Millie Bobby Brown opens up about her 'unhealthy situation' with TikToker Hunter Ecimovic
Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown is currently in a relationship with rocker Jon Bon Jovi’s son Jake BonGiovi, but before she was happily loved up and Instagramming it, she experienced trauma and humiliation at the hands of a TikTok star, and she is now opening up about the experience.
Gracing the cover of Allure’s September issue, the actress tells the magazine that the experience forced her to delete her TikTok and Twitter, while handing over control of her Instagram to her team so that she could take back her power.
Before dating Jake, Millie tells the outlet that she was in an "unhealthy situation" with TikTok personality Hunter Ecimovic. "I felt very vulnerable," she says, but found the gumption to walk away from the relationship in January 2021.
However later that year, Ecimovic went live on TikTok with a host of obscene claims about the actress, including bragging about “grooming” her and that they had sexual intercourse when she was just a minor. Her team denied the claims, releasing a statement that read, in part, “"Mr. Ecimovic's remarks on social media are not only dishonest, but also are irresponsible, offensive and hateful.”
It was that hate, and the barrage of online trolling that followed, that really affected the young actress.
"It was a year of healing," Millie reveals in the Allure cover story.. "When you get publicly humiliated this way, I felt so out of control and powerless. Walking away and knowing that I’m worth everything and this person didn’t take anything from me, it felt very empowering. It felt like my life had finally turned a page and that I actually had ended a chapter that felt so f***ing long.”
“Ultimately, all I wanted to do within my career is help young girls and young people out there know that I, too, go through things. I’m not this perfect person that is selling skin-care products and [who is] in Stranger Things. I absolutely have made wrong decisions," she adds.
She tells the outlet that in addition to going to therapy, she doesn’t keep any social media apps on her phone, has deleted her TikTok and Twitter, and a member of her team controls her Instagram.
Speaking about the online hate she received, she bravely opens up about choosing to be herself no matter what people say, because they just don’t know her.
“It’s really hard to be hated on when you don’t know who you are yet,” she says. “So it’s like, ‘What do they hate about me? ’Cause I don’t know who I am.’ It’s almost like, ‘Okay, I’m going to try being this today.’ [And then they say], ‘Oh, no, I hate that.’ ‘Okay. Forget that. I’m going to try being this today.’ ‘Oh, my God! I hate when you do that.’
She continues, “Then you just start shutting down because you’re like, ‘Who am I meant to be? Who do they need me to be for them?’ Then I started to grow more, and my family and friends really helped. It helped to be able to understand that I don’t need to be anything they said that I need to be. I just have to develop within myself. That’s what I did. That’s what I’m doing.”
She also reveals that at a very early age, she suffered an indignity during an audition, when a casting director told her she was “too mature” at the age of 10: a comment that left her bereft and in tears.
“I always knew that I was mature and I couldn’t really help that,” she says. “[Hearing that] was really hard because I thought [maturity] was a good thing. And then being told that it wasn’t, that I wouldn’t make it in this industry, it was so hurtful.”
She continues, “I got really down about that. My parents told me, ‘Just do this one last audition on tape and then you can go outside and play with your friends again.’ So I said, ‘Okay, yeah, I should do this one because it looks cool.’”
That’s when she got the part of Eleven in Stranger Things.
“I always struggled with self-identity and knowing who I was. Even as a young person, I always felt like I didn’t quite belong in every room I was in. I also struggle with loneliness a bit,” she says. “I always felt quite alone in a crowded room, like I was just one of a kind, like nobody ever really understood me. So I liked [playing] characters that people understood [and] people could relate to because I felt like no one could relate to Millie.”
