Speaking on Wednesday, May 22 with Kelly Ripa on SiriusXM’s “Let’s Talk Off Camera,” Jessica Biel, wife of star singer Justin Timberlake, said that their family moved away from Los Angeles despite Timberlake’s very public-facing job because they wanted to better raise their kids and give them a sense of “normalcy” while growing up.
Particularly, Biel said that the notorious LA paparazzi refused to respect any boundaries with her and Timberlake’s two young children, noting that fans can act in the same insensitive way. That, apparently, is both a problem in LA and on the East coast, so she and Timberlake moved far away from both and are now happily living in Montana.
She said, speaking about the boundaries issue, “I don’t really think they necessarily respect that, you know, if we’re out and about with our kids.” Continuing, she said, “It can be somewhat country dependent, where if we’re in this country, in the States, it’s kind of like state by state, you know. You get hammered on the East Coast, you kind of get hammered on the West Coast. That’s why we don’t really live there anymore.”
Biel, herself an actress, then went on to note that though her husband’s job has “this major public-facing element,” they still felt they needed to get out of LA and to a place where they could have normal events with friends and families while raising their kids normally. She said, “It’s just trying to create some normalcy for these kids, and we want to share our family with our loved ones and friends.”
She then spoke about social media and staying off of it, saying, “And I know this very social media world is where they exist and where they live and that will be a very big part of their life and their reality. I just don’t want it to be on my account, so we try to engage in a way that feels authentic.” She added that that decision is “just our family choice.”
PEOPLE, reporting on the conversation, said that Biel didn’t like living in Nashville, hence why they now live in Montana, but that they kept the LA house because she likes it despite wanting to generally stay away from it for the sake of their children. PEOPLE reports that the source said, “Jessica never liked living in Nashville. They were trying to sell their Hollywood Hills house but took it off the market because she misses L.A. They just don’t think L.A. is great for the kids.”
PEOPLE further reports, describing where they now live in Montana, well away from the craziness of LA and its rabid paparazzi, “They found a sanctuary in an ultra-private and lavish gated community in Big Sky. According to local residents, over the past eight years the couple have taken on a cozy and quiet approach to life away from the spotlight.”
Featured image credit: By Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26508566
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