Cara Delevingne Dishes on the Fellow Victoria’s Secret Supermodel Whose Naked Body Made Her Literally Pass Out

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Cara Delevigne is having a big year. Huge! Her latest film Club Kid received a seven-minute standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and her first studio album, “Can You See Me?” is set to be released by Warner Records later this summer. And then, on the day of her first ever live concert, she sat down with “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper for what may just be the most open, vulnerable, and sprawling interview of her career so far.

During their two hours together, Cooper and Delevingne talked about everything from British high society to Delevigne’s mother’s struggles with substance abuse, to the model-tuned actor-turned-musician’s own sexuality and history of self-destructive behavior. It’s a great interview, as Cooper’s interview’s so often are, and you should definitely check out the full thing, but for those of you who don’t have two hours to sit and watch their conversation in it’s entirety, here are a few of our favorite excerpts.

On her distaste for the British high society circles her parents ran in:

“Growing up in high society — obviously the crown is not how I grew up… there is nothing quite like British high society. It’s, to me, something I didn’t really enjoy. I was very confused by the whole thing of… people growing up having kind of a lot of money and not really doing anything and kind of feeling very entitled and having a lot and expecting a lot for really nothing, whereas… I really wanted to earn people’s respect and I think there’s that thing of ‘society’ where if you’re born into it you don’t really have to do much and people can be pretty horrible and pretty rude and pretty spoiled… and the circles my parents ran in, I was like “I don’t know. I don’t really like these people’s kids. They’re not nice to other kids or they’re not nice to people who work here or for them and it’s just like… its felt very… I preferred to go to raves and break into music festivals and do drugs in a park, like that was my vibe. I wanted to do the opposite, I think.”

On her difficult childhood and the destructive ways she sought control of an uncontrollable situation:

“I don’t feel like I had a voice as a kid. There was a lot going on with my mum who was very sick when I was growing up and I didn’t know how I felt about it. But I also wasn’t asked! And I wasn’t allowed to feel and also she was so sick that I wasn’t… I couldn’t make it about me. I just had to look after her. And I was actually really good at it and I loved doing it, but it took over everything to the point where I just… I still am really trying to learn to look after myself at thirty-fucking-three.”

According to Delevingne, her mom spent a lot of time in hospitals and rehab when she was young and she often didn’t know where she or if she was even still alive. And that uncertainty and grief lead her to seek control in other ways.

“I would just stop eating at, like, seven [years old] and just be on a hunger strike because I didn’t know where my mother was. So I was not going to eat because to me that was the only thing I had control over”

At the same time she started engaging in dangerous behavior and self-harming – breaking her arm and being glad to have a cast and finally be able to point to it and say, ‘I hurt, too. See!’

On getting really into drugs at 13:

Delevingne was in boarding school by the time she got into hardcore drugs, and did them regulally, though she insists she never did them at school, only on her weekends back in London. At one point she was doing a lot of acid, though, and having a lot of very bad trips, including one where “I thought my dad was god and my mom whs the devil and I had to kill her to save the world. And… I lost my mind.. Acid is a crazy thing. And I was taking it every day and doing it a lot and I just kept having bad trios and I just became suicidal.”

On dropping out of school and becoming a full time model and her big break working for Burberry:

It wasn’t so much that she dropped out of school to become a full time model as that she felt she had to drop out of school because she was so miserable there and modeling was a thing for her to do. When she started modeling she went to castings and got rejected just like everyone else. Then she got a job as an e-commerce model for ASOS. Suddenly she was working five days per week and getting a free sandwich every day for lunch and buying clothes for 5 GBP per bag at the ASOS sample sale and, as far as she was concenred, that was as far as her modeling career was likely to go. And she was fine with it.

“And then… I remember I’d been into Burberry before and I’d done the castings [getting rejected by the casting director before I’d even walked] and I remember going in there again and meeting Christopher Baily and he’s like, ‘What do you like to do?'”

And she told him she wanted to act and make music — though she didn’t think she was good enough.

“I’d never been asked that before… and the next day I was doing the campaign with Jourdan Dunn and Mario Testino, shooting on a beach in Brighton in the freezing cold and I remember thinking ‘Oh, this is different.'”

Delevigne said she will always be grateful to Bailey launching her career, but admitted that she also felt bitter towards all the casting directors and brands that rejected her when she first started — telling her she was too short or too ugly or just not good enough — and now that she was in Burberry were suddenly interested.

On the toxic nature of the modeling industry and fashion in general:

Despite being at the absolute pinnacle of the industry, Delevingne says she often found the work and the environment depressing and would discourage others from getting involved.

“When little girls would come up to me and their moms and they’d be like: ‘My daughter wants to be a model because of you.’ And I was like: ‘Don’t. Don’t do it.’

“I [didn’t] believe in what I was selling because what I was selling was a lie.

“The body stuff, the body shaming, the racism, and everyone… just became really mean. People would do really mean things and just degrade you because even if you were a really big model, they’d be like… ‘Why don’t you get on all fours and bark like a dog.’ That’s like, because it made people who were in the industry, who were assistants — who had been treated badly — feel big and feel important.”

On being in her first Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2012 at the age of 20:

“I was not sober. Like… and I don’t want to speak for the rest of the girls but that is not a nice environment, personally. I think something about… it definitely changed how feminine I seem or come off because of modeling. Like I … growing up, I had short hair, I didn’t like wearing girls clothes. I didn’t like being a girl because I thought that girls didn’t get the same opportunities; they didn’t get to play with the toys I wanted to play with and that kind of stuff. And for modeling I really had to become this girl that I wasn’t.

This ultra feminine presentation “felt fun. It felt like dress up. But there was also something darker about it, because also at that show I was in the closet. I was gay and I was like, “Am I the only lesbian that’s ever done fucking Victoria’s Secret? Like… this is a big deal, [I was like] ‘yeah, shake your ass girl. You want me to do up your bra? 100 percent.’ Like I was having a great time, but also very confused, like I felt like an undercover lesbian.

On the Victoria’s Secret model who triggered her most visceral gay panic:

“I remember seeing Candice Swanepoel and I remember we were in a hotel room eating pizza and she came in the bathroom and I think maybe we were smoking a joint — I don’t really know — but she came in the bathroom and she took off her clothes — not in a sexual way; that’s what models do — and I passed out. I fully passed out. Or, like, I was standing up and had to fall back on the toilet and she was like, ‘Are you okay?’ and I was like ‘I’m fine. Are you okay? I have something in my eye.’ It was a lot. Like the gay panic… I was constantly panicking.”

Honestly, this is just the tip of the iceberg, so do yourself a favor and check out the full interview below. It is well worth the two hours.