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IRISH SINGER CATHERINE Harding said a security guard “berated” her and her daughter after an encounter with singer Chappell Roan.
Harding’s husband, former Chelsea footballer Jorginho, criticised Roan on Instagram on Saturday after he said her security spoke “in an extremely aggressive manner” to his wife and daughter when they saw the pop star at a hotel in São Paulo, Brazil.
Jorginho, 34, said the incident made his 11-year-old daughter cry and left her “extremely shaken and cried a lot” after the interaction and accused the singer of not appreciating her supporters, adding: “Without your fans, you would be nothing.”
In an Instagram post yesterday, Harding said her daughter did not have her phone or approach Roan after spotting her while having breakfast at the same hotel, but smiled as she walked past her table.
“She literally didn’t do anything; she just looked at her and smiled. She came back and she actually said to me ‘Mum, I don’t know if it’s her.’ Because obviously she looked like, you know, with her costumes and everything, she looks a little bit different,” Harding said.
She added that a security guard spoke in an “aggressive tone” and approached them to “berate and scold” while they were eating breakfast.
“Even if she did send him or she didn’t send him, I don’t know, for me it felt like it really overstepped a boundary,” Harding said.
Chappell Roan later said neither Harding nor her daughter had approached her and that the security guard was not part of her personal detail.
She said on her Instagram stories: “I didn’t even see, I didn’t even see a woman and a child like… no-one came up to me, 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.
“I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child, I did not.
“They did not come up to me. They weren’t doing anything. 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.”
Roan, 28, who was lying down in bed as she spoke in the video, continued: “I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children – that is crazy.
“I’m sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something, and that… if you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”
Harding is married to former Arsenal and Chelsea midfielder Jorginho, who now plays for Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro, and the pair have one child together.
She also has a daughter from a previous relationship with actor Jude Law and Jorginho has two children from a previous marriage to Natalia Leteri.
Harding, who said they had bought tickets to Roan’s show in São Paulo as a birthday present for their daughter, claimed she knew the security guard to be someone who was not part of the hotel security but rather “looks after artists”.
“I don’t know if it was her personal security guard, but he was with her. So that is all I know,” she said.
“Did she send him to do it? Again, I don’t know. Look, I would like to hope not. 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.”
Harding added: “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.”
Following the post from the footballer, the chart-topping popstar has received criticism online, including from the mayor of Rio, Eduardo Cavaliere.
The Grammy-winning singer, whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, previously hit out at “entitled” fans for their “creepy” behaviour in a series of TikToks in 2024, where she emphasised the need for boundaries between celebrities and their fans.
Roan is known for tracks including Pink Pony Club, Good Luck, Babe, Hot To Go and Red Wine Supernova.
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