Brazilian soccer star Jorginho Frello accused Chappell Roan over the weekend of leaving his stepdaughter “in tears” after an incident at a hotel in Sao Paulo. Frello claimed Roan’s security team confronted the girl — who is actor Jude Law’s 11-year-old daughter — but Roan is denying the accusations. Now, British singer Catherine Harding, who is Frello’s wife and Law’s ex-partner, is speaking out about the incident involving her daughter as well as Roan’s claims.
The back-and-forth started when Frello posted an Instagram story on Saturday accusing Roan of sending her security guard over to scold his stepdaughter after the child spotted the Grammy winner in a hotel restaurant. Frello said that his stepdaughter was a fan of the “Pink Pony Club” artist and was “so happy to see an artist she really admires, or used to admire” before the situation took place.
Who is Jorginho Frello, and what is he accusing Chappell Roan of?
Frello is a Brazilian-born soccer player who currently plays for the Italy national team as well as for Flamengo in Rio de Janeiro. In 2025, he married Harding, who also goes by the name Cat Cavelli.
Frello said his stepdaughter spotted Roan at the hotel restaurant during Lollapalooza Brazil, a major music festival in Sao Paulo, where Roan was performing. The girl smiled at her while passing her table and sat back down without saying a word, he said. A security guard then approached the table and spoke “extremely aggressively” to the child and her mother, Harding, accusing the girl of harassment, according to Frello. The guard threatened to report them to the hotel “while my 11-year-old daughter was sitting there in tears,” he wrote on social media.
“It was just a child admiring someone,” Frello wrote. “Without your fans, you would be nothing.”
Frello posted about the hotel confrontation on Instagram, tagging Roan directly and writing: “Without your fans, you would be nothing.”
((Screenshot via Instagram/@jorginhofrello))What did Chappell Roan say about the incident?
On Sunday, one day after Frello posted about the ordeal, Roan responded with a video on her Instagram story denying her team had confronted the child.
Roan denied seeing the girl or her mother. “No one came up to me, no one bothered me. I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel,” she said, adding that the guard was hotel security, not her team. “I do not hate people who are fans of my music,” Roan said. “I do not hate children.
“I’m sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something,” she added.
The incident quickly escalated beyond social media. Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere suggested he would ban Roan from performing at the city’s Todo Mundo No Rio festival.
Catherine Harding speaks out
On Sunday, Harding — who was with her daughter when the altercation took place — said that her daughter went to look to see if Roan was at the hotel restaurant where the two were having breakfast. However, Harding said the moment was so quick that her daughter wasn’t even sure if it really was Roan.
Harding denied that the person who spoke to her child was a member of hotel security. However, she could not confirm whether the man was part of Roan’s team or not.
“I don’t know if it was her personal security guard, but he was with her,” Harding said. “So, that’s… that is all I know.”
She added, “Did she send him to do it? Again, I don’t know. Look, I would like to hope not, but at the same time, I think that you have a responsibility when you are a celebrity to make sure, I guess, that the people that work with you and act on your behalf are acting on your behalf. So, would he do that if he didn’t have her authority to do so? I don’t know. If he does, then obviously that’s a big problem, because then he’s representing her in a way that she doesn’t want to be represented. So I think that’s really important for her to notice and realize that’s not correct.”
Harding also spoke about how her daughter was a big fan of Roan’s prior to the incident, and that she had asked for tickets to her show for her birthday. However, she said that they did not attend.
Roan has previously drawn attention for setting boundaries with fans. In August 2024, she posted a lengthy message on Instagram calling out “predatory behavior disguised as ‘superfan’ behavior” and writing that she felt “the most unsafe I have ever felt in my life.”