Sex Abuse And Drug Addiction: 6 Most Explosive Revelations From Jessica Simpson's New Memoir 'Open Book'
She details a history of sexual abuse and her struggle with alcohol and pills.
Getty Jessica Simpson was a moderately famous pop star when she had her new husband, 98 Degrees singer Nick Lachey agreed to do a reality show about their lives together. Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica premiered in 2003 and became a pop culture phenomenon. The couple reached new heights of fame as they navigated their fledgling marriage, their two music careers, and life in the spotlight.
The marriage didn't last and the pair divorced in 2006. Simpson, however, parlayed her fame from the show into a fashion label and lifestyle brand that is now estimated to be worth over a billion dollars. After several high-profile relationships with other famous men like John Mayer and Tony Romo, Simpson settled down with former NFL tight end Eric Johnson, with whom she now shares three children.
But Simpson's charmed life was hiding some dark secrets. Now in a new memoir, Open Book, she is talking for the first time about her addiction to alcohol and pills as well as some of the pain that led her to self-medicate.
Keep reading for the most shocking revelations from Jessica Simpson's new memoir.
1. Jessica Simpson rose to fame thanks to her music career and her reality show.
Simpson grew up in Texas and began singing in church when she was very young. When she was twelve, she auditioned for the new Mickey Mouse Club show and was up against talents like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in the audition. Ultimately, she didn't make the cut and returned home to continue pursuing music. She was signed with a gospel label but eventually transitioned to pop music. Her first album was released in 1999 when she was only 19 years old. She met Nick Lachey, a fellow boy band member from 98 Degrees that same year. The couple married in 2002 and started on their reality TV odyssey. Simpson became an immediate fan favorite due to her lovable but ditzy personality. Both saw their music careers improve but their marriage couldn't stand up to the strain. In 2005, they got a divorce.
In the years after her reality show, Simspon focused less on music and more on her very successful fashion and lifestyle brand. She was in several high-profile relationships with men including John Mayer and NFL Player Tony Romo. She made a few forays into movie acting with roles in Employee of the Month and the Dukes of Hazard movie. In 2010, she started dating Eric Johnson, a former football player and the couple had daughter Maxwell in 2012 and son Ace in 2013 before they married in 2014. They have since had a third child, daughter Birdie, in 2019.
2. In her new memoir, Simpson finally addresses her past relationships.
Now 39 years old, Simpson says that she was originally contracted five years ago to write a motivational book but she couldn't bring herself to write a book about living your best life when she knew all of her own darkest secrets. She was finally ready to open up about some of the most intimate episodes in her life, including her tumultous relationship with John Mayer. She started dating the singer/songwriter shortly after her divorce but she never felt fully confident around him.
The relationship had a lot of intensity, Simpson recalls. “Again and again, [Mayer] told me he was obsessed with me, sexually and emotionally,” she remembers. But she was also intimidated by him. “I constantly worried that I wasn’t smart enough for him. He was so clever and treated conversation like a friendly competition that he had to win.” She drank to overcome her anxiety about impressing him and that started her on the road to an addiction to alcohol.
Later, after they split up, Mayer shocked Simspon by revealing the depths of his obsession with her. "That girl, for me, is a drug. And drugs aren't good for you if you do lots of them. Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me...sexually, it was crazy. That's all I'll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm," Mayer said in a Playboy interview in 2010. For Simpson, that revelation was a profound betrayal of her privacy. “I was floored and embarrassed that my grandmother was actually gonna read that," Simpson wrote. “A woman and how they are in bed is not something that is ever talked about. It was shocking.”
Simpson with her family.
3. She also confessed she was sexually abused as a very young child.
One of the major traumas Simpson talks about in her memoir is the sexual abuse that happened when she was six years old. She and her family would visit friends of her parents and when they stayed over, Simpson revealed she would share a bed with another girl. That girl touched her inappropriate ways. "It would start with tickling my back and then go into things that were extremely uncomfortable,” she recalls. But it took her years to gather the courage to tell her parents due to her fear that she would somehow be blamed. She was twelve when she finally said something to them. Her mother said to her father, "I told you something was happening.” They never visited those family friends again, but Simpson says they also never spoke about it again.
4. Burying her trauma led her to self-medicate.
Simpson says she turned to alcohol and pills to help her cope with the pressure of her career as well as the unaddressed emotional wounds from her childhood abuse. But the cumulative effects of drinking over the course of years was affecting her health. “I was killing myself with all the drinking and pills,” she writes in Open Book.
5. She finally hit bottom in 2017.
The singer decided it was time to get sober in 2017 after she and her husband hosted a Halloween party. She had started the day with a drink at 7:30am and continued drinking throughout the day. By the time she was in her costume for the party planned for that night, she realized that she was in no condition to help her kids get into costumes. “I was terrified of letting them see me in that shape,” Simpson revealed. “I am ashamed to say that I don’t know who got them into their costumes that night.”
She continued to drink that day and finally ended the night with an Ambien to put herself to sleep. The following morning, too ashamed to face her family, she waited until they left the house then started drinking again. She finally reached out to friends to say she was ready to stop drinking. “I need to stop," she told them "Something’s got to stop. And if it’s alcohol that’s doing this and making things worse, then I quit.”
6. She's been sober since then.
Simpson says sobriety was not as hard to achieve as she was afraid. She claimed her anger at what alcohol had done to her was enough to give her the strength to quit. The hard part came with committing to therapy and working through all the reasons she drank. But therapy and the support of friends and family has gotten to a point where she feels good about her life again. “It was a long, hard emotional journey,” she says.
Simpson has been sober since 2017.
Simpson's book will be released next month. She also recorded the audiobook version, which comes with six new songs, which will be the first new music she has released in a decade.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.