Katie Underwood has gone public with a tearful defence of her behaviour ahead of Bardot's long-awaited reunion performance in Sydney, saying online commentary about her conduct backstage amounted to bullying and could derail any future tour.
The singer posted a video to Instagram on Tuesday, which she has since removed, describing the anxiety she felt in the half-hour before the group took the stage at the Mighty Hoopla festival, and her frustration at not being able to locate the audio technician holding their microphone packs. The video was emotional and unfiltered, and it clearly struck a nerve online before it disappeared from her feed.
Underwood said the reunion itself had felt overwhelmingly positive. Four of the five original Bardot members, Underwood, Belinda Chapple, Sally Polihronas and Tiffani Wood, reunited at the Sydney festival for the first time in 25 years. Sophie Monk did not participate in the comeback. For fans who grew up with the group's early 2000s catalogue, including Poison, These Days and I Should've Never Let You Go, it was a significant moment in Australian pop history.
But Underwood said the warm reception was quickly overshadowed by social media posts characterising her as difficult backstage. She singled out one comment in particular, which she said described her as "a complete moll" before the show, and rejected the idea that nerves or stress justified that kind of public commentary.
"We got backstage half an hour before we were due to go on. All I wanted was a sound check and a microphone. There were legit 50 people backstage. I could barely get in the door because it was blocked by so many people."
Underwood acknowledged she may have appeared short-tempered. "I'm just going to say this once," she added. "The moment you put that thought on the page online, it's online bullying. Don't kid yourself, that's exactly what it is."
She also pushed back against what she described as a gendered double standard, saying she was expected to appear cheerful regardless of circumstances. "As a woman, I'm expected to look happy all the time. Well, I wasn't happy, I was stressed," she said.
The threat to walk away from a potential tour carries real weight for fans hoping for a full Bardot comeback. The group was created through Channel Seven's Popstars reality series and became Australia's most commercially successful girl group of the era, charting six consecutive top-20 singles before disbanding just two years after their formation. A reunion tour would, by any commercial measure, generate significant interest.
The episode raises questions that extend beyond one band's reunion. Online commentary about the behaviour of performers, particularly women, in unguarded moments is a recurring feature of the social media age. Critics of that culture would argue that pre-show stress, in any workplace, is entirely ordinary and does not become a character failing simply because it happens in an entertainment context. Those who posted the original comments might counter that public figures accept a degree of scrutiny as part of the territory.
Both positions have merit, and the tension between them is not easily resolved. What Underwood's video captures, regardless of where one lands on that question, is the particular exhaustion of having a moment of ordinary human stress turned into a public verdict. The Australian Communications and Media Authority and platforms themselves continue to wrestle with where the line sits between criticism and harassment online, and cases like this rarely produce clean answers.
The story was first reported by 7News, which noted the video had been taken down by Tuesday afternoon. Whether Underwood follows through on her warning about the tour remains to be seen, but her willingness to call out the commentary directly suggests she is not inclined to let it pass without a response.