Tate McRae Responds To Backlash Over Her Olympics Ad
The Canadian singer is showing where her loyalties lie.
Tate McRae has been getting a chilly response from her home country after her recent Olympics commercial. In the clip, McRae gushes about Team USA, without ever mentioning Team Canada. After some serious Canadian backlash, McRae reassured her fans that she is still loyal to her homeland.
The commercial that started all this controversy was released on Feb. 4. It shows McRae skiing down a mountain to ask an owl for directions. "I'm trying to get to Milan for an amazing opening ceremony and meet Team USA," McRae says. "Then it's the weekend with America's best skating for gold, and Lindsey Vonn's epic comeback. Then come back to the States for the big game, Super Bowl LX."
The pop star, who was born in Calgary, Alberta, blatantly highlighted Team USA in the ad, despite the fact that it is one of Canada’s biggest competitors at the Olympics.
Among the critics of McRae’s commercial was Adults star (and fellow Canadian) Jack Innanen “Tate McRae. That is some traitor sh*t I just saw, big bro,” Innanen said in an Instagram Story. “Joking, but not really joking. That is a crazy time to go and support the United States in place of Canada on an international stage; a country that directly threatens your own. Disappointed.”
As Innanen alluded to, U.S. and Canadian relations have been especially fraught recently due to President Trump’s desire to annex Canada.
McRae clearly saw all this backlash, and reasserted her love for Canada in an Instagram Story. She posted a pic of herself as a kid holding the Canadian flag, and wrote, “...y’all know I’m Canada down.”
This comes two months after McRae opened up about how she deals with “controversy and criticism,” while speaking about the uproar around her decision to record a duet with Morgan Wallen.
“I don’t think you should regret anything in life, because it gives you so much clarity,” McRae said in her Dec. 11 Rolling Stone profile. “I think controversy and criticism is a way of learning and figuring out what you want to move forward with, and how that shapes you as a person. I think it’s all important.”
