Mark Wright Apologises For Dressing Up In Offensive Halloween Costume

The point of a Halloween costume is, of course, to be scary. And usually, celebrities are right on the money with their spooky outfit choices. But some celebs completely miss the mark and even cause offence by dressing as other celebrities who hurt real victims.

In a now-deleted Instagram post, former The Only Way Is Essex star Mark Wright proudly posted a picture of his Halloween costume. Donning multi-coloured braids and drawn-on tattoos, Wright had dressed up as Takeshi 6ix9ine. Wright mimicked 69’s signature post, with the caption reading ‘Happy Halloween @6ix9ine’. Another posted ‘do these people [celebrities] not have publicists?????’

The reality TV star was immediately met with backlash, understandably. Wright quickly turned his Instagram comments off, before later deleting the post entirely. Outraged fans took to Twitter to comment on the issue. ​​‘@MarkWright_ turning his comments off on Instagram because he knows going as a 69 for Halloween is just wrong,’ one Twitter user said.

Wright is certainly not the first famous person to sport an insensitive costume for the spooky season - we’re looking at you, Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian - but dressing up as a convicted child sex offender is particularly horrible, and we’re surprised Wright hadn’t thought of that during the probably-quite-long process of drawing on all 69’s tattoos. Maybe celebrities should quickly Google the people they intend on dressing as, before making the costume?

Back in 2015, the rapper - whose real name is Daniel Hernandez - pled guilty to a felony count of use of a child in a sexual act. He was charged with three counts of the offence after appearing in a video in which a 13-year-old was seen engaged in a ‘sexually explicit act’. At the time of the assault, Hernandez was 18 years old.

Hernandez initially entered a plea bargain, but he violated the terms of the agreement after being arrested twice afterwards. In 2018, Hernandez was initially sentenced to four years of probation and 1,000 hours of community service, for his crimes concerning the sexual assault case, but he was not made to register as a sex offender - for reasons not revealed to the public.

Tekashi 6ix9ine was released from prison last April. He was reportedly granted early release due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yesterday, Wright addressed the backlash and apologised, saying he wasn’t aware of the rapper’s crimes. In a written statement uploaded to his own Instagram story, he said ‘My apologies for last night's Halloween picture. I only knew about Tekashi69's music and not about his offences. Had I known, it would not have been my choice of costume.’