Shawn Mendes Apologizes for Misgendering Sam Smith: 'It Absolutely Slipped My Mind'

During the livestream on Thursday night, Mendes introduced Smith for their performance of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." When introducing Smith, Mendes used "he" and "him" pronouns to describe the singer; Smith publicly changed their pronouns to "they" and "them" in September 2019 after coming out as nonbinary and genderqueer.

"After a lifetime of being at war with my gender I’ve decided to embrace myself for who I am, inside and out," they wrote at the time. "I’m so excited and privileged to be surrounded by people that support me in this decision but I’ve been very nervous about announcing this because I care too much about what people think but f--- it!"

Fans of both stars publicly called on Mendes and iHeartRadio to make an apology to Smith for misgendering them at the Jingle Ball and for airing the wrong pronouns. "I understand that Shawn may not have known that Sam Smith's pronouns are they/them but why did no one correct him?? Wasn’t this pre-filmed???" one fan wrote. "Did Shawn Mendes just misgender Sam Smith four times in a row? Really?" said another.