Simone Biles on her anxiety around fame and her marriage to Jonathan Owens

US Olympic athlete and champion Simone Biles has given a candid and revealing interview to Vanity Fair for their February 2024 cover issue, and she touches on some of the headlines and buzz that has been circulating around her for a little while.

Most notably, she touches on how fame and being famous has affected her deeply, and even admitted that it triggers her anxiety.

“I think everyone wants to be famous, and then when it happens, you almost hit a wall and you have an identity crisis. You’re like, Am I made out for this? Why did I wish for this?” the Olympic gold medalist told Vanity Fair.

“I’m not saying that [people] scream and line up like I’m Taylor Swift, [but] I still get a lot of attention. When five people come up to me and they’re rushing for a photo, I just get a little flustered. My anxiety kicks in.”

She goes into detail in the cover story about advocating for the de-stigmatization of mental illness, mental health, and therapy, especially after she had to withdraw from several competitions during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to a bout of “the twisties” where she wasn’t able to coordinate her movements with her line of sight during her complicated gymnastic jumps, twists, dismounts, and moves.

 “I’ve always been in therapy [and] I’ve always been an advocate for medicine,” she tells the outlet, noting that she has been on anxiety medication Lexapro for years. “If you need an inhaler, take it. If you have anxiety, take it. I’m no stranger to medicine.” 

She goes on to say that after the Tokyo Olympics, her mental health went into decline, especialy when her withdrawal from certain events made some commentators blame her for the USA team winning bronze instead of gold. 

“After 2020, it was kind of depressing until I started therapy and got help. I felt like a failure. Even though I was empowering so many people and speaking out about mental health, every time I talked about my experience in Tokyo—because it obviously didn’t go the way that I had planned—it stung a little bit. But all in all, it was the best decision.”

She also speaks about her marriage to Green Bay Packers safety Jonathan Owens, who recently found himself in hot water when he publicly said that he was the “catch” in their relationship – a comment that had some people feeling like he was denigrating his wife’s huge achievements and trying to put her in her place.

“If I’m going to be honest, obviously he’s very fine,” she says of what initially attracted her to Owens after they met on celebrity dating app Raya. “[But] besides his looks, he was so sweet and kind, and I think what I liked about him was his confidence. He truly believes he’s the best at everything.”

In the interview, Owens is also asked to comment on their initial meeting on the dating app, and he doubled down on his assertion that he didn’t know she was a famous athlete. 

“A lot of people don’t believe me when I say I had no clue,” he says, adding that she wasn’t on his radar because, “I never once was like, Oh, let me check gymnastics out.” 

It was only when he snooped her IG account that he admits, “I was like, man, she got a lot of followers, she must be pretty good.”

What made him fall in love with his now-wife, he says, was pretty simple. “I just noticed her laugh.“It was just contagious. We could talk all day and we’d stayed up late, and there just wasn’t an awkward moment.”

In February 2022, Owens popped the big question and a little over a year later, the couple said their "I dos," first in an intimate Texan ceremony and then at a lavish destination wedding in Mexico.

Simone’s Vanity Fair interview also touches on her return to the sport, where she hopes to make it to the Paris Olympics, and also on her bravery in speaking out about the abuse of trainer and coach Larry Nasser. You can read the full cover story here.