Jordyn Woods is getting candid about the “dark place” she was in last year. The 23-year-old model was embroiled in drama when reports surfaced in February 2019 that she had shared a kiss with Khloe Kardashian’s boyfriend, Tristan Thompson.
The incident led to the ending of Woods’ friendship with Kardashian’s sister, Kylie Jenner, and Kardashian’s breakup with Thompson — as well as overwhelming online commentary and public shaming.
“I remember just sitting in a very dark place,” Woods said during her appearance on the YouTube series Now With Natalie, which was shot before the COVID-19 outbreak, but released on Saturday. “I had my family to talk to, I had you to talk to, but I just felt like I had no one… You take everything you think you know for a whole decade, the people you think you know, the life you think you know, everything that you’ve grown up doing and you take it all away from someone. I didn’t even know how to feel.”
Woods told her side of the story in a Red Table Talk interview last year, claiming Thompson initiated the kiss with her, and that they “never” slept together. She said she was drunk, but not blacked out. Woods also accepted responsibility for putting herself in the situation, but said she was not responsible for breaking up Kardashian and Thompson. (The couple has since reconciled.)
The model opened up more about taking “accountability” for the situation on Now With Natalie.
“Looking at the situation, ‘OK what did I do, what role did I play in this, how was I responsible, how can I be held accountable, how can I take responsibility for what happened?’ Things happen and that’s what makes us human,” she shared. “But just acceptance and accountability and responsibility. I feel like people in this generation lack accountability and when you can’t accept what you’ve done or you can’t accept that, then you can’t heal from it.”
“It’s easy to beat yourself up over things that you could have done differently. But you can’t hold on to what you could have or should have done, you just have to accept what actually happened and then you can let it go. It might take you a month to let it go, it might take you a year to let it go, but you have to start praying to be able to let it go,” she added.
While she has perspective now, at the time, Woods said she coped with the public scrutiny by pushing everyone away. “I deleted everything off of my phone. I wouldn’t respond to anyone. I responded to about two people. I pushed people away that probably shouldn’t have been pushed away but I just couldn’t trust anyone,” she revealed. “Everything in my life changed.”
“I did feel like everything was against me, and the only thing I had to lean on was my faith and my family,” Woods continued.
Looking back at the drama, Woods still feels bad that “people were hurt.” “I’m not happy that people were hurt and people had to go through what they went through,” she said. “It was a lot for everyone, my family, other families, friends, and not in a million years have I had a negative intention to do something bad to anyone I love. I wouldn’t say I’m happy something like that happened, but I’m happy I was able to become who I am today.”
Woods is in a much different place now — figuratively and literally. The model has been celebrating her 23rd birthday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and on Saturday, she and Karl-Anthony Towns confirmed their relationship on social media.
“I found you, then I found me?,” Woods captioned a pic of herself and Towns wearing matching Versace swimsuits.
The basketball player wrote alongside his post, “There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights ?.”
