Zara Larsson has come out in defence of Chappell Roan, saying her biggest critics are driven by sexism.
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In a new interview with The Guardian shared yesterday (April 3), the ‘Midnight Sun’ singer came to her fellow pop star’s defence, and said that she gets a disproportionate amount of hate.
“The more people hate her, the more I love her,” Larsson said of Roan. “I don’t like how she’s being treated at all.”
“When a woman has boundaries, I think people freak out,” she continued. “Men can do violent criminal things, and people applaud them, but when a woman says, ‘Stop following me,’ it’s controversial? It’s like, ‘You guys just hate women, actually.’”
The ‘Stateside‘ artist was referring to the blowback Roan has faced after being vocally resolute about maintaining her boundaries. The former NME Cover star has routinely called out disrespectful behaviour from fans and the music industry, once controversially comparing fame to “an abusive ex-husband” in 2024.
She has also previously shared her thoughts on “weird” and “creepy” followers, calling out the “predatory behaviour” of so-called “superfans” that includes “nonconsensual physical and social interactions”, and also hit back at photographers who yelled at her on the VMAs red carpet.
For her part, Larsson said she enjoyed that element of fame, saying she thrived “on attention in all forms”.
“When I was younger, I was like: ‘Oh, I can’t wait till I have paparazzi outside my house,’” she said, noting that fellow pop star Addison Rae similarly treats the attention economy as more of a game, and calls the paparazzi before heading to the petrol station. “I think we both realise that life is a performance.”
Larsson is also familiar with public backlash, and told the Guardian that after she’d made a joke about abortion on TikTok in March, a brand had revoked a multimillion-dollar sponsorship offer. “I lost $3 million, which is the biggest brand deal I’d been offered in my life,” she said. “I was genuinely like, ‘OK, losers!’”
Her defence of Roan comes shortly after another period of backlash for the ‘Pink Pony Club’ singer following an incident between a security guard and the stepdaughter of footballer Jorginho.
Late last month (March 22), the former Chelsea and Arsenal player accused a security guard of acting in an “aggressive” manner towards his 11-year-old stepdaughter Ada Law – the daughter of actor Jude — during breakfast at a São Paulo hotel.
Jorginho claimed that Ada, a big fan of Roan, “walked past the table” when she saw the singer – who was in Brazil for Lollapalooza Brasil – at breakfast. He alleged that a security guard went on to “berate” the family, leaving Ada in tears.
Roan addressed the claims, saying that she “didn’t even see” the incident take place and that the security guard wasn’t employed by her. And Catherine Harding, Jorginho’s wife and Ada’s mum, also shared a statement. She acknowledged Roan’s claim that the guard wasn’t her own security, but also said he wasn’t a security guard of the hotel.
Roan received plenty of backlash online and offline, with the mayor of Rio de Janeiro even banning her from one of the city’s largest music events. However, a report has since suggested that much of the controversy may have been fuelled by bots.
