The Boys star Erin Moriarty announced she would quit Instagram on Thursday following Megyn Kelly‘s accusations that Moriarty underwent plastic surgery.
“We’re all subject to levels of bullying throughout our lives but I am horrified, and I felt that I deserved to take a second to address these things,” Moriarty wrote in a lengthy, two-slide post. “To receive a message about a disgustingly false, counterproductive to the degree of being ironically misogynistic video of Megyn Kelly commenting on the manner — to learn the widespread nature of this has left me horrified.”
Kelly aired a segment with The Daily Wire‘s Michael Knowles on Jan. 17 episode of her podcast calling plastic surgery a “social illness” in which Kelly said Moriarty was an example of someone with an “addiction” to cosmetic procedures. Kelly then showed an image of Moriarty which she claimed was “relatively recent” and described the photograph as a “nice, beautiful, natural gal” before showing a newer photo of Moriarty that looked substantially different.
“I thought, ‘is this an AI-generated face’… but apparently it’s real,” she said. “She’s done this to herself.”
In her Instagram post, Moriarty reiterated that she is “horrified” by the reactions to Kelly’s video, calling them a “primary example” of harassment which as “broken my heart.”
“Social media was my ability to connect with fans,” Moriarty wrote. “My ability to work with but also mostly just share brands that I believe in on an independent level and otherwise. To share news or updates. But I’m deciding to invest my energy into work into my work.”
“You’ve lost the privilege of this account. so, you can believe whatever you want,” the actress continued. “But there’s no excuse for these horrific allegations, the verbal abuse that I have had to delete, and the genuinely false information that is being used to perpetrate a message that is exhibitionist feminism. You don’t have to believe me when I say these videos are absolutely false but the way this has been spoken about, the way I have been spoken to, I will not accept.”
Read Moriarty’s full statement here.