Bestselling author Jillian Lauren has opened up about her divorce with Weezer bassist Scott Shriner and her arrest in a new candid interview with Rolling Stone.
Jillian Lauren has opened up about her encounter with the LA Police earlier in April this year, which saw the bestselling author arrested for allegedly firing her gun at two officers patrolling her neighbourhood.
The writer would open up about the incident in a candid interview with Rolling Stone, describing her reaction to seeing police swarm her neighbourhood, and her decision to end her marriage to Weezer bassist Scott Shriner.
“I was doing the best I knew to protect my family,” she tells Rolling Stone. “[The] impulse was self-defence.”
In a statement, the LAPD would say that Lauren racked her gun and fired it during a standoff with police officers. The LAPD would share that the officers were in a neighbouring yard searching for hit-and-run suspects who had fled the scene of a nearby traffic collision earlier that day. Police would return fire, striking Lauren in the arm and would charge her with two felonies.
“My world fell to pieces around me in a heartbeat,” she says. “It’s like, you spend your whole life just getting an entire deck of cards in order. And just take them and throw them up in the air one day, and I’m still waiting to see how they’re gonna land.”
Lauren would plead not guilty to the charges in May, and was granted a mental health diversion program, letting the 52-year-old writer avoid jail time in September.
“When the [mental health diversion] headlines came out, my joke was, ‘I’m not just a gun-toting criminal, now I’m a crazy one,’” she shared, before taking a more serious tone. “My PTSD is a very real thing. I’m a victim of sex trafficking and domestic violence. … When the headlines said ‘Mental Health Diversion,’ what I really thought was, ‘OK, good. People are so scared to talk about this.’” She adds, “I’m in a position where I can speak to it.”
In early December, Lauren would formally file for divorce from Shriner after two decades of marriage, citing “irreconcilable differences”. She admitted the relationship had been under strain for years; however, the incident with the police only intensified it.
“The headlines about the divorce were the ones that really hurt me,” she says. “I was the one who served my husband, but still, to see it in the public was really painful. It was definitely a day [spent] under the covers, blocking out all the noise. Divorce is painful, I don’t care who you are.”
Lauren would share that despite their separation, she’s proud of the life she built with Shriner and the two remain close friends.
“He’s still my best friend. We still have beautiful kids together and have always really supported each other in our various transformations.”
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