Millie Bobby Brown has shed some mild on her previous alleged relationship with TikToker Hunter Ecimovic, in any other case generally known as Hunter “Echo.”
Mille was 16 when she and Hunter, then 20, have been rumored to be courting. Although they by no means explicitly confirmed that they have been in a relationship, hypothesis arose after the pair have been seen kissing and embracing in a sequence of images that surfaced throughout social media, all of which had reportedly been taken in 2020.
On condition that the authorized age of consent in California — the place Hunter is reportedly based mostly — is eighteen, the TikToker’s alleged relationship with Millie sparked extreme backlash on-line.
However Hunter maintained that he “had nothing to apologize for” as he went on to seemingly verify the rumors throughout an Instagram Dwell final July.
Making a sequence of crude remarks about his and Millie’s alleged relationship, Hunter — who, on the time, had extra 1.6 million followers on TikTok — went dwell with a bunch of buddies and joked that the Stranger Issues star had been “in love” with him. On the time, Millie had already begun courting her present boyfriend, Jake Bongiovi.
And Hunter went as far as to explicitly declare that he “groomed” Millie in response to viewers’ criticism. “Think about being a grown grownup and courting a child. Groomer,” learn one remark, to which Hunter mentioned: “I do know, I groomed her.”
Hunter went on, “The whole lot that I did was fully authorized… You guys do not know something,” earlier than addressing the onslaught of criticism he was going through: “You guys are simply following after one individual saying one factor, like, everyone hates him so that everybody’s going to hate me.”
“I’ve nothing to apologize for, so make that clear,” he added. “I’ve zero issues to apologize for. You guys have no idea a single factor in any respect.”
Hunter additionally claimed that Millie’s dad and mom had permitted of their alleged relationship. “I used to be dwelling at Millie’s home for eight months. How the fuck is {that a} lawsuit? I believed her mum and pa knew about every thing,” he mentioned.
Hunter confronted heaps of backlash for his remarks, and wound up issuing an apology. “The livestream, I’m sorry for,” he mentioned. “I’m not pleased with in any respect how I spoke, it sounded very immature, seemed horrible on my household, it seemed horrible on me, it seemed horrible on my buddies.”
And strolling again his claims that he’d “groomed” Millie, Hunter commented: “I by no means groomed her. I by no means put stress on her to love me.”
Millie didn’t personally reply to Hunter’s claims herself, although her group have been fast to label his remarks “irresponsible, offensive, and hateful.”
“Mr. Ecimovic’s remarks on social media usually are not solely dishonest, but in addition are irresponsible, offensive, and hateful,” her representatives mentioned in a press release to E! Information. “As an alternative of participating in a public discourse with him via the press or on social media, we’re taking motion to make sure that he stops this habits as soon as and for all.”
Although she didn’t explicitly verify that the pair have been in a relationship, Millie closely implied that this was the case as she described her and Hunter’s previous “unhealthy scenario.”
“I felt very susceptible,” she admitted. “Additionally, nobody on the [Stranger Things] set knew I used to be going via this. So it was form of good to have the ability to simply cope with that myself and nobody else knew. Then it was more durable when the entire world knew.”
Because the interviewer notes, the Stranger Issues actor mentioned she walked away from Hunter in January 2021, which was nearly six months earlier than his Instagram Dwell.
Reflecting on the crude remarks he’d made through the livestream, Millie went on to recall feeling “powerless” after being “publicly humiliated” by Hunter, earlier than revealing that she’s spent the previous 12 months “therapeutic.”
“Once you get publicly humiliated this manner, I felt so uncontrolled and powerless,” she mentioned. “Strolling away and understanding that I’m price every thing and this individual didn’t take something from me, it felt very empowering.”
“It felt like my life had lastly turned a web page and that I truly had ended a chapter that felt so fucking lengthy… It was a 12 months of therapeutic,” she added.
And, explaining the reasoning behind her resolution to talk about her and Hunter’s previous encounters, Millie made it clear that she needed “younger women and younger individuals on the market” to pay attention to the “fallacious selections” she’s made.
“Finally, all I needed to do inside my profession is assist younger women and younger individuals on the market know that I, too, undergo issues,” she mentioned. “I’m not this good individual that’s promoting skin-care merchandise and [who is] in Stranger Issues. I completely have made fallacious selections.”