Jonah Hill Accused of Emotional Abuse by Ex-Girlfriend

By Nate Parker | Celebrity | July 10, 2023 |

By Nate Parker | Celebrity | July 10, 2023 |

Surf instructor Sarah Brady briefly dated Jonah Hill between 2021- 2022, and this weekend posted a series of now-expired Instagram stories that accused the actor of emotional abuse. Brady shared several text exchanges with Hill, and they’re exactly the kind of passive-aggressive manipulation anyone who’s dealt with a control freak will recognize (click for full size).

The internet, being what it is, was immediately divided into 3 camps. Camp A, primarily but not entirely women, agreed it’s emotionally manipulative at best and abusive at worst, and that people shouldn’t get into relationships with the intention of changing their partner’s behavior, particularly when that behavior was part of the draw in the first place. Camp B, mostly but not entirely men, are convinced Hill was “setting his own boundaries.” More shortly on why these people are delusional. Camp C, which appears equally divided between the genders, think Hill was out of line but not abusive, and that sharing the texts more than a year after the relationship ended and shortly after Hill and his current girlfriend, Olivia Millar, had a baby, is bad behavior on Brady’s part.

It’s not my place to tell anyone if they were abused. It didn’t happen to me. A 4-screenshot text rant can’t contain an entire relationship or provide context outside the obvious subject at hand. But one thing this isn’t, is setting healthy and reasonable boundaries. Dressing it up in therapy speak doesn’t make it better. If Jonah Hill wasn’t comfortable dating a woman who posted sexy swimsuit photos on Insta and surfed with men then he shouldn’t have asked her out. Boundaries aren’t set by demanding your partner change who they are after the relationship begins, though a disturbing number of people seem to think otherwise, including some who recognized Steven Crowder’s behavior toward his ex-wife as inappropriate. Apparently telling a pregnant woman to “watch it” is obvious, but a 400-word diatribe about normal beach culture to a professional surfer is not.

The most obnoxious part of Hill’s speech has to be the therapy doublespeak. He spends the first half talking about his respect for her before devolving into a tirade about her career, clothes, immodesty, inappropriate public behavior, and friendships. “Be the person I want you to be, not the one that attracted me in the first place, or I’ll leave you.” I’m not sure why a socially inept and anxiety-ridden actor with a decades-old reputation for being insufferable thought that was a threat. I’ve empathized with Hill even as his often whiny voice and attitude annoyed me. Severe anxiety has been a part of my life since before puberty. I respected Hill’s choice to stop doing movie publicity because it exacerbated his body image issues. Speaking openly about anxiety is important. But I think Kayleigh put it best:

Jonah Hill making a lavish and adoring documentary about his therapist (and potentially crossing ethical boundaries with their friendship) takes on a whole new aura when you see those texts of him trying to therapy-speak his then-girlfriend into submission.

— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) July 8, 2023

Hill’s not unique; it’s a common move among people whose emotional bandwidth peaked during senior year. Ironically, for an actor so determined to be Taken Seriously, this behavior is what I’d expect from his Superbad character. Hill, who made a documentary about his own therapist’s life, weaponized his insecurity. He didn’t date a chaste, modest, and stay-at-home Mormon woman. He chose an athletic extrovert. Then he tried to make her feel bad about her friends and lifestyle. Hill’s supporters want us to think it’s reasonable for Hill to retroactively set boundaries on their relationship. It’s not. And Hill knew it! If he’d walked up to a beautiful professional surfer and said, “I want to ask you out, but for us to have a successful relationship you’ll have to change your clothes, career, friends, and social media habits” she’d have laughed in his face; so he didn’t. He waited until the relationship was established. Ironic demands, coming from a man who used to be part of Leo DiCaprio’s “Pussy Posse.”

I admit I had mixed feelings about Sarah Brady releasing the tweets now, more than a year after the relationship ended and shortly after Hill had a kid. It’s reasonable to assume anything you put in writing these days will end up public knowledge eventually, but I wasn’t sure if it served a purpose. Fortunately, Twitter’s shallowest social scientist steered me in the right direction.

Candace Owens is always wrong, so Brady is by default in the right. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it; I don’t make the rules.