Chrissy Teigen sees both sides of Ben Affleck, Matthew Perry dating-app controversy
“Chrissy’s Court” went down with the Quibi ship, but that sure hasn’t stopped Chrissy Teigen from judging people on social media.
After a dramatic exit and then return, Teigen is officially back on Twitter — and so are her candid opinions about the latest celebrity gossip. On Thursday, the model weighed in on recent viral videos of actors Ben Affleck, 48, and Matthew Perry, 51, appearing to flirt with young women via an exclusive dating app called Raya.
“I agree celebs shouldn’t be making these creepy desperate video replies on raya but it’s tacky to release private messages,” she tweeted, likely referring to two TikTok clips released by women who say they were approached by the “Gone Girl” star and the “Friends” alum on the platform.
“Ya both wrong, congrats.”
Both Affleck and Perry made headlines earlier this week after the women exposed their interactions on Raya, a membership-based app designed to connect people — especially those in the entertainment industry. The Times has not independently corroborated the TikTok users’ accounts of their exchanges with the actors.
On Tuesday, podcaster and actress Nivine Jay posted a TikTok reflecting on “the time I matched with Ben Affleck on Raya and thought it was fake so I unmatched him and he sent me a video on instagram.”
Included in the TikTok, which has more than 8.5 million views, is a video of Affleck saying, “Nivine, why did you unmatch me? It’s me.” Jay later told E! News she never meant to shame Affleck for his behavior, despite the flack he’s received online for contacting her.
“I’m seeing a lot of comments calling him a creep and l don’t think that’s fair. l wasn’t making fun of him in the video,” Jay told E! “l was making fun of myself for thinking he was a catfish and it was just supposed to be funny.”
In a separate TikTok that has since been deleted, a 20-year-old personal assistant from Los Angeles shared a brief clip of an alleged FaceTime call with Perry, who asks her, “Do you always play with your hair this way?”
“When you match w Matthew Perry as a joke on a dating app and he facetimes you and plays 20 questions with you,” the TikTok user, Kate Haralson, captioned the video.
While speaking with Page Six on Thursday, Haralson said she uploaded the TikTok to out older male stars for “taking advantage” of young women online. She claims that the “Good Fight” actor, who got engaged to literary talent manager Molly Hurwitz in November, requested they move their conversation to FaceTime after meeting on Raya in May 2020.
In March, Chrissy Teigen quit Twitter over its toxic environment. Now she’s back, she says, for the random “belly chuckles” and online friendships.
Haralson also alleged that during their video call, Perry asked the then 19-year-old Raya member if he was “as old” as her father and “laughed off” her response when she told Perry he was one year older than her dad. She said the questioning and age gap made her feel “weird” and uneasy, though the discussion never became sexual.
“A lot of people were saying I’m a bully and mean for posting this, and it made me feel kind of bad, but at the same time, I feel like a lot of guys in Hollywood are talking to all these young girls and it’s something that I think a lot of people should be aware of,” Haralson told Page Six, adding that she later removed the video because she felt “a little bit bad” about the backlash directed at Perry, whom she called “a nice guy.”
On Friday, Haralson confirmed to Page Six that her Raya membership had been revoked in the wake of her TikTok fame. The app’s website states that members can be removed from the platform if they violate its tenets of “respect, trust and privacy.”
“I should have expected that would happen,” Haralson told Page Six. “I feel fine about it. I never really used it anymore anyways.”
Like Teigen, several people on social media agreed that Jay and Haralson were out of line for putting their private encounters on public display and subjecting Affleck and Perry to ridicule.
“Isn’t the point of Raya a certain amount of privacy and she posts his video online to what… boost her clout?” one person replied to Jay’s TikTok, which picked up extra steam when reposted on Twitter.
“Matthew Perry & Ben Affleck ... were not going after women and harassing them,” tweeted another. “They were matched with women who requested to meet men around their age. I’m kinda Team Matt/Ben in this case. It’s far creepier to release the private videos.”
Representatives for Affleck and Perry did not immediately respond Friday to The Times’ requests for comment.
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