Then
Extract from THE magazine: An Interview with Milo Ford by Laura-Lee Lamb
‘I love these places,’ says Milo when he arrives.
Late by an hour. Tossing out a well-rehearsed apology.
Eyes tired, but utterly beguiling. ‘I don’t feel lonely in a place like this.
You get everything here. Old dudes who’ve lived here too long and seen too much.
Bus drivers on lunch. Starving musicians.
Occasional lost tourist. Real life. You know? Helps me connect to my own.’
And I spot my moment.
‘And how is it,’ I ask, ‘your real life?’
Ford’s heavy-lidded brown eyes look up from the menu in his hand at that.
He quirks a smile, and so do I. We, of course, know what I’m getting at.
I mean, sure, I want to know how he really is.
Is he well? Is he still benzo free? Do Day Falls fans still want his head on a spike?
But, mostly, I want to talk about his viral text-romance with Allie Lake, a biologist he met on a flight.
A text romance leaked online that not only had people (yup, me included) holing themselves up in work bathrooms to binge it, like a juicy boxset, but that established him as something of a Hollywood lothario overnight.
‘I thought this would come up,’ he says, easily, and I cut straight to it – Have you been hanging out? Did you ever meet Allie Lake?
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, Allie and I didn’t actually ever meet in real life.’
The romantic in me’s heart drops to my ass. The realist in me scoffs, wants to paint ‘love is a lie’ on a brick wall somewhere. ‘And will you meet?’
‘Ah.’ Milo laughs – it’s an exasperated laugh.
Guarded. An if-only-you-knew laugh. ‘I don’t know, man.
No. No, I can’t think of why we would now.
And is it sad? Yeah, maybe, but it was a moment in time.
You know? But no. To answer your question, Allie and I never met.
And am I happy about that? Yeah. Now, I think I am. ’