Vivian Wilson has a lot to say about what it means to grow up in one of the wealthiest households in the world, and very little of it is flattering. The 21-year-old, who is estranged from her father Elon Musk, has opened up about her early years in a candid new interview, describing an upbringing that felt more alienating than privileged, and one that left her with a deep skepticism about wealth and the people who accumulate it.
Wilson, born in 2004 to Musk and his first wife Justine Wilson, came out as transgender in 2020 and has since distanced herself from the Musk name entirely, going by her mother’s surname instead. She now works as a model and has become increasingly willing to share her perspective on the life she grew up in and the father she has chosen to leave behind.
Vivian on growing up in extreme wealth
Wilson has described her childhood as defined more by separation than by comfort. She grew up moving through private schools and exclusive social circles, an environment that felt removed from the rest of the world rather than connected to it. The insularity of that world struck her early, and she has reflected on how aware she was, even as a young child, that something about it felt wrong.
One memory she has returned to is the experience of encountering homelessness as a small child and feeling genuinely distressed by it, while the adults around her dismissed her reaction as overblown. She has since concluded that her instinct at the time was correct and that the discomfort she felt was an appropriate response to an unjust reality, not an overreaction to be managed.
What money does to people
Perhaps the most pointed part of Wilson’s account is what she has observed about the psychological effects of extreme wealth on those who hold it. She has spoken about watching money and the pursuit of power change people around her, describing the dynamic as a cycle that feeds on itself and ultimately hollows out whoever gets caught in it. She frames greed not as a personality flaw in isolation but as something the accumulation of wealth tends to produce over time in ways that are both predictable and, to her, genuinely frightening. It is a fear she holds for herself as much as an observation about others.
Vivian Wilson and the question of her father’s name
Wilson’s estrangement from Musk is now several years old and shows no signs of softening. Musk has spoken publicly about her transition in terms that made clear he does not accept it, framing it as a loss rather than an evolution. Wilson has not engaged extensively with those statements, but her broader posture toward her father and the life he represents is unmistakable.
When asked about what it means to be known primarily as his daughter, she has expressed a kind of settled indifference. She acknowledges it as part of her story without accepting it as the defining part. Her sense of identity, she has made clear, is not something she is willing to let someone else’s name determine, no matter how large that name looms in the public imagination.
