MY chat with Jocelyne Wildenstein over the phone in Paris just over a month ago was her last ever interview.
It was weeks before her death and a somewhat strange encounter, filled with denials and misdirection with a sort of bizarre undercurrent I couldn’t quite pin down at the time.
Now that time has passed, I think I've figured out the reason.
Just as she'd done with her face, in life Jocelyne hid behind a created facade, one she desperately wanted people to believe.
But in her final days, maybe the debt notices, eviction orders and other secrets were hovering a bit too close to the surface for comfort.
She was nervous, afraid the facade was about to crumble.
Our chat was arranged through Lloyd Klein, her partner of 20 years, a man who was equally hard to pin down but when we finally spoke, he was charming.
I requested a Zoom interview because her face was, after all, the reason we were doing the chat.
Jocelyne was Catwoman, she was the Bride of Wildenstein and I wanted to see her famous face.
“No way," said Lloyd, suddenly becoming tough.
Lloyd can be volatile with journalists so I agreed we'd do the chat over the phone.
During the early evening of November 25 I was granted 45 minutes of ‘Miss Wildenstein's’ time.
After exchanging pleasantries, Lloyd passed me over to Jocelyne, who sounded soft, feminine, with a throaty French accent.
She seemed in good spirits.
"I'm living in a big apartment with Lloyd," she said.
"I like Paris a lot. I’m enjoying life."
An image came to mind of Jocelyne and Lloyd sipping Champagne in some grand apartment, full of antiques and priceless paintings.
It was that kind of vibe but my first thought was, how can she afford it?
Paris real estate is expensive. Jocelyne is bankrupt!
But the focus of the interview was to discuss beauty and plastic surgery, so I let it go, for the time being.
I only had 45 minutes, and I was worried about how long it would take to get through the plastic surgery stuff.
She spoke about face scrubs as though they were the reason she looked the way she did - it was as though she actually believed it
Natalie Clarke
I asked her what plastic surgery she'd had.
Plastic surgery? Oh no, she was too scared to have the full procedure.
This threw me - so what then, if anything, had she had done?
Well, said Jocelyne, she'd had some Botox, but it didn't agree with her, and she hadn’t had fillers.
She did have the odd chemical peel, though, and used a face scrub.
Jocelyne was in denial, or delusional, or a bit of both.
In her younger days, she was utterly stunning. Perhaps denial had become her coping mechanism.
She knew she’d messed up, big time, and the only way to deal with it was to pretend it hadn’t happened.
When she spoke about face scrubs as though they were the reason she looked the way she did, it was as though she actually believed it.
She told me she never used moisturiser.
The woman who looked like she'd spent millions on plastic surgery had never shelled out a fiver for a tub of Nivea.
It was getting weird.
I asked her if she was happy with the way she looked.
She said she was.
"My goal is to keep the skin fresh. It is good even now. My skin is good-looking, I have to say."
She giggled.
I wanted to know what had made Jocelyne embark on this plastic surgery odyssey, the psychology behind it.
Was it really because her ex husband liked big cats and wanted her to look like one?
Or was it simply that she could not contemplate her perfect beauty fading?
But she had refused to admit to surgery, so I couldn't ask the question.
As Jocelyne talked, Lloyd sat in, occasionally translating my English questions into French for her.
His job seemed to be more than translator.
He was protective of her, for sure, and wanted to support her.
But there was more to it. He was there, I think, to make sure Jocelyne didn’t say anything she shouldn’t.
I’m beginning to understand the strange undercurrent I felt.
Following Jocelyne’s sudden death on New Year’s Eve, a few details have emerged.
She was reportedly under threat of arrest for ignoring orders at a Miami court regarding an unpaid $344,000 debt and had also been threatened with eviction from her Miami apartment.
But to me, they had to present a nice, composed facade and pretend everything was fine.
They didn’t really want to do an interview, but decided it was necessary to raise Jocelyne’s profile to reinvent herself as a reality star.
A two-part documentary about her life had been made. Lloyd said it was currently being edited.
Jocelyne said she and Lloyd were also midway through a book about her life.
The need to become a reality star had arisen from the fact that Jocelyne was now bankrupt.
In 1999, Jocelyne had divorced her husband, Alec, after finding him with a Russian model in one of her New York apartments.
It was said at the time she had been awarded a settlement of $2.5billion, plus $100million each year for the next 14 years.
So how on earth did Jocelyne get through all that money?
Jocelyne became enigmatic - her tactic whenever a difficult question was asked, while Lloyd was silent.
Unfortunately, she said, she could not discuss her finances.
There was some legal case which prevented her discussing the lost billions.
That undercurrent again.
I think, in the background, Jocelyne’s life was in utter chaos.
In their 20 years together, Jocelyne and Lloyd had had some spectacular fights.
One, at Jocelyne’s Trump Tower apartment, was so bad the pair were arrested.
We had a nice happy hour the same night and were getting ready for the New Year, and we took a little nap just to look good before getting dressed.
Lloyd Kline
In 2018, Lloyd bought Jocelyne a 32 carat engagement ring and ever since Lloyd, 57, had been referred to as her ‘fiance’.
So, I asked, when was the big day?
But no, apparently there had been no engagement, it was an invention of the press.
Jocelyne explained they didn’t feel the need.
It was strange.
Jocelyne Wildenstein, also known as Catwoman, died of a pulmonary embolism.
A pulmonary embolism is when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in your lungs, according to the NHS website.
Symptoms include difficulty breathing that come on suddenly, chest pain that gets worse when you breathe in and coughing up blood.
It can be life threatening if not treated urgently.
At hospital, you are likely to be given an injection of anticoagulant medicine to stop the blood clots getting bigger.
Maybe Jocelyne was waiting for the time the millions would start flowing and she could get married in style.
Or maybe it had reached the point they couldn’t even afford a marriage licence.
There was another point I wanted to clear up: Jocelyne’s age.
In some reports she was 84, in others she was 79.
She was adamant she was 79, born on 7 September 1945, explaining a newspaper had mistakenly matched her to her late husband's birthday.
A report the New York Post ran in 1999 gave her age at the time as 54, which would make her 79 when she died.
Just as with her age, it seems even the spelling of Jocelyne's name can't be agreed upon either. Is it Jocelyne, or Jocelyn?
I checked later with Lloyd - he said Jocelyne with an e was correct.
The more chaotic Jocelyne’s life became, the more she and Lloyd were determined to keep up appearances.
I have no idea how they could afford to live in their hotel apartment.
In the weeks before she died, the pair always looked immaculate in matching designer black outfits, strolling around Paris.
Jocelyne was in denial about plastic surgery, and everything else.
The statement Lloyd gave after her death which said she suffered a pulmonary embolism was telling.
"We had a nice happy hour the same night and were getting ready for the New Year, and we took a little nap just to look good before getting dressed."
Typical - they had to keep up the pretence.
Jocelyne’s life had skidded off the rails and was out of control, but only she and Lloyd must know it.
I had the impression during our interview that Lloyd was very attached to Jocelyne, proud of her, even.
And it’s true that she was an incredible woman.
She told me about the 66,000 acre big game ranch she used to run in Kenya with her ex-husband, how she used to fly her own plane notching up 3,000 flying hours.
She used to take Lloyd flying in a rented plane in the British Virgin Islands, where the Wildensteins have a vast property.
How did it all come to this? We may never know.
Lloyd described finding Jocelyne lifeless beside him.
"We were having a nap and when I wake up I said, 'Jocelyne, we have to wake up, we have to get dressed' and she was cold and she was dead.”
As our interview drew to a close, Jocelyne said, “I am so secret, I don’t like to speak about me.”
That was probably the most candid thing she said.
Yet ultimately, I think, it was one of those interviews where you gain more insight from what is not said, than from what is said.
At the end, the lines between fact and fiction in Jocelyne Wildenstein’s life had become blurred.
She had created her own reality, her own delusion.
