Abbie Chatfield has apologised for a video she posted a year ago after her boyfriend, Keli Holiday, was refused entry into the United States while travelling for an international tour. Holiday, whose real name is Adam Hyde, said on Monday that he had been detained at the Canadian border and denied entry back into the US, forcing him to cancel an upcoming New York show.

Holiday said he was still trying to get clarity on why he was turned away, even though he said he had the proper visa documentation in place. Chatfield, 37, responded on Tuesday morning with a ten-minute video statement that opened with an apology for what she called a very bad joke and a clarification about headlines she said had exaggerated what she meant.

In the video, Chatfield said she believed words had been put in her mouth and that she had done a lot of growing since posting the joke a year ago. She said she did not call for the assassination of Donald Trump, did not say President Trump, and did not believe political assassinations are positive for anybody.

Chatfield said the post was intended as a joke aimed at mocking incels and the online fascination surrounding accused killer Luigi Mangione. She said it was a poorly aimed joke about the violence of incels and the reaction to Mangione, and added that she should have explained the context better or not posted it at all.

The border refusal and the apology landed as Australians and New Zealanders prepare for tougher United States entry requirements that could expand social media checks for visa-exempt travellers from around 40 countries. Last year, President Donald Trump announced a major security overhaul tied to those conditions, and the current episode has fuelled fresh online speculation about how closely such scrutiny can now follow travellers and public figures.

For Holiday, the immediate issue is practical: a cancelled show in New York and an unresolved border decision that he says has not yet been explained. For Chatfield, the more pressing question has been how far a year-old joke can travel once it collides with a political climate already primed to read it in the worst possible light. Her answer on Tuesday was direct: she meant it as a badly judged joke, not a serious call to action.