Naomi Campbell Says She Used Drugs to 'Cover Up' Grief from Gianni Versace's Death

Naomi Campbell is getting candid about grief.

The 53-year-old English model appears in the new Apple TV+ series The Super Models and discussed her struggles with addiction in her early years, as well as in the wake of her close friend Gianni Versace‘s sudden death.

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“When I started using, that was one of the things I tried to cover up, was grief. Addiction is such a — it’s just a bulls— thing, it really is,” Naomi said.

“You think, ‘Oh, it’s gonna heal that wound.’ It doesn’t,” she continued. “It can cause such huge fear and anxiety. So I got really angry.”

She went on to say that she had learned about “chosen families” through her friendship with Gianni, so his murder in 1997 was incredibly challenging for her.

“He was very sensitive to feeling me, like, he pushed me. He would push me to step outside and go further when I didn’t think I had it within myself to do it. So, when he died, my grief became very bad,” Naomi recalled.

She battled addiction for five years before collapsing in the middle of a photoshoot in 1999.

“When you try to cover something up, your feelings — you spoke about abandonment. I tried to cover that with something. You can’t cover it,” she shared. “I was killing myself. It was very hurtful.”

The situation caused her to check into rehab, which she says was “one of the best and only things I could have done for myself at that time.”

“It’s taken me many years to work on and deal with,” she said of addiction. “And it does still come up sometimes. But I just now have the tools how to deal with it now when it comes up.”

The Super Models is streaming now on Apple TV+.

Naomi recently made some rare comments about her 2-year-old daughter. Find out what she said here.