Designer Michael Costello accused model Chrissy Teigen of cyberbullying him and attempting to ruin his career, Fox News reported Monday.
Costello told the outlet he hadn’t shared the allegations against Teigen because he had been “living in fear.”
Michael Costello says Chrissy Teigen bullying left him suicidal:
“she told me that my career was over and that all my doors will be shut from there on.” pic.twitter.com/d5r5ycWYJb
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) June 15, 2021
“I didn’t share this with anyone because I was living in fear,” he wrote. “In fear of losing some of my most profitable brand relationships; in fear of losing friends and allies; and in fear of being outcasted even more by the power elites who run the industry.”
Costello claimed Teigen believed allegedly fake social media posts that were created to make the designer seem racist, and cyberbullied him over it back in 2014. According to Costello, Teigen wrote to him, “Racist people like you deserve to suffer and die.”
“When I reached out to Chrissy Teigen to communicate that I was the victim of a vindictive cyber slander, and that everything she thought I was is not who I am, she told me that my career was over and that all my doors will be shut from there on,” Costello reportedly said. (RELATED: Chrissy Teigen Says She ‘Was A Troll’ In Second Explanation Of Why She Once Told Someone To Kill Themselves)
“And wow, did she live up to her words,” Costello said in the statement. “Throughout the next few years, I would book jobs only to be pulled off last minute with no explanation. I would regularly get texts and calls from our mutual friends and colleagues that her and Monica Rose, a powerful stylist in fashion, have gone out of their way to threaten people and brands that if they were in any shape or form associated with me, they would not work with any of them.”
The model seemingly returned from a social media break Monday to publicly apologize again for her past actions involving cyberbullying. Model Courtney Stodden revealed in May that Teigen had once told her to go kill herself.
“I know I’ve been quiet, and lord knows you don’t want to hear about me, but I want you to know I’ve been sitting in a hole of deserved global punishment, the ultimate ‘sit here and think about what you’ve done,'” Teigen wrote. “Not a day, not a single moment has passed where I haven’t felt the crushing weight of regret for the things I’ve said in the past.”