Ashley St. Clair, mother to one of Elon Musk’s children, says she declined a $40m offer from the tech billionaire to not be involved with Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk.
St. Clair was speaking at the press conference for Gibney’s film ahead of its world premiere at Venice film festival today, and answered a question about how she came to the project.
“I was offered the opportunity not to speak for $40m,” said St. Clair, who was briefly involved with Musk in 2023 and gave birth to their son the following year. “When you’re offered something like that, it causes a debate in your head about what your speech means and how valuable that is. Why do they want to offer me this amount of money not to speak?
“Alex spoke about Elon’s unreality. He has complicated relationships generally, but his most complicated relationship is with the truth. Most importantly, I want to set the example for my kids that you should never take being materially comfortable over speaking the truth.”
St. Clair said the offer came through Jared Birchall, Musk’s longtime business manager, “on behalf of Elon.”
“The thing that struck me most was, particularly early on when I was trying to get people to talk, there was a tremendous fear of talking – almost an existential fear,” said Gibney. “Both among people who were his critics, people who were his business colleagues, and people who were his friends. I talked to many people, but very few, except the brave people who are here, [spoke on the record].”
Gibney and St. Clair were joined at the press conference by Zoe Schiffer, a tech journalist who has covered Musk. “He has a lot of loyalty at the upper echelons of his company,” said Schiffer. “He stacks the boards with friends and colleagues. At lower levels, he doesn’t do a lot to engender a tonne of loyalty towards him. He treats people pretty harshly, and particularly when he’s coming into a new organisation like USDS or Twitter, there’s a feeling that it’s a takeover, and people who were there previously feel like something really wrong is happening. Those people were quite willing [to take part].”
Implicated
Gibney said that he hopes the film makes audiences consider their own role in Musk’s rise. “How did he obtain so much power, and how did we let him do it?” said the director. “While Musk is at the centre of the film, we’re all implicated in the story. For Musk and many of the tech oligarchs, we’ve allowed them to accrue a tremendous amount of power. It is intended as a cautionary tale, and I hope we have the strength to get out of the conundrum that we’re in.”
Produced by Anonymous Content, Closer Media and Gibney’s Jigsaw Production, Musk is 232 minutes long. Gibney said he had intended to make a shorter film, before the tech mogul became connected to Donald Trump.
“Very early on, the first thing we did was reach out to Musk and ask for an interview, and he declined,” said Gibney. “So we faced the problem of how to treat the central subject, and that became an elaborate journey.
“So much of what Elon Musk says has an air of unreality about it. So how do we embrace the reality of what he says, but also the unreality.”
The documentary considers Musk’s danger to societies around the world. St. Clair said that Musk had messaged her to say “that we need to have a legion of children before the civil war.
“What he’s doing with [social media platform] X cannot be ignored,” said St. Clair. “He is stoking flames that don’t exist in the real world, and creating something that is causing real-world effects. I believe he is causing deliberate division that may be catastrophic if it’s not regulated or tamed, if we don’t do our part in putting it down.”
Yesterday the far right AfD party in Germany won a decisive victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Gibney said he hopes the film shows Musk’s involvement in right-wing parties around the world. “That seems to be his ideology at the moment. Many of these right-wing governments tend to be more pliable. It’s easier to buy the results you want for administrations that are utterly corrupt, venal, and have no sense of restraint, of internal checks and balances.
“He’s pursuing a global right-wing agenda, both for ideological and for practical and monetary reasons.”
Venice film festival runs until Saturday, September 12.
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