Megan Thee Stallion opens up to Michelle Obama about the emotional toll of fame: ‘I’m tired of people talking about me’
Appearing on Michelle Obama’s “IMO Podcast,” Megan Thee Stallion reflects on boundaries, embracing emotions and prioritizing her mental health.
For her first interview in months, Megan Thee Stallion sat down with former First Lady Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson for the “IMO Podcast.” Throughout the conversation, Obama and the “Hot Girl Summer” rapper bonded over their shared experience of life in the public eye, and Megan got candid about the weight of consistently being a trending topic.
“Being me is, it’s a rollercoaster,” Megan told the podcast hosts. “Like some days I feel like, ‘yes, hell yeah. We on top.’ But then some days, I feel like, ‘oh my gosh, I need to go get under my bed.’ Like I don’t want to see anybody. I don’t want anybody to see me. I’m so tired. I’m tired of people talking about me.”
“But then I have to take a step back sometimes and realize I’m very blessed. So even though I have like a lot of good days, I, I mean, I can’t have the good without the bad. But what I’ve been learning lately is how to express more gratitude and instead of praying all the time about, ‘can I have [this], can I have [that],’ I start praying and saying like, ‘oh my gosh, I’m so thankful,’” she added.
Throughout her rise to fame, the Houston rapper has had to publicly navigate grief, friendship betrayals, legal trials, breakups, and so much more. Earlier this year, after announcing the end of her relationship with Klay Thompson, Megan shared that she would take some time to prioritize herself to “move ahead with peace and clarity.” Since then, the rapper has kept a relatively low profile, during which she revealed she was working on herself and new music.
“When my mom passed away, I immediately still had to be Megan Thee Stallion. And so I’m literally trying to figure out how to grieve, how to perform, how to go through everything I’m going through and still do it in front of everybody,” she shared. “So I’ve learned to just feel what I’m feeling. And just feel it. If it’s pain, if it’s sadness, I have to express it. I might get under my bed and cry. I don’t know, but I have feel it because I’m never going to be able to come out of it if I don’t get it out of my system.”
And she does admit it took a lot of work to reach this point, from creating boundaries to limiting the social media apps on her phone to Pinterest and her very curated TikTok algorithm, to learning that sometimes people are just not going to like you. Even now, she says she’s working her way up to being more social and leaving her isolation “bubble.”
“It was a point in life when I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want to be filmed eating. I don’t want to be filmed getting coffee. I don’t want to be filmed talking to people. Like, just bye, I’m not going outside. And I would be like a vampire in my room in the dark all the time until I had to go do, until I have to go be social,” she explained. “So I’m starting to do the simple things again because I definitely was in my head for a long time. I was not in a good space. I didn’t want to do anything…be seen…to talk to nobody until I had to turn into Megan Thee Stallion. But now I’m doing more Megan things. I feel better. I feel a little less heavy.”
Obama, who understands the unique weight of being at the center of hateful comments, took a moment to give Megan her flowers: “You are giving more young women, young Black women, all kinds of people the permission to not have to be strong all the time.”
“I feel like strong shows up in so many different ways,” Megan added. “It’s not about being tough or just stoic. It’s about what you look like. I think it’s about being. Like, brave enough to keep going. Brave enough to be like, I don’t want to do this. Just brave enough to feel how you feel and have your boundaries. Saying yes to everything doesn’t make you strong.”
And ultimately, Obama noted that these lessons are applicable to anyone, regardless of whether they are public figures.
“The same thing is true for all young people trying to find themselves and relying too much on what their phone says. It’s got to be a part of being a hot girl…like let it go, put it down. Don’t take it in. It’s not real. It’s not true,” Obama concluded.