As we discussed Friday, Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario gave a fascinating interview to Cosmo. Cosmo sent reporters to the Democratic National Convention, and Troian was there to promote her work with pro-choice organizations and to support Hillary Clinton. The bulk of the Cosmo interview was about Troian being a Bernie Sanders supporter and then happily moving to support Hillary Clinton. Troian came across as thoughtful, articulate, pragmatic and interesting. Unfortunately, Cosmo’s last question – the “just for fun” question – was about Taylor Swift versus Kimye. And Troian didn’t just say “no comment.” She said:
“Oh god, I have such an aversion to the Kardashians because I literally don’t understand people’s obsession with them and I don’t want to accept them as our closest thing to a royal family, so I guess I would be Team Taylor Swift? However, I’m so appalled by what I consider to be her false feminism. It seems like she’s this person who’s like, “Sisterhood!” and then she does nothing but tear down the women that were once her friends. So is it possible to just be, like … this is a two-party system that I don’t want to be a part of? Can I just say that? Can I say that I would choose the Green Party in this?
If you really read her entire answer, it’s clear that she doesn’t like Taylor or Kim that much. But the Taylor/false feminism thing got the most attention (that’s what I used for the headline, as did most blogs and media outlets). And Troian must have been getting slammed by touchy Swiftloonies, because she tried to backtrack a bit on Twitter (you can see her whole Twitter feed here):
@etalkCTV for goodness sake what I said about her was that I truly had no opinion on whatever matter was most recently going on with her
— Troian (@SleepintheGardn) July 30, 2016
@etalkCTV please leave me out of noise like this. I basically said I would like to have no opinion on the topic. I've never even met her.
— Troian (@SleepintheGardn) July 30, 2016
@ThePerezHilton @etalkCTV I said I couldn't care less bout another Swift feud-apparently that means Im in one w/ her pic.twitter.com/KW6pkuIbiI
— Troian (@SleepintheGardn) July 30, 2016
@enews more like I'm "appalled" by people who misquote me & attach a terrible photo of me, when really i want nothing to do gossip. peace.
— Troian (@SleepintheGardn) July 30, 2016
There were more tweets where she said that was misquoted, then she asked not to be involved, then said we need to focus on more important things, then when someone asked if she really believes that Taylor Swift tears down her former friends, Troian wrote: “she did, according to the media, I asked to not be involved in choosing sides because, right, I still dont care.”
Dear Troian: I get it. You are passionately and admirably involved in politics and you thought you were giving an interview about Hillary and Bernie and all of that. And Cosmo accurately quoted you on that part of the interview, right? Then maybe – just maybe? – learn how to say “no comment” when a media outlet asks the fun/gossip question at the end. Because if you were truly misquoted, why not clarify your real comments instead of freaking out when your ON-THE-RECORD interview made news. Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West are gossip catnip, so of course if you talk about them in an interview, people will be interested in your thoughts. It’s like Gossip 101: don’t talk sh-t about really high-profile people and then claim that you were (vaguely) misquoted and that you really don’t care and “according to the media” Taylor is a terrible person. You can’t put this genie back in the bottle. Why not just own what you said? It was actually pretty balanced, in that you insulted both Kim and Taylor.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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