BRB. Alison Roman was put on hiatus from her New York Times food column after she stirred up controversy with Chrissy Teigen earlier this month, Us Weekly can confirm.
“Alison Roman’s column is on temporary leave,” a spokesperson for the New York Times told Us on Wednesday, May 20.
After an interview with the New Consumer, published on May 7, Roman faced backlash for her harsh critiques of Teigen, 34, and Tidying Up star Marie Kondo, who have both created massively successful brands for themselves.
“What Chrissy Teigen has done is so crazy to me,” the Nothing Fancy author said at the time. “She had a successful cookbook. And then it was like: Boom, line at Target. Boom, now she has an Instagram page that has over a million followers where it’s just, like, people running a content farm for her. That horrifies me and it’s not something that I ever want to do. I don’t aspire to that.”
The Chrissy’s Court star responded to Roman’s comments before taking a brief break from social media, noting that it was “a huge bummer” to see a diss from a fellow food lover. “I know the actual tears I put into the work I do and it’s really hard to see someone try to completely invalidate it. Someone I really liked,” Teigen tweeted.
At first, Roman took a lighthearted stance toward the controversy, teasing that she was glad she had supportive friends to help her through “baby’s first internet backlash.” She later issued two separate apologies to Teigen and Kondo, 35, admitting to using their names “disparagingly” in an attempt to “distinguish” herself.
“It was stupid, careless and insensitive. I need to learn, and respect, the difference between being unfiltered and honest vs. being uneducated and flippant,” the Dining In author wrote in a detailed Instagram post on May 11. “They’ve worked extremely hard to get where they are and both deserve better than my tone deaf remarks. … My inability to appreciate my own success without comparing myself to and knocking down others – in this case two accomplished women – is something I recognize I most definitely struggle with, and am working to fix.”
Roman vowed to use the backlash she faced as a learning opportunity, concluding, “I’ve messed up. I promise I’m not putting this behind me in hopes that it goes away. I need to learn from this, and I’m going to use it as a motivation to do and be better.”
