Chrissy Teigen: I was a troll and I’m so sorry
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
Chrissy Teigen’s apology to Courtney Stodden for trolling apparently was just the tip of the iceberg.
On Monday, Teigen shared a lengthy Medium piece she wrote in which she talks about her “VERY humbling few weeks.”
“I know I’ve been quiet, and lord knows you don’t want to hear about me, but I want you to know I’ve been sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment, the ultimate ‘sit here and think about what you’ve done,'” Teigen wrote. “Not a day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past.”
Last month, Stodden, who identifies as nonbinary, went public with Teigen being cruel to them on social media years ago after Stodden, then 16, married then 50-year-old actor Doug Hutchison.
“(Teigen) wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself,” Stodden told The Daily Beast. “Things like, ‘I can’t wait for you to die.'”
Teigen apologized to Stodden, who has since gotten divorced from Hutchison.
Reflecting on it in her Medium piece, Teigen wrote, “As you know, a bunch of my old awful (awful, awful) tweets resurfaced.”
“I’m truly ashamed of them,” Teigen wrote. “As I look at them and understand the hurt they caused, I have to stop and wonder: How could I have done that?”
According to Teigen, there are “more than just a few” people she needs to publicly apologize to and she says she’s been reaching out to some of the people she was mean to privately.
Those people, she wrote, “needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor.”
“I was a troll, full stop,” Teigen said. “And I am so sorry.”
The backlash on social media has been massive and resulted in Teigen tweeting an apology May 12.
In the piece published Monday, Teigen wrote, “I want to go a little further here, thinking of those I’ve hurt and friends I’ve disappointed” with what she called her “snark at some celebrities” that she did via “jokes, random observations.”
“In reality, I was insecure, immature and in a world where I thought I needed to impress strangers to be accepted,” Teigen wrote. “If there was a pop culture pile-on, I took to Twitter to try to gain attention and show off what I at the time believed was a crude, clever, harmless quip. I thought it made me cool and relatable if I poked fun at celebrities.”
Teigen said her piece was to provide people context, not to portray herself as a victim. She’s grown since then, she said, married, had children, gotten therapy and been on the receiving end of enough trolling to understand the damage she has done.
“I’m more understanding of what motivates trolling — the instant gratification that you get from lashing out and clapping back, throwing rocks at someone you think is invincible because they’re famous,” she wrote. “Also, I know now how it feels to be on the receiving end of incredible vitriol. Believe me, the irony of this is not lost on me.”
