Everything That Chrissy Teigen Has Had To Apologize For

Once upon a time, everyone agreed that Chrissy Teigen was the Queen of Twitter. The Sports Illustrated cover model won millions of fans through her wide-ranging observations online, seeming to be a "famous person" who was just as much a fan of pop culture as the rest of us. Her witty, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners tweets made her seem relatable, like a normal person who just happened to be a beautiful bikini model, television host, and cooking expert who married one of the most successful singers in Hollywood. "No other celebrity has mastered the art of Twitter like she has," celebrity expert Mike Sington told BoredPanda.

However, that same take-no-prisoners approach made her a frequent target for people upset with the way she was conducting herself online. Over the course of her decade in the limelight, Teigen has repeatedly gotten into social media tiffs with other stars, said things that annoyed her fans, and eventually, faced a public reckoning when numerous abusive tweets resurfaced in 2021.

"'Apologize the way you want me to' is not it," she once tweeted. "Just personally, in your heart and remote, cancel them if you're truly mad. Writing them over and over, the onslaught, it can drive a sane person insane and an unstable person to...worse." Still, though, Teigen has repeatedly apologized, both sincerely and sarcastically, in tossed-off side comments and long, heartfelt blog posts. Here's a look at everything Chrissy Teigen has ever had to issue a mea culpa for.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

Chrissy Teigen appeared on "Larry King Now" all the way back in 2014, a year or so after she married John Legend. Teigen, already a tastemaker by that point, extolled the virtues of elephant poop coffee and insulted her own modeling skills, but she also discussed her rising status as a Twitter darling on the show. Teigen had already had a few public stumbles by that point, and it seemed like she was already trying to assess her relationship to her Twitter fame, given the amount of times she'd already been criticized online. 

The legendary host asked her about what it's like to face "trolls" on Twitter, and in what seems now like ironic foreshadowing of how her days online would later come back to haunt her, Teigen told King that she had calmed down in "the past six months" because she was tired of ending up on blogs for expressing her opinions online. "I think some people are really just itching to fight sometimes," she said.

So, no grand apology for her online behavior quite yet. After the interview, though, she posted a photo with King on Instagram and felt the need to apologize for something else. "Just had the best 30 minutes of my life with @kingsthings," she wrote, posing with her leg up and King's arms around her waist. Realizing how that looked considering her still-new marriage, she joked, "(sorry john)." 

In 2016, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend walked the red carpet at the American Music Awards. It appears that Teigen's dress was a bit too revealing for comfort; the safety-pinned slit in the side went high above her hip, and after backlash to the look took over social media, she felt the need to apologize after the event. Alongside a photo of three different angles of herself in the black gown, she joked on Instagram, "apologies to anyone harmed mentally or physically by my hooha." She even tagged her laser hair removal specialist, acknowledging that she'd shown off something perhaps a bit more intimate than she had initially intended.

She went further in a since-deleted Q&A on Twitter, hitting back at fans who suggested she should have been more lady-like. "I'm pretty sure you could clearly see I'm a lady," she quipped (via Marie Claire), while she told another fan, "Hindsight is 20/20."

Her husband was asked about the situation a few days later, and he told "Extra" that they had been aware in advance that someone might be able to see something they didn't want seen. "We were watching her walk," Legend insisted. "I was like, 'It looks good. Looks like all is well.'" However, he acknowledged, "If a photographer is resourceful enough they can find that one moment." 

While doing some reflecting in 2018, Chrissy Teigen took to Twitter to publicly atone for an incident that she called "one of my past drunkest moments," calling herself "mortified." ​​She described meeting actor John Cho, star of films like "Searching" and "Star Trek;" instead of talking to him about one of his film roles, Teigen instead asked why the actor "wasn't working in the White House anymore." She had apparently confused him with his "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" co-star Kal Penn, who did indeed work for the Obama administration.

After writing that John Legend still teases her about her mistake, Teigen added, "This is my formal apology @johnthecho I still think about it, it haunts me." Cho never replied, but Penn did! He told the model not to worry about it, writing, "Never apologize for America." 

Penn had been hired by the White House in 2009, serving as the "associate director in the office of public liaison," according to The Guardian. He left the administration to return to acting in 2011, reflecting to ABC News, "I don't know anyone who would say that the White House is particularly glamorous. I think everyone has an understanding of the impact you can have, and the fact that ... that feeling is indescribable."

During the height of Kanye West's Donald Trump-era backlash, his then-wife Kim Kardashian got into a Twitter feud with songwriter Rhymefest, a former friend of the controversial rapper who revealed in a tweet to Drake that Ye had pulled funding from social programs his foundation had sponsored, allegedly saying, "f*** the youth of Chicago." Kardashian wasn't having it. She lashed out, telling the world that Rhymefest had been kicked out of the studio while working with West for wearing fake Yeezys. Yikes!

Chrissy Teigen jumped into the fray, sharing the iconic gif of Kardashian peeking out from behind some bushes excitedly. Her fans were, to put it lightly, unhappy. "It really saddens me that women like Chrissy Teigen and Kim K are raising BLACK children and kiki over dragging a black man that was literally asking to support black youth," wrote one fan.

Teigen defended her choice of gif, telling one fan that she wasn't laughing at underprivileged youth. "...it means I am watching the drama, that is how it is used," she tweeted. "You guys really wanna think people have the worst intentions." However, as fans continued to push back, Teigen eventually conceded that it wasn't the best look. "I should have stayed out of it," she admitted. "I really just thought it would come off like I was watching the drama..."

Chrissy Teigen loves a fangirl moment, such as when she got to appear with "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star J.B. Smoove on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Years earlier, when she met Alicia Silverstone — in character as Cher from "Clueless," of course — Teigen shared a snap of the twosome on Twitter, writing, "How am I supposed to sleep? I think I've asked for 2 photos in my entire life. @AliciaSilv and beyonce." 

It seems like the aforementioned Beyoncé encounter was pretty awkward! Teigen described the incident to Jimmy Fallon, relating a run-in at the 2018 Grammy Awards that saw the model kneel in supplication to the "Bow Down" singer. "I took her hands and I got down on my knees and I was like, 'Sorry to bother you, my queen.' Like, who says that?!" Fallon suggested that he assumed Teigen would be used to meeting other famous people, and Teigen replied, "Not her, though."

That evidently wasn't the most uncomfortable run-in the two have ever had. The night of the Oscars in 2020, Chrissy Teigen took to Instagram to issue an apology for her behavior at an after-party. She captioned a photo of herself and her husband with, "@Beyonce if there is any, any way you're reading this please just know I stare at you and don't talk because I am truly so nervous to say something stupid but we love you and thank you so much!!!"

In July 2020, Megan Thee Stallion was shot in the foot by fellow rapper Torey Lanez during an argument in a car; he was charged after the incident. A mere eleven days later, this didn't appear to be on Chrissy Teigen's mind when she riffed on a joke from TV writer Nell Scovell, who tweeted, "I have a Charles Manson joke and it kills." Teigen quote-tweeted and added her own: "I have a megan thee stallion joke but it needs to be twerked on." According to PopBase, who shared screenshots of the since-deleted tweets, Teigen attempted to head off criticism, adding, "Before u start, I love her."

The clunky joke about needing "to be twerked on" didn't go over well with fans, considering Ms. Thee Stallion's then-recent encounter with an allegedly-abusive man. Teigen gave in and simultaneously doubled down, writing, "I'll delete because you guys are sooooo f***ing annoying. Just unfollow me you absolute tools." She then made her account private.

However, via Vulture, she ultimately apologized for her poor timing. "Making anyone feel reminded of a terrible time or letting you guys down sucks more than anything to me so I am sorry to Megan and anyone who thought this was about the incident at all," she wrote. "You'll say someone else wrote this or that I don't mean it and that's always the punishment for having said it in the first place so I'll take it."

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Though Chrissy Teigen apologized to Courtney Stodden, she declined to name the multiple other Twitter feuds she got in around the same time. In her Medium post outlining the steps she had taken to learn and grow from the public backlash, she said that she was instead reaching out privately to some of her other targets. With that in mind, here is a non-comprehensive rundown of who those private apologies might have gone to!

During Amanda Bynes' tumultuous 2013, Teigen wrote (via Us Weekly), "The fact that Amanda Bynes has any 'support' to retweet is really unsettling. Support people with mental illness, yes. But don't condone/enable scary and poor behavior." (Bynes shot back, "I think you're jealous that you're just an ugly model who's career is uninspiring!")

"Teen Mom" star Farrah Abraham told TMZ that she was waiting on her own personal apology for that time Teigen tweeted that she was "a whore." Teigen also feuded with "Saw" screenwriter Leigh Whannell after she tweeted something derogatory about his former co-writer James Wan's film "The Conjuring." When Whannell defended his friend, Teigen wrote, "I've never had a face to match the word 'prick' to so accurately."

Finally, she mocked Lindsay Lohan for her struggles with self-harm, writing (via The Sun), "Lindsay adds a few more slits to her wrists when she sees Emma Stone." "Now, confronted with some of the things that I said, I cringe to my core," Teigen told her fans after the backlash.