Chrissy Teigen has revealed she is 100 days sober, having given up alcohol in the weeks after she was accused of cyberbullying multiple celebrities in cruel tweets — including one post in which she urged a then-teenage Courtney Stodden to kill herself.
Teigen, 35, discussed her sobriety in her first TV interview since the scandal first unfolded in May — when several of the model’s old tweets resurfaced online, prompting swift and bitter backlash that led to her cookware brand being dropped by multiple big-name stores, including Macy’s.
The mother-of-two revealed to the Today show’s Hoda Kotb that she has been sober since July, adding that her decision to give up alcohol has helped her to ‘do the work’ she needed to do in order to become a ‘better person’.
‘I’m actually a hundred days sober today and I’m so excited,’ the cookbook author revealed. ‘I feel so good, I feel very clear-headed.’
Change: Chrissy Teigen has revealed that she is 100 days sober, having given up alcohol in the weeks after she faced furious backlash over resurfaced cyberbullying tweets
Backlash: In May of this year, it was revealed that Teigen, 35, had sent a barrage of cruel tweets to a then 16-year-old Courtney Stodden, including one urging the model to ‘go to sleep forever’
Evolving: On the Today show this morning, she said her decision to give up alcohol has helped her to ‘do the work’ she needed to do in order to become a ‘better person’
‘Aside from being pregnant, I hadn’t gone more than a day or two [without a drink], ever, since I started drinking at 20 or so. I just never really had that period of time of clear thought,’ she admitted.
‘It became embarrassing,’ she said, adding that being with husband John Legend, who is ‘so respected, and so beloved,’ she realized, ‘I can’t be the messy one.’
‘Waking up in the morning and being like, “Oh, what did I say?” she said. ‘That feeling is not worth it. Not to mention the headaches and everything.’
Getting sober has helped her get clarity, and Teigen talked about how she has changed since her Twitter scandal broke.
‘I feel like I’ve done the work and I just hope these people can forgive and be able to welcome the fact that hopefully they’ve seen me be better,’ she said.
Speaking about the fallout from the scandal, Teigen — who lost several brand deals as a result of the controversy — insisted that she is ‘glad it happened’ because it ‘made her a stronger person’ and a ‘better person’.
‘Having this period of time, and time to digest it all, and being able to look back, and to realize that there is so much time to grow and to learn and to become more empathetic.
‘I look at my kids and what I want their values to be, and how I want them to treat people, and seeing that in myself, that I wasn’t doing that, was I think the hardest part for me — was realizing, my goodness, this really had an effect on people.
‘I’m actually a hundred days sober today and I’m so excited,’ the cookbook author revealed. ‘I feel so good, I feel very clear-headed’
Giving it up: Teigen is pictured with justband John Legend and a beer in 2008
‘It became embarrassing,’ she said, adding that being with husband John Legend, who is ‘so respected, and so beloved,’ she realized, ‘I can’t be the messy one’
‘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,’ she said.
‘For me it was a big moment of, “Wow, I need to find out how I can be better, how I can grow from this, learn from this.”
‘There’s that old cliché like I’m glad it happened, but, truly, it made me a stronger person, a better person.’
Teigen said that she used to treat social media as if what she said didn’t matter, because ‘you felt like you weren’t taking to anybody [on the internet].’
‘You just threw things out there, you didn’t feel like anyone was gonna read it,’ she said. ‘You don’t really think about the impact and the person on the other side.
‘And I think about how much I’ve changed, just in the past year, and how much I’ve grown and learned. And then to think of that in the term of a lifetime, how much there room there is to always know more and be better.’
Teigen first came under fire for cyberbullying in May of this year, when fans discovered that she had posted a barrage of tweets in 2011 telling a then-16-year-old Stodden — who had just tied the knot with 50-year-old actor Doug Stodden — to ‘go to sleep forever’.
After the tweets were revealed, Stodden — who identifies as non-binary — spoke out about the bullying they faced from Teigen, insisting that the posts were only a small part of the picture and revealing that the former Sports Illustrated model would also ‘privately DM me and tell me to kill myself’.
Teigen posted a barrage of tweets in 2011 telling a then-16-year-old Courtney Stodden – who had just tied the knot with 50-year-old actor Doug Stodden – to ‘go to sleep forever’
In 2011, Teigen published a barrage of unearthed tweets telling then-16-year-old Stodden to ‘go to sleep forever’
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Stodden said they were faced with relentless bullying both publicly and in private from Teigen, who tweeted at the then-teen in 2011: ‘My Friday fantasy: you. dirt nap. mmmmmm baby,’ followed by: ‘go. to sleep. forever.’
Teigen apologized at the time, and spoke to Hoda today about making amends.
‘I wanted to make sure, first of all, that they were OK with me contacting them,’ Teigen said. ‘Some people, you know, maybe they don’t want to be in contact with me, or they just had gotten past it, or moved past it themselves.
‘I just hope these people can forgive,’ she said, ‘and welcome the fact that, hopefully they’ve seen me be better.’
She didn’t say specifically whether Stodden had accepted her apology.
Earlier this year, Stodden had spoken out about the effect that Teigen’s words had all those years ago.
‘I experienced so much harassment and bullying from her when I was just 16 years old,’ Stodden said in an Instagram video.
‘It really affected me,’ they added. ‘It’s so damaging when you have somebody like Chrissy Teigen bullying children.’
‘I look at my kids and what I want their values to be, and how I want them to treat people, and seeing that in myself, that I wasn’t doing that,’ Teigen said.
After Stodden spoke out, more old tweets from 2013 also resurfaced.
In one, she took aim at a then-21-year-old Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham, tweeting: ‘farrah abraham now thinks she is pregnant from her sex tape. in other news you’re a whore and everyone hates you whoops not other news sorry.’
In others, she wrote of then-nine-year-old Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis: ‘Is it okay to call a small child cocky? I am forced to like Quvenzhané Wallis because she’s a child right? Okay fine.’
Lindsay Lohan was also the subject of an insensitive post by Teigen. A tweet from January 2011 read: ‘Lindsay adds a few more slits to her wrists when she sees emma stone.’
Amid the backlash, Teigen was dropped by several companies, including Safely, the cleaning brand she founded with Kris Jenner; while her cookware brand was also dropped by Macy’s, Target, and Bloomingdale’s.
She was also pulled from the Netflix show Never Have I Ever.
On May 12, Teigen took to Twitter to share a public apology.
‘Not a lot of people are lucky enough to be held accountable for all their past bulls*** in front of the entire world. I’m mortified and sad at who I used to be,’ she wrote.
‘I was an insecure, attention seeking troll. I am ashamed and completely embarrassed at my behavior but that is nothing compared to how I made Courtney feel.
Teigen addressed the controversy on her Twitter account in May
‘I have worked so hard to give you guys joy and be beloved and the feeling of letting you down is nearly unbearable, truly. These were not my only mistakes and surely won’t be my last as hard as I try but god I will try!!
‘I have tried to connect with Courtney privately but since I publicly fueled all this, I want to also publicly apologize. I’m so sorry, Courtney. I hope you can heal now knowing how deeply sorry I am.
‘And I am so sorry I let you guys down. I will forever work on being better than I was 10 years ago, 1 year ago, 6 months ago,’ she concluded.
A month later, she shared another mea culpa in a post for Medium, writing: ‘I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance. I ask that you allow me, as I promise to allow you, to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self improvement and change.’
Since then, she has marked over three months of sobriety, and told Hoda this morning that she and the people around her have seen a change.
‘Daydrinking for me, was honestly — that was the only drinking for me. I didn’t even call it daydrinking,’ she said.
‘And if I wasn’t drinking, it was because I was hung over or something,’ she went on.
‘I had been struggling with it, honestly, for the past couple of years, when I knew it was kind of an issue. Even doing interviews and things, thinking I needed a glass of wine. And then it just started getting embarrassing, like at award shows and things. And everyone memes it and thinks it’s funny and cute, right? That you fell asleep or something at the Oscars,’ she went on.
Since starting her sobriety journey, she said: ‘My best friends, my closest friends, my family, everybody’s noticed a difference.’
‘The whole detox out of my system of it, and realizing you get this high of having energy and being able to play with your kids and roll on the floor with them,’ she said.
Though she ‘hates working in absolutes’ and wonders if she’ll ever have a glass of wine again, she knows ‘it doesn’t serve me anymore’ to drink.
‘Like, I’m not fun on it. I don’t dance. I’m not a better person. It’s just not for me,’ she said.
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