Chappell Roan’s comments about invasive fans show that we never really know our favorite celebrities
Chappell Roan’s rise to pop stardom happened slowly, then all at once.
She started by singing covers on YouTube over 10 years ago, using her real name, before she earned a record deal out of high school. Her debut single, Pink Pony Club, was released in 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her album came out almost a year ago to positive reviews and a small but dedicated fanbase.
Over the last six months, though, her star has gone stratospheric. A stop at NPR’s Tiny Desk and a star-making Coachella appearance introduced Roan to new audiences, just as her songs Good Luck, Babe! and HOT TO GO! started soundtracking hundreds of thousands of TikToks. Her massive summer culminated in what may have been the biggest Lollapalooza set in the Chicago festival’s history — as many as 110,000 people were in her audience.
Sudden fame has weighed heavy on Roan, but her discomfort became untenable earlier this week. She shared two videos on TikTok in which she criticized invasive fans who have followed her around, stalked her family and demanded photos or hugs in public despite Roan’s resistance.
I don’t care that abuse and harassment, stalking, whatever, is a normal thing to do to people who are famous or a little famous, she said in one video. It’s weird how people think that you know a person because you see them online and you listen to the art they make … I’m allowed to say no to creepy behavior, okay?
In a lengthy Instagram post on Friday, she doubled down on her comments, reiterating that she’s clocked out when she’s not performing and doesn’t owe anything to people who approach her during her downtime. And while she loves making music and the support she’s felt from respectful fans, she said, she will not accept harassment of any kind because I chose this path.
I feel more love than I ever have in my life, she wrote. I feel the most unsafe I have ever felt in my life.
Part of why fans love Chappell Roan — and perhaps why some people have gone to disturbing extremes to invade her privacy — is the authenticity she projects, said Sally Theran, a professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Massachusetts who has studied parasocial relationships between celebrities and young fans.
One thing that’s really appealing about her, I think, is that she is very upfront about, ‘This is who I am, and I don’t conform in the same way that maybe past celebrities have, and I do what I want, Theran said. I think that’s very appealing in an age where everything feels so incredibly manufactured.
Roan’s openness and self-assuredness, at least online, might lead some fans to think that they know her, and that she wants to get to know them. But there’s a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the fans who believe Roan’s online persona is the real her.
I think that’s really what she’s trying to say: ‘I’m doing this as an act. It doesn’t mean that you know me or I know you, Theran said. But there’s this disconnect, where people really, really think they get her and then probably that she wants to get them.
The boundaries between fans and celebrities are less well-defined in an era when social media is a star-maker and personal, candid moments are viral fodder. The alarming flags that Roan raised show that there’s a breakdown in how much fans expect celebrities to give of themselves — and that the cost of being candid online is often more than artists like Roan are willing to pay for stardom.
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