The Daily Beast Podcast - Epstein Made Me Dress Like a Sexy Nurse for Trump: Model

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

Australian model Cleo Glyde sits down with the Beast's Joanna Coles to share her extraordinary, unsettling memories of New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At just 22, she was living the height of the fashion world, signed to Ford Models, immersed in the club scene, and swept into the orbit of Jeffrey Epstein. She recalls meeting him through a fellow model, their early friendship, his Great Gatsby–like allure, and how he used wealth and connections to project power. Cleo also opens up about her introduction to Donald Trump through Epstein, visiting Trump Tower, and witnessing the bizarre mix of glamor, neediness, and showmanship inside his gilded world. She reflects on the dangerous charm Epstein wielded, her shocking encounter with him on a private plane, and how hindsight reveals the darker truth behind the high-society facade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I felt like Jeffrey was sort of like the Empire State Building, another interesting aspect of New York to come and visit. Come and see this, come and eat that, come and meet Jeffrey Epstein. It just felt like another creature in the New York jungle to meet. And when we went to the house, that was then the time when I really started to just see the kind of seediness. So today, we're actually talking to someone who spent a lot of time with Jeffrey Epstein. She was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. She actually went to Donald Trump's apartment with Jeffrey Epstein

and has a fascinating insight on what it was like living in that model culture in the late 80s and the early 90s when Donald Trump was a colossus on the New York landscape. And Jeffrey Epstein was his friend, often offering to bail him out when he was dealing with his bankruptcies. Cleo Glide was a model for Saint-Laurent when she was in her late teen. she was literally spotted on a school trip in Paris and became one of the top models in the world. She strode the Tieri Mugler Couture Catwalks. And of course she became friends with some of New York's players, one of which was Jeffrey Epstein. And now, of course, she looks back through a completely different lens, the lens of being a mother, the lens of being a working woman.

But at the time, she was on the adventure of her life. Let's get into it. So Cleo Glide, you are an Australian model. You're in your early 20s. You moved to New York and you are introduced to Jeffrey Epstein. What was he like? What was your first impression? Tell us about hanging out with him.

Yeah, so I'd been a teenage model in Paris. I'd spent years at the Saint-Laure house. And then, you know, you're traveling in this gypsy caravan, Milan, Paris, Rome, you know, in London. And I fell in love with New York and that energy at that. that time that you could bottle, you know, and the club scene and the creativity. So by the time I met Jeffrey, I would have been, but probably about 22. The really important thing, Joanna, and it's probably what's made me hesitate to talk about knowing Jeffrey for so long. The really important thing is there's a lived experience. It's you're looking forward. So, you know, looking backwards,

seeing the mugshot, being world famous as a Darth Vader villain is what people's understanding of Jeffrey now is. At that time, my lived experience, was he was a high society A-Lister, a sort of an enigmatic Great Gapsby figure with these on paper ludicrously over the top, a cutromo, like having a, you know, a mansion that had an entire city block and a vaguely nebulous, wealthy, very, very much a self-made man.

He was on boards. He was at events. He was loud. And so by the time I met him, there was, on paper, nothing to fear. I had actually heard about him before I met him. A friend of mine, a good friend, a fellow Australian model who I adored, had met him out on the traps. And models at that time... Out on the traps.

What does that mean? Well, you know, parties, you know, Vanity Fair parties, models are essentially, even though you're very young and in many cases unsophisticated, you're aping. a high fashion ideal. We have the keys to the city in London, Rome, Milan, Paris. You're instantly connected with a network of, let's say, the parties and the people that make the city tick. And you're a Ford model at this point, which is about as good as it gets. Now, take us back to, your Australian friend introduces you to Jeffrey Epstein. She had a sense that he was someone too tough for her to handle. She said, I kind of got to know him a bit, and I realized he's a bit too much

of a player for me to really seriously consider him as a boyfriend. But she knew I sort of liked that very sort of smart, superverbal, funny New York, high-speed kind of personality. And so she said, I was thinking it could be someone interesting for you to meet. And this was not done. I isn't to add in any sleazy way at all. It was more, oh, you know, out of all the men out there in New York, you should really meet him. And but I know that I'm not. I can't take on that level of player. Now, the context was Playboy, and at that point, it was way more James Bonder than Darth Vader. It was, he was somebody that was known as many a girl on his arm, lots of girlfriends.

He eventually, when I met him, I realized he had that sort of smarmy self-satisfaction of like, oh, women would love to take me down and they never will, you know. And when I actually met him... What do you mean women would like to take him? him down, but they never will. I think, you know, when someone's very wealthy, they're on their guard, and they like to use the fact that, on paper, they're an object of desire for women that want to be with a wealthy man. Okay.

So he knew that. So he's fending people off. Well, I think he enjoyed it. I think he enjoyed it. And I guess part of our dynamic, when I met him, I actually, and it's sort of hard to say, because I never, ever, ever want to be an apologist for someone. one that caused so much destruction and destroyed so many lives. But if I'm being really honest, my lived experience was we became friendly.

And that's the actual truth. It's like a little, it's a whole kaleidoscope. It's a very complex situation. And my little shard of glass in the kaleidoscope that I'm just contributing to the picture is, initially when I met him, he did have a charm. And I did, we sought at each other's company and we did hang out in a non-sexual way. And you spent, how long was he a friend of yours for? Oh, for years, you know, for years.

Like, especially in that early period where we were, you know, he'd be someone I'd call, he would call back or he would call me. At that time, we had answering machines and, you know, God knows where those little cassettes are, you know, but so it was like probably, there was a two and a half three year period where it was at its apex. And you met Donald Trump through him, right? Yes. And as a precursor to the Donald Trump encounter, I have to say by that time I'd also sort of

realized he's a black diamond run of a man. Way too much for me to handle. I'm a romantic. So I knew there's no way that I'm going to just be a part of a harem. And that was considered attractive at the time. In a post-Me2 world, everyone's like, oh, gross. But at that time, it just made you a player. and it was a value and people, it was shiny, you know.

And at that point also, people behaving outrageously was something that was I sought out and it was part of the fashion world. And it was part of the 80s and the 90s, wasn't it? I mean, Wall Street was on at the movies. This was about money. It was about glitz. It was about glamour.

And you were living in that in your day job because you were dressing up as that. And then in the evenings, you were actually living it. Exactly. And also, when you're, modeling. When you're doing couture, this whole idea that this, a Parisian designer like Yves Saint Laurent, he's basically liberating women from stifling bourgeois convention by this highly eroticized sexual glamour. So in my hilariously undercooked teenage, youthful, book smart, life, completely naive way,

I thought I got the players and the, and the world and I was like navigating. But even then, I thought, yeah, There's no way I can take on a Jeffrey Epstein, you know, in terms of being, auditioning him or him auditioning me for partner material, but we instantly slipped into a friendly catch-up mode. And he was someone who was always super busy. He didn't really do like four-hour lunches in a cafe. He'd be like, hey, I'm going to the airport. Why don't you come in the car and we'll hang out?

And then I'll just, the car can take you back wherever you want to go. He was always on the run, on the run, on the run. And then one day, he'd spoken about, um, Donald Trump as someone that, you know, he kind of had a, he was kind of a bit self-satisfied about that friendship, I think, because at that point, Donald Trump was, you know, larger than life, you know, almost like cartoon-like character in the New York landscape. And he mentioned, I had this white wrapper wrapover dress. And he said, oh my God, you look just like a nurse and that. It'd be really fun if we got this other mutual friend that had introduced us, why don't we both go over to Donald's? And you'll both look like. nurses and I'll just knock on the door and we'll go to Trump Tower and it'll be hilarious. And it kind of, you know, looking back, obviously, it's like there's something kind of mortifying about that story about me putting myself in my, in that Benny Hill position. But I'm being like sort of on Jeffries's arm going to Donald Trump's.

It's completely surreal. I mean, it's really mental. But at the time, it just felt like a bit of fun. And obviously now I look back and go, okay, it's a very odd story. and especially when it blew up into this global horror show. So take us back to, so you're sauntering over town, cross town, from Jeffrey's House on East 71st Street to, was this Trump Tower you go to meet Donald Trump? Yeah, we went to Trump Tower and we get ushered up. And so I suppose there was a sense of anticipation.

And I wasn't that invested in Donald Trump, but anyone that lived in New York at that time knew he was an outsized figure. So he was like a Macy's Day parade float of a man, you know. And then, you know, so then, and I don't know, you know, I'm pretty sure that the, I remember the doors being sort of having all this kind of embedded Byzantine detail, like, you know, like this Persian prince that we're going to see on the other side. And then when the doors sort of swung open, there, the two things that really hit you. One is the outrageous skyline. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just the embodiment of all aspirational New York desire. The view from his windows. Unbelievable.

I remember that. And I also remember the OTT, outrageously opulent Romanian dictator look of the, I honestly, it was shocking. Like, it actually blew my mind. And I'd been in very opulent French spaces, but this was on steroids. And so I remember blurting out, oh, good thing that we didn't, a good thing that we didn't, A good thing I didn't wear silver earrings, you know, and just being a smart ass. And we came in and he was gracious and I think he offered us a drink. And Jeffrey was sort of a little bit, you know, you know, cat that got the cream, like a little bit, you know,

well, isn't I cool, aren't I great, aren't I fun? And there wasn't anything really seedy or sexual or weird apart from the aspect of us being sort of trophies on display. He was really invested in us knowing about, I bought this, I got that, I paid the most at the auction. He was really, really invested in making a good impression, which I found startling. I just could not believe that sort of chasm of need in him. Like it really, really blew my mind. And what was the relationship like between him and Jeffrey? They seemed warm and friendly, you know.

You know, Jeffrey was kind of a bit boasty about knowing Donald. you know, Donald was much more famous than him at that time, you know. So I think he loved kind of accentuating the connection. He probably was showing off Donald to us and us to Donald. You know, and I mean, look, at that time, you know, there was, he was a soap opera. So this was part of your New York adventure. It was just an adventure and Donald Trump was just another, you know, I'd met, I'd done a show and shaken Diana's hand. It was like meet Godzilla.

This is just another, you know. Diana Princess Day. Diana Princess of Wales. It was like all these towering figures. You just ended up meeting them. It's very surreal to look back at now. There was no weird, dark sexual undercurrent. He was gracious.

I do remember. Where did he look? Because there's you, your friend, you're both dressed in tiny little white dresses that Jeffrey thinks give off a nurse vibe. Is Donald responsive to that? He smiled. He smiled and he laughed.

And he obviously thought, this is just Jeffrey. Because obviously Jeffrey's thinking I'm literally walking down Fifth Avenue with two nurses. This is, you know, he smiled and he laughed, but not in a way that made me uncomfortable at the time. And it's really, really, I feel so exposed telling this story in a way. But it is, you know, let's face it, it's the oddest thing in the world to be remembering that story is considering everything that's swirling around all these seismic events globally now.

I mean. So does he invite you in and do you spend tight, do you, do you, we have a drink. Yes, yeah. He was gracious, but I, you know, and I remember he was extremely eager to please in the sense of this very odd Gatsby-esque need for us to know how much things cost. And I found that a little bit odd and needy and very bizarre. But I, there was no, there was definitely no cede undercurrent, I have to say that. And what was Jeffrey's relationship like with Donald Trump? He spoke about him as somebody that he, I think he felt that he, that he, That was at a time when Donald Trump was going through some bankruptcy issues, and he definitely loved. He kind of was a little boasty about the fact he lent him his plane and I've helped him out a lot. And, you know, definitely the sense that he was the power center at the time. Definitely, that was how he spoke of it in those terms.

So what was it like actually hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein? Where did you go? You mentioned that he would go to the airport and say, hop in the car with me so he can catch up. go to his various houses. I'd often meet him in his Madison Avenue office. I went to his home on 71st. So when you were hanging out at his house, did you come across Gillen Maxwell? I did. And when I met Glenn, it was very odd because at that point, I didn't understand or know about the backdrop of her position as this very high-octane figure in British society. And obviously now I know all about her father and how connected and how there was this incredibly valuable relationship between what she was offering Jeffrey, which was all these open doors and what he was offering her and supporting her.

And there was, when I first met her, initially he was asking you to do this and do that. And she was running off and doing things and arranging. And I just thought she was a some sort of executive assistant. And then she came in and she was really rude to me and cocky and sat on his lap. And so all my signals were jammed. I'm like, what on earth is going on? And then people would explain, oh, no, no, I mean, no one's ever going to get to the bottom of Jeffrey and Golan. Like, she's semi-girlfriend, semi-hand man, semi-this, semi-that.

And I realized, oh, it's just extremely bizarre and unknowable. And when I actually went to Jeffrey Zorro Ranch, I was going to L.A. to do a show at the Playboy Mansion. And it was the one night where it was actually an. AIDS benefit, and it was with Suzanne Barsh, who was a friend in a very, very iconic nightclub promoter, still doing the pony somewhere in a club today as we speak. And she took over with, you know, us and a retinaue of drag queens, the Playboy Mansion. And I told Jeffrey about it, and he thought it was hilarious. And he said, oh, well, you have to go and visit my ranch. And I remember him saying, it's bigger than Manhattan. It's bigger than Manhattan. I said,

well, then I guess I better see it. And I took my girlfriend, Dania, who was also modeling in the show, and we went on a road trip. And I remember feeling... And his French was where, New Mexico? Yes, yes. And it was, at that time, he hadn't built the main structure. And I took a lot of footage. And there was a very bizarre mannequin that was there.

And it was dressed in a Zorro costume that George Hamilton, a friend of Jeffries had given him from the movie Gay Blade. Because I said, what's the Zorro costume? And I've actually got video where I think I'm, like, talking to him in the distance, and my friends chatting about to her mum, I'm saying, yeah, we've met this friend of Cleo's, this crazy guy, Jeffrey.

I mean, he was almost like Mr. Howell and Gilligan's Island to us. You know, it was just this sort of roughly sketched New York billionaire, you know, almost like a cigar. Like it was, he wasn't like that, but that's what he kind of seemed to us. And we still wonder why he was offering these things with very little in return except friendship because I prided myself. and this was sort of my youthful arrogance on being the girl at the poker game that can handle hanging with the big boys but not getting burnt. And there was a little bit of shame when the whole story exploded, a little bit of survivor guilt.

It was kind of a cocktail of shock, dismay, relief and guilt. And it kind of paralyzed me a lot. But at that time, I didn't think I had anything to fear. I just thought it was exciting. And did you sleep with him? No, I didn't. I didn't, but he did do the pounce. We went down to Palm Beach once on his plane, and I thought it was very exciting going on a private plane. When I got on the plane, it's funny because I'm a total fantasist, so I always kind of visually project things.

So when I think private plane, I always think there's a chic in the corner. He's holding a falcon. There's a woman in a Pan Am outfit, and there's a tinkling fountain, and she's kind of carrying trays of champagne. It was a little bit more shabby than that. It was a bit more, it's like an office, you know, so it felt a little bit more shabby, a little bit more grubby. I mean, it was still a private plane, and obviously that was impressive and it had a novelty to me. But it wasn't, it felt more like a mid-level executive's office in the sky than a rock star, lead Zeppelin fantasy, you know. And it came out of nowhere.

So when he did the pounds, it was genuinely shocking because it was, we were in the middle of a conversational beat and it was a pleasant, happy time. And, you know, he was being gracious and there was probably a fruit platter and there would have been a server. But I do remember that it was just us. I couldn't handle it. He actually got that sort of gimlet stare. You know, I think most women are familiar with when the light goes out of the eyes. and that kind of lustful laser beam focus, most women have probably experienced where you realize

if it's unwelcome and unwanted, if you start to feel queasy and scared and worried about how you could handle it. And I had a dress with a wrap dress that he was able to put his hand between my legs at the knee and then start to kind of get rough, you know, get rough and put his hand on my breast and put his hand on my leg

and like creeping up to my underwear. And I was, I was kind of teared up. And I was like, Why are you doing this? I thought we were friends. You know, I don't want to be, and I think I said, you know, I really don't want to do the whole Jeffrey Epstein Roadkill thing, you know. And he kind of stopped and then he dropped it like completely. It wasn't like a second or a third or a fourth attempt. He almost was like shoulder shrugging about it and he dropped it.

And it shocked me to my core, which sounds very silly and naive, but I did not see it coming. Were there other people on the plane? It's interesting you asked me that because there would have been staff, but I definitely don't remember anyone looking on all staring, which would have actually been horrific in a way that that would be just another person dehumanizing you by not even reacting. I don't remember that element. So they must have gone to the front of the plane.

There was always, you know, staff, someone serving drinks. And obviously, you know, but I remember the roughness of the physical. It was, it really shocked me. Like, it really shocked me. And so you'd been friendly with it. him up until this. We were mates. That's how I described. Now, obviously this sounds ludicrously naive now, but I just thought I was the, you know, the goal that was, that was, it was enough for us to

just have banter and talk. And what happened after that? Because you still had some of the journey, presumably. I had a very heightened sense of, um, what happens, I'm a bit of, I've got a people please of personality. So when something happens that confronts me, um, I bury it and fake it immediately. So I immediately went back. I was shaken, but I buried it and tried to act like nothing was happening to make it all okay. That's how I make things okay, especially at that time. So it made it, of course, appallingly easy for him to not even care about, you know, damaging the friendship. But I do remember being violently recoiling and being upset and verbalising, you know. And now I realize, you know, that there's always kind of an element of danger to

planes and boats obviously because you're isolated and you're away from um and do you think he had planned it or do you think it was just yeah i think so yeah it was premeditated and and i do remember when we went to palm beach i do remember that he went and got a massage and i thought that's odd like um you know why you know surely that's something you can put off to another time and you don't have a guest so now i realize that um that was obviously his real you know he would he would have had on tap relief at all times which is obviously creepy and horrific and gross. Did you see who was massaging him?

No, no, I didn't. But he just said, look, I'm going to go up and have the massage, make yourself at home. You know, he was, he, I picked up on his casual normalization without realizing, oh my God, what is really happening, you know. And that's, you know, that's the, God's honest truth. I just didn't know. Clear, hold on one second.

We're just going to take some words. from our sponsors. And we're back talking to the former model, Cleo Glide, about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And the thing that I now realize is, now that I understand that I only had one piece of the puzzle at the time, everybody knew that Jeffrey had a harem-like attitude to women. Everybody forgave him for it.

Everybody normalized that. But now, of course, we know that he wanted something much darker. wanted girls that were underage, friendless, vulnerable from poor backgrounds. That was something I literally had no knowledge of. But when I heard it, I realized how little I really knew about what I was living at that time, because that was all going on at the same time. So he pounces on the plane. You repel him. He doesn't try again. Do you stay friends with him? I, my memory of it is that it was downhill to a certain extent. The intimacy, the excitement wasn't there for me, but I actually did, it wasn't the end.

I did actually look him up again when I came back to New York. I returned to Australia when I had a baby. I got married and had a baby and I kind of fell out of that single bachelorette living the Carrie Bradshaw life. I actually My life contained Went back to Australia And I did look him up when I came back

Yeah So obviously to answer your question I guess I did forgive him yet And so you forgive him You come back to New York And you call him up Yeah And he invited me over to the house

And I had a friend with me An Australian friend And she had a very overtly sexy Sex witch kind of sexuality She was someone who was Very attractive to men And you know

had the kind of geisha way of, you know, like you're just pretty and much more, I think, pleasing. I sort of had much more of a, shall we say, fag-hag energy. And you were sort of sharp. I've known you for a long time and you're very funny, you're fast, you're sort of sharp talking. This is probably the least funny subject we've ever had. I know I sound quite sober, but yeah, usually I'm a bit more upbeat.

But yeah, she had that, you know, the skin and the body-conscious. clothes and, you know, really sexy. And so when we went over there, I said, yo, I felt like Jeffrey was sort of like the Empire State Building, another interesting aspect of New York to come and visit. Come and see this, come and eat that, come and meet Jeffrey Epstein. It just felt like another creature in the New York jungle to meet. And when we went to the house, that was then the time when I really started to just see the kind of seediness where the murkiness. I thought the biggest problem with Jeffrey was that he was a, you know, a kind of a slightly misogynistic playboy. And then I guess I had this weakness of my flaw in my character, of the vanity of thinking I can pass through this.

I can move over these laser beams and I'm going to be okay. And of course, I feel kind of a bit of shame about around that. But at the time, you know, I wasn't there yet. And we went there and he kind of pulled her. He said, can I just borrow her for a minute? And he pulled her into the cupboard. And she seemed breathy and giggly and okay with it. What do you mean in the cupboard?

Well, there was a, what I assumed was somewhere where you hang coats. It was a big room. There was kind of, it was almost like, you remember in 2001 Space Odyssey where the aliens create this 18th century room of this is a human room? It was like, this is a rich man's room. So there's a giant globe. But he was always like in jeans and a polo shows. He was almost like, I've set the stage, this Gatsby-esque stage of this.

wealthy man, but he was, you know, it was almost like you're expecting to see somebody come in in a velour robe and slippers and a pipe, you know, it was like very gentleman's club, but then he would, he was very contemporary New York, but she was, he dragged her behind the door and, um, and they disappeared and she said he was just whispering all these filthy things. And that's when I thought, oh my God, like, that's appalling. Like it's, it's, it's, I was like, are you okay? I'm so sorry. I felt really bad that I'd put her in that position. And she was like, no, it's okay, it's okay, but, you know, she had a, you know, I had obviously internalized that it was

okay. And that's when I, I just didn't contact him again after that. I just felt that it was an appalling way to, you know, that I'd kind of sunk in and slipped and, yeah, I don't want to go back. And then when you, well, when did you first begin to hear the news that he was arrested? I was in some ways horrified and other ways not surprised. I remembered things. I got flashback memories. I remember him once talking about how he had nicknames for women that were akin to hamburgers at McDonald's. Like what? So you'd get the Big Mac, you get the Junior Burger, you know,

so in other words, kind of their status and their appeal and their looks and whether they're, you know, just pretty or pretty and smart and funny, like, you know, basically categorizing women and all those things that I'd buried. Called women junior burgers. Yeah, junior. burgers or Big Macs, he told me about that. So telling in retrospect. And in retrospect, and the thing is, when you let things slide, you sort of go into a delusional state. You know, it's like the, it's like the lead cape at the dentist, you know, it's like this, and it just lifts. And that's when I thought,

oh my God. And I felt really paralyzed about telling anyone, I must have told maybe on one hand, people that I actually knew him, because I felt really odd that I'd gotten through it with really just a grope, if I'm being honest. And it was also very hard to explain to people at that time why I would even hang out with the monster. Like, how do I even begin? Where do I start? Well, and he didn't seem like a monster when you were hanging out. Not at all. Not at all. And we had conversations and fun. And I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. And I didn't want to appear to be an apologist for someone who would hurt these, you know, girls. And I think about someone like Virginia Gelfrey who never wavered from her story and had this.

unbelievable, arrow-straight bravery. And, you know, I guess, you know, we have to honour what, you know, the long-lasting damage, but also the courage. And I just didn't feel like I had a place in the conversation at all at that time. I was really ashamed. So why did you decide to start talking about it now? I think because now I realize, as I, you know, it's the decades whizz by, you know, at startling speed, I realize that, you know, even with an issue as black and white as the moral, you know,

carcass of that whole situation of Jeffries, the damage he's done and what a creep and what a predator he was. I'm just, I guess I'm just bringing another, hopefully a bit of understanding on what it was like on the other side, why he was loudness known and befriended and just, it's another piece of, it's another shard of glass and the kaleidoscope. It's another piece of, it's another little piece in the puzzle as I look back on my life and try and make sense of it all. So Donald Trump had a modelling agency. There was Jeffrey Epstein's friend who ended up committing suicide actually. His name was, is it Jean-Luc Bernal? Oh yeah, and he was just appalling. There are horrific stories of girls coming, you know, because the girls are really young,

14, 15, and you're staying and you're staying with a 45-year-old, grizzled, douchey playboy who's going to put the hard word on you night one. and possibly or maybe not even reward you for your services. Really, there are horrific stories. And the thing I guess that I like to think of when I talk about that world, and I build that world in my mind, it's a double helix because there's the trap doors, there's the pitfalls, but there's also the glamour and the intoxicating creativity, and they're entwined.

So a lot of people, they either see the glossy fashion page, which doesn't really capture the grit, or they see a very, understandably sober, maybe documentary on sex pests that is horribly lit and everybody's, you know, distraught. But when you actually experience it, it's all intertwined at the same time. And also there's a lot of money. And you're kind of getting heart search and money at the very start of your life. And of course, you're getting ripped off left, right and center. Like I remember they would take out a lot of money for tax in Italy. I said, but I've never filled out of form. You know, like 18, 17, impossibly naive. But even allowing for how much money's cascading through everyone's hands apart from your own, you still get plenty.

So if you were to go back and talk to your younger self, would you encourage her to go into modelling? I mean, we had Stacey Williams on the podcast about a month ago and she said she gets outreach all the time from young women saying, oh, how can I be a model? How can I be a model? And she says, I'm the wrong person to talk to. I could never encourage someone to go into modeling. What's your feeling?

Well, you know, it's funny. I was thinking about that the other day. I did buy an apartment. I bought an apartment in Paris and I'd always been haunted. And how old were you? I would have probably been 1920. Right. So the age of 20, you were able to buy your own apartment in Paris?

And I had a mortgage, but it was, and I have footage, because I have hours and hours of footage, I have footage of that apartment and there's just empty vodka bottles and Marlborough cigarettes. And I look back and then couture, strawn all over the, and all the, and I was spending so much money on the clothes because we could buy. at ludicrously low prices, these clothes that were being designed for these high society women. And we were aping them. That was our job, was to bring these, to animate these dresses and get their clients to buy them. And we would sort of tour, you know, Salzburg and castles and the south of France.

It was all very rarefied air. But then there was also the cattle calls and the auditioning to get to that point where they were brutal. Like people would talk about you like you went there. and it's very paradoxical because you're on a pedestal, but you're also being dehumanized in many ways. You're the centre of attention at a shoot with all these adults plucking you and fluffing you, but really you're the least powerful person in the room, but it's all about you. It's a very bizarre paradox. So in answer to your question, I've had girls talk to me about it before,

and you can see that they're very drawn by it. And I would say if they're straight arrow gagging for this, just you've got to have your you've got to have your financial plan in place. But what 17-year-old goal is ready to hear that, you know, life wisdom from someone, you know, that's 45 plus? No one. Cleo, we're going to take a quick break for some ads. And we're back talking with the former model and now documentarian Cleo glide on her life at the top of the modeling industry. And what did you think when you heard he had died?

Ah, I was, it felt like the under, the underbelly of evil has reached up and the claw has struck. It just instantly felt very menacing and sinister to me. And did he feel menacing and sinister when you were hanging out with him? The only glimpse of that was that time with my friend in the cupboard. I thought, ooh, this is really off. before that I thought it was, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio man about town level. I got that spectacularly wrong, obviously. I, but it was basically the groping was the beginning of the end and then the,

and then him being really sleazy and gross with my friend. But before that, if I, you know, in all honesty, he, you know, there was plenty of charm, fun, laughs, you know, it felt like, it felt like good company. And that's what was so mortifying to admit. And when you look back on your friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and how he died, do you think that he was murdered? What do you think about his life? I do, yeah, I think so. I think so. I think it's very possible. I mean, we don't know for sure. I think there's something very, um, his blueprint in my mind has been completely overwritten as, as everybody else is by. the mugshot, the garish horror of that jail cell.

And then all these towels, you know, like the 20 towers, there's all this really garish, horrific imagery. And there's a lot of high stakes. I mean, it's kind of, there's something very, there's something very scary swirling around this whole story. That's why I kind of stayed in the shadows for so long about it, I think. You know, there's something very menacing, very sinister. There are deaths, there's power plays.

There is no way on God's Green Earth, obviously, that we've gotten to the bottom of all the players that were involved. And there's no way that somebody as transactional and now we know manipulative and clever as Jeffrey wouldn't have used girls as a way to entrap and ensnare power players, both politically and wealth. I mean, it's clear to me that there's many, many, many, cataclysmically

profound secrets left to uncover. Would you agree? I mean... Well, I spent no time with him. I oddly spent 25 years in New York and never came across him, never really heard of him. Well, isn't it just not my world? And isn't it telling that you and I,

we worked together at Marie Claire, not short, you know, shortly after probably the last time I saw him, and it never occurred to us to even discuss him because he wasn't on radar yet. wasn't on the radio and now we can't get him off the radar and the president can't get him off his radar. And I think that, yeah, I cannot tell you,

Jero Anna, how surreal it has been, as this story has become a frenzy and it's number one on everybody's minds and it's etched in the public consciousness and I'm sitting there going, I cannot believe I actually was in a room at these two people. It's very pinched me, it's very bizarre. And you're making a documentary about what it was like

being a model in these heady days? Well, the thing is, at the time, there was something that came out, and of course it looks like a gigantic loaf of bread to people now, but at the time, something called a high-eight digital camera came out. And everybody could not believe the luxury of being able to hold in the palm of your hand a video, whereas before, you know, you needed a gigantic piece of extremely expensive equipment. So it became a really fun novel thing. And I had this instinct to document everything. And I just somehow knew there was, there was, there was, just as much story going on backstage as the hyper interest of what was going on in the front stage on the catwalks. And at that time, it was a very elite world because as amazing as it is to think, you know, pre-digitally, the fashion magazines were the only authority. And they held onto those secrets and those images and the next, the new, the now for months. And then only fashion people knew what was coming. Now an image is digitally ricocheted around the globe in five seconds. So at that time, it was this really contained world, and I suppose it was a part of me that

then later blossomed into, you know, a journalistic instinct to capture it. And there's a lot of candid footage. And now that I've realized, now that a few decades have passed and I can make sense of it, I've actually found all of the people in the footage, the friends that I was still in contact, the models that I'd lost contact with, their stories are extraordinary, their origin story, how they got addicted to the industry, how it scarred their soul, how they loved it, how they miss it, how they hate it. And this was before inclusion was a movement, it was exclusion. Luxury, you know, elegance is refusal, luxury is exclusion. Did you come across Melania Trump as a model? Because she was modelling around the same time. She was sort of floating around

and Donald, at that time, Donald Trump was, you know, a kind of a cartoon-like figure in the in the streetscape of New York, but I didn't actually get to know her. She wasn't really ever editorial high fashion. So, you know, but I'm sure I was in the room at some point at the same time. I'd love to read the real book. I'd love to read the real book. So what I find fascinating about Cleo's story is I've known Cleo for 20 years. She's never once told me any of this.

And then she called me out of the blue and said, I want to talk to you about Jeffrey Epstein. And I thought she would be talking about she'd had a brush with all or something. I didn't expect her to say that they'd had a years-long friendship and for her to really unpack her own lived experience. And what I think is so interesting and what we're trying to get at in this podcast is what was it like in that modeling world when these kind of men owned modeling agencies. Let's not forget the president owned the Miss Universe competition. And this, as Cleo pointed out, was sort of so they could have their own in-house dating agency,

so they could share women with each other. And we heard from Jeffrey Epstein's victims this week. And as Cleo says, this is over in a minute for the men, but the violence lives on forever in the victims. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Leave us a comment on YouTube. And below this video, click on the join. button to join the Daily Beast community.

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