Emily Ratajkowski shot to fame after appearing in the music video.
American supermodel Emily Ratajkowski has claimed she was sexually assaulted by Robin Thicke on the set of the music video for 2013 hit, Blurred Lines.
Ratajkowski makes the allegations in her upcoming book, My Body, and accuses Thicke of groping her without consent during filming for the music video.
According to the Sunday Times, the 30-year-old model claims that Thicke “returned to the set a little drunk to shoot just with me.”
She continues: “”Out of nowhere, I felt the coolness and foreignness of a stranger’s hands cupping my bare breasts from behind. I instinctively moved away, looking back at Robin Thicke.”
She says that she felt “humiliation pump through [her] body.”
Ratajkowski featured in the music video for the song alongside Thicke, Pharrell Williams and TI. Diane Martel, who directed the video, told the Sunday Times that she remembered the alleged incident.
She is quoted as saying: “I remember the moment that he grabbed her breasts. He was standing behind her as they were both in profile.”
Martel added that Thicke later apologised.
Blurred Lines became one of the biggest songs in the world when it was released, selling 1.5 million copies in the UK in 2013. The following year, it was named the most-downloaded song of all time in the UK.
But it attracted controversy on its release for its provocative lyrics which some argue promoted non-consensual sex.
Around 20 university student unions ended up banning the song from campus as it promoted “date rape culture.”
Whilst Pharrell Williams has since said that he was “embarrassed” by the lyrics, Thicke has defended the song, and in 2013 told the BBC that critics didn’t “get” the song.
He said: “I don’t want to be sleazy, I’m a gentleman, I’ve been in love with the same woman since I’ve been a teenager. I don’t want to do anything inappropriate.”
In 2015, Thicke then told the New York Times that the lyrics weren’t intended to have sexual connotations, saying: “I have never and would never write a song with any negative connotation like that.”
In the same year, Ratajkowski said that appearing in the music video was the “bane of her existence.”
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