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Rachael Gunn, the Australian breaker who went viral for her performance at the Olympics in July, defended her breaking abilities and talked about how she has struggled with the backlash to her performance at the Paris Games.
In an interview with the Australian TV show "The Project" — her first with a media outlet since going viral — Gunn, who went by her B-girl name “Raygun” in Paris, said that she has been stunned by the response. “It’s been a pretty wild ride,” the 37-year-old said in the interview on Wednesday. “It definitely has been tough at times.”
Gunn was eliminated in the round-robin stage in Paris after notching zero points against her competitors. But her performance, which included dance moves that mimicked a kangaroo hop, ricocheted across the internet, turning her into a meme and exposing her to relentless mockery.
A cultural studies lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Gunn said that she disconnected from social media as the response grew, and sought mental health support shortly after. She said she was “really sad” about the criticism of her performance and apologized for the backlash that the breaking community has dealt with as a result.
Gunn said the outsized media attention that she received put her in “a state of panic” and that it has been “nerve wracking” to be out in public for a while. Gunn also said she had “mixed feelings” about a skit on NBC's “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” in which she was impersonated by comedian Rachel Dratch.
“I don’t know whether to, like, hug him or yell at him, because what a platform he ended up giving me,” she said, adding that she isn’t ready to watch the sketch but will someday.
“I’m still in the process of being able to describe how I feel about all this stuff, because it kind of feels like a really weird dream that I’ve been having that I’m going to wake up from any moment,” she said.
Gunn first addressed the criticism last month in a video on Instagram. She said at the time that the hate she received was “devastating” and that she took the Olympics “very seriously.”
“I worked my butt off preparing for the Olympics and I gave my all, truly,” she said in her video.