TikTok star Lunden Stallings apologises for resurfaced racist tweets
Stallings said she was ‘completely and utterly disgusted’ at her tweets from 10 years ago
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
TikTok star Lunden Stallings has apologised after a series of racist tweets posted to her account around 10 years ago were resurfaced.
Stallings, 26, who is best known for running a TikTok account with her wife Olivia Bennett, 27, addressed the controversy in a video posted on TikTok on Tuesday (4 October), just days after the viral couple got married in a ceremony in Georgia.
Shortly after the wedding, several posts resurfaced on social media that appeared to feature screenshots of multiple tweets posted to Lunden’s Twitter/X account in 2013 that included a racial slur. Stallings’ Twitter/X account has now been deleted.
One of the screenshots read: “N****s all about my business,” and in another Tweet, she wrote: “I’m about to clown n***** that snap chat me.”
The Independent has contacted Stalling’s representatives for comment.
Responding to the backlash in a video posted on her TikTok story as her wife sits beside her, Stallings said she was “completely and utterly disgusted and ashamed” after seeing the tweets she posted when she was 16.
In quotes from the video obtained by People, Stallings added that she was “embarrassed at how normal it was for me to speak that way on Twitter and for my friends and I to address each other that way and for me sing along to rap songs, and that’s nobody’s fault but mine”.
“I don’t want people to think that I am just sweeping this under the rug or that it’s something I’m not going to address or don’t want to address because I do want to address it,” she explained in the apology video. “That’s not who I am, who I was as a teenager.”
The TikToker went on to say she has “grown” as a person over the last several years and “would never ever think about saying those things” again.
"It’s truly just, like, a really unfortunate and disgusting and ignorant mistake that you made as a teenager," added her wife Bennett.
“You were a kid and you were ignorant and it was wrong and shameful, and it’s so embarrassing,” Bennett assured her in the video. “And I think that’s why you wanted to get rid of them because that’s not a reflection of your character and how I know you and how so many people know you.”
Stalling, who posts on the TikTok account @lundenandolivia, shares “day in the life” videos with her wife as they document their relationship from buying their first house together to getting married.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments