Sienna Miller covers the May issue of Allure Mag, mostly to promote The Lost City of Z. As you probably know by now, I’m not really here for the Whitewashing of Sienna Miller, no matter how hard magazines want to remake her. Sienna was an unrepentant party girl, It Girl and mistress… until she wasn’t. Until she almost destroyed her career completely. Now she’s a mother and so we get editorials with doves and virginal white clothes. We also get slightly overwrought cover profiles trying to force-feed this idea that Sienna is still the coolest person around. You can read Allure’s profile here. Some highlights:

She doesn’t want to move to LA: “L.A. Bleh. You go for lunch and look around and everyone’s a bit of a douche. Even the people I love. That’s really trashing L.A., and I don’t mean that because I have the coolest friends in the world, but…”

She loves New York: “People sort of complain about the pace. Friends of mine from London find it really intense, but I thrive in that kind of environment. It’s sort of cliché, but it’s motivating and inspiring. It feels incredibly open and boundaryless. You can barely speak English and be a New Yorker. New York takes anyone, accepts everyone…. I feel increasingly, in light of current events, that I want to be around that kind of openness. I think subliminally that’s probably the most important part.”

On Trump: “I said before he was elected that if he got elected I would leave America. And then Fox News offered to buy my ticket.”

She coparents with her ex Tom Sturridge: “[We see each other] all the time. We do bedtime every day. We felt like as much togetherness as possible would be ideal, and fortunately we really love each other and are best friends, and so that works. It’s not that it’s not complicated, because it is.”

She feels like a single mom most of the time though: “I had an amazing moment the other day where I just heard this ‘Mama!’ from upstairs. I said, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming.’ And as I got to the landing I just smelled, like, puke. And she’d thrown up basically off the top bunk, so the splatters were like: Pow! Like all four walls. She had the norovirus or whatever. I was like, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ And I skidded on the sick and fell. Whacked my head. Then I get her out of the bunk; she’s crying, covered in sick. I take her to the bathroom, take all her clothes off, and then the dog comes up and starts eating the sick. And I get her in the bath and in my bed, and I’m just, like, literally naked, mopping, and crying at midnight. You know, and that’s parenthood. You’re so enriched by it and so fulfilled, but at the same time, I look at these people who just don’t have any responsibility, and it feels like the responsibility is crippling.”

She’s still trying to stop smoking completely: “I’m reading Allen Carr’s book on how to stop smoking. Over the past nine months I’ve picked up and put the book down four times. I am now halfway through, and I’m gonna stick with it.” Is she still smoking now? “I had one in the last two days. I’m not a big smoker anymore, but it’s definitely a part of me.” Is she the kind of person who can have a cigarette every once in a while and it’s OK, or once you start falling into it. “Yeah,” she says. She’s more the falling-back-into-it type. “Yeah. Sucks. But I didn’t smoke when I was pregnant or breastfeeding.” Was it hard? “No. If it’s about protecting someone else, it’s easy. But “I don’t see it the same with myself.” Do you think you have a self-destructive streak? “Probably, a little bit. It’s not like I want to go out and hurt myself, but I just think inherently I was always a little bit rebellious, and I guess I sort of feel like I can be a little fatalistic or a little bit, what’s the word? Bohemian.”

She wants more kids: “I would love to. Yeah. I have to figure out the other side of it.” Who the dad is? “Well, yeah.”

[From Allure]

I think that story about her daughter having the norovirus is the most real she’s been in an interview. Totally unglamorous and totally honest. It reminded me of Adele talking about how she misses her single, childfree life all of the time now that she’s a mother. As for what she says about New York… that was the pre-Bigly New York, when you could be a New Yorker and not speak English. Nowadays, ICE will come for you if you say “gesundheit” when someone sneezes.

Photos courtesy of Daniel Jackson/Allure.