Bella Thorne | 'The Life of a Wannabe Mogul' Paperback Edition

Photographed by Ellen von Unwerth

With a possible Lord of the Rings and Star Wars inspired wedding looming overhead, the ever so authentic Bella Thorne surprised me. Connecting from her Los Angeles haven, the 23-year-old mulls over heavy trauma and personal growth with a maturity well beyond her years. 

Thorne released her first book, The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray Vol. 1, on July 23, 2019 and hasn’t looked back. Easily misunderstood, the entertainer acknowledges she bares no filter and her book further solidifies her frankness. A new paperback edition will be released September 9, featuring newly-added poems amongst her journey through self-realization. 

From feature film roles to creating a consulting agency, Thorne's ambitiousness knows no bounds. And with that, her biggest accomplishment still stands– she has left her mark with Mental Disarray.

Flaunt spoke with Thorne via Zoom about regrets (or lack thereof), future writing endeavors, and her love for all things truly vintage. 

Can you tell me a little bit about the projects you have going on right now? 

I have a song coming out with Juicy J that I'm really excited for. I directed a… music video with my muse Abella Danger. I am really excited for people to hear it. It's definitely a fun song and the video is controversial. It's a very sexy video...I'm in the middle of filming a movie right now. We're gonna do the release soon, but I am not allowed to say what it’ll be yet...After this movie, I go to Italy. I film another movie and then we have ‘Time Is Up’ that's coming out. Habits just came out. 

So The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray came out in 2019, and now the paperback edition is coming out. That's a pretty big gap in between releases. How do you still feel about it? Is there anything you would have changed?

Everything still holds up. In the original [release], there was [poems] that were left out, and so I thought they're very important to be back in. Those are in this one as well. There's some newer ones from the last book that I'm happy [about]. I'm working on the second book. The second book is called Mental Rehab. This one's called Mental Disarray. It's taking me longer than I had originally thought. I wrote the first one very quickly, and this one, because it is about mental rehab and really getting my mind in a better place and a healthier place and the steps forward to do that, you kind of really have to watch my journey from Disarray to the end of Mental Rehab. Then you'll be able to, I'm hoping, see how far I've actually come. But, I just can't do that in months. I need to actually do the work and writing into my mind. I've been writing that one [and] this will take a little while though. I wanted to get my fans something else. Everyone still comes up to me about this book. Every one of my fans really, really connect to this book so hard so I wanted to give them something new to hold them over a little bit while I work on the second one.

What was the reason behind using a typewriter? What was your process?

I had handwritten two books that were going to be put into one and then I left it on a plane. That killed me. All this handwritten material that I could have never get back. While I was in the middle of creating Filthy Fangs, I was in the middle of creating another company…Because Life of a Wannabe Mogul, I really want everyone that reads it to realize how much they have a chance ar the world, how little they think constantly they do, but that's not the truth. I think that that's really inspiring and all of those were gone… So on the second one, my handwriting is also a piece of shit. It's literally terrible… By someone's handwriting, you can kind of tell what the inner workings of their brain looks like. And now that I'm doing the second one, I keep debating whether I should change format, and not do a typewriter, do something new. If I should do some handwritten things… I just love the type writer, the feeling that the vulnerableness about having this page that's not touched up. This page is exactly how it's written, and there's no editing on it. It's beautiful in its imperfections, right. I'm pretty much all about imperfections so that really stuck with me, and I just can't decide if I should do the second book on the typewriter or if I should try a new format, because the book is about growth. So to me, if I stay with the typewriter, then the growth isn't fully there. I just don't want it to just be like, you know, written like a normal book, either. I don't want it to be on my handwriting because my handwriting is a piece of shit.

Because this is essentially a diary, do you have any regrets showing so much of yourself to the world through this book?

Every fan that comes up to me, it's the book. It used to be this movie, or that thing, or Shake It Up. Now it's the book, and I've met so many people in pain from this book. So many people. The amount of people that I touch their hands and I can feel the pain, the sweat, the blood, the tears literally through them. They explain to me their story. And you know, it's one horrendous story after another, but it makes us all connected in this way. There's a really strong connection between two people that share the same idea of pain, and that is so much more worth all the movies I've done. So much more worth just a fun night with your friends where you watched my movie. These things really stay with people and I really, really hope that it actually does help change the perspective, the mind. Especially with the second book that I'm writing now, it's really supposed to help kind of try and teach you as well as me, because I'm teaching myself in the book, how to be better mentally, how to be happier. Something that we all struggle with the most is probably trying to be actually happy and that's a really big theme in the book. I really hope that when I release the second one too, instead of just horrendous stories, it's ‘I'd read the first one. I read the second one and the second one has helped me so much in my life to be better and be happier person.’ That's way better than any movie or any song you know, or any script.

There are some individuals mentioned in the book that you may not be close with anymore. Did you consider taking some pieces out of the new paperback edition?

It's kind of like getting a tattoo from your ex. Some people want to take off that tattoo as soon as they break up. That was in my life at that time. That's just how it is. Maybe I'll get it taken off later. I think that's more towards the side that I lean towards. There was definitely love once there.

You mention your sister Dani Thorne in your book as a sort of saving grace. Tell me about your relationship with her.

Dani and I are like twins that are like four and a half, almost five years apart. It's really weird. When you hear us talk, you never know which one's talking. Like, you could think I'm home because Dani's downstairs or vice versa. When you can look at someone and no one has to do any talking, [it] feels like you're mentally talking to each other, just without words. You're just looking at each other and you just don't really know what the other person is thinking. It's just your kind of connection feeling that you can have with, you know, I don't really even think you can have it with your very best friend. You can sometimes be like, ‘I know what you're thinking,’ but it's like a real language of communication that me and Dani can just have looking at each other. I just wouldn't be where I am without her. I would not be a good person. I think without her it would take me a lot longer in my life to get to the point where I am right now mentally if I didn't have her to kind of show me the better ropes. I also just got lucky because she's...so much about accepting. Even when...someone tells you a bad story about themselves and you're judging them, you can’t help the brain but judge them in that moment. After that moment has passed, I think there are so many things in your life that made you this way and every single one of them is okay and I'm accepting them for you. I'm gonna fuck with you for who you are, not for your past experiences or things that made you ‘you’ and I really learned that from her. When you talk to her..because she's so sweet, like for instance in our group, no one's allowed to make jokes about each other. That's not a thing in our group. In some groups, guys be like getting at each other and then the girls be like randomly making a funny little knife comment and then all the other girls not in are frowned upon. It's very you know, no one's making jokes or being a jackass. It's a very interesting group. People like to hang out with us I think literally because with Dani being such a hippie and me kind of backing that as well, like the aura of our group is so like ‘come here. Come here friend. You look like you might be in pain. Come get coddled.’

Tell me about your creative process while writing this book.

Funny enough, I was on set at the time filming Paradise City. Because I had just lost the other ones, now I had to completely start from scratch which totally fucked me. But also didn't in the way that I was just like, ‘You know what, I'm on a deadline. I'm going to get this shit.’ I finished the book in two and a half weeks. I did it on set and, literally, walking around [with] my typewriter. It's so funny. I've just like bringing it to rehearsal, putting it down on the bed, putting it on this place...it was so funny. I honestly couldn't believe I actually got it done. Like in time. Because it was my first time using a typewriter. I've always loved the look of typewriters. I've always loved the vintage of it and the spiritual vintage of it. Not just the look, but like something actually being old and was used to tell messages over time, save people's lives, or make people fall in love, or all these things that make a typewriter beautiful. My first time on that typewriter, I will tell you, like ‘Oh, this is so hard.’ Because of my dyslexia, you'll see it in there. In the book, you saw it where I'm spelling something wrong, then I go back to the next. Spell it wrong again. I go back to the next. Now, I've almost spelled it right. It's still raw, done with the typewriter. It's not like you can delete, right? You can't read, cut, re-paste. You have to completely take that thing out and start over. That's what I loved about the imperfection of it. It forced me to be so open in this way. People make fun of me all the time for having dyslexia. I've been bullied since I was literally so little for it, and people still do it everywhere, all over social media, really throwing it in my face. This was a way to really force me to be this open and this vulnerable. I think that's also the part that makes the book. It's not just the words I'm writing that are so vulnerable, it's the format I'm writing it in. I'm opening my arms up to get slashed, and I'm very much giving myself fully to you to be ridiculed, which I've done a lot in my life anyway... I say what I want to say. I don't have a clean, publicist type of answers. When I'm answering the question, I'm really answering this question. That's been hard for me too. I think that that definitely shows in the book as well. It's just the book to me. It's just all these different pages of vulnerability, just stuff in one book. 

Whenever I'm done with the diary, and I set it down, I'm just done with it. I'm like, oh, like a weight was lifted off my shoulder. I feel like I got what I needed to say out and it's there. Was that kind of how this book release felt for you?

Yes, definitely felt lighter, but I was also feeling scared because it's really all in there. I know how the press [perceives] vulnerability, and I know how they can take your words that are meant to be so beautiful and touching and they can throw them in a really nasty way that doesn't show any of the strength that you had in the book. I was worried about that, because obviously there's molestation in there. There's so many things in there for people to just bite onto and say, ‘This is my headline. I don't really care [what she’s] going through to even write this thing. I'm just taking these words, and then these words from another chapter, and I'm just going to smash them into one headline that sounds bad.’ I was really worried about that...The book is definitely the thing I'm most proud of to date, ever that I've done, and to see other people respond to it, and for it to actually make an impression on them, something that they'll remember for a long time. It's like...I'm making my mark. We all want to leave our mark on the world before we leave, and this book helped me feel that way—that what I'm doing in life isn't just for shits and giggles over here...It's actually some weight to it.