The drama surrounding Chappell Roan, her security guard, Italian football star Jorginho Frello, and his 11-year-old stepdaughter is not over quite yet. Catherine Harding, the mother of the girl who was allegedly berated by a security guard after sneaking a peak at Roan during breakfast at a São Paulo hotel, has now shared her side of the incident.
Harding acknowledged Roan’s claim that the security guard who confronted her daughter was not her “personal security,” but also doubted he worked for the hotel. “100% this security guard was not a security guard of the hotel. That’s what I can say,” she remarked. “He looks after artists, so. I don’t know if it was her personal security guard, but he was with her. So that’s all I know.”
“Did she send him to do it? Again, I don’t know,” Harding continued. “Look, I would like to hope not, but at the same time, I think that you have a responsibility when you are a celebrity to make sure, I guess, that the people that work for you and that act on your behalf are acting on your behalf. So, would he do that if he didn’t have her authority to do so? I don’t know if he does; then obviously that’s a big problem because then he’s representing her in a way that she doesn’t want to be represented. So I think that’s really important for her to notice and realize that’s not correct.”
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Harding went on to detail the incident as she said it went down:
“Literally, we were staying in the same hotel. We were at breakfast. And we noticed a girl walk past with long red hair, very curly. And I said to my daughter, ‘Oh, do you think that’s Chappell Roan?’ and she looked and she said, ‘Oh my God, Mum, do you think it’s her?’ And so she said, ‘I’m gonna go and have a look outside,’ and she was sat just outside in the garden area which we were also free to go into; the door was open.
“And so I went back to the table to sit and eat, and my daughter walked through the door. She didn’t have her phone, she didn’t try to take a picture, she didn’t approach her. She literally didn’t do anything; she just looked at her and smiled, and she came back and she actually said to me, ‘Mum, I don’t know if it’s her.’ Because obviously she looks like—you know, with her costumes and everything—she looks a little bit different. So my daughter said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m not—I’m not sure if it was her. I think it was her, Mum. It really, really looks like her, but I don’t know; maybe it’s her sister.’ She said, ‘Maybe it’s her sister,’ and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, darling,’ and that was it. We continued our breakfast.
“From that, then came the security guard who, as I said—as my husband said—had a very aggressive tone. And I feel like was—if she did not send him… I mean, even if she did send him or she didn’t send him, I don’t know. For me, I feel like it really overstepped a boundary because he is quite an intimidating—he is very large. So for him to come over to a table with just a woman and her daughter eating breakfast to kind of like berate and scold us and say that he was going to complain, and tell me that I should be teaching my daughter to be better and that she’s badly educated and we should respect people’s privacy and we should not harass people and all of these other things.
“And I did try and explain to him the situation—that she’s a child and she was just very excited to see an artist and singer that she admires—and can he not understand that was all she was doing? I explained to him also that my husband is also very well-known and that we’re very—she’s very used to being around people that are well-known and she would never cross someone’s boundaries or overstep a mark. She very much knows the limits; not to ever, you know, be rude or make anyone feel… she understands; she understands very well.
“And I tried to explain this to him, and then he just kept saying, ‘Well, if you—if—if that’s the case, then you should know better. You should know how it is. You should know how it is, so you should teach your—you should teach her to be better. You shouldn’t allow her to be like this.’ And I was—I was shocked. And I did actually say to him at the time, I said, ‘Well, if this is the case that she doesn’t even want people to look at her, she is very welcome to eat breakfast in her room because this here is a public area and I am a paying guest as well as her. So if I want to walk past someone’s table and look at them, I have every right to do so. I am not approaching her. I’m not doing anything to make her feel intimidated or nothing—like this 11-year-old child.’”
Harding said she and her daughter came to Sao Paõlo specifically to see Roan perform at Lollapalooza Brasil. “It was my daughter’s birthday present; she actually asked for tickets to come for her birthday present,” Harding explained. However, because of the incident, they did not end up going to the show.
For her part, Roan said she was unaware of the entire incident and stressed that she does not “hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children.”
@consequence Catherine Harding, the mother of the girl who was allegedly berated by a security guard after sneaking a peak at Chappell Roan during breakfast at a São Paulo hotel, has now shared her side of the incident. #chappellroan #brasil #saopaulo
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