Julia Fox Consulted A Medium To Contact Her Dead Friend

In her new memoir Down the Drain, Julia Fox says a medium helped her find closure after she suffered a difficult loss. Fox’s friend Gianna Valdes died suddenly from an overdose in 2019, and Fox found it difficult to process — particularly because she’d just FaceTimed with Gianna the night before her passing. “I kept replaying our last conversation over and over. She was fine! She was happy!” Fox shares in her book.

Fox first met Gianna at an A.A. meeting when she was in New York, and they immediately hit it off. Before long, they’d immersed themselves in their own “little world filled with sweet treats and prank calls and the never-ending echoes of our laughter,” Fox recalls in Down the Drain. She also notes that Gianna was with her when she learned she’d been cast in Uncut Gems, and later visited her on the film’s set for moral and emotional support.

After Gianna’s death, Fox says she became reclusive. She briefly considered trying to “find another Gianna” to fill the void, but quickly realized she needed to reconnect with the real Gianna, even if by unusual means. So, she searched for a psychic or medium who could help her reach the other side. “I just need closure,” she remembers thinking at the time. “I just need to hang out with her again.” After successfully finding someone suitable on Long Island, Fox booked an appointment under a fake name and phone number.

In her memoir, she describes the appointment beat for beat. “When I walk into the room,” she begins, “before I can say anything at all, he closes his eyes and says, ‘She was in so much pain. I’m surprised she even made it this far.’”

She continues, “He tells me she had been badly abused by her biological family, she wasn’t going to make it in this world, and there was nothing I could have done to stop this from happening.”

Later, the medium said something that convinced Fox she was really communing with Gianna: “And then he tells me, ‘She loved you the most. She might have even been in love with you,’” Fox writes. “I know this is true, and my face is wet with a steady stream of silent tears.”

Fox also remembers the medium appearing to allude to a scene from Uncut Gems, which wouldn’t hit theaters for another month. “Before I forget,” he told her, “she said she wants you to get a tattoo of her name on your ass.” Fox says she was overwhelmed, and began shouting: “She’s here! She’s really f*cking here! She’s in the room!”

The medium went on to reassure Fox that Gianna was living through her, and to say that Gianna didn’t want her to be boring. Fox is many things, but it’s clear from her memoir (in which she writes about working as a dominatrix, dating Kanye West, and growing up between Italy and Manhattan’s Upper East Side) that she doesn’t have to worry about being boring.

If you or someone you know is seeking help for substance use, call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).