Allison Holker is sharing for the first time that there were two sides to her late husband. There was Stephen Boss, the man she knew intimately who would become her life partner and the father of her two children. And then there was Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the “entertainer” the public grew to love.
But in a new interview on Taylor Lautner and Tay Lautner’s podcast, The Squeeze, Holker shares that he wasn’t a natural extrovert. Fans certainly saw him that way, given his high-energy personality as the beloved DJ on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and his countless dance videos and inspirational messages on social media. But that personality didn’t come naturally to him, and in the end, it took its toll. Boss died by suicide in December 2022. He was 40.Â
“So, Stephen. It’s interesting. I knew him as Stephen. A lot of people knew him as ‘tWitch.’ Very two different humans,” Holker prefaced her answer when asked if “tWitch’s mental health struggles were always part of his life or a more recent challenge. “He wore this character of ‘tWitch,’ and it did become a part of who he was but that extroverted personality was not natural for him. So, when he would go out as ‘tWitch’ and make sure he’s spreading all this love and joy and positivity and be dancing all the time for people — an entertainer, and such — it would drain his energy. And he would have to come home and he would always tell me … our home was his safe place. So, he’d come home and have to really recharge his battery.”
But while for some recharging their battery can mean a host of relaxing activities, for Boss it meant diving into a darker space before digging himself out of that realm.
“When you’re saying recharge your battery that also comes with the state of depression because you get really low. And you had to let him have that space to really kind of find himself in a darker space, let him live in that,” Holker shared. “He would always find his way out, though. So, a lot of the things that Stephen and I would talk about would be these tools in which he was really trying to help himself, like, ‘I’m reading these self-help books. I’m listening to podcasts. I’m talking to friends. I’m trying to connect with people.'”
She continued, “And so I always thought that though you’re dealing with this low side of you that you don’t let other people see, it seemed like he was really treating it.”
For the better part of 13 years, Holker observed her husband addressing his mental health and being honest with himself. He’d often do so by being straightforward with her.
“Like, ‘I need to take a second for myself. I need a little bit of space. I need this,'” Holker recalled him saying. “But at the end of the day, I think there was maybe extra help he needed that I was unaware of at the time — talking to a therapist, maybe some medication as well. But I was unaware. I think he also was, ’cause I think he also thought he was taking care of it because he’d be like, ‘I’m low. Give me some time to build it back up.'”
Holker and Boss shared three children — Weslie, 16, Maddox, 8, and Zaia, 4. This past January, Holker spoke to ET and revealed that she didn’t dance for months after her husband died.
“I didn’t dance for I wanna say almost five months after [Boss’ death]. It took me a long time,” Holker admitted to ET. “That was something that was just so close, obviously, to each and every memory I really share with Stephen. It kind of crosses the area of our life individually, and especially together. There was parts of me that didn’t know if I was ready. It almost felt like, maybe if I dance for the first time it’s my final release of him. I don’t know if I was trying to hold onto him or if I was scared to share that with him. I’m not sure which one it was, but it took me a very long time to do it.”
“I will say, I called my friend Brittany Russell and I was like, ‘I think I’m ready to dance,’ but I didn’t want to do it alone. I was too scared to do it alone,” she continued. “I called her… She came over and we danced.”
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