Bieber dispelled accusations she cried on the red carpet amid the 'Selena' chants.
Hailey Bieber is setting the record straight about those Selena Gomez chants at the 2021 Met Gala. Nope, she wasn't crying.
The 25-year-old model addressed the ordeal during her in-depth conversation on the Call Her Daddy podcast with Alex Cooper, who asked Hailey what happened when she and her husband, Justin Bieber, were on the red carpet at the ritzy affair posing for the throng of photographers amid boisterous "Se-le-na!, Se-le-na!" chants from the frenzied crowd.
"I could hear everyone screaming and, again, I think there's a certain part of you that has a numbness of just like, I was like, really surprised," Hailey said on the podcast that dropped Wednesday on Spotify. "I could kind of hear, but I didn't know if that's what was really going on until I saw the video after, the whole thing of everybody being like, 'Oh, he's trying to tell her not to cry.' That was not true. It [the Selena chants] wasn't making me cry, although it's a very disrespectful thing to do towards anybody."
The video in question loomed so large online and fueled the social media-created war between Selena and Hailey, that even the Call Her Daddy podcast used the snippet in its 55-second teaser for its highly anticipated interview with Hailey. So, after all these years, Hailey addresses what really happened on the red carpet that led trolls to brag that the chants made Hailey cry.
"I felt like I had something in my eye," Hailey explained. "That's just what goes to show you how out of context things can be seen, when he's like trying to help me. I'm like, 'I feel like there's something in my eye. Do you see something in my eye?'"
Hailey says that, as she tried to figure out what was in her eye, she could hear everyone's chanting.
"But yeah, I did hear people yelling," she added. "It wasn't making me almost cry. I just felt like it was disrespectful to me, to my relationship. It just was, period. The end. But I think I've endured so much disrespect, and I still do to this day that there was like a part of me that was just like another day."
Cooper chimed in to console Hailey about the ordeal, calling out the the crowd who "ruined" her moment on the red carpet with Justin. But Hailey wasn't having it. She wasn't about to let the trolls score any kind of points or consider the 2021 Met Gala ordeal a win.
"They've never ruined anything for me," Hailey said sternly. "They're not ruining my life. They're not ruining my happiness and that, I think, is really the win of the whole thing. You're actually not taking anything away from me. So, that's what I just keep stepping forward with. It's like, you can't take this away from me. You cannot take away my happiness, my relationship, my business, my career. Like, you can try and you can be mad about it but it doesn't change anything, is my point."
For the better part of almost five years, Hailey has constantly been at the center of online hate since she and Justin got engaged in July 2018, shortly after the singer and Selena broke up for good following their on-again, off-again relationship of nearly seven years.
A source tells ET, "Hailey wanted to set the record straight once and for all. She wanted to give people an idea as to who she really is and clear up any negativity or lies about her. She is in a great place personally and with Justin. She has worked hard to get to a point where she feels very strong and comfortable to talk about herself openly and share her side of things. She understood there might be consequences and haters, but it was more of a personal decision for her to speak her truth. She felt like it was important to open up."
So much has happened since Justin and Hailey got together: the couple tied the knot in 2018, they've been open about their marital challenges and navigated scary medical episodes. The reward? So far, they've come away stronger than ever before, and happy to be celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary. But none of this seems enough for trolls to leave Hailey and Justin's relationship alone.
"I think it's sad," Hailey says. "I think it’s sad to be against someone’s happiness. I think it’s sad to not wish somebody well."
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