Teigen Tales: Chrissy Teigen Says Cancellation Made Her Stronger

Chrissy Teigen, a 35-year-old model and influencer who once told a teen celebrity to take a “dirt nap,” appeared on the Today show this morning to promote her new cookbook, Cravings: All Together. It was her first live TV interview since she was “canceled” this past summer, and as such, she was asked to address her cyberbullying scandal.

Hoda Kotb put the question this way: “You were accused of bullying people online, on Twitter… One person said that you said, quote, ‘I can’t wait for you to die.’ And you apologized… did you ever get the bottom of like, Why did I do that stuff?”

The answer is no, not really. Teigen spent the next five minutes trying out different answers, such as:

“I feel like there was honestly so much — having this period of time to digest it all and to look back and realize that honestly there is always so much time to grow and learn and to become more empathetic.”

“I look at my kids, and I look at what I want their values to be, and how I want them to treat people, and to see that in myself that I wasn’t doing that? You know…”

“I used to like, live, in the internet days, I would honestly, you felt like you weren’t talking to anybody… And then I kind of became the person that was that person that people thought the messages weren’t going to.”

Then Kotb asked Teigen directly if she thought she was still “canceled.” Teigen’s response:

“The thing that was important to me was realizing, I mean, you don’t really realize. I think you learn so much in the moments where you do lose so much, you lose it all, your world is kind of turned upside down. For me it was a big moment of like, Wow, I need to find out how I can be better, how I can grow from this, learn from this. And honestly I think, you know, you don’t want to say that old cliche, ‘I’m glad it happened,’ but I truly it made me a stronger person, a better person, I realize that, you know, that’s when I went sober, I went clean, I’m actually 100 days sober today, yeah, so I feel so good. I feel very clear-headed, I feel very, I don’t know, I feel like I’ve done the work and I just hope these people can you know, forgive, and be able to, you know, welcome the fact that, hopefully, they’ve seen me be better.”

Okay.

After the commercial break, Teigen returned to make her famous orange chicken sandwiches for Carson Daly and Al Roker. They said they were good.

Teigen Tales is a series about Chrissy Teigen. Previously: Teigen Tales: Chrissy Teigen Reveals Her Boob Size.