Topline
Singer, actress and beauty and fashion mogul Rihanna has apologized to fans for playing a song that featured a sample of a Hadith—a holy Muslim text—during a lingerie fashion show, the latest star to say they were sorry for actions deemed problematic by the public.
Key Facts
Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty lingerie line is often praised for its inclusive and affordable designs, but it took a beating this week after viewers noticed the fashion show over the weekend featured scantily-clad models walking down the runway to a song that sampled readings of a Hadith about judgement day.
The song, called DOOM, is by London-based artist Coucou Chloe and features a distorted voice reciting the verses over an electronic dance beat.
Critics said the song and its inclusion in the show was offensive to Islam by making light of an important religious text.
On Tuesday, Rihanna took to Instagram to apologize, saying it was an “honest, but careless mistake,” adding that she was “incredibly disheartened” to have offended “many of our Muslim brothers and sisters.”
“I do not play with any kind of disrespect toward God or any religion,” Rihanna wrote. “The use of the song in our project was completely irresponsible.”
Tangent
Actor Zoe Saldana apologized in August for portraying iconic singer Nina Simone in the Nina biopic in 2016, for which she wore a prosthetic nose and darkened her skin tone with makeup to make her resemble the late singer, saying in an interview she “should have never played Nina,” as a light-skinned Black woman.
Saldana is far from first to apologize for past actions recently—Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds apologized in a Fast Company interview published in August for having his 2012 wedding to actress Blake Lively at a former plantation in South Carolina, Boone Hall, which at one point reportedly had 85 people enslaved on-site. “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” he told Fast Company. “It’s impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.”
Earlier that month, former Dance Moms star Maddie Ziegler apologized for making what she called “ignorant and racially insensitive” comments and gestures on the show as a child—now 17, Ziegler said she has grown up and that “decisions I made then are absolutely not decisions I would make today.”
In June, Little Women actress Florence Pugh took to Instagram to apologize for partaking in what she called “cultural appropriation” as a teenager—like wearing her hair in cornrows and adorning her skin with bindis and henna designs.
Lili Reinhart, who acts in the dark-side-of-Archie-comics teen drama Riverdale, said she was sorry in June for posting a photo of herself posing topless to Instagram with a caption insisting on justice for Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was shot to death by police, saying it was a misguided attempt to raise awareness: “I understand that my caption came off as tone-deaf,” Reinhart said on Twitter.
Comedian and late night host Jimmy Fallon issued a public apology in May over his previous use of blackface in 2000 to parody fellow comedian Chris Rock on an episode of Saturday Night Live, a choice Fallon called an “unquestionably offensive decision” in a tweet.
Key Background
George Floyd’s killing in police custody in Minneapolis in May led to thousands protesting worldwide and has spurred a whirlwind of sweeping changes in society, from brands like Aunt Jemima abandoning problematic packaging to cities pulling down Confederate monuments nationwide. In June, celebrities were slammed for taking part in an online trend called #ITakeResponsibility, meant to be a way to acknowledge their privilege and complicity that critics said ended up being tone-deaf and more about optics rather than actual change.
