As his desperate battle to avoid extradition to the UK reached a Miami courtroom last week, self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate wheeled out what he must have hoped would be his trump card.
Who would have thought, given the vile rhetoric upon which he built his online empire, that the most potent weapon in the alleged rapist’s legal armoury would turn out to be a woman?
Dressed demurely in black, her glossy dark hair swept neatly into an up-do, Natasha Sesay took to the stand to describe Tate as ‘calm, thoughtful and caring’ – not a bit, in fact, like the female-bashing alpha male persona which has brought him global notoriety and, he brags, a multi-million-pound fortune.
‘It’s not real life,’ trilled 35-year-old Natasha, from Chelmsford in Essex, while giving evidence at a federal bail hearing for 39-year-old Tate and his 38-year-old brother Tristan.
‘A lot of it is comedy. It’s a very different character from the person you see online versus the one I know personally.’
Claiming to have known the former professional kickboxer for five-and-a-half years, she insisted Tate, whose foul-mouthed sexist rants have garnered him more than ten million followers and a business empire worth millions, was not only a loving partner but also a devoted parent.
She told the court that they have a child who is eight-and-a-half months old and are expecting a second in a few weeks via surrogacy.
‘He’s a great father,’ she concluded.
So what should we make of this strikingly sanitised portrait of a man whose hideous outpourings about women have seen him banned from all major social media platforms for violating hate speech guidelines?
As well as facing criminal proceedings in the US and Romania, Tate and his brother are wanted back in Britain on 56 charges involving rape and sex trafficking.
Can it really be possible that he is a dedicated family man; that all the woman-hating male supremacy he has spouted in recent years was simply part of an elaborate money-spinning act?
Self-styled misogynist influencer Andrew Tate with his 35-year-old partner, Natasha Sesay
Court sketch of the mother of his child giving evidence during Tate’s battle against extradition
In fact, as the Daily Mail discovered this week, Tate’s relationship with the woman he referred to as ‘one of my chicks’ during an interview just three years ago is a tad more complicated than the rose-tinted impression given by Natasha in court last week – just a few feet away from where self-styled ‘Top G’ Tate sat shackled, in a tan-coloured prison uniform.
We have spoken exclusively to those that know Natasha, including her 66-year-old father who had dinner with his daughter and Tate just a week before the latter’s arrest in the US in July.
More, in a moment, of Natasha’s father’s first impressions of the notorious man his daughter is linked to.
A former friend back in the UK has also given an insight into Natasha’s life with Tate, first in Romania from where he ran his lucrative webcam pornography empire and, more recently, in Dubai where he moved last year with his entourage.
‘I think she feels she is the “chosen one” because she has lived with him in his main house in Romania for years and in Dubai. He’s bought her a house, designer bags and a boob job,’ they said.
So what on earth attracted Natasha to a man who claims that ‘monogamy is not natural’ and brags about having sex with all the women in his orbit because, according to his own perverse belief system, it guarantees their unwavering loyalty?
Former neighbours from Brentwood in Essex, where she grew up with her divorced mother Tracy and younger brother Nathan, remember Natasha as a ‘sweet and lovely’ girl whose parents separated when she was small.
Father Alex, who was born in Sierra Leone, moved to the US 30 years ago. Natasha attended a large co-ed secondary in Brentwood but dropped out without completing her A-levels when her mother became ill.
She found work in sales, taking jobs with carmakers Ford and Land Rover before starting work in 2013 with house-building company Bellway Homes.
The same year, aged 23, she embarked on a long-term relationship with a local car dealer to whom she got engaged and bought a house with.
That relationship ended amicably in 2020 – a year before she met Tate.
By then, she is said to have been earning around £60,000 a year from her sales work and the modelling she’d begun, appearing in music videos and promotions. She met Tate in 2021 after taking a hostess job with supercar event company, The Cannon Run, of which he was then a director.
In a 2021 video clip, she can be seen sitting behind him on a rented private jet transporting his entourage from Biggin Hill airport in Kent to Ibiza.
One of several videos showing the couple, who are both originally from Britain, together
Natasha straddling Tate during a video in which he describes how to have a ‘good’ relationship
Two years later, during a podcast interview he gave to Canadian YouTubers The Nelk Boys, Tate referred to ‘the chick Tash’ when asked who was on ‘cigar duty’, adding: ‘It’s a chick, one of my chicks, you know. One of my wives. I’ve got four wives.’
She can also be seen straddling Tate during a work-out and being lifted by him into a flashy car in a promotional video he released about how to have a good relationship.
‘For them to look up to you with authority you have to show some confidence,’ says Tate in a voice over.
‘They’re not going to completely bend over and comply with you just because you have a d***. Because I’m telling you, if you meet a woman who’s half good and you’re the Big G, she’ll behave.’
‘When they met it was as girlfriend and boyfriend,’ the friend said, adding that Natasha was ‘very strong-minded’ and not the kind of woman to be taken advantage of. ‘If she was being victimised, she would know about it’.
The friend added: ‘She is definitely one of his partners.’
Self-confessed womaniser Tate has frequently boasted of having a ‘roster’ of four girlfriends and being ‘loyal’ to all of them. In his twisted world that means looking after them, financially and physically, while they are expected to take care of him, his children and his home and remain absolutely faithful while turning a blind eye to his own promiscuity.
He laid bare this disturbing domestic set-up in a 2021 podcast interview.
‘What’s the point in pretending you’re with a guy and pretending he’s loyal? These girls are making good money. They’re living a very good life. They’re with a man they love. They’re with these other girls who are their best friends. There’s no disrespect in the house. My girls just understood, “I’m f****** all of you. If you don’t like it, leave”.’
He expanded on his theme in ‘The Tate Bible’, his self-penned guide to wealth, success and masculine power, describing how he had ‘a little penthouse with my hottest girls. The ones I actually wanted to spend time with’.
He added: ‘It would be me and the three of them, f****** and watching TV. Chilling. All would say in private, “I wish we were alone sometimes. I’d do anything to be just us”.’
While he’s been vague on exactly how many children he has, when pressed he admitted that it was around ‘10 or 12’.
Asked if the children had different mothers, he said: ‘Not all different but there’s been a few ovens to bake the bread.’
Andrew Tate, 39, with his 38-year-old brother Tristan. Both face charges in several countries
Tate, who said he had converted to Islam in 2022, went on: ‘I need 20 kids so, you know, I have no choice but to have four wives as Allah intended.’
Legal documents filed in Florida last year give a further insight into a disturbing arrangement which, from the outside, bears all the hallmarks of a harem. In one, US lawyers for one of their alleged victims say the Tate brothers deliberately created ‘jealousy and competition among the women which they can manipulate to their benefit’.
The same document refers to another woman living inside Tate’s home who ‘desperately wants to have a child with’ him.
The document features reams of text messages between Tate and another long-term female associate with whom he was in a relationship.
In one message, he mentions ‘another girl coming to the house for a week’ to work as a ‘cam girl’.
Using a slang word meaning ‘to scam’, he tells the other woman: ‘You need to famoose her like you did with Tash.’
On another occasion, according to the document, he asked the same woman to talk to ‘another woman he was dating, Natasha, to spy on her and report back’.
When Tate asks for an update, the woman tells him: ‘She just talked about you and her and how you’ve gone together places and how nice it is when you take her with you. How much she loves when you spend time with her and how you do things for her to show that you love her. That you want her to move in with you full time after the Cannon Run and spend more time together as a couple.’
Tate replies: ‘She’s testing you to see if you get mad… She’s running her mouth. You’re reporting to me. She’s a f****** child. You’re a real woman.’
He adds: ‘This is why it’s important you and I work together and just control them all.’
Natasha’s father Alex claims that he saw a very different side to Tate when he ate lunch with him and Natasha recently at Capital Grille, a Washington DC steak house popular with senior figures in Donald Trump’s orbit.
Tate, said Mr Sesay, took care of the bill at the restaurant, where a porcini-rubbed bone-in ribeye steak costs an eye-watering $93 (£67).
Speaking on the phone from his home in Maryland, he told the Daily Mail: ‘Everything was good. Natasha has never complained to me. I don’t interfere with my kids’ relationships.
Tate often shows himself in private jets, supercars and lavish houses to keep up his persona
‘The relationship between me and Mr Tate was cordial. There was mutual respect. He was very pleasant. He was very thoughtful and we talked about the grandkids. He told me he would take care of them and I said thank you.’
He added: ‘I just dealt with him as a human being and he seemed like a good guy.’
As for Natasha herself, Tate must have little reason to question her unwavering loyalty given her appearance in court last week.
‘I’m treated very well by Andrew at home,’ Natasha told the court, adding that her boyfriend has ‘never ever been violent toward women’. She said he was involved with his children and made them a priority.
Under cross-examination, Natasha admitted that Tate paid for her home in Dubai along with food, private health care, jewellery, cars, luxury bags and shoes.
She also revealed that British police raided her home in the UK and arrested her in February 2024 on suspicion of offences including prostitution, money laundering, tax evasion and modern slavery. She said she currently faces no charges.
‘It was frankly offensive,’ she told the court. ‘The things they were accusing me of were absolutely impossible.’
If anyone suspected that she was simply trying to portray her manipulative ‘manosphere’ influencer lover in a good light then, outside court, Tate’s lawyer Joseph McBride made a point of telling journalists that Natasha, who had flown from Dubai to give evidence, is ‘no pushover’ and that her ‘captivating’ testimony meant a lot to Tate.
He said the pair’s first child was born via IVF and that the second was being carried by a surrogate after Natasha suffered ‘brutal miscarriages’. The pair were committed to raising a family, he added.
US magistrate Judge Lauren Louis will issue a written ruling at a later date on whether to grant bail to Andrew and Tristan Tate.
At the hearing last Thursday – in which the brothers’ legal representatives also downplayed their wealth, insisting many of the cars and homes they film in are rented – defence lawyers claimed that the pair had complied with the terms of their release while battling charges in the UK and Romania.
But the British Embassy in the US has filed documents asking the judge to keep the brothers, who have boasted about having multiple passports, locked up while the UK pursues extradition. British authorities have until September 16 to submit a full extradition request.
Both men deny all the charges against them.
Andrew Tate told the court last week: ’I’ve never committed any of the crimes I’m accused of.’
He argued at length that his ‘Top G’ gangster persona was just ‘social media hyperbole’ and shouldn’t be taken literally.
But in the morally muddled world the brothers have created, the real challenge is knowing what is real and what is not.
