Since you’ve been gone, pop powerhouse Kelly Clarkson has been making headlines across the internet — but not for a performance on The Voice or a viral clip from The Kelly Clarkson Show. Instead, the singer has found herself at the center of an internet debate involving a Brooklyn curiosity shop called Art of Play, an apparently awkward shopping interaction, and one very famous mechanical bird named Molly. Yes, you did in fact read that correctly.
The drama began on Oct. 10 when Clarkson took to X (formerly Twitter) to call out Art of Play, claiming an employee made her feel as though she couldn’t afford an item she wanted to purchase. Comparing the experience to Julia Roberts’s infamous shopping scene in Pretty Woman, Clarkson said the store had lost out on a major sale. The item in question? Molly, a singing and dancing bird displayed inside the shop. Art of Play, however, pushed back against Clarkson’s account, explaining that Molly is a one-of-a-kind bird permanently attached to the wall and isn’t for sale. The store claimed that employees explained that the artist who created Molly had a similar bird available for $15,000, and claimed they offered Clarkson a similar bird for around $2,000. With both sides standing by their accounts, the internet was left wondering what really happened during the now-viral interaction. But with the recent release of security footage from the alleged altercation, things are becoming a little more clear.
Now, that the footage has surfaced, the internet was rewarded with a glimpse into the encounter between Clarkson and the store’s employees. The nearly five-minute video shows the singer browsing the shop and interacting with the store manager near Molly, but there’s one important catch: the footage has no audio. So while we can see what happened, we can’t hear what was actually said.
The security footage serves as a follow-up to Clarkson’s second Art of Play tweet that she made on Oct. 11, where she continued putting them on blast. She ultimately claimed that the shop was making it seem like her inquiry about whether or not Molly was for sale “never happened.”
While it remains unclear what really went down in Art of Play, one thing is certain. Molly the singing bird has officially become the most unexpected character in this celebrity drama. And until we get the full story, we’ll just have to let the footage do the talking.