Chrissy Teigen Explains Why She’s ‘Glad’ Cyberbullying Scandal Happened

While promoting her newly-released cookbook Cravings: All Together on the TODAY show Tuesday, Chrissy Teigen reflected on the months that followed her online bullying scandal. 

“Having this period of time to digest it all and to look back and to realize that honestly there is always so much time to grow and to learn and to become more empathetic,” Teigen told Hoda Kotb. “I look at my kids and I look at what I want their value to be and how I want them to treat people, and to see that in myself, that I wasn’t doing that was — the hardest part for me was realizing, ‘My goodness, this really had an affect on people.” 

Courtney Stodden accused Teigen of telling them over private messages to “go. to sleep. forever” when they were 16 years old. She issued a public apology over Twitter after unsuccessfully trying to reach out to them privately. The cyberbulling revelation came one month after her return from a three-month Twitter hiatus due to how the platform was negatively impacting her life. 

“I think about how much I’ve changed just in the past year, how much I’ve grown and learned, and then to think of that in the term of a lifetime, how much room there is to always know more and be better,” she added. 

Stodden’s accusations led to Teigen stepping away from a guest voiceover role in Season 2 of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever. She returned to social media after another hiatus, but admittedly struggled with personal issues since her return from the backlash over her decade-old remarks. 

“I do know that however I’m handling this now isn’t the right answer,” she wrote. “I feel lost and need to find my place again, I need to snap out of this, I desperately wanna communicate with you guys instead of pretending everything is okay.”