Chappell Roan politely confronts rude photographer, controversy ensues

In addition to her actual job as one of the planet’s most quickly rising pop artists, Chappell Roan has also taken on a sort of unwanted cultural side hustle: Serving as the vessel for society’s ongoing arguments with itself about how pop stars “should” conduct themselves in public. That came into sharp profile this weekend, when a clip of Roan walking the red carpet for Olivia Rodrigo’s new concert film Guts World Tour went viral online. In the widely circulated video, Roan—who’s talked quite a bit about the many ways becoming an overnight pop sensation is kind of genuinely awful—sees a photographer she recognizes and steps out of the line to address them, telling them they shouted at her at a Grammy’s party several months back. “Don’t do that to another artist again. I deserve an apology for that,” Roan can be heard saying on the video, adding, “You need to apologize to me.” Eventually, a handler for the red carpet leads her away from the “confrontation”—which, we feel moved to note, was conducted at conversational tone and with complete politeness, and yet has still set off the typical hubbub of condemnation from the kinds of people who get extremely mad when pop stars act like they have a basic right to not be harassed. (It also, to be fair, provoked loud and vociferous defenders praising her actions, and often saying she “ate” in the clip, which we can only assume is positive despite being too personally 40-years-old to understand it.)

Roan’s rise over the past year or so has seen her move into a position where she’s making more headlines from the conversations surrounding her than from actual music. (Although she did get the Kidz Bop treatment earlier this month, the true definition of musically making it.) Notably, Roan dropped out of a performance at the All Things Go Festival back in late September, citing the basic overwhelming crush of her meteoric rise combined with getting drowned in minor controversies that seem largely rooted in going from “fairly regular person” to “internationally famous” in a very short amount of time. Now, clips of her, basically, saying “Please be less of a dick to me and other people in future” have picked up 14.3 million views, suggesting she’s now well and truly trapped in the vortex. God bless, and good luck; we genuinely wouldn’t wish it on anyone.