Gypsy Rose Blanchard is issuing a public apology after seemingly making a joke about killing her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard.
“The whole idea behind it is like, um, you know, yes we understand that we’re not perfect, we are influencers, and we have gone through some difficult things but we are focusing on positivity. That was the entire point of the video — is accountability and growth,” Blanchard, 34 AGE, told TMZ in an interview published on Monday, March 23, referring to her now-viral video with fellow social media star Natalie Reynolds.
In the video, Blanchard and Reynolds, 23, participated in the “We Listen We Don’t Judge” TikTok challenge. After Reynolds admitted to offering a homeless woman who couldn’t swim $20 to jump in a lake, Blanchard spoke about her mother’s murder.
“I went to prison for eight and a half years because I ‘X’ my own mom,” Blanchard said, making an “X” motion with her arms.
“Oh my god,” Reynolds responded.
“Hey, we listen and we don’t judge,” Blanchard said.
Blanchard was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center on December 28, 2023, after she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2016. She was granted parole in September 2023.
Blanchard and her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godgejohn, were arrested in 2015 after Dee Dee was found dead from multiple stab wounds in her Springfield home. She was 48.
When asked if she understood why she was receiving so much online backlash in the wake of her video, Blanchard answered in the affirmative.
“I can. I can. Especially, um, with me particularly — I understand that my audience has always followed my journey because they like to see me grow,” she explained. “And so usually I think I can bank on my audience receiving things very well, um, but I’m not the type of person to be very in your face about my past. So, um, this is the first time that I tried something different in a head-on approach and I just don’t — unfortunately it wasn’t received like we wanted.”
Blanchard also wanted to clarify that she was in no way trying to joke about or make light of her mother’s murder by deciding to make the “X” gesture.
“No, that wasn’t the case. The only reason why I did this [makes the gesture] is because I had a conversation with Natalie and TikTok is extremely sensitive when it comes to how you word things,” she said. “So we deliberated on, you know, words that we could possibly use and everything that we thought of — homicide, unalive — all of these things may have gotten flagged by TikTok and the video taken down.”
She continued, “And so I was like, ‘Well what happens if I just do a gesture — an X?’ People know what that means without having to actually say the word. And that was why we had to do it that way.”
In the end, Blanchard — who welcomed her daughter Aurora alongside partner Ken Urker in December 2025 — issued an apology to anyone who was offended by her video.
“I say that I do deeply apologize to anyone who may have been offended by it — that was never my intention,” she said. “I was not laughing about it — I don’t think it’s funny to joke about a heavy topic and my past. I apologize because the delivery was wrong on that.”
She added, “I am trying to be my authentic self and if my authentic self is saying I did something bad in my past but look at where I am now, that is where I’m coming from with it. But I would never joke about my past. So I do apologize if it came off too abrasive.”
