‘If I Do Not Stand Up for Myself, I Will Quit’

Last year, the public heat around Chappell Roan intensified after she posted a series of TikToks hoping to clarify her stance on the presidential election after an interview quote was taken widely out of context. Each new video only gave viewers more to nitpick over. Some questioned why Roan wouldn’t just let it go. Why not let people believe what they want, even if they’re wrong? In a recent interview on TS Madison’s Outlaws, the 26-year-old explained why defending herself and drawing boundaries is the only way she can continue being in the music industry.

“I cannot bear people saying I’m something I’m not. That’s what’s really hard online. People just assume you’re the villain,” Roan said. The first intense wave of backlash came this past August when she set boundaries around her private and public personas. She communicated that while she was experiencing the most success of her career, she also had never felt more unsafe as she navigated harassment and stalking. She was, in turn, slammed for being entitled and ungrateful.

On Outlaws, she likened the response to how Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton were treated. “That behavior is still, they’re still doing it,” she said. “Do you want me to just get to the point where I become agoraphobic? Or so stressed out, or so anxious to perform? You want me to get to that point? Because if I don’t say anything, I will. If I do not stand up for myself, I will quit because I cannot bear this. I cannot bear people touching me who I don’t know. I cannot bear people following me.”

Roan referenced the popular X account Pop Crave, which posts the latest happenings in pop culture and often shares pull quotes from interviews published by established outlets, in a game of “Ban it, Bitch!” with Outlaws. Quite a few of the public’s online fallouts with the singer began with posts from Pop Crave. It’s not necessarily that the account itself is framing her in a bad light. Rather, it presents quotes that can be easily misconstrued without necessary context and allows users to have a field day in its quotes and comments sections like a pop star gladiator colosseum.

This treatment has followed Roan offline before, too. She’s called out photographers on red carpets for yelling at her on more than one occasion, only to later be called a brat and a villain online. “I’ve been treated better at my doughnut shop job than I have on a fucking carpet,” Roan said. “People on the news treat me worse than how customers did. And I think when I started to say, ‘Don’t talk to me like that’ … That doesn’t mean that I’m a villain or ungrateful for what I have. It’s like, ‘Why is this customary?’”

From Rolling Stone US.