ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Elon Musk’s sister Tosca Musk recently said that people often have the conception that the Tesla founder’s family were 'born rich'. “And it’s like: ‘ah, no,’” she stated. While scouting a location for her film production company, Tosca, said “the location was going to cost $5,000 [£4,000] a day but when they heard my name and assumed we were rich, they decided to charge us $25,000 [£20,000]. That’s not exactly fair, is it?”
“Everyone assumes my eldest brother pays for everything, but he does not,” she told while speaking to the Daily Mail in London, where she has travelled from her Atlanta, Georgia home, to attend the premiere of her latest Passionflix film, ‘Gabriel’s Redemption’. When asked if Musk contributes money or advice to her business, Tosca said, ‘Well, it’s a double-edged sword for me to say whether my brother has helped in any way. If I say no, then people will say he does not support me at all and if I say yes, they’ll think he paid for everything. But I hope he watches the films. They are definitely an education service for men in how to behave with women!”
What is known about Tosca Musk?
Musk was born on July 20, 1974, to her parents, Errol and Maye Musk, in South Africa and grew up with her two older brothers: Kimbal and Elon. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a BFA degree in film studies in 1997. Tosca is the CEO and co-founder of the OTT streaming platform Passionflix, described as “sexy Hallmark Channel” by The New York Times.
She has worked as an executive producer and director of several feature films, television programs, and web content. Tosca produced and directed her first feature film, ‘Puzzled’ in 2001 under Musk Entertainment. The Space X founder served as the executive producer of the film. Shortly after, Tosca produced ‘The Truth About Miranda’, before producing over a dozen of feature films, TV movies and series, including the teen horror film, ‘Cruel World' and other titles like ‘The Heavy’ and the TV drama, ‘We Have Your Husband.’
She also produced three TV movies in 2011 which aired on Lifetime and Hallmark in 2012. Tosca partnered with Jeff Macpherson in 2005, to produce the ‘Tiki Bar TV’ web series. In 2017, the filmmaker founded Passionflix, a streaming service that creates movies out of romance novels. As of 2022, the platform charged $6 per month for service and raised $22 million in funding. As part of her work for the platform, Tosca has directed feature films like Alessandra Torre's ‘Hollywood Dirt’, Sylvia Day's ‘Afterburn/Aftershock’, Rachel van Dyken's ‘The Matchmaker's Playbook’, K. Bromberg's ‘Driven', Jodi Ellen Malpas' ‘The Protector’, and Sylvain Reynard's ‘Gabriel's Inferno’ series.
On the personal front, Tosca is mother to twins, ten-year-old daughter, Isabeau, and son, Grayson, who were conceived through a sperm donor and IVF. “I was 37 and had just ended a relationship with a nice person, but not somebody that you’d want to get married to. I wanted to have children but I didn’t actually want to be in a relationship with anybody to have these children with and so I decided to have them on my own with in vitro and an anonymous sperm donor,” she told Daily Mail in her latest interview.
‘I’ve always had an older head on young shoulders’
Speaking to the publication, Tosca discussed if it was tiring to get approached by people who are hoping to get closer to her brother. "It happens all the time," she said. “But I have a finely-tuned bullsh*t-ometer so I don’t let it get that far and the answer is always no,” the filmmaker added. Tosca also spoke about her mother, Maye, 75, and revealed that it was Maye who introduced her to the romance genre in their native South Africa.
“On Sundays we would rent the VHS tapes of all the Judith Krantz and Danielle Steel adaptations, such as Mistral’s Daughter or I’ll Take Manhattan, and it would be our day of treats,” Tosca recalled. “She tries hard to come to all of my events and my brothers’ events even though she has her own extremely busy career,” she added. Maye is a dietitian and model who appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s famed swimsuit issue, last year.
Speaking about her turbulent life in the early years amid her parents’ complicated relationship, Tosca said, “While there were some really, really horrible times, I try not to focus on those because that doesn’t get you anywhere. I had an incredible mother who took care of me, and great brothers.” Maye left Errol, in what she claimed was the only way to escape an alleged abusive marriage. Tosca was just five years old at the time.
“There’s a perception that we had so much money growing up but that is not the truth. After my parents divorced, my mum and brothers and I were together and we didn’t have any money,” the Passionflix founder reiterated. Tosca added that she and her brothers “worked ever since we were able to read and write” while their mother did five jobs at one point to raise her children.
“My mum had a dietetics practice at home, so from the age of around nine I would be her receptionist, answering the phone, taking appointments and booking her schedule, and in the evenings, I would help her type up letters to the doctors,” Tosca remembered. “Then, when she was doing modeling, she couldn’t afford childcare so she took us to work. I would sometimes go with her and help the models with their quick changes, or she would take us to the fashion shows and we’d all sit in the audience doing our homework, waiting for her to be done,” she added.
Despite her struggles, Tosca believes she had a good childhood. “I was taken care of and loved by my family. My mum was always of the attitude that if you don’t like something, come up with a plan to change it. You can’t just sit there and wallow in misery. So that’s very much how all of us in the family have operated,” she mentioned. “But as children, we were given a lot of freedom and with it, a lot of expected responsibility in the sense of: you should take care of yourself and you should learn how to cook and clean. You had to be supportive of the people who were doing everything they could to support you in life,” Tosca stated in the interview.
“I think I’ve always had an older head on young shoulders and I’ve felt the age I am now for as long as I can remember. But from birth we were always encouraged to think for ourselves and come up with ideas as to how we could support ourselves,” she added.
