Robert Griffin III said his wife, Grete Griffin “did it on purpose” when she posted a zoomed-in photo of him eating a giant croissant at the Summer Olympics in Paris, which led to the former ESPN analyst getting viciously trolled on social media.
During an appearance on the “Pardon My Take” podcast on Friday, Griffin explained what led to the couple taking the viral photo and how he handled the internet going “ballistic” on him back in August.
“We’re at the Olympics and we find out in Paris that they had these giant croissants. So I’m like ‘hey we gotta go get one of these things,’” Griffin, who was fired from ESPN as part of financial cuts in August, recalled.
“Actually, TikTok worked with us to get the giant croissants and take content with them at their headquarters in France. So that was an incredible experience with me and my wife.”
“… But then when we got the croissant back at home, I’m like, ‘We have to take a picture eating this croissant.’ You guys have had a situation where your wife kind of, or your lady friend, throws you under the bus a little bit — I’m not blaming my wife for saying that she threw my under the bus. But what I’m saying is that, when we took the picture, we were both supposed to be eating it.
“I was eating it and she didn’t do that and then she posted it on Instagram with a Zoom in on me. So she kind of set everything in motion.”
Griffin said it was a “long day” after the croissant photos took off on social media.
“She did it on purpose! She took the picture and then it was three frames and the second one was zoomed in and the third one was zoomed in even more,” Griffin said. “So then when I posted it on Twitter I got all the zoomed in pictures from instagram that came over and in 10 minutes it was like yeah it’s gonna be a long day.’”
Dan “Big Cat” Katz and PFT Commenter, hosts of the Barstool podcast, continued to joke with Griffin that the photo looked inappropriate because of the way he was holding it.
“The croissant was so big, I had no choice… but to have my hand underneath [it],” he said. “The croissant was super heavy.”
Griffin chose to have fun with the viral moment.
“You have to be able to have fun in a way that people can relate to,” he said. “When you see that picture of me eating that picture — I saw Josh Hart, the forward for the Knicks — he said, ‘Jesus himself could not get me to post this picture.’
“But guess what? He’s engaging with the picture because he understands that it is funny. He understands that you have to have a sense of humor in life. The internet took it and went with it. The way I captioned it wasn’t like ‘watch me at this giant croissant that looks like whatever.’ It was, ‘Enjoying a croissant with my life. The internet will alway internet.”
Griffin added that he saw some comments from people warning him to take the photo down, but he stood by it.
“It’s like, no man the internet is going to do what the internet is going to do. I’m not at fault for them taking it and making it whatever,” he said. “It’s a croissant. I’m eating. I can’t eat pastries now? You just have fun, laugh it off and move on.”
Griffin was a good sport about it at the time.
“Can’t even eat a croissant with your wife anymore on this app,” he wrote, including a crying laughing emoji, at the time.
In another photo, Griffin showed him and his wife holding the croissant.
