Vivian Wilson ended a red carpet interview in Ibiza after a reporter asked about her estranged father, Elon Musk, turning a fashion-event exchange into the latest public sign of a family split that has been visible for years.
What happened at the Ibiza event
Wilson, 22, was speaking with a reporter on Tuesday at a Desigual Vintage event in Ibiza, Spain, when the conversation shifted to Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and founder of SpaceX.
According to footage shared on social media, the reporter asked: “Your father the best, no?”
Wilson appeared not to hear or understand the question at first, responding: “My what? Sorry?”
The reporter repeated it: “The best, your father.”
Wilson replied, “OK,” then ended the interview and walked away. It was brief, awkward and not exactly a masterclass in red carpet questioning.
The moment got attention because Wilson has been clear in public that she does not want a relationship with Musk. She has also removed Musk from her name.
Why the Musk question was loaded
Wilson came out as transgender in 2020 and legally changed her gender in 2022. That same year, court filings showed she wanted to distance herself from Musk legally and personally.
In those filings, she said she “no longer wishes to be related” to him. Since then, both Wilson and Musk have spoken publicly about their fractured relationship, though in sharply different terms.
Musk told author Walter Isaacson in a 2023 interview that Wilson had become “a full communist.” He also suggested her political views were shaped in part by the private K-12 school she attended in Santa Monica, California.
The dispute later expanded beyond politics. Musk claimed he was “tricked” into signing documents connected to Wilson’s gender transition.
In 2024, he told Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson: “I lost my son, essentially.”
He added: “They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it ‘deadnaming’ is because your son is dead, so my son, Xavier, is dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
Wilson has accused Musk of being absent
Wilson has rejected Musk’s version of events and described him as largely absent during her childhood.
“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” she told NBC News. “And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”
She also described Musk as “uncaring” and “narcissistic,” and said she had little interest in maintaining contact with him.
Wilson later wrote on Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads: “I want to make absolutely clear that I have disowned him and not the other way around.”
That context is why a casual red carpet question about whether Musk is “the best” was never going to land as harmless small talk. It touched directly on a relationship Wilson has repeatedly said she does not want to maintain.
She has described wealth and fame as isolating
Wilson has also spoken about what it was like growing up as the child of one of the richest people in the world, describing the experience as emotionally complicated rather than glamorous.
In an interview with Cosmopolitan published in April, she called her childhood “very strange” and “very isolating.”
“It was a very strange experience, very isolating,” Wilson said. “I remember being very young and seeing homelessness and feeling sick to my stomach. People would get on me for being like a dramatic little child. But no, I was right to be a dramatic little s**t about that.”
Her comments cast her not as a passive figure in Musk’s orbit, but as someone defining her own public identity — including by drawing a hard boundary around questions about him.
Where Wilson fits in Musk’s family
Wilson is one of Musk’s oldest children. She and her twin brother, Griffin, were born in California in 2004 during Musk’s marriage to author Justine Wilson.
Musk has had 14 children over the years with several women, including:
- Justine Wilson, his ex-wife and an author
- Grimes, the musician
- Shivon Zilis, a Neuralink executive
- Ashley St. Clair, an influencer
The Ibiza exchange was short, but it spread for a simple reason: Wilson has spent years making clear that Musk is not a subject she welcomes. The reporter asked anyway. The interview then ended exactly as one might expect.
