Kelly Clarkson has become embroiled in a viral feud with a Brooklyn store after sharing a social media post claiming she received the “Pretty Woman” treatment while shopping at The Art of Play, all over a mechanical bird named Maggie.
The owner of the shop, however, has responded by claiming that what she claimed happen didn’t happen. Meanwhile, Clarkson doubled down on her claims, resulting in an online war of words between the “American Idol” winner and the shop.
Now, a person with a close connection to Clarkson is revealing how she came to learn of the imbroglio.
Reba Chimes In
Reba McEntire has remained close to Clarkson after they became family through marriage when Clarkson wed late ex-husband Brandon Blackstock, son of McEntire’s ex-husband, Narvel Blackstock.
In a recent interview with E! News, McEntire was asked to weigh in on the feud, and revealed how she came to learn about it.
“I just heard about it in the makeup trailer a while ago,” McEntire said during a cast interview for her NBC sitcom “Happy’s Place.”
Her co-star Melissa Peterman then chimed in to add, “I was the one who told you.”
The reason McEntire hadn’t known about it before, Peterman explained, was due to the “long busy days” they were putting in filming a network television sitcom — and, in fact, she was surprised that she’d heard about it at all.
“It must be really out there if I’ve heard about it,” Peterman quipped, “because I’ve not been watching a ton of stuff and I’ve been working so much.”
The whole thing started when Clarkson took to X on Saturday, October 10, to detail a disappointing experience while visiting the store.
“Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me,” she wrote in her post. “Wow, dude. You’re an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out.”
The Store Received Backlash
The store’s owner, Adam Rubin, revealed that the shop had been hit with backlash because of Clarkson’s post.
“It’s a pop star, a mechanical bird, it’s surreal. When this thing first started, everybody wanted us to die,” Rubin told Page Six.
Rubin continued by describing Clarkson’s post as a “reprehensible abuse of power,” observing that her actions provides an opportunity for the public to “reconsider the place we give celebrities in our society.”
He added: “This is not how you can behave as a citizen in the world, like, if you are this famous and powerful and you try to squash someone like a bug, then we’re supposed to blame the trolls for all the damage that’s inflicted. She lit the fuse.”
Rubin also claimed that he’d received “thousands of hateful phone calls, hateful text messages,” and that her fans’ demands that he apologize represented “a perverse distortion of reality.”
When the shop insisted the mechanical talking bird she’d inquired about had never been for sale, and was a display item to attract interest, Clarkson issued a terse response.
“Cool, cool. Sure, it wasn’t for sale,” Clarkson wrote in a sarcastic Instagram post. “That’s the narrative Art of Play is gonna go with — so the whole conversation we had when I asked you if it was for sale whilst pointing to the price tag hanging on the wall with the title Singing Bird didn’t happen as you elevator eyed me, saying in a condescending tone, ‘Yes, it’s for sale but it costs $15,000, so if you’d like me to find something comparable for you I can.’ That all never happened and now it’s not for sale.”
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Reba McEntire Reveals the Surprising Way She Learned of Kelly Clarkson’s Viral Feud with Brooklyn Shop