The late Anna Nicole Smith’s former partner Larry Birkhead is opening up about their relationship, admitting it sometimes felt like “some kind of cult.”
“She did not want to share the spotlight she was getting and the attention she was getting with anybody else because that was where she felt loved,” Birkhead, 53, revealed on the Sunday, March 22, episode of the “Dumb Blonde” podcast. “You’re taking that love away when you’re taking a piece of whatever [her fame] away. That’s why I think she was the way that she was.”
Birkhead, father of Smith’s only daughter, Dannielynn, had a low-profile romance with the model near the end of her life. (The former Playboy model died at age 39 in February 2007 due to an accidental overdose caused by a combined drug intoxication. Her son, Daniel Wayne Smith, died at age 21 in September 2006 from an accidental drug overdose.)
“Dumb Blonde” host Bunnie Xo brought up a run-in she’d allegedly had with Smith and her former lawyer, Howard K. Stern, in Las Vegas, describing Stern’s energy as “so dark and so evil” for allegedly putting his arm in between them to end the interaction. (Bunnie, 25, explained in the interview that she now suspects Stern’s reaction came “from a place” of not wanting her to give Smith pills.)
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“I’ve seen him do that to different people at different events … When I first came to the house … it kind of felt a little cultlike. Like we were in some kind of cult,” Birkhead told Bunnie. “I didn’t want to be an entourage member, or whatever. I maintained independence [or] I tried to as far as I could. I still worked and did my own thing. I wasn’t asking her for money, that kind of stuff.”
Birkhead said he had his “own issues” with Stern when it came to “stepping into the relationship territory.”
“On the flip side of things, I watched him work tirelessly and negotiate all of her contracts and not take a fee,” he added. “[An agent] would take 10 percent … nothing was taken out so everything went to [Smith] and was fiercely negotiated for her benefit. I would also see him spend time with Anna’s son, Daniel, [and be] kind of a father figure.”
Still, Birkhead admitted that it was difficult to be in a relationship with Smith at the time, since she insisted on keeping everything private.
“I winded up dating her for like two years … The reason [people don’t know we dated for so long] is because when Anna always did interviews — and you can find dozens of them out there — she was this available goddess that people desired to be with,” he noted. “When she went out on a red carpet, that was what she projected. Like, you would want to be with this woman if you could be with this woman. That was part of her image.”
He went on, “If she was on an interview, there’s tons of them out there, [she’d say], ‘I haven’t had sex in years. Oh my god, no guy asks me out. I don’t go on a date.’ All that stuff. That was part of her thing. She said it because she wanted to appear to be available and for you to think you could have a chance with Anna Nicole.”
The public discovered Smith’s relationship with Birkhead following her 2007 death. Birkhead was involved in a protracted legal case that ultimately used DNA to prove that he is Dannielynn’s biological father in April 2007.
