

Apple has always done things on her own terms so much of her mythos is tied to her refusal to play by the rules. Instead, she happily remained on the line for 45 minutes, discussing, well, whatever she wanted to discuss. Email me if you want to talk.”Ī few days later, I hopped on the phone with her, assuming we’d discuss the incident and go our separate ways. “No one seems to think this is a big deal, but I think it is, and I’m wondering if you’ll write something about it. “They overdubbed the word ‘REFUGEES,’” Apple continued. Except in the video initially tweeted by Variety, Scafaria’s use of the word refugees was dubbed over, rather nonsensically, to imply that Apple is donating royalties “to the movie.” After Scafaria called out the dubbing, Variety scrubbed the original video from the internet and reposted it with corrected audio, calling the misstep a “glitch.” During the interview, Scafaria applauded Apple’s decision to donate two years of royalties from “Criminal” to an organization that assists refugees. “I saw that you were one of the only ones to notice what Variety’s Twitter did with that Lorene Scafaria interview,” she wrote, referring to a recent and bizarre incident involving the Hustlers director. Part of me was suspicious and part of me was eager to believe: Of course Fiona Apple wouldn’t employ a publicist of course Fiona Apple would have a nondescript Hotmail address. Shortly after Hustlers premiered, I received an email from someone claiming to be Fiona Apple, who’d found my information on my personal website and was emailing from a nondescript Hotmail address. How I ended up on the phone with Fiona Apple, talking about J.Lo and Apple’s career and Neil Portnow and insomnia remedies, is nearly as difficult to explain. “I go off and I take too long making stuff.


“I mean, I don’t know!” she tells me over the phone from her home in Los Angeles. If I were a person who actually left my house, I’d go.” She’s been reclusive for a reason, though: She’s hard at work on a new album that was supposed to be done “a million years ago,” and is finally, hopefully, maybe going to be released into the world next year. Fiona Apple rarely leaves her house, which is why she’s yet to see Hustlers, the movie that features a be-sequined Jennifer Lopez pole-dancing to Apple’s beloved 1996 anthem “Criminal.” “Listen, I just want to say: I would give my song to Jennifer Lopez to dance to for free, any day, any time,” laughs Apple.
