Lily Allen, David Harbour heartbreak bombshell: The real ‘Madeline’ finally breaks her silence

It’s the question that gripped Lily Allen’s fanbase since her blistering new album West End Girl dropped on Friday...Who is Madeline?

The British pop star’s latest record does not shy away from addressing the brutal fallout of her four-year marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour.

One track that has sparked an online frenzy is called “Madeline”, an emotional and devastating confession of betrayal that leaves little to the imagination.

Rumours of infidelity have swirled for months, but Allen’s new lyrics confirm what many suspected. “Madeline” is not metaphorical she is the other woman.

Allen recounts confronting the other woman by text, singing, “How long has it been going on? Is it just sex or is there emotion?” And as the song ricochets across social media, her fans are asking the same thing she sings on the track: “Who the f..k is Madeline?”

After much speculation, the woman behind the alleged betrayal has now come forward.

The Daily Mail has identified Natalie Tippett, a 34-year-old costume designer and single mother from New Orleans. Ms Tippett has reportedly confirmed that she was at the centre of Allen’s marriage breakdown.

“Of course I’ve heard the song,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“But I have a family and things to protect. I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and I understand this is going on. It’s a little bit scary for me.”

Ms Tippett reportedly met Harbour, 50, while working on the Netflix film We Have a Ghost in 2021. It has been reported that their relationship began soon after filming started. At this time, Harbour was newly married to Allen, whom he had wed in Las Vegas the previous year.

It is believed that even after filming had ended, the affair continued. Harbour allegedly flew Ms Tippett to his home in Atlanta, Georgia, as the relationship and connection deepened in secret.

It has now been revealed that their relationship was discovered by Allen when the singer saw a text message between the pair. Allen wrote one of her songs titled Tennis, “So I read your text, and now I regret it… You won’t play with me, and who’s Madeline?” she sings.

In Madeline, Allen appears to mimic Ms Tippett’s voice: “It has only ever been about sex. I can promise you that this is not an emotional connection.”

Allen and Harbour confirmed their split in January, after separating quietly a month earlier.

She spent Christmas in Kenya with her two daughters, 13-year-old Ethel and 12-year-old Marnie, while Harbour remained in the US.

On her Miss Me? podcast that same month, Allen admitted she was struggling.

“I’m finding it hard to be interested in anything. I’m really not in a good place… I can’t concentrate on anything except the pain I’m going through. It’s really hard.”

Friends said she was “devastated” and sought trauma treatment after the breakup. She later told British Vogue she resisted turning back to alcohol or drugs to cope.

“The last time that I felt anything like that, drugs and alcohol were my way out, so it was excruciating to sit with those (feelings) and not to use them.”

Harbour, meanwhile, told GQ in April he wouldn’t discuss the split, saying it would only invite “a salacious s..t-show of humiliation”.

Friends allegedly say Allen had long suspected Harbour’s attention had strayed.

Allen, who has been sober for five years, is now back in London after selling their Brooklyn townhouse. She recently bought an ex-council flat near where she grew up.

“I have wanted to live in this building since I was a baby,” she told Vogue.

“It’s been a dream of mine forever.”

As for Madeline, the song has done what all great heartbreak anthems do: turned private devastation into global conversation.

Ms Tippett, for her part, just wants it to quiet down.

“I have a family,” she said. “It’s a little bit scary for me.”