JODI LEE: These leeches you keep bringing up. Paparazzi?
MARLOW FIN: Worse.
JODI LEE: How so?
MARLOW FIN: Paparazzi take pictures. It sucks, yes. But leeches write lies. Do you know how to remove a leech, Jodi?
JODI LEE: I’ve never encountered one actually.
MARLOW FIN: Where I’m from, you have to find its mouth. That’s the trick, get it where it talks.
JODI LEE: Can I give you some nicknames the “press”—and I say that for now to give it a label—have dubbed you with in the past?
MARLOW FIN: Sure. Why not?
JODI LEE: “Mad Marlow”? “Fiery Fin”? “Mental Mar”?
MARLOW FIN: Sweet, isn’t it?
[Roll package, footage of Marlow and press]
JODI LEE: There is no question that Marlow has earned a reputation for shunning the press and even acting out. In 2006, she was involved in an altercation outside The Ivy in which she pushed a photographer into the street, breaking his arm. He filed a lawsuit the following spring, but it was settled out of court, and the details remain undisclosed. In 2010, Marlow was sued again, this time for pouring a bottle of water over a reporter’s head in New York City.
[Studio]
MARLOW FIN: I never touched anyone. Not in a violent way. I stand by that. The photographer outside The Ivy pushed me. I was only trying to get out of there safely.
JODI LEE: By yelling and screaming? “Tantrums,” as the press called it.
MARLOW FIN: [Shrugs] They can say what they want. Just because it’s in print doesn’t make it true. Scary world, isn’t it?
JODI LEE: I’m going to go to a place now that may be hard to talk about. But can we try?
MARLOW FIN: You are so polite. I like that about you, Jodi.
JODI LEE: Does that mean I can go there?
MARLOW FIN: Go there.
JODI LEE: You’ve had some addiction problems. I will flat out say it. [Motions hands outward] Do you think you are fully recovered?
MARLOW FIN: I’ll never be recovered. But I think I am in a better place for sure.
I’ve been in some really, really dark holes. I don’t think that’s what people understand. That someone on magazines, billboards—that’s an image. Those are only images of me. But they are nothing close to anything resembling me.
JODI LEE: Can you tell me about some of those dark holes? I’ve interviewed a lot of people who have had and still have addictions. But the one thing they all have in common is that moment when they knew something had to give. What was it for you? The darkest moment when you knew something had to change?
MARLOW FIN: There are . . . [Holds up two fingers]
JODI LEE: Tell me about the first one.
MARLOW FIN: My first time modeling in Europe. You always hear about these models being crazy and partying. Snorting. Doing lines. But it wasn’t like that. Not for me, or initially anyway. I really tried to keep to myself—focus on the jobs and staying levelheaded. I truly liked the work back then. But I swear, the more I tried to stay on this . . . this tightrope . . . the higher I got and the harder I was going to fall.
I took one hit. One hit of pot at a party in Barcelona. Seems innocent right? But I was all too curious. I was . . . maybe I wanted to go there. Maybe I wanted to fall. A week later I was drinking heavily. Empty bottles don’t lie. A month later I was doing coke and ecstasy pretty much every night, then all day every day. I blurred my life out. I won’t sit here and lie and say I regret using. Because I loved it. I loved the burn and numbing power it had. My head lifting away from my body . . . it was peace. But . . . [pauses]
JODI LEE: But?
MARLOW FIN: There were many times I woke up unsure of where I was. What I had done. What someone had done to me.
I remember it was a Sunday. I heard a lot of church bells that morning. I woke up in a hotel in Florence completely naked. Even the sheets were stripped off the bed. There was no one else. I couldn’t tell you what had happened because the night before was a complete blackout. I put some clothes on—they weren’t even my clothes—and took a walk outside. I was beyond hungover. I was at the point where hungover was better than the state I was in. The world had gone silent. Dead. And everybody who walked past me didn’t seem to see me. It was as if I were a ghost.
That’s when I knew.
JODI LEE: How old were you?
MARLOW FIN: Eighteen. A kid. But I felt fifty.
JODI LEE: You sought help.
MARLOW FIN: I did. [Scratches forehead] I did.
JODI LEE: Did it work?
MARLOW FIN: Well—I’m still here now, aren’t I?
JODI LEE: What did your family think of all this?
MARLOW FIN: They didn’t. At least at this time in my life they didn’t. It was so easy to hide because when I went home, I would put on this spectacular show of being fresh and excited about all the travels I had done and my fantastic career. But really? I wanted to be alone.
