Pop sensation Chappell Roan is setting the record straight about her feelings toward late French film legend Brigitte Bardot—and she’s not holding back.
Just days after Bardot’s death at 91 rocked the world, Roan revealed she was stunned to discover the dark side of the iconic actress’s legacy.
Roan, famed for her viral single ‘Red Wine Supernova,’ gave Bardot a quiet shout-out online with a simple ‘Rest in peace Ms. Bardot’ on her Instagram Story. She even admitted to fans that the sultry muse behind her chart-topper was none other than the Parisian screen siren herself. “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot / She showed me things I didn’t know,” Roan sings in the infectious opening lines, referencing a magnetic crush.
But things took a sharp turn when eagle-eyed followers pointed out Bardot’s decades of jaw-dropping views on Islam, the LGBTQ+ community, and the #MeToo movement—topics Bardot never shied away from. Roan wasted no time expressing her shock: ‘Holy [expletive]. I did not know all that insane [expletive] Ms. Bardot stood for. Obvs I do not condone this,’ she fired back in disbelief Monday. ‘Very disappointing to learn.’
Bardot, once the embodiment of sexual freedom in the ‘50s and ‘60s, spent her final years grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. After leaving acting in the 1970s, she made a name for herself as an animal rights activist—and then as a magnetic force in France’s far-right political scene. Fiercely devoted to National Rally founder Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine, Bardot became a controversial symbol of ultra-conservative France. Marine Le Pen, herself embroiled in legal troubles after being slapped with a five-year political ban for embezzlement, mourned Bardot enthusiastically following her death. ‘She was an exceptional woman,’ Le Pen gushed. ‘She abandoned a dazzling career to defend animals with boundless love and energy. Irreplaceable, untamable, and deeply French.’
Bardot’s legacy, however, is marred by a string of French court convictions—five, to be exact—for inciting racial hatred and discrimination, especially against Muslims and people from Réunion island. In typically brazen fashion, Bardot once railed, ‘I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population [the Muslim community] which is destroying our country.’ Her inflammatory statements didn’t stop there: in 2019, she labeled the residents of Réunion as ‘aboriginals who have kept the genes of savages,’ prompting lawsuits from local officials.
True to form, Bardot’s opinions didn’t mellow with age. In one of her last TV interviews in May 2025, she infamously dismissed the #MeToo movement, rallied to the defense of actor Gérard Depardieu, and scoffed, ‘Feminism isn’t my thing. I like guys.’
As for Chappell Roan? She’s drawing a firm line: inspiration does not equal endorsement. That much, she’s made crystal clear.
