Ashley Graham stopped by Ellen to talk about her new digital series Fearless, and how the body-positive model met her longtime idol, Jennifer Lopez.
Graham, 31, hung behind for a post-concert party put on by JLo after her Vegas concert. Graham mustered the courage to talk to the pop singer and actress who was enjoying a meal with boyfriend Alex Rodriguez.
“Of course, I went to the after party, I wanted to meet her oh-so badly. So I waited up really late because I’m not a night person, I’m a morning girl, but I was like, ‘I’m gonna meet JLo,’ and I broke a cardinal rule,” Graham told Ellen .
“I don’t like it when people come up to me when I’m eating, and I don’t want to go up to a celebrity when they’re eating, but she was eating and it was late and I needed to go. So I went up and sat next to her while she was eating next to A-Rod, and I just said, ‘Hi, I’m Ashley Graham, it’s so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for having me tonight.’ And she goes, ‘Oh hi it’s nice to meet you,’” the model continued.
Graham quickly took the after-party meet-up as an opportunity to invite her idol onto her podcast and for the duo to snap a selfie together.
“And I say, ‘First of all, I have a podcast, it’s called Pretty Big Deal and actually Kim Kardashian was just on it, and we were talking about you and how you’ve just been body goals for us, you know I’m a curvy girl, you’re a curvy girl, she’s a curvy girl, so hi, would you like to be on it? Oh, can we take a selfie,” Graham told Ellen of her fan-girl moment.
Ellen, who nodded empathetically to Graham and offered up some giggles, joked that Graham went from not wanting to bother JLo to actually bothering her. Ellen then prompted Graham to talk more about the video series Fearless, and the model opened up about the important series, which can be viewed on Ellentube . Graham gushed about the series and the different people that are featured in it: a single mom, a young man who wanted to come out to his family, and a young girl with self-esteem issues.
“Do you consider yourself fearless,” Ellen asked Graham. Graham listed off the many ways she finds herself fearless, just as a man dressed as JLo popped up from the side table between Ellen and Graham, which prompted a started exclamation and screams from the model as well as the audience.
“I think I peed a little,” Graham joked as she tried to recover from the scare.
