Chrissy Teigen Shares a Story of When She and John Legend Were Racially Profiled

Chrissy Teigen is Marie Claire's new cover star. In the issue, she reflects on an incident when she and John Legend were followed and harassed by two white men while driving in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 2010. "It was a terrible, scary experience," she says.

"We were in a nicer neighborhood at night, driving slowly, looking for John’s godmother’s home. These two guys were in a pickup truck slowly tailing us, flashing their lights and trying to speak to us," Teigen recalls. "When we pulled over, they were like, ‘What are you guys looking for?’ and we gave them the address. They literally said, ‘Get your asses out of here!’ and proceeded to follow us all the way into her driveway. They got out of the car and stared at us as we knocked on the door and went inside."

"That was my first taste of seeing what happens to Black men everyday,” Teigen says. "It was horrifying and could have gone wrong so quickly. I was sobbing afterward for hours, and I noticed John wasn’t emotional about it. Seeing that he wasn’t very thrown by it was really upsetting because he obviously had experienced it before."

Teigen sees the same overt racism in 2020, and believes Trump has emboldened formerly covert racists. "People are very confident in their ways of being open about their racism because they have the backing views of the president," she says. "It’s become such a hurtful, weird presidency for so many Americans, and I’m going to fight to get this person out of office because I can’t live another four years with this kind of hatred boiling through America."

Read the full Chrissy Teigen cover story here.