Actress Talulah Riley is in her homestead era with husband Thomas Brodie-Sangster — just don’t call her a “trad wife.”
“We live in an era where lifestyles are commoditized online, indexed by hashtags. We are encouraged to ‘be the brand’ and exert influence, prioritizing personal growth. I am loath to attach a label to my life, which is many-faceted, so please don’t call me a trad wife,” Riley, 39, wrote in a Sunday Times essay published on Sunday, December 1. “I’ve been divorced twice — there’s nothing trad about that unless you’re Zsa Zsa Gabor.”
The Pride & Prejudice actress was previously married to businessman Elon Musk twice, both times ending in divorce. She has since found love with Brodie-Sangster, best known for his role in Love Actually, and they wed in June.
Riley and Brodie-Sangster, 34, recently relocated to a sprawling farm in rural north Hertfordshire, England.
“I’m now in my 30s and safely home in the U.K., and it’s full steam ahead on the rural idyll,” Riley wrote, referring to her brief jaunt in Los Angeles during her marriage to 53-year-old Musk. “Thomas, who was born and raised within the sound of Bow bells, took to country life immediately, though he still pretends not to know the difference between a horse and a cow to liven up long car journeys. He is a carpenter and mechanic as well as an aesthete.”
The category of “trad wives,” short for traditional wives, has recently gone viral on social media after influencers Nara Smith and Hannah Neeleman showed off their domestic lives in a series of videos. While both Smith and Neeleman have similarly denounced the label, it is a slang term for modern women who have stay-at-home roles in favor of their husbands serving as breadwinners. The “trad wife” term seemingly glorifies the more old-fashioned lifestyle of a housewife.
Riley, for her part, is content where she and Brodie-Sangster are despite what the world might see or define.
“Happiness, for me, has wandered in slowly and seems directly proportional to the number of chickens that come tapping at the kitchen door every morning. Thomas might also have something to do with it,” Riley wrote in the article. “The philosopher Spinoza (who believed God and nature are one and the same, sorry to roll him out at this late stage) said, ‘Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.’ So I’m going to focus on propagating rosemary rather than personal growth.”
She added, “Here on the (fake) farm it’s all about love and manure, actually. Slap a hashtag on us, if you will. Or come and join us.”
