Georgia Love: ‘I’m so deeply sorry, I’ve learnt a lot’
EXCLUSIVE: Two years after she was “cancelled” Georgia Love has opened up at length about her regrets over the incident and reveals her uncertainty about having children, confessing “not a lot of people admit that”.
Stellar
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After rising to fame – and meeting her now husband – on The Bachelorette, Georgia Love went on to build a lucrative career as a presenter, entrepreneur and influencer. But in September 2021, when she posted a video to social media that prompted widespread backlash and accusations of casual racism, the fallout was swift and severe – costing Love not just the goodwill of her fans, but also the “dream job” she had worked toward for years. As she joins Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About, Love reveals the true impact of being cancelled and explains why she retreated from the public eye for so long. And as she opens up about the price she has paid, Love also speaks about her uncertainty around having children: “Not a lot of people admit that”
When asked how she has been faring since September 2021, when she posted a video of a cat sitting inside an Asian restaurant with the caption “Shop attendant or lunch?!” and was accused of casual racism by her followers and a number of prominent media figures. A similar post from 2013 soon emerged, resulting in a swift backlash that sent Love to ground: “It’s been a really difficult couple of years. I think it has been for everyone. I really wanted to take that time – after everything happened and I was called out – to sit and listen rather than talk. The reaction was so strong, and the after-effects were very real in my life. I didn’t want to come out and yell and scream and try to overcompensate or over-explain anything. It was incredibly important for me to listen and have conversations with people in my own space and in my own time, rather than yelling on the internet, which does no good for anyone.”
On posting the offensive video to social media, what the ensuing blowback forced her to reflect upon and whether she feels regret: “I gave no thought coming from my privileged lens. I put no thought into how that could be offensive. The second somebody reached out to me and said that it was, I was absolutely mortified. I obviously took it down immediately and apologised, but I understand that that was too late and not enough for a lot of people. Knowing that I caused offence, hurt people and made people feel marginalised in that way is still really upsetting to me. I didn’t want anyone to think I would purposely upset or offend anyone; to this day I’m so deeply sorry for the fact that I did. I’ve done a lot of reflection. I’ve learnt a lot. You bring up the word regret and it’s an interesting one because I’ve always been a believer in: you shouldn’t have regrets. You know, everything is a learning capability, if nothing else. That said, this I deeply, deeply regret. I would never mean to upset or offend anyone. But I did. I have learnt that and I understand that.”
On what else she feels she learnt from the incident: “The most important thing is looking at everything through other people’s lenses and other people’s eyes. It’s so easy to live in our own little bubble of what we know and what we understand, and it’s so important not to do that. I became involved and spoke to Asian community groups. I got some really great mentors in that space – close friends of mine as well as people I hadn’t met before – who I reached out to and also who reached out to me [so I could learn] and understand why I caused offence, why that was offensive, how I can do better, and how we can all do better to understand other people’s histories and backgrounds and feelings and triggers.”
Her thoughts on what it felt like to be at the receiving end of a pile on from critics and the general public, and how bad it got: “It was awful, to be really honest. It was a really bad time. The trolling is not anything new. It’s not. Sadly, it doesn’t feel like it’s anything that’s going away soon. The people who were loud and want to have a go and take you down, I don’t have anything to say about them because I don’t think they deserve our time. The people I’m grateful for were the people who reached out, who spoke to me, not just yelled at or about me.”
On being “cancelled” and how she now feels about the idea of cancel culture, particularly having lived through the experience as a target: “I hate the term cancellation. To think that we have the ability to cancel somebody – whether that means from their industry, their job, their family and friends… We don’t have the ability to do that. Everyone is in charge of who they are as a person and how they move forward in life. Whoever we’re talking about who’s been through some kind of pile on or fallout or has said something wrong in a public space – these are the people we should be talking to and learning from in terms of, well, why did you say that? So often people aren’t given that space to talk about it in the heat of the moment.”
On how the incident affected those in her personal orbit, and the professional acquaintances who reached out to offer support: “I felt horribly guilty about the effects this was having on other people in my life. I had some beautiful people, too, who really made a strong effort to reach out. Erin Molan and Jock Zonfrillo – both I had had bits to do with through work over the years. Both of them said the same things. Both had negative things happen in their lives and careers, and that was a really heartwarming thing for me, feeling understood by other people in the industry. And I mean, my friends are still my friends. I think – I hope – they’ve forgiven me, too.”
On how her career path was affected during the fallout following on from her social media post, including the loss of her job as an on-air reporter for the Seven Network: “I had my dream job. I felt so lucky every day to be doing what I loved and what I had dreamed of for so long. So to have lost that on-air job – I stayed working at Seven, but I was taken off air in the fallout – was probably the hardest thing for me, because I’ve always put a lot of emphasis and focus on my work and my career. Not being able to do the thing that I loved every day was very difficult and a big point of reflection for me. That said, I was offered reality TV gigs, I was offered to do the podcast rounds and speak to everyone. But I didn’t want to do that, because if you’re out there shouting and talking and trying to make up for it in the interim, in the short term, then you’re not actually reflecting, you’re not actually sitting there and listening and taking things in.
Before all of this happened, I had what started as a little lockdown project of a small sleepwear business, and it was quite a bit of a saviour in that time because I had that to not just focus on, but work on. And I learnt about the business world, which I had never really been a part of before. I’ve had a podcast that I do myself for a few years now called Everyone Has An Ex, and I was able to focus on that, too. With my jobs kind of crashing to a halt, I was able to then work for myself. And that’s been a really nice thing for me to discover that I can do, and that I enjoy doing, as well.”
When asked about how her husband Lee Elliott – who Love met when she starred on The Bachelorette, and who she married in March 2021 – handled the fallout alongside her: “A silver lining in that was that I was at home with someone I love, with Lee. I had his support and he was my rock and physically got me out of bed when he needed to, and helped me in sitting with everything that had happened and what I needed to do to make sure that I was helping myself – but also those who I had upset – get through this. It was a very tricky time for Lee because I really changed in that time. I became very introverted, self-reflective. I hated social situations and that’s not me.”
On deciding to speak out about her ambivalence about having children or starting a family in the future with Elliott. [As regular readers would be aware, Stellar has a longstanding policy to not ask interview subjects unprompted about their baby plans, so this was a topic initially broached by Love]: “I’m really ambivalent, to be honest. I’ve had a lot of change in my life over the past seven years, for sure, but really over the past two, a lot of big change. And to think about that next big change of having children is, to be completely honest, way too much for my mind to even fathom right now. I don’t know if I actually want kids, but I haven’t decided I don’t, either. And I think not a lot of people admit that.”
On how the loss of her mother Belinda, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2016, has affected her feelings on having children: “Because I’ve lost my mum, who I was incredibly close to, the thought of having children without her around is really, really difficult for me to even think about. Thinking about going into parenthood without her there supporting me is hard but also, that feeling of, what if I can’t stay around for a child I might have, and what would that be putting them through? Well, I know what that puts them through. I know what it feels like. But also, what a stupid thing to say. You can’t control anything. I might die tomorrow, I might die when I’m 98. Who knows? We don’t know what’s going to happen. You can’t control life.”
On whether the way in which she is asked about planning for a family or trying for a baby differs from how her husband might be approached with the same questions: “Probably. A thing that’s a difference for us, as well, is that he’s eight years older than I am. He’s 42 and people are telling me at 34, ‘Oh, you know, time is ticking.’ And that’s true, of course – biologically for women that time is an issue and it’s not for men. That makes the conversations really different, as well. But I really want to say [to and] make sure that anyone out there who really wants to start a family and is struggling to do so, or isn’t in a place where they can right now – I don’t want to devalue anything that you’re feeling; I don’t want anyone to feel invalidated by me saying I don’t know whether I want it. Everyone’s choice about what they do with their life and whether they have a family is very much their own.”
On why she chose to name her sleepwear brand Georgia Elliott: “I didn’t change my name when I got married. I’m still Georgia Love, and my husband’s surname is Elliott. He would have liked me to change my surname, but I didn’t want to for my own reasons, so I called our baby – or my baby, the sleepwear brand – my would-be married name. The sell to him was, ‘One day this brand might be way bigger than just me as a person, so wouldn’t that be better to have your name?’ That’s the trade-off. I mean, he married me knowing exactly who I am: fiercely independent and fiercely feminist. So he knew there wouldn’t be much of an argument.”
When asked what she would like to do next, career-wise: “I desperately adore the media industry. It’s where my skills and my background lie. I love talking to people and hearing their stories and getting to help share their stories. My absolute dream job is Dancing With The Stars. I realise that’s not a long-term job, but that’s on the vision board. I want to get some sequins on under that disco ball! Beyond that, I just want to keep pursuing that passion
that I have for the media industry and keep working on helping people have that platform to share their stories. That’s really at the base of everything I’ve always done.”
On whether, after coming out the other end of a hugely public scandal and shaming, she thinks she will ever be as unguarded or unfiltered as she once was, or will be more selective about what she shares publicly: “Nothing that’s happened in my life has taught me to be guarded or restrained or filtered. What it has done is taught me what is OK to say, what will get a negative reaction, what will offend people. So I look at everything with that lens now. Change your thinking and feel how other people might feel.”
Georgia Love’s podcast Everyone Has An Ex is available on Apple, Spotify and Acast.
Originally published as Georgia Love: ‘I’m so deeply sorry, I’ve learnt a lot’
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