Maren Morris revealed that calling out Morgan Wallen three years ago resulted in some "scary" death threats addressed to her family, including her young son.
Morris joined the Work in Progress podcast for its Thursday, August 29, episode and opened up about the backlash she and her family had endured for speaking up against the Lies Lies Lies artist. She previously criticized the singer for using the N-word in February 2021, and she told Sophia Bush in the recent podcast that her young son received death threats because of that. She added:
"The death threat portion for me as a young mother was obviously scary. And it wasn't death threats against me. It was against my son, too. So it's like, 'Oh, wow. Now we're involving the kids, the ones that you cared so much about.'"
Maren Morris's son, Hayes Andrew, whom she shares with her former husband, Ryan Hurd, was less than a year old when a video of Morgan Wallen using racial slurs broke the internet in February 2021.
In the video obtained by TMZ, the country music singer and his friends were seen pulling up to his Tennesse home after partying in Nashville. The publication reported that as the singer went inside his home, the actor was heard yelling:
"Hey, take care of this "p— a— motherf—r. Take care of this p—a— n—."
A doorbell camera captured everything as the musician and his friends honked the horns and caused a scene. Wallen's label, Big Loud Label, dropped him after the incident. Several other artists also called him out for the slur, including Kelsea Ballerini and Mickey Guyton.
Maren Morris says she stands by her decision to call out Morgan Wallen's racial slur
Elsewhere in the podcast, Maren Morris shared that she now feels the same way as she felt back in 2021 when she called out Morgan Wallen for using the N-word. Despite the flak she received from it, she told Bush in the podcast:
"I don't regret it, I don't apologize. I feel the exact same way as I did that day. Don't be racist. Don't be transphobic. Don't be homophobic."
The My Church singer also reflected on the reasons why she received so much hate and negative response after calling out a fellow artist for his mistake. She questioned how people could be so "pissed over the criticism of cruelty."
Morris gave her own theory about it in the podcast. She emphasized that it could be because those people were "not only defending the person who said this," but they were also taking her criticism personally.
For her part, Morgan Wallen isn't the first personality that Maren Morris called out for using slurs. She, among other musicians, criticized Jason Aldean's wife, Brittany, for her transphobic comment in August 2022.
On August 21, 2024, Morris told Cosmopolitan during her feature in Cheap Shots that she still stands by her viral "Insurrection Barbie" comment to Brittany Aldean after the influencer's transphobic comment on Instagram.
Moreover, the county music star also famously criticized Tennessee lawmakers while she was onstage at the Love Rising benefit concert in March 2023. She was one of the performers at the event. It was a concert for the benefit of the LGBTQ+ community after the passage of the bill banning drag show performances on public property.