Making moves. Jessica Mulroney is taking steps to recover from her racially charged spat with influencer Sasha Exeter.
“Jessica has hired a big crisis PR team to deal with all of this backlash against her,” a source tells Us Weekly exclusively. “She’s been talking to lawyers, image experts and crisis PR teams. She has been having a lot of them over to her house to brainstorm and find a way to put this behind her.”
The stylist, 40, came under fire earlier this month after Exeter alleged that Mulroney threatened legal action against her amid a public feud on social media. “As some of you may have seen, @sashaexeter and I had a disagreement,” Mulroney wrote in a statement posted to Instagram on June 11. “She rightfully called me out for not doing enough when it came to engaging in the important and difficult conversation around race and injustice in our society. I took it personally and that was wrong. I know I need to do better.”
Mulroney continued: “I want to say from my heart that every word of my apologies to Sasha over the course of the last two weeks privately, and again both publicly and privately today is true. I did not intend in any way to jeopardize her livelihood. We had a disagreement and it got out of hand. For that I am sorry.”
Before Meghan Markle‘s BFF broke her silence over the incident, the lifestyle blogger explained that she was “by no means calling Jess a racist,” but that the Canadian was guilty of showing “textbook white privilege.”
“During the span of about a week or so, Jessica basically ticked every single box of what a white woman should absolutely not do during the biggest racial uproar in history,” Exeter said in an Instagram video, addressing global calls to action in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. “For her to threaten me — a single mom, a single Black mom — during a racial pandemic blows my mind. The goal here is genuine, transformative change — not optical and performative bulls—t. You cannot be posting that you stand in solidarity while attempting to silence somebody via text.”
Shortly after the scandal made headlines, Good Morning America confirmed that Mulroney, who began working as a style contributor for the morning show in 2018, would “no longer appear” in segments. Nearly two weeks later, her husband, Ben Mulroney, announced that he would be “immediately” stepping down from his position on CTV’s etalk after 18 years at the network.
Ben and Jessica tied the knot in October 2008 and later welcomed three children. A source tells Us that the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has been using his family connections in order to try and help his wife recover from her recent drama, as “former prime ministerial employees and political strategists” have been stepping in amid the backlash.