“I’m not yanking on shriveled-up cow balls,” Bunnie Xo says.
Oh, the places our conversation goes when we sync up to discuss the Dumb Blonde podcast host’s memoir, Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic, out now.
Bunnie’s multitasking — she’s in the middle of a two-hour style fitting — but has me belly-laughing about life on her 500-acre Nashville-area farm with husband Jelly Roll. More specifically, the time they castrated their bull, Crunch. It involved wrapping wire around the bull’s testicles, then — when they didn’t naturally fall off — twisting off the “stiff leather satchel.”
Ultimately, Bunnie (real name: Alisa DeFord) found the task so “disgusting” she punted it to her best friend. She did, however, dispose of the leftover parts. Where? “I threw them into the freaking forest,” says the 46-year-old.
Her experience with farm life provides levity to a deeper conversation about a life that has, frankly, been awful at times. She had an abusive childhood. Her first career was in sex work. There was relationship abuse. Addiction. Arrests. Pregnancy loss. Infertility. Depression. Suicidal ideation.
“I didn’t want to sugarcoat stuff,” says Bunnie, who certainly doesn’t in her memoir. “Where’s the lesson in that? I want people to read it and look at it as: She was a terrible human. She admits to it. But she doesn’t stay in it. She went on this journey of making herself better.”
She doesn’t spare herself in the telling — or anyone else for that matter.
“If people wanted me to talk better about them, then they should have treated me better,” she says. “I’m not saying I’m a victim. I’m not saying I didn’t treat people terribly myself, but at least I admit to it.”
That bluntness defines the autobiography — and, as it turns out, her marriage.
Bunnie met Jelly Roll (real name: Jason DeFord) at a Moonshine Bandits concert in 2015. Neither of them was the person they are today. She was a high-end call girl. He had his own history: After stints in jail for aggravated robbery and drug dealing, among other charges, he was trying to launch a singing career.
Bunnie Xo was supported by Jelly Roll on her Stripped Down: Unfiltered and Unapologetic book tour stop in Nashville on Feb. 22, 2026.
(John Shearer via Getty Images)
He was already in a growth mindset, though. The first time Bunnie tried to sleep with him, he resisted, insisting they first discuss their long-term goals, which they sealed with a pinky promise. She says he was never judgmental of her profession, especially after learning how much she was paid. (Per the book: $1,000 for dinner; anything intimate starting at $5,000.)
Bunnie continued her sex work after they eloped in Las Vegas in 2016 because it paid the bills. She retired from being a call girl in 2020, shifting to OnlyFans instead, where she made her first million. She officially quit all sex work in 2022, thanks to the success of her podcast — not to mention Jelly Roll’s rise in country music.
I ask how they set boundaries around her sex work when they were married.
“On the street, there are different sets of rules than there are in real life — or ‘square’ life,” Bunnie says. “It was always understood between us that it was just a job. I never mixed business with pleasure. It was like an acting job.”
For them, it was about autonomy, not secrecy.
“My husband never put stipulations on me,” she says. “That’s one thing I’ve loved about [him]. He’s never tried to change me, and I’ve never tried to change him. We just let each other evolve — and ended up wanting to be better humans for each other.”
It doesn’t mean their relationship is perfect.
She writes about feeling broken after discovering “J,” as she calls him, had a 10-month affair early in their marriage. Their marriage wasn’t undone by the sex: While they don’t have an open marriage, it’s what she describes as “free,” which can involve other women — but it was rocked by his dishonesty about it.
“Everybody’s always quick to say, ‘Oh, I would have left,’” says Bunnie, who was previously married two other times. “That’s easy to say. Was it wrong what he did? Absolutely. But I’m happy that situation happened because it was another catalyst in our fairy tale — of moving forward, of getting through, of learning how to choose each other.”
She adds, “Because real marriage is waking up and choosing that person. Even when they get on your nerves. Even when you don’t feel like you’re in love with that person. You are still waking up day after day, choosing that person.”
Bunnie compares her arc — from Las Vegas-based escort to Hollywood red carpets — to the 1990 film Pretty Woman, albeit with her own revision.
“Pretty Woman was this beautiful fairy tale of a working girl who finds a man who saves her,” she says. “My story is more about me. I found a great dude, and we saved ourselves. We changed together. We grew together. Parts of my book weren’t always beautiful, but in the end, we do get the happy ending.”
That transparency, she believes, is why fans root for them.
“There’s always going to be naysayers and trolls, but the world has been so accepting,” she says. “I think it’s because we have been 100% honest since the beginning. There weren’t any gotcha moments. Anything that anybody knows about my husband and me, we have told them. Whether they used it as ammo [or not], they heard everything from us. It was never a surprise.”
Still, success hasn’t erased self-doubt. I ask if she’s had any “You’re obviously in the wrong place” moments like Julia Roberts’s Pretty Woman character did.
“My girlfriends and I went to Rodeo [Drive] to meet my husband the other day,” she says. “[He] can walk into any high-fashion store in sweats and a T-shirt … and nobody has an issue with it. But we had just left the gym and, I don’t know, I felt so out of place. I think I have more imposter syndrome than anything. It’s hard for me to rub shoulders with people, because I’m just like, How am I even here?”
The couple at the Grammy Awards on Feb. 1, where Jelly Roll won Best Contemporary Country Album. In his speech, he said he would have been “dead or in jail” if it weren’t for Bunnie.
(Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Marrying Jelly Roll also made Bunnie a mother to his daughter, Bailee, 17; they have full custody of the teen. (Jelly Roll also has a son, Noah, 9, whom they refrain from discussing publicly.) The couple has been trying to expand their family through IVF. They already have a surrogate and hope to have twins.
She says undergoing IVF has “brought me closer to God. It has taught me to lean on God and trust the process — that this life is a journey and everything’s on God’s watch, not ours.”
While she once explored occult practices, such as having witches perform spells for her, “as I got into this IVF journey, it really turned me away from all of that,” she says. “When I wake up in the morning, I talk to God. I just talk to him like he’s my homie, because I really feel like Jesus is a cool dude.”
She’s defining that relationship in her own way, as she tends to do.
“I don’t believe in organized religion,” Bunnie explains. “I’m still on my journey with a church. I don’t speak about this very publicly. I don’t like the way some churches are run and how the people in the congregation act with each other. That doesn’t mean that every church is like that, but I think you can love God and have fellowship with [him] in your house [and through] your words and your actions in the world. There’s more to having a relationship with God than sitting in a church.”
Faith anchors the couple in their overall glow-up that has been years in the making: Her growing platform with Dumb Blonde and this book. His recent Grammy win and focus on health. They’re healthy. Hopeful. Intentional.
“We’ve never been here,” she says. “We’re excited. This is what we sat down and dreamt about the first night we were together — our five-year plan. We’re like: ‘What’s next?’ Anytime something happens, we just look at each other, like little kids, going, ‘Are you kidding me? This is crazy. What’s next?’”
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