1.
Errol Musk
Elon Musk is estranged from his father, the South African engineer who fathered two children with the stepdaughter he helped raise.
2.
Maye Musk
Elon Musk’s mother claimed that little Elon was just thinking “in another world” when doctors suspected he was deaf as a child. The 1969 Miss South Africa finalist has since pursued a late-stage modeling career, appearing nude on the cover of New York magazine at 63 and, at 74, becoming the oldest Sports Illustrated model to date.
3.
Sergey Brin
The co-founder of Google was pals with Musk until Musk slept with Brin’s second wife, Nicole Shanahan, leading the couple to divorce.
4.
Justine Wilson
Elon Musk’s college sweetheart mothered the first six of Musk’s children. (Nevada Alexander, who died in infancy, was followed by twins and then triplets.) One of the twins, Vivian, uses “Wilson” as her last name because she doesn’t want to be associated with her father.
5.
Ari Emanuel’s Abs
You wouldn’t think anything of them had a photo not surfaced of the shirtless Endeavor C.E.O. hosing down Musk’s translucent paunch on a yacht in Greece. Now we’d argue they’re his best asset.
6.
Talulah Riley
The Pride & Prejudice actress (she played sad Mary Bennet) married Musk in 2010 and divorced him in 2012. The couple re-married in 2013, filed for divorce in 2014, and withdrew the divorce that same year, only to divorce permanently in 2016. Now she dates Thomas Brodie-Sangster, of that other British modern classic, Love Actually.
7.
Jeff Bezos
Musk briefly surpassed the Amazon executive chairman in wealth. We can’t imagine anyone’s happier about the Twitter debacle than Bezos.
8.
SpaceX Flight Attendant (not pictured)
An unnamed flight attendant for Musk’s rocket-and-spacecraft company alleges the SpaceX C.E.O. exposed himself in front of her and propositioned her for sex—specifically, to “do more” during a massage. He also offered to buy her a horse. The company paid her $250,000 for her silence.
9.
Donald Trump
Despite Musk’s regular criticism of Trump, our former president still thinks Musk is a “genius.”
10.
Amber Heard
Before Musk, whom she dated for a year, there was Johnny Depp. (In case you didn’t follow every minute of the hearings that sealed the deal on that relationship, a TV show will soon dramatize the whole thing.) And before Johnny, there was Tasya van Ree, the photographer who referred to Heard as her “main muse.” They broke up after Heard was arrested for hitting van Ree in an airport.
11.
Bill Gates
Karma is tweeting the pregnant-woman emoji alongside a pic of the Microsoft founder, only to be photographed looking like a more cringey version of the pregnant-woman emoji just a few months later.
12.
Shivon Zilis
Musk’s Neuralink direct report with whom he fathered twins in secret credits her Punjabi-immigrant mother for her big blue eyes and identifies with the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. When news of the twins came to light, Musk tweeted, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilizations face by far.”
13.
COVID-19
Musk was vocally anti-vax up until the point that he got double-vaxxed.
14.
Grimes
The musician’s first child with Musk has an unpronounceable name that we think has something to do with A.I. The birth of their second child, nicknamed “Y,” via surrogate, was announced in … a Vanity Fair cover story.
15.
Walter Isaacson
Musk would not seem to us to be the logical next subject for an award-winning biographer of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs. But who are we to judge? Isaacson seems to be having a grand old time. “Dealing with his life is like trying to take notes while drinking from a fire hose,” the writer told The New York Times.
Julia Vitale is a Deputy Editor for AIR MAIL
