Actress Hilary Swank has reportedly apologized for snapping at a mother who was taking her terminally ill sons to Disneyland for a Make-A-Wish trip.
Jada Bafus was waiting at baggage claim in Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), when she took out her phone to call her husband, prompting Swank to declare, “I hope you enjoy that picture!” according to a report by Daily Mail.
“I think I just took my phone out the wrong time. She just thought I was taking a picture of her,” Bafus — the mother of a seven-year-old and four-year-old son who both suffer from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy — told the newspaper.
Bafus speculated that Swank was perhaps “having a bad day,” and she told the Boys Don’t Cry actress she wasn’t taking her photo, and was merely trying to call her husband.
“She just stormed off a little bit,” the mother claimed. “It was just the wrong place, [wrong] time.”
“It just hurt my feelings because I was starting my son’s Make-A-Wish trip, which she wouldn’t have known, but just one of those situations where it was one of my first encounters with a celebrity so I thought it was a little comical,” Bafus explained.
“We just don’t know what others are going through, and I was just a stressed mom trying to navigate LAX,” she added.
Bafus initially told the story of her run-in with Swank on Instagram, which went viral, receiving millions of reactions. The mother has since deleted her Instagram post.
After that, the Million Dollar Baby star reached out to Bafus on Instagram to apologize for her outburst, claiming that she was worried about her two-year-old twins being photographed.
Bafus shared Swank’s apology messages with Daily Mail but asked the newspaper not to publish the images.
Meanwhile, Bafus’s husband Bryan told the outlet he found it odd that a two-time Oscar winner — whose job is to be filmed on a regular basis — would snap at a stranger in a bustling airport that is usually swarming with people trying to take photos of celebrities.
“To snap back at anybody when you’re in that profession is kind of like — I don’t know — it is what it is,” he said.
“We’re not upset at her,” Bryan added. “We’re not trying to get anything from it. It was just kind of like, ‘Oh, look at this, that was crazy’ — it was unexpected at the start of our trip.”
Swank and her husband, Philip Schneider, welcomed their twins in 2023, with the Yellowjackets actress announcing the new addition to her family in an April post from that year, writing, “It wasn’t easy. But boy (and girl!) was it worth it.”
“So maybe don’t snap at a mother taking her terminally ill child on their Make-A-Wish trip at an airport because your illogical self-importance wanted you to believe she was taking pictures of you,” one Instagram user wrote in the comment section of Swank’s post.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
