When a celebrity sits down for a one-on-one interview, it always seems harmless enough
... at first.
But in the past 10 years, these exchanges have often gone awry, ending in cursing, screaming,
and sudden walkouts.
These are the last decade's most uncomfortable celebrity interviews.
In 2014, Samuel L. Jackson stopped by KTLA morning news to promote his new film - a remake
of Robocop.
Reporter Sam Rubin simply couldn't wait to ask him all about his career.
There was just one problem, though: He was confusing Jackson with another African-American
actor, Laurence Fishburne.
"The Super Bowl commercial!
Did you get a lot of reaction from that Super Bowl commercial?"
"...What Super Bowl commercial?"
Upon realizing his mistake, Rubin does his best to apologize for the mix-up.
Jackson, of course, is not about to let it go.
"You're the entertainment reporter for this station, and you don't know the difference
between me and Laurence Fishburne?"
As Rubin continues making apologies left and right, Jackson clearly isn't having it.
"Really?
Really?"
"I apologize."
"I'm the other guy.
The other one.
'What's in your wallet?"
Later, Jackson points out:
"I've actually never done a McDonald's or a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial.
I know that's surprising."
Rubin later ends the interview by saying:
"They're pushing us along and I'm probably going to get spanked in the most extraordinary
way, with good reason."
A month later, Jackson hadn't forgotten this cringiest of cringeworthy interviews.
He tweeted a photo of himself wearing a shirt that reads:
"I'm not Laurence Fishburne."
Meanwhile, Fishburne said that this was a common mistake - just like how people used
to confuse Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino back in the day.
In his opinion,
“It's not a bad problem to have."
“Not at all.”
“No.”
Krishnan Guru-Murthy is a British journalist who's increasingly made a name for himself
as a button-pusher.
He certainly managed to get under Robert Downey Jr.'s skin in 2015, pummelling the actor with
extremely personal questions about his so-called "dark times."
“Uhhh… are we promoting a movie?"
Sure, sometimes it's a journalist's job to ask the tough questions... but at this point,
we all know the Iron Man star struggled with substance abuse in the past.
To add insult to injury, the tense interview occurred during a press event for Avengers:
Age of Ultron.
Not exactly the time or the place.
"Your foot is starting to jump a little bit.
You better get to your next question."
Meanwhile, Downey Jr. was only there with the express purpose of promoting his new film.
That certainly didn't dissuade Guru-Murthy:
"We also would like to talk a little bit about you.
I don't know how comfortable you are… talking… talking about yourself at the moment."
"You have as much time as anyone else will."
This line of questioning eventually caused Downey to end the interview - and it's a gloriously
awkward moment:
“I'm sorry, I really don't know, what are we doing?"
"Well I'm just asking questions, that's all."
"Right.
Bye."
On his way out the door, Downey called Guru-Murthy a "schmuck."
During a subsequent appearance on Howard Stern, the actor said,
"What I have to do in the future is give myself permission to say 'That is more than likely
a syphilitic parasite and I need to distance myself from this clown.'"
Call it a hunch, but we're pretty sure the folks at Marvel wanted Downey to talk about
playing Iron Man - not delve into the time he got arrested for heroin possession.
While promoting the crime caper Now You See Me in 2013, Jesse Eisenberg sat down with
blogger Romina Puga for an interview that quickly became the epitome of cringe.
"Yeah…
That one…
I think what you're doing is you're putting your thumb under your pointer finger."
It seems Eisenberg was doing everything in his power to make Puga's self-confidence…
disappear.
Throughout the interview, he fires off insults left and right, at one point asking her:
"Um, do you know the, um, comedian Carrot Top?"
"Yes.
Horrible."
"Well.
You are like the Carrot Top of interviewers."
"Ooh."
And Eisenberg doesn't let it slide when Puga refers to his costar Morgan Freeman by only
his last name:
“So Freeman plays, uh… a magic debunker."
"Freeman?
Who are you?
Freeman?
What, are you on a baseball team with him?"
"Yeah, he's a buddy of mine."
"Okay."
Shortly after the interview, Puga wrote that
"I was just humiliated by Jesse Eisenberg.
[...] The five minute 'interview' [was] more like self-esteem butchering."
Krishnan Guru-Murthy clearly has a knack for making celebrities very, very angry.
In 2013, he found himself on the receiving end of quite the verbal tongue lashing during
a wickedly awkward interview with director Quentin Tarantino.
Things went haywire when Guru-Murthy tried discussing the potential relationship between
violent films and mass shootings.
Meanwhile, Tarantino was there trying to promote his new film Django Unchained - a movie with
no shortage of violence.
Things didn't go well, and Tarantino totally lost it.
“Do not ask me a question like that, I, I’m not biting, I refuse your question.”
“Why?”
“Because I refuse your question.
I’m not your slave and you’re not my master.”
As Guru-Murthy repeatedly attempted to discuss a potential correlation, Tarantino simply
declared:
"And I'm shutting your butt down."
"And that's entirely your right."
"This is a commercial for my movie!"
Indeed.
It was a highly entertaining, highly awkward commercial for his movie.
Joan Rivers
The late comic Joan Rivers was legendary for speaking her mind - as you can see for yourself
in this remarkably awkward 2014 interview.
Rivers was there trying to promote her book Diary of a Mad Diva... but things got off
to a shaky start with CNN correspondent Fredricka Whitfield said this about her work on Fashion
Police…
"Even with your fashion critiquing, which is very mean in some ways."
"It's not mean…
It's not mean."
"Really?!"
"It's not mean."
"It's not mean?!"
Whitfield then moved on to the cover of Rivers' book, saying:
"You have some shock value to you… you know, on the cover of your book, you're wearing
a fur and you probably knew there would be animal rights activists…"
Rivers cuts her off right then and there:
"You know, this whole interview is becoming a defensive interview."
"NO!"
"Are you wearing leather shoes?"
"Yeah"
"Then shut up."
Rivers goes on to say:
"I don't want to hear it.
'You're wearing fur.'
You're wearing leather shoes!
You're eating chicken!
You're eating meat!
I don't want to hear this nonsense.
Come to me with a paper belt and I'll talk to you."
For some reason, Whitfield didn't shift gears.
Instead, she suggested that other journalists harped on Rivers for wearing that fur coat
on the cover of her book.
This was clearly the last straw:
"No, you know, I'm going, I really am going, because all you've done is negative.”
“NO!”
“All you have done is negative!"
Rivers then made a point to mention:
"I've made people laugh for fifty years.
I am put on Earth to make people laugh.
My book is funny.
I wear fur that was killed fifteen years ago.
I work for animal rights."
"STOP IT with 'and you do this, and you're mean, and you're that' … You are not the
one to interview a person who does humor.
Sorry!"
And just like that, Joan Rivers stormed out of the interview and was gone.
A befuddled Whitfield was left all alone on screen, asking no one in particular: "Are
we serious?"
Indeed, Rivers was serious.
Shortly after leaving the interview, she explained to TheWrap that it wasn't a PR stunt, and
she felt perfectly justified ending the interview.
Her exact words were:
"The CNN interviewer was a news reporter and not an entertainment reporter.
She did not seem to understand we were talking about a comedy book and not the transcripts
from the Nuremberg Trial.
Every question was an accusatory one designed to put me on the defensive."
Meanwhile, Rivers had stated her philosophy as clearly as could be:
"Life is very tough.
And if you can make a joke to make something easier and funny, do it."
After 20-plus years of lawsuits against him, singer R. Kelly agreed to sit down with journalist
Gayle King in 2019.
His apparent reason for doing so was because
"I'm very tired of all the, um, lies.
I've been hearing things and, you know, seeing things on the blogs.
You know, I"m just tired."
When King asks him what rumors he's heard, he responds:
"[I] got little girls trapped in the basement.
Helicopters over my house… trying to, um, rescue someone that doesn't need rescuing.
Because they're not in my house.
Handcuffing people.
Starving people.
I have a harem.
A - whatchamacallit - a cult."
At one point, King brings up the documentary Surviving R. Kelly, asking him whether the
fifty people interviewed for the six-part series were all lying.
He responds:
"Everybody [in that documentary] said something bad about me.
Nobody said nothing good.
They was describing Lucifer.
I'm not Lucifer.
I'm a man.
I make mistakes, but I'm not a devil."
King soon asks him:
"Why would all these women tell these different stories about you if they were not true - and
they don't know each other?
That defies logic to me."
Kelly responds:
"You can start a rumor on a guy like me or a celebrity, just like that.
All you gotta do is push a button on your phone and say, 'So and so did this to me.'"
Later on, King asks Kelly if he's ever been intimate with anyone who happened to be, quote,
"under the age of 17."
And he responds, "No."
King challenges that assertion:
"I have to tell you, it's so hard to believe that based on …"
"I'm gonna tell you something, Gale."
"...what the women have said about you."
Kelly grows more agitated as he accuses all these women of lying.
"Stop it, quit playin.'
I didn't do this stuff.
This is not me.
I'm fighting for my f----g life!"
Kelly then stands up and starts punching his fists in the air as King sits there calmly,
and he yells:
"Y'all just don't want to believe the truth!"
After the broadcast, Boston Globe columnist Renee Graham tweeted:
"Now we see exactly how #RKelly behaves when challenged by a woman."
Meanwhile, King said that she never felt threatened, telling O, The Oprah Magazine:
"I never thought he was going to hit me.
[...] I was more worried that he was going to get up and leave."
“I hope this camera keep going.”
“We’re going to keep the camera going.”
“This is not true.
This… doesn't even make sense!"
Comedian and talk show host Chelsea Handler has never been one to hold back, and she certainly
pulls no punches in this 2014 interview on Piers Morgan's now-defunct CNN show.
"You tweet very amusingly."
"I wish you did."
At one point, she even tells him,
"You're a terrible interviewer."
"Well you just weren't keeping my attention."
"Well, that's not my problem."
"That is your problem."
"This is your show, you have to pay attention to the guests that you invited on your show."
And then Morgan decides to end the segment by showing Handler footage of controversial
news figure George Zimmerman as he signs autographs at a gun show.
"Thank you.
Thank you for ending on such a high note."
And then there's this horribly awkward goodbye:
"Try to end on a smile, something nice."
"You're so handsome."
The folks behind Australians’ version of 60 Minutes must have known exactly what they
had on their hands when they scored an interview with Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, Duchess of York,
in 2011.
Needless to say, the conversation gets awkward in a jiffy.
The problems arose when the show made Fergie re-watch incriminating undercover footage
from 2010.
This footage seems to show Ferguson offering access to her ex-husband - Prince Andrew,
Duke of York - to a reporter who is posing as "an international business tycoon."
In fact, it looks like she's offering to, quote, "open doors"... in exchange for a payment
of 500,000 pounds.
As The Guardian reported in January 2018, Fergie subsequently sued Murdoch's News Group
in the wake of the scandal, asking for 45 million pounds.
Meanwhile, she wasn't invited to Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding or Prince Harry
and Meghan Markle's nuptials.
It's really no wonder that Fergie wasn't eager to watch the footage right then and there
in front of the cameras.
Instead, she stormed off the set.
The show's producers capitalized on the moment by making it the centerpiece of the promos,
enticing viewers with the promise that
"It's the weirdest interview you'll ever see."
When conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly visited The View in 2010, he didn't waste
any time sharing his opinions on 9/11.
The appearance was all part of his promotional tour for his book Pinheads and Patriots, and
it quickly became one of The View's most intense episodes.
When O'Reilly said it was "inappropriate" for a Muslim community center to be built
near Ground Zero in New York City, Whoopi Goldberg pointed out,
"There were 70 families who are Muslim who also died in that building."
Explaining why he felt the community center was "inappropriate," O'Reilly announced,
"Muslims killed us on 9/11, that's why!"
The ladies vehemently protested that claim - with several words being bleeped out during
the broadcast.
Joy Behar soon stood up from her seat and said, "I don't want to sit here now."
Goldberg then stood up with her and the two of them dramatically walked off the stage.
Barbara Walters wasted no time criticizing them on-air for this abrupt departure.
"You have just seen what should not happen.
We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands, and screaming, and walking
off stage."
After that, Behar and Goldberg returned to the fold.
O'Reilly apologized for his comment, and all seemed well.
Fast-forward to 2016, when O'Reilly announced on his former show that he would never appear
on The View again.
Why, you ask?
Because Behar claimed that Donald Trump was unstable.
"That's it.
No more View for me."
Kanye West absolutely excels at giving awkward interviews.
I'm a god.
Everybody says, Who does he think he is?
I just told you who I thought I was…
A god!"
But if we had to choose the most cringeworthy interview?
It's a tough one, but we'd have to go with his appearance on TMZ Live In 2018.
That's the segment where he attempted to explain his experiment with "free thought," a concept
he'd been practicing on his Twitter account.
Needless to say, it didn't go well.
The chaotic, stream-of-consciousness interview quickly made headlines, and rightly so: West
mused on everything from his liposuction procedure to his resulting opioid addiction.
And then, of course, there was his remark about slavery.
His exact quote was:
"When you hear about slavery for 400 years - for 400 years?
That sounds like a choice.
Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all?"
The statement was so objectively outrageous, a TMZ staffer called out West out on the spot.
Afterward, the rapper took to Twitter to clarify his remarks.
In a series of since-deleted tweets, West attempted to explain that he was referring
to, quote, "mental enslavement."
In a tweet from that batch that still remains live, he wrote:
"The universe has a plan.
I knew that TMZ would be awesome."
Well… we're not sure we'd use the word "awesome," but it was certainly something.
Today we tip our hats to UK radio personality Jamie Edwards: Sadly, his morning show enthusiasm
was simply no match for Bruce Willis's outsized ego during this interview… which was ostensibly
to promote the actor's 2013 movie Red 2.
As you can see, Willis approaches each of Edwards' questions with either coiled rage
or palpable boredom:
"I'm thinking about driving right now.
I can hardly keep my mind on this interview."
Meanwhile, Mary Louise Parker stares into space, hopefully astral-projecting into a
much less awkward conversation.
"Do you hear that?"
"I do."
"It's the sirens.
They're coming to take me away."
"Not you.
They're not taking you away.
Go ahead… you got some great questions there, James."
But good news: Edwards' subsequent interview with HLN suggests Willis didn't manage to
completely break his' spirits:
"He just obviously doesn't like talking about his movies."
The story checks out.
"So how would you sell me the film then?
What would you say?"
"I wouldn't.
I would… slash my hooves."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite celebs are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.