Sometimes you can’t bring yourself to meet your idol.
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Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic; Matt Baron/Shutterstock Sunisa Lee; Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber
Suni Lee had the opportunity to meet Justin Bieber at the 2021 Met Gala earlier this month thanks to his wife Hailey Baldwin – but didn’t accept.
In a sneak peek of her appearance on Thursday’s episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist recalled turning down the offer to meet Bieber, 27, and expressed her regret for not taking it.
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Sunisa Lee; Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber
“I met Rihanna,” she told Ellen DeGeneres of her Met Gala experience. “I met Hailey Bieber—oh, my gosh, I love her.”
“I talked to her, and I was shaking, and I was like, ‘Hi, I’m Suni.’ And then I was just telling her how I was dancing to Justin Bieber’s ‘Stay’ for my first Dancing With the Stars dance. And she’s like, ‘You should tell him.’ And I’m like, ‘OK,’ ” Lee recalled.
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Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.
RELATED: Suni Lee Celebrates Being Named to 2021 Time100 List
The gymnast performed the jive to Bieber and The Kid LAROI’s song “Stay” for her debut DWTS with Sasha Farber, earning a 28 a 40 score from the judges.
Lee clarified that when the time came for her to say hello to the “Peaches” singer during fashion’s biggest night, however, she froze.
“Then when I got the chance to see him, I got too scared. I was like, ‘I’m not doing it,’ ” she told DeGeneres, 63.
Shocked, the host asked “You didn’t walk over to him and say hi? He’s so nice. He’s so sweet.”
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Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin
“No, I was so scared,” the Auburn University freshman admitted.
RELATED: Sunisa Lee, First Hmong American Olympic Gymnast, Talks Achieving Her Dream and Being an Inspiration
DeGeneres told the Olympian she hopes she’ll be able to connect with Bieber in the future, to which she responded, “I hope so, too.”
The DWTS contestant said she was once a total Belieber, explaining, “Me and my sister, when we were younger, we had posters of him and blankets of him, and the posters have kissy marks on it with red lipstick.”
“So Justin, if you’re watching, just forget that I said that,” she said with a laugh, adding, “Yeah, I really want to meet him.”
Lee, the first-ever Hmong American Olympic gymnast, is a superstar in her own right.
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Jamie Squire/Getty Suni Lee
She won three medals during the Tokyo Summer Olympics: a gold in the individual all-around; silver with Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum during the team final; and bronze in the uneven bars.
Since her Olympic success, she started college, began competing on DWTS, and was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
RELATED: Joseph Gordon-Levitt ‘Starstruck’ Meeting Suni Lee, Surprises Her with Gymnastics Stunt Skills
The outlet shared a video of Lee reacting to the happy news, which her sister shared. In the clip, she leaped into the air and exclaimed “No way!”
Watch: @sunisalee_ finds out she’s on the 2021 #TIME100 pic.twitter.com/VfLNQ7VAjy
— TIME (@TIME) September 15, 2021
“This milestone has and continues to inspire the Hmong community,” fellow Olympic champion Nastia Liukin wrote for TIME of Lee’s success and larger impact. “But it also sends a simple yet powerful message to underrepresented people everywhere: Dream big because anything is possible.”
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Voicing her pride in representing the Hmong community, Lee told PEOPLE in June that her history-making accomplishment “means a lot to the Hmong community … and to just be an inspiration to other Hmong people [means] a lot to me too.”
