Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur who is spending $2 million a year on an effort to live forever—an effort involving various antiaging interventions, such as injecting Botox into his penis, which itself is another subject of Johnson’s focus—has accused his ex-fiancée, Taryn Southern, of wanting to murder him with scissors.
In a 2,000-word screed posted to X on Wednesday, Johnson said he “feared for [his] life” in November 2019, around the time he broke up with Southern and kicked her out of their house while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer. He claimed that he observed a pair of scissors on the countertop in the Venice Beach home the couple shared. The scissors “were within her reach,” he wrote. “My mind raced to plan an escape. The front door was locked. It would take me too long to unlock it before the metal found its way into my flesh. Perhaps I could grab a large sofa pillow and hold it as a shield.” He attributed the alleged threat of attack to “chemo-rage,” which he described as “a common side effect that can be directed towards caretakers and loved ones.”
Later in the post, he declared that “[t]he irony is that I am likely the reason why Taryn survived cancer.” (In a separate post linked to the first one, he echoed this claim by invoking his cri de coeur—“Don’t Die”—writing, “Apparently, I’m pretty good at helping people not die.”)
Julia Price, a friend of Southern’s, replied to Johnson’s post: “For anyone reading this, know that Bryan can say whatever he wants to say because he has Taryn under a one-sided NDA, so she can’t actually speak. Scissors, really?! Within reach? But never threatening to use them, wtf? Mind manipulation at its best.”
Vanity Fair reached Johnson by phone (at his request) on Wednesday afternoon. When asked whether Southern ever actually picked up the allegedly ominous scissors that were on the countertop, he changed the subject: “Rachel, why didn’t you highlight in your article that her credibility had been called into question and that we now know nothing of her ability to tell the truth about anything?”
Johnson is referring to my Vanity Fair article—for which I interviewed him—that chronicled a two-year legal battle between Southern and Johnson. Initially, Southern filed a complaint in California Superior Court for eight causes of action, including infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, and loss of earnings. But due to an employment contract that Southern had signed with one of Johnson’s companies in 2017, the ex-couple wound up in arbitration, which is notoriously favorable to employers. The arbitrator ruled in favor of Johnson, and held Southern responsible for paying Johnson’s $584,199 legal bill. The case was dismissed in December.
When I asked Johnson on Wednesday why the alleged scissors attack never came up in any of the depositions or court filings, he said, “It was never germane to the court proceedings.” (Southern declined to comment.)
Shortly before Vanity Fair published my original story, Johnson posted a 16-minute video to YouTube titled “My Ex-Fiancée Sued Me for $9,000,000” in which he cast himself as the victim of a #MeToo extortion scheme. The $9 million in the video’s title referred to a 13-page letter detailing allegations of abuse that Southern’s lawyers sent to Johnson’s lawyers in April 2021 in an attempt to negotiate a settlement and avoid a public fight.
Why did Johnson feel he needed to expand upon this—on Valentine’s Day? “The YouTube video relayed the events that Taryn Southern tried to extort me,” he said. “I said no, and I prevailed. You and other journalists then wrote articles using her story as an unquestioned basis of truth which distorted everything because it wasn’t the source of truth, so I need to correct the record and tell the accounting of events.” I told him I disagreed with his opinion that Vanity Fair’s story was unfair and said that if there were factual inaccuracies I would have expected Johnson to have asked for a correction, which he did not then and has not still.
Anna-Marie Wascher, a friend of Southern’s who helped her move out of the house she shared with Johnson four years ago, expressed further bewilderment to Vanity Fair. “He was afraid of a 100-pound cancer patient, who was ‘within reach of scissors’? Doubtful,” she said. As for Johnson’s claims that he is responsible for Southern’s beating cancer, she asked, “Where does the megalomania end?” (Johnson did not comment on Wascher’s statement by press time.) Wascher suggested Johnson should “focus on your [redacted] olive oil,” referring to a product Johnson sells, priced at $60 for two 750-ml bottles. (His website recommends drinking one tablespoon with each meal.)
Johnson recently announced that he was rebranding the olive oil as Snake Oil. Hopefully there won’t be IP issues with Caroline Calloway, who already sells a branded “Snake Oil” of her own.
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