Will Smith darkly predicts the future, while Lizzo manifests her heart's desire.
And they're not the only celebs who set the internet aflame with their TikToks.
The Material Girl is living in a much different world than when she first burst onto the pop
music scene in the 80s. Nowadays, she can get tongues wagging without having to appear on MTV.
Case in point: in October 2022, Madonna shared a video of herself crumpling up a
pair of pink underwear and trying to toss it into a wastebasket, along with a caption that read,
"If I miss, I'm Gay." When her lingerie landed on the floor, she dramatically raised one arm up
in the air. The video sparked a discussion about whether she was coming out or just queerbaiting.
Back in 1991, she helped cement her spot as an LGBTQ icon by telling The Advocate,
"I think everybody has a bisexual nature. That’s my theory. I could be wrong."
Fast forward back to 2022, when Elvira,
Mistress of the Dark told TMZ that Madonna once made a move on her girlfriend and added,
"I think Madonna has always said she's pretty fluid."
Jojo Siwa doesn't have to do much to impress her TikTok followers. But in 2022,
she spilled some piping hot tea about another celebrity with a wholesome image:
Full House and Fuller House star Candace Cameron Bure. Siwa participated in a rapid-fire Q&A,
and one of the prompts that flashed up on the screen asked her to identify the
rudest celebrity she's met, and she responded by holding up her phone to reveal a photo of Bure.
Bure then revealed on Instagram that she had no clue what Siwa had against
her until she reached out. She then learned that she'd snubbed Siwa at
an event when the then-11-year-old requested a photo with her. Siwa later told Page Six,
"We had about a 10-minute conversation,
and it was sweet. She apologized, and we talked. It was cool. It was nice."
Drew Barrymore didn't have to spill any tea or stir up controversy to go viral.
All she had to do was laugh in the rain. In a July 2022 TikTok, the actor and talk show
host filmed herself gleefully frolicking in a downpour. After lifting her face to the sky
and removing her droplet-covered glasses, she enthusiastically urged her followers:
"Whenever you can, go out into the rain, do not miss the opportunity!"
Something about her pure joy simply resonated with viewers, with one person responding,
"The happiness here is just making me unbelievably happy too."
There were plenty of people picking up Barrymore's childlike delight,
a remarkable trait for someone who endured some traumatic early years.
She spent time in rehab when she was just 12 years old and once admitted to The Guardian,
"I really had a fear that I was going to die at 25."
Barrymore also had a theory about why this simple TikTok resonated so much, as she told Page Six,
"Rain is for everybody. And I love things that are for everyone."
After surviving a series of horrors on Stranger Things, Noah Schnapp found himself
facing a fearsome new foe on social media: none other than Doja Cat. In a July 2022 TikTok,
he dubbed the musician "thirsty Doja" and shared a screenshot of a private Instagram conversation
they had in which she asked if his Stranger Things costar Joseph Quinn had a girlfriend.
Schnapp suggested that she slide into his DMs, and when Doja Cat responded that Quinn
has no social media, Schnapp helpfully set her straight by sharing a link to
his Instagram. But then in a TikTok Live, Doja slammed her wingman for his lack of propriety.
"That's like borderline snake shit."
Observers debated online over who was in the wrong,
and Schnapp later spoke to Variety about his messy matchmaking fail. As he put it,
"I'm super unserious on social media and pretty goofy,
so I posted that not thinking too much of it, but obviously it hurt her feelings."
He also revealed that he told Doja Cat that he
was sorry for his actions and that she accepted his apology.
Social media can breed surprising collaborations, and perhaps none was more surprising than Addison
Rae and Kourtney Kardashian teaming up on TikTok in 2021. They were dressed for the classiest of
sleepovers in matching silk pajamas with ostrich feather trim. Kardashian had a drink in hand,
and she lip-synced along with one of her own Keeping Up With the Kardashians lines,
while Rae then mouthed Larsa Pippen's response.
"I mean, I feel fine, I just cry myself to sleep every night."
"Yeah, that's totally normal."
Some of Kardashian's TikTok followers saw nothing
abnormal about this unlikely friendship, with one writing,
"Addison and Kourtney are [an] iconic duo."
However, others found the 21-year age difference between the pair a bit odd, with one commenting,
"I'd cry myself to sleep too if I was so desperate to stay young and relevant."
As it turns out, Kardashian's son Mason Disick is a huge fan of Rae's, so she
arranged a meeting between Mason and his TikTok idol, who ended up clicking with his hip mom.
"I kind of just stuck around and we got really close, and we started working out together."
Kardashian even went on to cameo in her new bestie's Netflix movie He's All That.
While participating in the "Wipe it Down" challenge in 2021, Mariah Carey took her fans
back to 2009. That was the year she took a page from the playbook of Britney Spears impersonator
Eminem by dressing in drag in her "Obsessed" music video. She decided to channel her inner Marshall
Mathers after the rapper kept insisting that the two of them had been romantically involved.
On his Shade 45 radio channel, Eminem claimed that he and Carey dated for about half a year,
and he wasn't happy about her denials of their love connection. After the
rapper vented his frustrations in the song "Bagpipes from Baghdad,"
Carey's husband at the time, Nick Cannon, wrote on his blog,
"Homeboy is still obsessed with my wife."
Then, to play her own stalker in the "Obsessed" video, Carey rocked a goatee and hoodie to pull
off the Slim Shady resemblance. As for the TikTok clip, it begins with Carey wearing
a pink bathrobe, green face mask, and rollers in her hair. She utters the intro to "Obsessed" and
transforms into the stalker character. Her followers were basically obsessed,
with some of them even predicting that this would reignite her feud with Eminem.
When Alicia Silverstone joined TikTok, she did it in style by recreating a scene from her 90s
classic Clueless. She rocked a plaid yellow jacket like her character Cher Horowitz wore
on the first day of school. To the tune of the No Doubt anthem "Just a Girl," her strutting
was interrupted by her son Bear Blu, as she then responded with her iconic line, "As if!"
"Ugh! As if!"
Fans from different generations expressed their admiration in the comments, with one declaring,
"ICON! Also feeling so old right now!"
According to Silverstone, her son actually became a fan of
her beloved film at a young age. As she told Entertainment Tonight,
"He saw Clueless when he was five, because it was on at the Hollywood [Forever] Cemetery. [...] He
was so young and it's not appropriate, I think, for a 5-year-old. [...] What he really picked
up [on is] he tried to kiss me, like, passionate kisses, because that's what he saw in the movie."
Silverstone doesn't always need her son's help when she recreates Clueless scenes. Case in point:
another TikTok, in which she reunited with Stacey Dash, her best friend from the movie.
It's hard to imagine anyone making it far in Hollywood without the ability to read,
but some conspiracy theorists believe that Lea Michele is illiterate. In her Glee co-star Naya
Rivera's memoir Sorry Not Sorry, Rivera claimed that Michele disliked improvisation. So podcasters
Robert Ackerman and Jaye Hunt suggested that this was because she couldn't read scripts,
and it made it more difficult for her to recall her memorized lines. This bizarre
rumor resurfaced on Twitter after Michele got cast as the lead in the Broadway revival
of Funny Girl, and it didn't help that her role required her to say the line:
"I hadn't read many books."
According to the New York Post, the audience actually laughed upon hearing those words during
Michele's debut performance. So she decided to have a little fun with this silly speculation
in a TikTok. An audio clip from Keeping Up With the Kardashians played while Michele held up her
phone, along with the caption "Calling Jonathan to read me the comments on my first TikTok." The
Jonathan in question is likely the actor's friend Jonathan Groff, with whom she's rather close. In
the documentary Spring Awakening: Those You've Known, Michele revealed that she's so tight
with Groff that she once even showed him her private parts when he requested to see them.
While documenting a visit to the Madame Tussauds museum on his TikTok,
Dwayne Johnson realized that his wax figure was next to Khloé Kardashian's.
So he compared the size of his fake glutes to hers, declaring:
"I mean, that's amazing."
He then hilariously pretended to ask the museum if he could get his own clone's backside boosted.
"Give me some glutes like that."
Madame Tussauds responded to Johnson's request with their own video of an employee crouched
down behind the mock Rock while pretending to study his posterior and jotting down notes.
"We will see what we can do."
Kardashian also saw what the Rock cooked up, and then she responded on her Instagram Story,
"Looks like I am in INCREDIBLE company!!! [...] I am crying!!!"
She also agreed with Johnson's assessment of the museum's work, as she added,
"They hooked me up."
As reported by Us Weekly, Kardashian ensured that Madame Tussauds made her
wax figure as close to anatomically correct as possible by taking measurements of over
250 different parts of her body. Some of Johnson's TikTok followers found the
feelings of inadequacy that the faux Kardashian caused quite hilarious, with one quipping,
"He wasn't happy with rock bottom."
Everyone has a celebrity crush or two, or several. But it takes a crazy level
of confidence to reveal which star you adore when you're also famous
yourself and might actually end up interacting with them. Nevertheless,
Lizzo has always worn her heart on her sleeve when it comes to the man who wears a star on
his chest. That would be none other than Captain America himself, aka Chris Evans.
In April 2021, Lizzo took to TikTok to confess that she'd drunkenly DM'd Evans a cryptic message
composed solely of three emoji: blowing wind, a woman playing handball, and a basketball.
"I know I'm not going to be able to marry him, and honestly,
it hurts me to the core, because damn, papi, he a rare breed, no comparing."
Miraculously, the singer somehow scored a win when Evans actually responded to her,
and she shared a screenshot of his hilarious message in a follow-up TikTok. He wrote,
"No shame in a drunk DM. God knows I've done worse on this app lol."
This was likely a reference to Evans accidentally sharing
a not-safe-for-work photo on Instagram. One response to Lizzo's TikTok declared,
"She's living all our dreams."
Lizzo's Evans obsession even made it into her monologue when she hosted
Saturday Night Live in April 2022. She joked about having no idea how a rumor
that she and the actor were having a baby together got started before theorizing:
"It could be the TikTok I did where I said, 'I'm pregnant with Chris Evans' baby.'"
Selena Gomez has had to deal with strangers scrutinizing her body for far too long,
and during a 2015 On Air with Ryan Seacrest interview, she admitted that she used to let it
get to her. But instead of giving in to pressure to look a certain way, she's decided to push back.
Case in point: an August 2022 TikTok in which she utilized humor to shut down
her body shamers. In the video, Gomez was rocking a colorful one-piece bathing suit
and lounging outdoors. She looked relaxed and unbothered until a voice could be heard saying,
"Suck it in." Gomez then placed a hand on her stomach and defiantly lip-synced:
"I'm not sucking shit in."
"Why?"
"Real stomachs is coming the fuck back, okay?"
Gomez wasn't the only one benefitting from her body positivity, as many of
her followers applauded her for giving them a boost of confidence, with one cheering,
"The real OG!! Thank you for making me feel beautiful after having two kids!!!"
Another remarked,
"She's the reason I'm so comfortable in my own skin."
Gomez hasn't always been the biggest fan of social media,
but she has a blast on TikTok. As she admitted to Extra:
"I get to be silly and I love doing that, and I love making people laugh, so."
Some TikToks get the internet all fired up because they're so unexpected, such as You
star Penn Badgley's charming bid to make the "For You" page by getting his groove on. He
might play a sadistic killer, but his co-star Jenna Ortega has revealed that he's an absolute
joy to be around when he isn't pretending to be creepy. As she put it to Hola! Magazine in 2020,
"Penn is such a sweetheart. [...] He's actually quite funny. He likes
to dance and crack jokes in between takes."
Now thanks to TikTok, millions more have gotten to see this side of Badgley. He
delighted fans when he joined the app and immediately outed himself as a Swiftie by
portraying two versions of himself while Taylor Swift's song "Anti-Hero" played. His
first TikTok even earned him an enthusiastic response of "OMG!!!!" from Swift herself.
But it was his duet with TikTok star Elyse Myers that really wowed his followers,
as he perfectly replicated her moves while swaying his hips to the Meghan
Trainor hit "Made You Look." One commenter noted,
"It's funny [because] he's the last person you'd expect to do this and that's what makes it slay."
In a 2021 interview with The New York Times,
Badgley revealed that he'd started taking dance classes, as he confessed,
"As much as I love to move and I love to dance, it's not a language that I speak regularly at
all. So even just getting into this feels great. But it also feels very clumsy."
Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner are no Kardashians,
as they don't talk about their private life as husband and wife very often, and there's
a good reason for their silence. As Jonas explained in a 2022 interview with Mr. Porter,
"When we started dating, I realized that I didn't have a ton of stuff that was
just for me. And in the end, it makes me a better person to have something for myself."
He does, however, offer small glimpses inside his marriage on TikTok. In one popular video,
the worlds of Camp Rock, Calabasas, Westeros, and lip-sync comedy all collided as Jonas and
Turner mouthed the words of a viral Keeping Up With the Kardashians moment. Kylie Jenner can
be heard unknowingly creating another bite-sized hit by singing about getting wasted. Turner plays
the role of Jenner, trading the beauty mogul's tequila for a thermos. Her husband, meanwhile,
noshes on frozen yogurt, which he uses as a stand-in for Kourtney Kardashian's starchy snack.
"I don't know what's going on, so I'm just appreciating my bread."
Something about the Queen of the North pretending to be the Queen
of Kylie Cosmetics just struck a chord with fans, as one declared,
"Married life legit brings out the weird in us all... and it's so much fun!!!"
Lil Nas X is a seasoned TikTok pro who's created loads of viral videos, from faking being pregnant
to spoofing Hannah Montana, to showing off his impressive pole dancing skills. He even has
the app to thank for his music career. The original version of his hit song "Old Town
Road" first found a foothold on the site in 2019 before he re-recorded it with Billy Ray Cyrus.
So of course the rapper was responsible for creating what one fan described as
the "TikTok version of the Oscar selfie" at Variety's 2021 Hitmakers Brunch. That
description is in reference to Ellen DeGeneres getting a who's
who of Hollywood stars to take a selfie together while hosting the Oscars in 2014.
Nas' followers got to play spot the celeb as some of his fellow
brunch attendees participated in the "Bing Bong" challenge. The eclectic mix of stars
who lip-synced along with an audio clip from "Sidetalk" were Olivia Rodrigo, Jack Harlow,
Normani, Anitta, Tinashe, Avril Lavigne, and Chloe Bailey. One commenter declared,
"This is the best tik tok to ever exist."
And at the event where the video was filmed,
Lil Nas X fittingly took home the Innovator of the Year award.
Hours before Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars in March 2022, he was in a much
brighter mood as he gave his TikTok followers a sneak peek at his snazzy suit and his wife Jada
Pinkett Smith's glamorous green gown. The couple struck the perfect red carpet pose
before hamming it up for the camera. As they made menacing faces, a voiceover announced:
"Good morning, everyone. God has let me live another day,
and I'm about to make it everyone's problem."
The clip also included the caption,
"Me 'n @jadapinkettsmith got all dressed up to choose chaos."
After Smith delivered on that promise in a rather unfortunate manner,
his followers returned to the clip to remark how poorly it aged, with one person noting,
"This was like a prophecy of what was going to happen."
After the slap, Smith ended up winning the Lead Actor award for King Richard,
but he was eventually slapped himself with a 10-year ban from attending future
Oscars ceremonies. When he resumed posting on TikTok after a long break,
he explained why he didn't use his time on the Oscars stage to issue an apology.
"I was fogged out by that point. It's- it's- it's it's all fuzzy."