Between the many racially-charged crimes in his past, his feuding with one of Hollywood's
biggest stars, and his dubious industry dealings, there's a lot about this rapper-turned-actor
that gives us less than... good vibrations. This is the shady side of Mark Wahlberg.
It didn't take long for Mark Wahlberg to start going off the rails when his parents split
up. Just two years after his mother and father divorced, the youngest Wahlberg child began
dabbling with hard drugs. At just 13 years old, he started using cocaine, and the drugs
were only half of it as the eventual high school dropout was also stealing cars and
sticking up rich kids by this point.
The actor joked about his criminal past during a 2011 episode of 60 Minutes -
"Were you a good thief?"
"I was pretty good. I was pretty good. I was pretty daring."
As Wahlberg summed it up to Forbes -
"We wanted what we didn't have, so we went out and hustled."
Father Jim Flavin, the local parish priest where Wahlberg grew up, said Wahlberg would
regularly wave at him as he drove around the neighborhood in stolen cars he was barely
big enough to operate. On 60 Minutes he went on to recall one particular courtroom appearance
that left him in doubt about where Wahlberg's future lay.
"'I'll never do it again.' You know, 'I'm sorry' He was wonderful. He started tearing
up, and the judge just melted."
During Mark Wahlberg's turbulent teenage years, he also allegedly committed more than one
racially motivated crime. On June 15, 1986, the then 15-year-old and three of his friends
spotted a 12 year old African American boy named Jesse Coleman, who was walking home
with his older brother and sister, when Wahlberg and his associates started tailing them. According
to documents obtained by The Smoking Gun, one of the gang told the Colemans to get out
of the area because they were black, compounding the hatred with racial slurs.
A chase ensued, with the all-white group pursuing the Colemans on their mopeds. The shocking
court docs also reveal that Wahlberg and his friends threw rocks at the Coleman kids that
day, and followed them chanting racial slurs. Luckily, the Colemans managed to make it to
the safety of a local Burger King before any of them were seriously injured.
Unfortunately for Jesse Coleman, he would run into Wahlberg's gang the very next day
while on a school field trip. The documents state that they followed Coleman's class for
several blocks, shouting racial epithets and summoning other nearby white males to join
them. Rocks were thrown during the exchange, with more than one student from class getting
hurt. The attack only stopped when the teacher was able to hail a nearby ambulance, which
chased Wahlberg and company away from the class.
Two years after he was reported to police for throwing rocks at black kids in his neighborhood,
Mark Wahlberg, allegedly high on PCP, brutally attacked another Dorchester resident. Explosive
legal documents via The Smoking Gun reveal that on the night of April 8, 1988, Wahlberg
knocked a stranger out cold with a large wooden stick.The victim was a Vietnamese man named
Thanh Lam, who was removing cases of beer from his car when Wahlberg approached him
with the weapon. He yelled obscenities at Lam before breaking the stick across his head
and leaving him in an unconscious heap.
According to Massachusetts court records, Wahlberg was mouthing off about "slant eyed
g***s" when police arrested him for the sickening assault. Officers marched him back to the
scene of the crime so that Lam, who had to spend the night in hospital for his injuries,
could confirm that he was indeed the attacker, but that part wasn't even necessary as Wahlberg
allegedly told the arresting officers -
"I'll let you know, that's the motherf***** who's head I split open."
Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder following the incident, but was ultimately
convicted of assault instead, and would only end up spending 45 days behind bars.
Thanh Lam wasn't the only man that Wahlberg allegedly assaulted on April 8, 1988. After
knocking Lam out cold with a stick, Wahlberg and two of his friends ran for a while to
get out of Dodge. When they encountered a second Vietnamese male a few blocks away,
another assault took place. Unsealed court documents reveal that Wahlberg lulled victim
Hoa Trinh into a false sense of security before attacking him. The future Hollywood star told
Trinh -
"Police coming, police coming, let me hide."
He placed an arm around his shoulder to make it appear as though they were friends. When
he felt the coast was clear, Wahlberg blindsided the unsuspecting Trinh with a punch to the
eye.
Numerous reports at the time claimed that Trinh had been left blind in one eye, and
for years that was thought to be true, even by Wahlberg himself. When The Daily Mail tracked
Trinh down years later, however, he revealed that he had already lost the sight in that
eye — fighting alongside U.S. forces in the Vietnam War. He went on to add that Wahlberg
had already paid for his crime and that he had forgiven him for the attack.
Wahlberg's violent streak didn't fade after he made it big with Marky Mark and the Funky
Bunch ⁠— in fact, he carried out what was arguably his most brutal attack after
becoming famous. In 1992, the rapper was arrested for assault and battery when he and his bodyguard,
Derek McCall, allegedly beat a man at a local tennis court. They left him injured, most
seriously with a fractured jaw that later needed to be wired shut, which court records
confirm. McCall reportedly held the victim, Robert D. Crehan, down as Wahlberg repeatedly
kicked him in the face.
While the documents state that Crehan didn't do anything to warrant the attack by Wahlberg,
a lawyer speaking on behalf of the musician and Calvin Klein model claimed that it was
Crehan who started it. Mitchell alleged that Wahlberg only got involved after Crehan used
a racist slur against his black bodyguard. Crehan lodged a civil suit against Wahlberg,
who initially denied having anything to do with his injuries, with the actor saying -
"People will do anything for money. I was present, but I didn't take part."
He decided to pay out anyway, reaching an out-of-court settlement just before his trial
was due to begin. Crehan told the judge that he was satisfied with the figure, and Marky
Mark got let off the hooky-hook.
Mark Wahlberg starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's Boston-set crime thriller
The Departed in 2006, which resulted in the Dorchester native receiving an Oscar nomination,
but the two had actually already worked together over a decade earlier. Wahlberg was still
relatively new to acting when he appeared in 1995's The Basketball Diaries, based on
Jim Carroll's memoir of the same name. DiCaprio stars as Carroll, a promising high school
basketball player who gets hooked on heroin. Wahlberg won a supporting role in the hard
hitting sports drama, which did not go down well with the leading man, or as Wahlberg
recalled during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter -
"Leonardo was like, 'Over my dead f***ing body, Marky Mark's not going to be in this
f***ing movie. Because we'd had a thing. I didn't even realize it, [but] I was a bit
of a d*** to him at a charity basketball game. So he was like, 'This f***ing a**hole is not
going to be in this movie.'"
Director Scott Kalvert stuck his neck out for him and he stayed, despite DiCaprio's
reservations. Wahlberg understood Leo's hesitancy because of his past behavior but according
to him, the animosity disappeared after the first script reading.
"We're friends right Mark?"
"Friends til the end bud."
"Do you accept me as your friend?"
"Sure."
"Thanks pal."
"And you?"
"I as well."
Mark Wahlberg filed an application with the Massachusetts Board of Pardons in 2014, attempting
to get his assault convictions erased from his record so he could work with at-risk kids
and obtain a concessionaire's license for his restaurant chain, Wahlburgers. In his
application, Wahlberg wrote -
"I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took on the night of April 8, 1988. Since
that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so that I can
be a role model to my children and others."
Unsurprisingly, Wahlberg's pardon request was met with backlash, with many seeing it
as a rich, white celebrity trying to buy a clean slate.
"Uh you know, people have said because of my celebrity, my success that I'm basically
waving that magic wand."
Kristyn Atwood, one of the black students that was hit by a rock when Wahlberg's gang
targeted her mostly black class during their field trip in 1986, made her thoughts on the
actor's pardon request perfectly clear.
"I don't really care who he is, it doesn't make him any exception. If you're a racist,
you're always going to be a racist, and for him to want to erase it, I just think it's
wrong."
The actor later admitted that his pardon request was ill-advised, saying:
"It was one of those things where it was just kind of presented to me, and if I could've
done it over again I would never have focused on that or applied."
When imprisoned steroid distributor Richard Rodriguez spoke to filmmaker Jon Bravo over
the phone in 2018, he claimed that he had a number of high profile clients before his
Miami-based Iron Addicts Gym was raided by the Drug Enforcement Agency. Mark Wahlberg
was allegedly among them. Rodriguez alleged that Wahlberg was a good person during the
interview, but their relationship apparently became strained over time.
"When you're dealing with celebrities you unfortunately have to be very accommodating.
[Wahlberg] started to become more demanding. Once I saw his true colors, I decided to sever
ties from him."
According to Rodriguez, Wahlberg allegedly used his steroids to help prepare for his
film roles and expected them to be shipped all over the world.
"Oftentimes, he would get creative with ways in which to ship particular products to certain
countries and areas where he could receive them but not necessarily under his name,"
The disgraced gym owner also reportedly claimed that Wahlberg would use fake names to throw
people off the scent. Wahlberg flat out denied that he was a steroid user when TMZ caught
up with him not long after the story broke. The Pain & Gain star claimed that his ripped
body is completely natural, and that he got his muscles through just working out.
When Kevin Spacey was dropped from Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World following
allegations of sexual assault, there was a race against time to save the movie. Spacey
starred as tycoon J. Paul Getty, who famously refused to cooperate with the mafia family
that kidnapped his grandson in Italy, despite his multi-billion dollar fortune. Spacey was
fired from the already completed movie with just a few months until the scheduled release
date, leaving things super tight. It sounds as though Wahlberg was allegedly more interested
in adding to his bank balance than he was about rescuing the film.
Michelle Williams was reportedly paid under $1,000 for her work on the rapid reshoots,
while Wahlberg demanded a whopping $1.5 million. Two separate sources claimed that the actor
had a co-star approval clause in his contract, a clause he took full advantage of when the
studio came to him with the idea of replacing Spacey with Christopher Plummer. One insider
alleged to USA Today -
"What he said was, 'I will not approve Christopher Plummer unless you pay me,'"
Wahlberg pledged to give up the $1.5 million after actors union SAG-AFTRA opened an investigation
into the huge pay gap, donating the money to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund in Michelle
Williams' name.
Mark Wahlberg's shady past resurfaced again in 2020 when the actor shared a picture of
George Floyd on his Instagram. He used the Black Lives Matter hashtag on the pic, and
captioned the photo with -
"We must all work together to fix this problem. I'm praying for all of us. God bless."
To absolutely nobody's surprise, Wahlberg was quickly called out for hypocrisy, with
numerous people bringing up his history of racially motivated crimes. Comic book artist
Adam Ellis tweeted -
"He beat a Vietnamese man unconscious and was charged for attempted murder. He's committed
at least 5 hate crimes. He only apologized while seeking a pardon 26 years later."
When people began to highlight the fact that Wahlberg had a full section on his Wikipedia
page called "Hate Crimes," the name of that section miraculously changed — it was retitled
"Racial Incidents," and later watered down further to simply "Legal Issues." Many are
now convinced that Wahlberg edited his own Wikipedia page to play down his past and minimize
backlash. Publicist Danny Derany summed it up by saying -
"If you still don't know what white privilege is, Mark Wahlberg committed hate crimes, has
a Wikipedia section dedicated to it, and we never ever talk about it."
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