Slow your roll there Thomas Middleditch fans, new and old…
TW: Abuse, emotional/mental manipulation, gaslighting, body-shaming
You might wanna sit down for this. :-/
I’ve noticed that there’s been some more Silicon Valley/Jake and Amir hype happening (most likely as a result of the fabulous Middleditch and Schwartz Netflix special) and for those of you that are new here, welcome but proceed with caution.
In truth, the amount of recent fandom revolving around Thomas Middleditch has honestly left me dumbfounded. Because not to be that person but…
And given how rampant cancel culture has become, I’m GENUINELY surprised how most of y’all let this fly for so long. Or even worse, let it slip past you in the first place.
And to that I say—no more.
Thomas around 2010-2012 was romantically involved with a fellow comedian/actress named Andrée Vermulen.
They eventually broke things off and he started dating his now ex-wife Mollie (who I’ll get to). It wasn’t until June of 2016 when Andrée came forward about how Thomas (who she chose not to name, maybe due to the fact that he had a very popular HBO comedy on at the time and wanted to avoid any drama) pressured her into getting breast implants. He preyed on her self-image issues, saying he was a “boob guy” and instilling the idea within her that her natural breasts weren’t ‘good enough’. She got the procedure, which he’d initially offered to pay for but then demanded afterwards that she pay him back for it. The implants caused her both immense emotional and physical trauma as you can go onto read about in her original Instagram post.
(This goes without saying but please do not send any hate towards Andrée, she’s very clearly put all of this behind her and I honestly feel bad drudging all this up.)
After getting a removal surgery, she decided to keep the implants and donate them to the Museum of Broken Relationships in Los Angeles. She originally wanted to send them to Thomas but decided that it would be more cathartic to give them to a place where her story could be told over and over again and shared with others who may have needed to hear it.
God bless that woman. :,)
Since many fans chose to sadly ignore the whole Andrée situation, it flew under the radar. But it was admittedly pretty hard to ignore the onslaught of websites and blogs when last year in September…this was everywhere you looked:
Now, at first glance, it seems pretty harmless. It was 2019 after all. Non-monogamous relationship dynamics such as polyamory and open relationships seemed to be pretty widely accepted and still are.
That was never the issue.
The issue was Thomas single-handedly committing one of the most preventable, egregious acts of foot-in-mouth syndrome I and many others have ever seen.
In short, Thomas waited until AFTER he and Mollie wed in 2015 to express his desires to “get non-traditional” with their relationship.
He goes onto describe himself as being a very sexual person which again, isn’t a bad thing. The fucked up aspect is where he basically acknowledges that Mollie is a private person and then airs out ALL of their dirty laundry in a Playboy article that I can’t help but feel is a publicity stunt.
Not in it’s legitimacy. But just as a way to get his name back in the airwaves following the bomb of a Godzilla movie that he starred in and to drum up interest in the last season of Silicon Valley that would be premiering later that year. Either way, I highly recommend reading the full article as it gives you a better idea as to how Thomas sort of dragged Mollie into all of it.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of women who have come forward online (most of these are unconfirmed however), saying that they were approached by either the couple or just Middleditch following his improv shows for group sex.
There was also the time a photographer friend of his posted on IG a photo of a scantily clad woman (I’m sorry for not including the post he was replying to, I genuinely forgot the person’s @ and will try to find it if I can) and THIS was his response:
It wasn’t until this past May, when he and Mollie, who had been married for 5 years, filed for divorce over “irreconcilable differences”. **insert pikachu surprised face**
Thomas has since expressed regret over his Playboy interview, saying that it was a “painful learning experience” but wasn’t it also JoJo who said “too little, too late”.
Yeah, sure seems like it.
You can by all means still be a fan of Silicon Valley. I’m currently sat five feet away from my season 4 “Changing The Way Things Change” poster on my loft wall. You can by all means still like Richard. Who doesn’t miss that anxious, awkward lil bean? You can still be a fan of Jake and Amir. You can still like Doobs. And Solar Opposites and Captain Underpants and anything else he’s known for and been a part of. And hell, you can still be a fan of Middleditch and Schwartz and even…still like Thomas (why would you tho??).
But if you do choose to stand by Middleditch and actions and his future projects, please don’t at the same time feign support for abuse victims and when you are LITERALLY supporting a known abuser and manipulator.
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