Chappell Roan has addressed a viral incident in which footballer Jorginho claimed a member of her security team reduced his 11-year-old stepdaughter, Ada, whom his wife Catherine Harding shares with Jude Law, to tears at a hotel in São Paulo, Brazil.
In a video posted to Instagram Stories on 22 March, the Grammy winner was clear: she had no idea any of it was happening, and the security guard involved was not acting on her behalf.
“I didn’t even see a woman and a child. No one came up to me,” she said. “No one bothered me. Like, I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel. I think these people were staying at the hotel, as well.”
She added: “I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child. They did not come up to me. They weren’t doing anything.”
Chappell, 28, was equally clear that she disagreed with the guard’s actions.
“It’s unfair for security to just assume someone doesn’t have good intentions when they have no reason to believe, because there’s no action even taken,” she said.
“I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children. Like, that is crazy.” She closed with a direct apology to the pair involved.
“I’m sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming that you would do something and if you felt uncomfortable. That makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”
The incident had been described the previous day by Jorginho on his own Instagram Stories.
The footballer alleged that his wife and daughter were eating breakfast at the same hotel as Chappell ahead of her Lollapalooza performance on 21 March, when Ada spotted the singer walking past and simply looked over to confirm it was her.
“She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask for anything,” Jorginho wrote, describing the moment as no more than a glance and a smile before his daughter returned to her seat.
What happened next, according to Jorginho, was disproportionate.
A security guard allegedly approached their table “in an extremely aggressive manner,” telling Catherine she shouldn’t allow her daughter to “disrespect” or “harass” other people, and reportedly threatening to file a complaint with the hotel, all while Ada sat listening.
“My 11-year-old daughter was sitting there in tears,” he wrote, adding that she “was extremely shaken and cried a lot” in the aftermath.
Chappell has faced scrutiny in the past over how she manages boundaries with fans and paparazzi.
This time, however, she was quick to make clear the distinction between setting reasonable boundaries and what she described as an unjustified assumption about a child who had done nothing wrong.
