Lily Allen has opened up about her phone use habits and how her needs her husband, David Harbour, to access it.
In a recent interview withThe Sunday Times the British singer explained that she and her husband control what apps they can each have on their phones. According to Allen, this is because she uses a phone meant for children that requires a parent to be linked to it.
“I now have a kids’ phone called Pinwheel. It has no browsing capability and no social media, but you can still have Uber and Spotify,” she told the outlet about her Pinwheel phone.
“My husband is the caregiver on it, so he controls what I’m allowed to have as an app on my phone. I’m the controller of his as well.”
The “Smile” singer went on to make jokes about how the two of them act like each other’s parents. “Because they’re made for kids, he’s [listed as] my parent and I’m his parent.‘ What’s your child’s name? David, aged 50,’” she said.
She also noted the effects of limiting her phone useage. “The creative side of my brain has been ruined by smartphones. I feel like everyone feels the same,” she said. “I don’t know anyone who could possibly say that the quality of their life is improved by the presence of a smartphone. I think it’s destroyed us as a species. It’s horrendous that they’re designed to be so addictive. Some of us have more addictive personalities than others. It’s evil.”
“I don’t think, as human beings, that you’re meant to share ideas and for them to be set in stone,” the singer added. “We are meant to evolve as people. How are you meant to do that if you’re always held to account by things that you’ve said in the past? I said that 20 years ago when I was a completely different person, hadn’t been married, didn’t have children. Of course, I had a different outlook on life. Don’t hold me to that.”
Allen had previously revealed that she and Harbour would actually not have gotten married without the Covid-19 pandemic.
The two first met on the exclusive dating app Raya back in 2020 and then were married in Las Vegas one year later.
Allen was previously married to Sam Cooper, who is the father of her two daughters. The former couple separated in 2016 and then finalized their divorce in 2018.
As for attributing their relationship to the global pandemic, Allen explained on the Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake podcast that they would have struggled to find time to spend together had they not been forced into a lockdown.
“He’s an actor and I have two children, who at the time were six and seven,” she told the podcast host at the time.
“I don’t know how we would have been able to spend enough time with each other to know it was going to work for us to therefore take the risk of moving to America [together].”
She added that because they were “being forced to live with each other for a year” she came to the conclusion that the relationship was capable of working out and she made the move to the United States.
“If it hadn’t happened, I just can’t see how that opportunity would have arisen,” she said.
Allen did not recognize Harbour, who is most known for his role as Jim Hopper in Stranger Things, at first when she saw his profile photo that featured him in his costume because she had never seen the show.
Appearing on one episode of The Jonathan Ross Show back in April 2023, Allen explained: “I thought he was just like a sexy policeman from a reality TV show. He was wearing a policeman’s uniform.”
