TikToker Alix Earle Reflects on Her Dad's Affair With Ashley Dupré - E! Online (2024)

"It was in like fourth grade. I started to kind of hear commentary from people and I had an iPad at the time,"she said. "I'm Googling my family and all of a sudden, I see that the past two years of my life had been a lie."

The 22-year-oldcontinued, "My dad had an affair with someone who was well-known for her job having sexual relations with high-class people and one of them was even the governor of New York. She was very well-known from that and in turn, my dad's affair became a very public situation."

Alix said that upon learningwhat had happened, she"felt like my world crashed down in that moment."

And the influencer credits her mom Alisa for shielding her and her younger sister Ashtin, now 20, from a lot of the tension within the family at the time.

"I didn't know the severity of what had happened between my parents because my mom was super, super mature about it and didn't speak to us about it and didn't put that stress that she was going through onto us," she noted. "I kind of figured it out myself and then I proceeded to deal with it myself."

Ultimately, Alisa and TJ broke up, with the construction company owner's romance with Ashley later blossoming. They tied the knot in 2013.

"When my stepmom started to hang around with my dad after he had moved out, she came into his life and we were introduced to her, which was super weird," Alix explained. "And I was told that I had to be respectful to this woman and we had to be nice to her.I wanted to rip her head off. It was very weird because I felt like I was a 10-year-old having to be more mature than someone 20, 30 years older than me."

And she also had to deal with the continued fallout of the affair, noting thatsome kidsweren't allowed to come to her house because of it.

"The parents would kind of tell my mom and she would tell me kind of the harsh truth of why this can't happen," she said. "She would have to sit me down and be like, 'They don't really respect us.'"

Alix also recalled a feeling humiliated in class after her connection to Ashley and Spitzer's sex scandal—he ultimately resigned over the affairin March 2008—was brought up.

"My teacher in high school was talking about this governor's affair and said exactly what had happened—who it had happened with—and like looked me in the eyes while this was going on in class," the Hot Mess With Alix Earle podcast host said."I remember my classmates looking at me and like, laughing because this was about my family. And this was something he was literally teaching in history class."

She added, "I left school bawling my eyes out. I was so embarrassed."

But these days Alix has overcome these obstacles. In fact, her family—which includes TJ and Ashley's kids Izabel, 10,Penelope, 8,and Thomas, 6—is now "well blended," according to Alix, who added, "They get along so well."

Alix has spoken about the scandal surrounding Ashley and her family before. In August, she told ELLEsheandher stepmom are "super close, and we've gotten to such a good point."

"Whatever's happened in the past," she added, "we've all gotten past it as a family."