Influencer Chris Olsen is opening up about the emotional toll of intimate photos shared online without his consent.
In a tearful TikTok video shared on Aug. 10, Olsen said he never consented to intimate photos and videos of him being circulated online, and he asked people to stop sharing them.
“I made them of my own volition and I have to stand by the fact that during all this, I never said no. … But today I am trying to say no. I’m saying I don’t want these things to circulate anymore and I hope that’s enough,” he said.
He went on to explain how the photos came to be. After going to rehab and getting sober at 19, he started feeling more confident in his appearance, which led him to collaborate with various photographers.
“When I got sober, I lost a lot of weight and started working out and started feeling good about how I looked physically for the first time in my life. I would post fitness photos often and had gained a small following,” he said.
Olsen said things shifted when he worked with one particular photographer who “crossed the line.”
“When we first shot together, he immediately had me sign a release for the photos that we were going to take, which he said was standard and he needed me to sign in order for us to start,” he said. “Being 19 and unfamiliar with the entertainment world, I complied without realizing what I was actually doing.”
“I didn’t say no. And the photos were taken. Multiple shoots happened, and I let them,” he also said. “And he posted them on a platform that you have to pay for, but people screenshotted them, and from there it was over.”
Olsen first publicly addressed the photos in a July TikTok video.
Since opening up about his experiences, Olsen has received support from many of his friends and followers, including Meghan Trainor and her husband, Daryl Sabara.
Read on to learn more about Chris Olsen and what he has shared about his experiences.
Who is Chris Olsen?
Olsen, 26, is an influencer with 13 million TikTok followers. He rose to fame in 2020 when he began posting videos about quarantining his then-boyfriend.
As his following grew, Olsen became known for sharing vulnerable videos about his mental health and past experiences with addiction and childhood trauma.
He even began sharing videos of his online therapy sessions on TikTok, which he said resonated with his fans.
“My therapy videos really took the app by storm for a second and that made me so happy,” he told People in 2022. “The amount of DMs I got of people saying, ‘I started therapy because of these videos. I was so scared of it before and you really demystified it for me.’”
Olsen, who has a degree in musical theater from Boston Conservatory at Berklee, launched his acting career in 2022 when he appeared in the Discovery+ miniseries “The Book of Queer.” He also had a role in 2024’s “Mean Girls.”
The influencer is also known for his friendship with Meghan Trainor and has appeared in two of her music videos, 2022’s “Meghan Trainor: Made You Look” and 2024’s “Meghan Trainor: To the Moon,” according to his IMdB profile.
In 2023, Olsen founded a coffee brand, Flight Fuel Coffee, partly inspired by his viral videos featuring him delivering coffee to famous people around the world.
What has Olsen shared about the leaked images and videos?
In a July 23 TikTok video, Olsen revealed that explicit images of him had been circulating online without his consent. He said this had first started happening four years earlier, but said he had been reluctant to share it publicly until recently.
“This is not something I want to talk about, but it kind of feels like I’ve gotten to a point where I have to,” he said.
According to Olsen, the issue began when someone shared an intimate image of him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Olsen said he did not have an X account at the time, and said he created one specifically to ask the person who had posted his photo to take it down.
In response to this, Olsen said the X user blocked him and tweeted publicly, “In 30 minutes, I’m taking Chris’ photos down, so download them now.”
“I knew after that I was, like, basically done for,” Olsen said in his July video. “And I said that was four years ago, and I’m still dealing with this today. It never stopped. It’s nonconsensual. It’s violating."
In his subsequent video on Aug. 10, Olsen opened up about his experience at age 19 with a photographer who he says crossed boundaries with him.
“He essentially made me remove what I was wearing,” he said. “I don’t want to get into too many of the details as it continues to obviously trigger me and can be triggering for others,” he said. “But what happened with this photographer was unconsensual, yet I didn’t know how to say no, because I didn’t really know how to stand up for myself and still sometimes don’t.”
Olsen said that while he acknowledges that while he “never said no” to participating in the videos, he asked his followers to consider the context in which they were made.
“I was desperate to get validation on my own terms. There are videos of me circulating doing just that. But I’m 19 and 20 in those videos,” he said. “I made them of my own volition and I have to stand by the fact that during all this, I never said no. … But today I am trying to say no. I’m saying I don’t want these things to circulate anymore and I hope that’s enough.”
“I know it might not be, and I know I have to stand by the fact that I made them, but I’m in the process of forgiving myself and I hope you can try to forgive me, too,” he added.
What does Meghan Trainor have to do with this?
In August, Meghan Trainor supported Olsen online after he faced bullying for going public with his experiences.
The “Made You Look” singer, 30, shared a TikTok video of herself rolling her eyes, blowing a kiss, and waving goodbye.
“Me saying bye & blocking anyone who’s mean to MY best friend,” reads the text overlaid on the video.
“@Chris Olsen I LOVE YOU,” she also captioned the video.
Trainor’s husband, Daryl Sabara, also shared his support for Olsen on TikTok.
“POV trying to hype Chris Olsen up against the bullies but I go a little too hard,” he wrote in an August post.
Olsen and Trainor have been close friends since at least 2022, when Olsen appeared on the “All About That Bass" singer’s podcast, “Workin’ On It.”
The pair hit it off and began creating TikTok videos together, and Trainor officially hired Olsen to be part of her team.
While they are known for their TikTok collaborations, Olsen has said he and Trainor share more than just a professional connection.
“I think regardless of if we ever had the conversation of working together, we still would be hanging out the way that we do,” he told E! News in 2023. “I truly love her. I’ve gone on vacation with her family now, and we’re about to go on another vacation together. So, it’s definitely much deeper than a working relationship.”
