lily allen
New career, new home, new outlook: Lily Allen tells Stylist’s Helen Bownass how she’s flourishing in every way
Photography: Tom van Schelven
fashion: lucy reber
interiors: Rebecca de Boehmler
The last time I interviewed Lily Allen was four years and four days ago. She was guest editing an issue of Stylist, and I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn to say she wasn’t in her happiest place. It was just a few months after the release of her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, which details, with extreme candour, her life growing up in the glare of the tabloids, her struggles with drink and drug addiction, her mental health battles and the breakdown of her first marriage. It felt like she was trying to rebuild herself and work out what should come next. Fast forward 1,464 days, and while all our worlds have shifted in ways we could never have dreamt of in the heady days of April 2019, Allen has been through a dramatic what’s next. She’s been sober from drugs and alcohol since July 2019, met and married Stranger Things actor David Harbour, moved her two daughters to New York and broke the internet when they revealed the gorgeous Brooklyn townhouse that she and Harbour renovated in cult interiors magazine Architectural Digest.
She’s recently been diagnosed with ADHD, saying, “It sort of runs in my family. And it’s only [been diagnosed] because I’m here in America where they take these things slightly more seriously than they do in and her first TV series, Sky comedy-drama . Next up is an even bigger career challenge: starring in West End play .
