Chrissy Teigen has vowed to seek “self-improvement and change” after weeks of controversy over her past comments on social media.
The model and cookbook author published a Medium blog post on Monday night, in which she acknowledged having experienced the “crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past”.
“There is simply no excuse for my past horrible tweets,” Chrissy wrote. “My targets didn’t deserve them. No one does. Many of them needed empathy, kindness, understanding and support, not my meanness masquerading as a kind of casual, edgy humor.”
“I was a troll, full stop,” she added. “And I am so sorry.”
Chrissy’s latest comments come about a month after Courtney Stodden accused her of routinely bullying them online.
The reality star recalled old tweets sent by Chrissy in 2011 in which she told the then-16-year-old to kill themself.
“She wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself,” they told The Daily Beast in May. “Things like, ‘I can’t wait for you to die.’”
Just days after Courtney made the allegations, Chrissy apologised in a Twitter thread.
“I’m mortified and sad at who I used to be,” she wrote at the time. “I was an insecure, attention seeking troll.”
Earlier this month, Netflix confirmed she’d dropped out of a planned appearance on the series Never Have I Ever amid the controversy.
On Monday, Chrissy steered clear of mentioning Courtney by name, noting only that she’d “apologised publicly to one person.”
Much of her blog, however, read like a preemptive mea culpa to others who might come forward with similar claims.
“Words have consequences and there are real people behind the Twitter handles I went after,” she said. “I wasn’t just attacking some random avatar, but hurting young women — some who were still girls — who had feelings. How could I not stop and think of that?”
Elsewhere in the blog post, Chrissy described a clear division between her social media commentary and real-life behaviour, and noted that she was “in the process of privately reaching out to the people I insulted”.
“I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance,” she added. “I ask that you allow me, as I promise to allow you, to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self improvement and change.”
The 35-year-old has more than 13.5 million Twitter followers, and is generally known for her witty, effervescent musings.
However, her social media presence has become more checkered as of late. Just weeks before Courtney went public with their allegations, the mum of two announced she was quitting Twitter, explaining that she’d become “a different human” in the decade-plus she’d been active on the social network.
By mid-April, she reactivated her account, noting, “turns out it feels TERRIBLE to silence yourself and also no longer enjoy belly chuckles randomly throughout the day”.
