This is Vivian Jenna Wilson, Elon Musk’s trans daughter who despises her ‘pathetic man-child’ of a father

It’s difficult to be 20 years old and at the center of the global conversation. Even more so when what you’re trying to do is, precisely, to distance yourself from all that noise, to cease being a part of it. However, Vivian Jenna Wilson (Santa Monica, California) has embraced the maxim “If you can’t beat’em, join’em,” and has pulled out all the stops to speak out, while simultaneously distancing herself as much as possible from her father: Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and President Donald Trump’s right-hand man. The battle between them has been ongoing for a few years, but in recent weeks, Wilson has openly declared war on him due to Musk’s ultraconservative shift and his declared battle against the trans community, of which she is a part.

The young woman has decided to bring out the big guns with two interviews in which she introduces herself in depth to let the public get to know her and get closer to her, and in which she also takes the opportunity to blast her father. Until now, her opinions were only to be found on her widely followed social media accounts, and she had chatted once, almost a year ago, with the television network NBC. But this time she chatted for an hour and a half with YouTube influencer Hasan Piker and has made the cover of Teen Vogue, the little sister of the powerful Vogue magazine, granting the publication a full interview. Her words have raised eyebrows due to the immense exposure that Elon Musk, one of the most famous figures in the U.S. (and the planet), has been experiencing these past few months. The two have not spoken in five years.

The personal differences between Musk and Wilson have grown over the years, down to their surnames. But five years ago, things weren’t so tense. “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare,” the Tesla founder tweeted in 2020, when his daughter was 17 and still had not legally requested a gender and name change. In April 2022, when she came of age and the state of California allowed it, the young woman petitioned the court to legally change her gender, first name and surname: she dropped her father’s surname and adopted her mother’s. Wilson is a staunch defender of her community and has made it clear: “I don’t feel like people realize that being trans is not a choice.”

However, Musk’s “absolute support” for the community has taken a conservative turn. He still deadnames his daughter. On March 22, he said of her on X that she’s been “killed by the woke mind virus.” In the interview with Teen Vogue, Wilson says that her father has taken a turn to the right, but that, at the end of the day, what he preaches today is not so far removed from his long-standing beliefs.

In fact, in the YouTube chat with Piker, she explains that many people believe it’s her fault, for being trans, that her father has embraced the far right: ““I cannot take credit for that, unfortunately.” Musk “was not a liberal darling,” she told the magazine. “I f–king know him, he was never on the left. It was a marketing scheme.”

Wilson, who describes herself as left-wing but not Marxist—acknowledges that she is appalled by her father’s and the current administration’s policies. “It’s horrifying what they’re doing, not only to the trans community, but also to migrants, to communities of color, to so many marginalized communities that are being systematically targeted by the new administration and having protections revoked. It’s cartoonishly evil.”

For all these reasons, Wilson doesn’t want to be associated with her father anymore. “I’m not giving anyone that space in my mind,” she told Teen Vogue. “The only thing that gets to live free in my mind is drag queens,” she laughs.

She’s not shy about talking about him, even though he’s been out of her life for five years. “I’ll see things about him in the news and think, That’s f-king cringe, I should probably post about this and denounce it, which I have done a few times.,” she admits. “The Nazi salute sh-t was insane,” she says of the gesture the tycoon made at Trump’s inauguration. “He’s a pathetic man-child. Why would I feel scared of him? Ohhh, he has so much power. Nah, nah, nah. I don’t give a f-k. Why should I be scared of this man? Because he’s rich? Oh, no, I’m trembling.”

Despite having the world’s richest man as a father, Wilson claims she’s not dependent on him, and hasn’t been for five years. Interestingly, she’d already explained with her sharp, quick-tongued posts to her million followers on social media (Twitch, Threads, and Bluesky, but not X, which Musk owns) that she wanted to distance herself financially from her father, and some people had been sending her money through various apps. Now she’s asking them to stop. “I haven’t made any money from being famous at all. I have made zero dollars and zero cents,” she says, adding that she might explore her social media as a way to make a living.

“It is my absolute dream to be on a reality show, which I know is absolutely pathetic. As an overdramatic little queer, reality shows are something I adore beyond belief.”

Vivian Wilson and her twin, Griffin, are the eldest of the tycoon’s 14 children, following the death of Elon and Justine’s firstborn, Nevada Alexander, at 10 weeks old, of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The couple decided to undergo fertility treatment, and the twins were born. Two years later, in 2006, Justine gave birth to triplets, three boys now 18 years old named Kai, Saxon, and Damian.

After those six children, Musk — who advocates for increasing the birth rate to repopulate the planet — had X Æ A-Xii in 2020 with the singer Grimes, with whom he was in a relationship. The boy, known simply as X, is often seen at the White House getting his picture taken with Trump. Musk and Grimes also have two other children, Exa Dark Sideræl (born via surrogacy in December 2021) and Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, in June 2022; he is currently in a legal battle with the artist over custody of their children.

With Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neuralink, he has four children: twins (a boy named Strider and a girl named Azure), born in secret in November 2021; a girl, Arcadia, born in June 2024; and another boy, Seldon Lycurgus, whose birth he announced last February. Also that month, it was learned that Musk and children’s writer and conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair had a son — only his initials, R. S. C., are known — around September 2024.

“I do not actually know how many siblings I have, if you include half-siblings. That’s just a fun fact,” says the young woman — who is currently studying in Japan — during her interview with Teen Vogue, adding that she found out about the births of Shivon Zilis’s children “the same time everyone else did. I had no idea before that.” Neither she nor her mother, she says, “keep up with that side of the family.” In fact, in her interview on NBC last year, she had already mentioned that, as a father, Musk “was cold. He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”

The interview with Teen Vogue, and to a lesser extent the YouTube chat, have become viral conversations, especially in a tremendously polarized United States where Musk’s figure stirs both passion and hatred. In The New York Times, which echoed the impact of the interview, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Versha Sharma, acknowledged that they were seeking to put the spotlight on the young woman: “We really wanted this story to be guided by Vivian, and also to focus on who she is, beyond just his daughter.”

Sharma added: “I think a lot of coverage of trans people these days, even high-profile trans people, ends up centering on their transness so much that it reduces them to two-dimensional figures without interiority. Most of all, I wanted this piece to give Vivian a chance to be herself in front of the world.”

Vivian has been more herself than ever, and she now has her calling card to the world. It remains to be seen whether she manages to be more than someone’s daughter and, as she so desires, manages to forge her own path, even if it is through reality shows.

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