyl-laced cocaine — and was revived with Narcan by paramedics at her home. Waking up restrained, surrounded by people and shame, her first conscious thought was that she wanted to die. That moment of absolute bottom became the turning point that sent her to residential treatment.
A sober mentor made Cara a wild offer: stay clean for a year, and he'd buy her a kilo of cocaine to see if she still wanted it. The point wasn't provocation — it was certainty. He knew that anyone who reached that milestone would never go back. Cara says it was true for her. That offer, and the year that followed, changed everything.
Karl Lagerfeld compared Cara to Charlie Chaplin, called her 'not a standout beauty', and dressed her as his Chanel muse. When he died and Jameela Jamil immediately called him a fatphobic misogynist, Cara — freshly landed in Milan — fired back on Twitter. She says the fashion industry may be inherently misogynistic, but the day after a death isn't the time.
Harvey Weinstein called Cara directly and told her to never be seen in a relationship with a woman, warning that being perceived as gay would end her acting career. She says she genuinely believed him and took it to heart. The call captures a broader industry pressure on gay performers that persisted long after audiences had supposedly moved on.
Cara had always loved music but didn't believe in herself enough to pursue it until sobriety forced her to confront and accept every part of who she was. The polarities she'd spent years numbing — the dark, the light, the shame — became the raw material for her debut album. Loving all of it, not just the palatable bits, was the precondition for making anything real.
Cara didn't take ketamine recreationally — she used it to disappear. She describes doing enormous lines not for a buzz but to fully tranquilise herself, developing a tolerance so extreme that a dose she considered small would knock out a six-foot-five man. She wore it as bravado at the time. In retrospect, it was terrifying.
London Fields, the 2018 adaptation of Martin Amis's novel starring Cara, Billy Bob Thornton and Jason Isaacs, holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Cara's take: the book is incredible, the script seemed great, and sometimes you just have to try to adapt an unadaptable book to prove how unadaptable it is. She takes the distinction with disarming good humour.
Cara says sexual assault was rampant in the fashion world when she was coming up. Test shoots were a common vector: young photographers would offer underage girls alcohol and then push boundaries — including asking 15-year-old girls to get naked in a bathtub together while their mothers watched. Cara, the oldest person present, refused. The photos still exist.
After days without sleep at Burning Man, Cara had a seizure, scored more drugs at her LA home, and arrived at the airport barefoot, wild-eyed, smoking in a Free Britney t-shirt. The photos went viral, brands quietly dropped her contracts, and the silence from the industry was deafening. That public collapse became the catalyst for everything that followed.
Analysis
What they talk about
- Health & Fitness 73%
- Music 9%
- Society & Culture 9%
- TV & Film 9%
Connections
Shows they appear on and people they share episodes with. Drag to explore.
