Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, Vivian Wilson, called her upbringing “isolating” and “strange” in a new interview about growing up with one of the world’s richest men as her father.
Wilson, who came out as transgender in 2020 and has since dropped Musk as her last name, opened up about her unique childhood during a chat with Cosmopolitan published Wednesday.
“It was a very strange experience, very isolating,” she told the outlet. “The upper class have their own private schools, social circles, and whatever.”
Although she initially attended an exclusive institution on the SpaceX campus in California called Ad Astra, Wilson later transferred to the private Los Angeles school Crossroads.
“I have unlearned a huge amount, but even as a child, I was like, ‘This is a bit gauche,’” the 21-year-old model recalled. “I remember being very young and seeing homelessness and feeling sick to my stomach.”
She continued, “People would get on me for being like a dramatic little child. But no, I was right to be a dramatic little s–t about that.”
Besides feeling “isolated” and “strange,” Wilson also observed a “level of detachment from reality itself” that was “in favor of wealth” and the “illusion that you deserve it while people are sleeping on the streets.”
Still, Musk’s estranged daughter acknowledged that she “was a rich kid” and “should not be lecturing anyone on materialism.”
Elsewhere during her interview with the magazine, Wilson said she has witnessed money “corrupt” the people around her.
“I have seen that s–t firsthand,” she asserted. “It will change you, and the desire for power corrupts people from within. It is cartoonish.”
Wilson continued, “Achieving that and wanting more is a never-ending cycle of greed and gluttony, where nothing is enough and you kind of go insane. It turns you into someone different. Which is honestly one of my biggest fears.”
But she also made sure to downplay her lot in life as Musk’s daughter.
“There’s not much I can do about it, so who cares?” Wilson said. “It’s part of my story, but it’s not the future of my story.”
Musk welcomed Wilson with his first wife, Justine Wilson, in 2004.
However, the model “disowned” the Tesla billionaire as her father in 2020 when she came out as transgender.
Wilson, who was born Xavier Alexander Musk, changed her name upon turning 18 in 2022. She filed for an official gender change in Los Angeles that same year.
The father-daughter pair have butted heads several times since their 2020 estrangement, including in 2024 when the SpaceX founder claimed that he was “tricked” into letting Wilson transition and blamed the “woke mind virus.”
“I was tricked into doing this,” he told the Daily Wire at the time. “It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs.”
Musk continued, “I lost my son, essentially. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead, so my son, Xavier, is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Wilson fired back a year later during an interview with Teen Vogue.
“I don’t give a f–k about him. I really don’t,” she charged. “It’s annoying that people associate me with him. I just don’t have any room to care anymore.”
