Chappell Roan was in São Paulo last weekend to headline Lollapalooza Brazil, the final show of her Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things Tour.
By Saturday morning, before she had even taken the stage, she was at the center of an international controversy involving a soccer star, an 11-year-old girl, and a city mayor who decided to weigh in publicly.
The story begins at a hotel breakfast.
What Did Jorginho Say?
Jorginho Frello, the Brazilian-Italian professional midfielder who plays for Flamengo in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A and is widely known by his first name, posted a lengthy statement on Instagram Stories on Saturday morning, tagging Roan’s account.
He wrote it in both Portuguese and English.
Jorginho said his wife, Catherine Harding, and his stepdaughter were staying at the same hotel as the artist and happened to spot her at the restaurant where they were having breakfast.
The girl, he said, is a fan. She was excited to be in the same room as someone she admired.
According to Jorginho, she did not approach Roan, did not speak to her, and did not do anything more than glance in her direction to confirm it was really her.
What happened next is where the accounts diverge sharply.
“A large security guard came over to their table while they were still having breakfast,” Jorginho wrote, “and began speaking in an extremely aggressive manner to both my wife and my daughter, saying that she shouldn’t allow my daughter to ‘disrespect’ or ‘harass’ other people.”
He added that the guard threatened to file a complaint against the family with the hotel, “while my 11-year-old daughter was sitting there in tears. My daughter was extremely shaken and cried a lot.”
He was direct about what he thought the incident meant. “It was just a child admiring someone. It’s sad to see this kind of treatment coming from those who should understand the importance of fans. At the end of the day, they are the ones who build all of this.”
He concluded with a line addressed to Roan: “WITHOUT YOUR FANS, YOU WOULD BE NOTHING. AND TO THE FANS, SHE DOES NOT DESERVE YOUR AFFECTION.”
The Mayor Of Rio Calls Out Chappell Roan
Before the day was over, Eduardo Cavaliere, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, posted his response on X. He wrote in Portuguese, with the message translating to, “I want to say that as long as I’m in charge of our city — this girl @ChappellRoan will never perform at Todo Mundo no Rio!”
He then added a pointed comparison, “I doubt that Shakira would do this!” and invited Jorginho’s stepdaughter to attend the Todo Mundo no Rio festival in May as a guest of honor.
The Todo Mundo no Rio is a free concert series held on Copacabana Beach, one of the most prestigious stages in Brazil, the same venue where Madonna performed in 2024 and where Shakira is scheduled to headline in May.
Being banned from it by the sitting mayor is not a small thing, even if the legal enforceability of the statement is unclear.
What Has Chappell Roan Said?
Roan performed her Lollapalooza Brazil set Saturday night as scheduled. During her closing remarks, she made a point of thanking her security team.
“This is our 33rd show of our Damsels tour,” she told the crowd. “I’m so grateful. Thank you to my crew, and my security, and everyone behind the scenes. This takes a lot of people.” The timing of the shoutout, the night Jorginho’s post had gone viral, did not go unnoticed online.
On Sunday she posted a video response on Instagram. She said she had not seen a woman and a child, that no one had come up to her or bothered her, and that the guard involved was not her personal security.
“I didn’t even see a woman and a child,” she said. “No one came up to me. No one bothered me. I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel. I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child. They did not come up to me. They weren’t doing anything.”
She then separated herself from the guard’s behavior explicitly. “It’s unfair for security to just assume someone doesn’t have good intentions,” she said. “I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children.”
She closed with an apology to the family, not for her own actions, which she denied, but for the experience they had. “I am sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something, and that if you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”
As of Monday, Jorginho had not publicly responded to Roan’s statement.
He did, however, post later Saturday that his stepdaughter had attended Sabrina Carpenter’s Lollapalooza set later that day. “Everything is well with the girls, and thanks for the messages,” he wrote.
Who Is Chappell Roan?
This is not the first time Roan has been at the center of a public debate about celebrity boundaries and fan access. She is 28 years old, born Kayleigh Rose Amstutz in Willard, Missouri, and rose to massive global fame faster than almost anyone in recent pop history.
Her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
She won the Grammy for Best New Artist in February 2025, where she used her acceptance speech to demand labels provide artists with livable wages and health insurance.
Her 2025 singles “The Giver” and “The Subway” both cracked the Billboard Hot 100 top five.
That kind of trajectory, from relative obscurity to the most recognizable face in pop within about eighteen months, brought with it a level of public attention she has been consistently and vocally uncomfortable with.
In 2024 she posted a series of TikToks urging fans to stop showing up at her hotel, kissing her without consent, and contacting her family.
In early March 2026, just two weeks before the Lollapalooza incident, she filmed herself during Paris Fashion Week surrounded by paparazzi and autograph resellers who would not leave her alone.
“I’m just trying to go to dinner, and I’ve asked these people several times to get away from me,” she said into her phone. Noah Kahan defended her publicly, explaining that the people in the video were not fans but professional autograph scalpers.
At the 2026 Grammys, Sabrina Carpenter noted during the red carpet that photographers had been noticeably more restrained than in previous years, crediting Roan directly. “Chappell really started a movement,” Carpenter said.
The São Paulo incident sits in the middle of all of that, a story in which the same impulse that has earned Roan praise for standing up for herself has collided with a situation involving a child who, by all accounts, was doing nothing wrong.
Who gave the security guard his instructions, whether he was her personal guard or hotel security, and what the full facts of the breakfast interaction were remain genuinely unresolved.
An 11-year-old girl spent the morning of a concert she was looking forward to in tears, and by evening a major city’s mayor had turned it into an international news story.
