Rock legend Phil Collins has spoken out on his feud with Emily In Paris star Lily, who penned a scathing letter about him in her memoir, claiming that he was absent from her life
Phil Collins has responded after his daughter Lily said pubicly he was not the dad she “expected”. Emily In Paris star Lily, 37, lashed out at her dad, 75, in her 2017 memoir, writing an open letter in which she she revealed he’d been absent from her life.
Speaking in Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, Lily told her dad: “I forgive you for not always being there when I needed and for not being the dad I expected.”
The father – daughter duo appeared to build bridges and when Lily and film director Charlie McDowell, 43, welcomed their daughter through surrogacy last year, she said she had introduced her child to “Grandpa P’s music.”
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In a new interview, Phil addressed the fallout and admitted he treated Jill Taverman, Lily’s mum, “badly” but had always tried to do the best for his kids.
During an interview with Piers Morgan on Uncensored, Phil responded to Lily’s letter. “She wishes she hadn’t written it,” he said. The In The Air Tonight singer went on to say: “Because she thought it was hurtful. I’m not saying it isn’t hurtful. I know what I did or what I shouldn’t have done. I treated her mum badly. I tried to always be there for her.
“Whenever, from the age from five or six, whenever I left the house to go off, I’ve always tried to be there for her.”
Last year, he and his family decided to reunite and spend four days together at a Knightsbridge hotel.
Prior to that Lily had feared that her daughter, Tove, might never meet her dad. While the family would often visit at Christmas or throughout the year, Phil made the decision to spend Christmas with all of his children as he said he doesn’t know how many Christmases he has left.
“It was moving, that was obvious,” he said. “Lily, for example, she just burst into tears, because she now has a child and she said, ‘I never thought that my child would get to know her grandfather’… It was very touching, very moving.”
In April 2024, Phil’s children gathered at his bedside, preparing to say goodbye to him, when he suffered a health crisis.
“There were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’ kind of thing,” he told The Sunday Times. “My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up. People were coming to say goodbye.
“But I don’t remember them coming, I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong.”
Phil has been open about his struggles with alcoholism in recent years, writing in his 2016 memoir, Not Dead yet, he became an alcoholic at the age of 55.
“I got through the heady Sixties, the trippy Seventies, the imperial Eighties, the busy Nineties. I was retired, content – then I fell. Because suddenly, I had too much time on my hands.”
The star now has a live-in nurse, after suffering spine and knee surgeries and can only walk while on crutches and also has type 2 diabetes.
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