The security guard at the centre of the row involving Chappell Roan, Jude Law’s daughter Ada and Ada’s mother Catherine Harding has broken his silence, accepting responsibility for what happened at a hotel in São Paulo while insisting he was not working for the singer.
Pascal Duvier said in a statement posted on Instagram on Wednesday that he wanted to address what he described as false accusations and defamation surrounding the incident. According to his statement, he was at the hotel “on behalf of another individual” and was not part of Roan’s personal security team. He added: “I take full responsibility for the interactions on March 21st,” while also saying that what he did was not on behalf of Roan, her management or anybody connected to her official team.
Duvier said he made “a judgment call” based on information provided by the hotel, events he said he had witnessed in the days beforehand and what he described as the elevated security risk at the location. He said his interaction with Harding had been calm and well-intentioned, but accepted that the outcome was regrettable. The statement was the first direct public response from the guard since the dispute erupted online over the weekend.
The dispute began after Jorginho Frello, the footballer widely known as Jorginho and Harding’s husband, publicly accused Roan over an incident involving Ada, Harding’s 11-year-old daughter with actor Jude Law. Jorginho said the family had been at the same São Paulo hotel as Roan ahead of the singer’s appearance at Lollapalooza Brazil, and alleged that Ada had simply walked past Roan’s table to see whether it was really her because she was a fan. According to his account, a large security guard then confronted Harding and Ada aggressively, accused the child of harassment and left her badly shaken.
Harding later gave her own account publicly and said her daughter “didn’t do anything” beyond looking over at Roan. She said Ada had not asked for a photo and had not approached the singer directly, and described the guard’s manner as aggressive. Harding also challenged the suggestion that the man was not linked to Roan, saying she knew he was not working for the hotel and appeared instead to be someone who looked after artists. In her view, even if Roan had not instructed him directly, celebrities still had a responsibility for those acting around them and on their behalf.
The incident quickly moved beyond a private disagreement because of the people involved. Ada is the daughter of Law and Harding, while Jorginho is one of the best-known footballers to have played in the Premier League in recent years. Roan, meanwhile, has become one of the most talked-about pop performers of the past year, with a fast-rising profile and a public image shaped both by her success and by her frequent comments about personal boundaries, privacy and the pressure of fame. That combination helped turn a hotel confrontation into an international celebrity story within hours.
Roan responded on Instagram soon after Jorginho’s initial criticism, denying that the guard was part of her personal security and saying she had not seen Harding or Ada at all. In her video response, she said she had not sent anyone over to speak to them and pushed back strongly at the idea that she disliked children or her own supporters. “I do not hate children, like, that is crazy,” she said, while also apologising that Harding and Ada had been left feeling uncomfortable.
Her representatives later reinforced that position in a further statement. A spokesperson said Roan held her own team “to the highest standards” and had “zero tolerance for aggressive behavior toward her or her fans.” The spokesperson added that Roan was unaware of any interaction between the mother and daughter and what was described as a third-party security officer, and said she did not direct anyone from her own team to approach them.
That has left the dispute focused on a narrower but still unresolved question: not whether the exchange happened, but who the guard was acting for when it did. Duvier’s statement is significant because it appears to support one of Roan’s central claims, namely that he was not part of her personal security team. At the same time, it does not settle the broader concern raised by Harding, who has argued that the distinction may matter less than the fact that the family believed he was moving in Roan’s orbit and behaving as though he had authority to intervene.
The case has also drawn attention because Duvier is not an unknown figure in celebrity security circles. He has previously been publicly linked to Kim Kardashian and became a figure of media interest after the 2016 Paris robbery case, when Kardashian’s insurer later sued him and his security company over alleged negligence before the matter was settled. That history has added another layer of scrutiny to the current row, even though the focus in São Paulo has remained on the specific encounter involving Harding and Ada.
For Harding and her family, the matter appears to have had an immediate personal effect. Reports on her account said the confrontation upset Ada so much that she no longer wanted to attend Roan’s concert, despite the show having been intended as part of her birthday celebrations. Harding made clear that she still considered Roan a talented artist, but said the experience had changed the way the day unfolded for her daughter.
For Roan, the incident has landed at a time when her relationship with fame and fan culture is already under intense discussion. She has repeatedly spoken in public about the need for personal boundaries and about behaviour from strangers that she considers invasive or disrespectful. Supporters say those comments reflect a reasonable attempt to protect herself in an industry that often blurs the line between public persona and private life. Critics, however, have argued that the latest episode shows how easily those tensions can spill over into situations involving ordinary fans, including children.
Duvier’s intervention may reduce some of the pressure on Roan by directly accepting responsibility himself, but it is unlikely to end the debate entirely. His statement confirms that he regrets the encounter and says he was not acting for the singer. Yet the disagreement over how the situation was handled, and over who bears responsibility when security steps in around a celebrity, is likely to continue. For now, the clearest new development is that the man at the centre of the confrontation has publicly owned the interaction, even as the wider fallout continues around Roan, Harding, Jorginho and Ada.
