An SNL star angers all of Syracuse and a sitcom queen sings off key.
What does it take to get booed by an entire auditorium of sports fans?
Oscar-winning actor Emma Stone and her husband, comedian Dave McCary, are San Diego Padres fans,
and they make sure the world knows who they support. One event in October had them dressed up
in Padres paraphernalia, perched against the mesh right behind home plate, so that cameras could
pick them out of a crowd to fully show off their version of San Diego pride. But their plan had one
flaw: they chose to showcase their dedication during a postseason game in New York, where
the Padres were taking on the Mets. Naturally, the hometown crowd showed their displeasure.
Video documented the couple toasting the crowd despite the boos, just before cameras
caught an elderly Mets enthusiast prompting the fans to shift into cheer mode again.
Their support didn't go unnoticed by the Padres, which tweeted,
"Big fans of these fans."
…and included a shot of the couple posing together.
As one of America's most visible celebrities,
Kim Kardashian has conquered pretty much every form of media available to her.
"I've read that you've figured out how to monetize just the act of living."
"I guess so, yeah."
But at a Los Angeles Rams game against the visiting Dallas Cowboys,
Kardashian somehow failed the jumbotron screen test. Like the other 70,000 fans
hunkered down in SoFi Stadium, Kardashian and her son Saint seemed to be enjoying the game.
After cameras picked out musician John Legend in the crowd, they switched to Kardashian,
who was seen blowing kisses to the masses. That's when the hordes turned on her.
No reason was given for the booing, although one naysayer hinted the celebrity was out of
her league, being far from the posh LA suburb she calls home, tweeting,
"This ain't Calabasas."
Kardashian's fans weren't having any of it, with many hitting Twitter to defend
their heroine. Even actor Stephen Amell, best known for his titular role in Arrow,
likened the crowd reaction to a badge of honor, tweeting,
"Being booed at a sporting event is a huge compliment. When people who
don't know you think they dislike you it means you are super duper famous."
Pete Davidson seems to have an unusual effect on women, counting Ariana Grande and Kim Kardashian
among his past relationships. But that love wasn't shared by the citizens of Syracuse,
NY, who showed their displeasure at a February 2022 college basketball game
involving the local Orangemen. When the jumbotron camera pointed at Davidson,
the crowd erupted in a series of boos over what the comedian said about Syracuse in the past.
In 2018, Davidson guested on The Howard Stern Show, where he lamented the difficulties he
had in the city while filming his movie Big Time Adolescence, saying,
"Syracuse, you know, it's trash. Worse than
Staten Island. The nicest hotel in Syracuse is, like, a f—ing Ramada."
He shared more of his experiences by recalling to Variety the time Syracuse police pulled him over,
resulting in Davidson's passenger getting busted for marijuana possession, saying,
"They tried to arrest me for bringing business to your town. Never again, Syracuse."
Davidson later asked for a ceasefire between himself and the city.
"Hello, Syracuse Orangemen, thank you so much for having me and my
friends in the building. We had a really great time. So, peace?"
Rapper Kanye West has provided detractors with plenty of reasons to rail against him,
from deriding Taylor Swift on an award show stage and anointing himself as a god on BBC Radio,
to openly praising Adolf Hitler. So when the SoFi Stadium jumbotron included a live shot of
West during Super Bowl LVI, fans momentarily forgot about the NFL final between the Los
Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals to focus their contempt on the provocative
hip-hop star. And there didn't seem to be a shortage of motives for booing West.
Newsweek noted that Kanye had recently dissed rapper Kid Cudi, a friend of comedian Pete
Davidson, who was going out with Kanye's ex, Kim Kardashian. He also denounced singer Billie
Eilish, who had recently stopped a show to help a fan retrieve her inhaler while making a subtle
reference to his buddy Travis Scott; Scott had recently continued playing his set at a
show where 10 people died. Twitter viewers showed dismay over the crowd's reaction at
the game, not toward West, but his young daughter North, with one person tweeting,
"I, for one, feel really bad for North. She looks really embarrassed/sad."
Arguments ensued over whether or not North was upset.
Sporting events and throwing shade at the Kardashians, anyone else connected with them,
seem to go hand-in-hand. In 2022, at SoFi Stadium alone,
crowds have booed Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and Kendall and Kylie Jenner. The
duo were lounging in one of the more luxurious sections of the stadium during the game between
the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Ravens when the jumbotron camera focused on them.
Noticing her image beaming back at her on the big screen, Kendall laughed, flashed a peace
sign at the crowd, and blew kisses. Whether or not that gesture was an actual call for peace,
it didn't work. While the sisters don't generate anywhere near the controversy
that's regularly surrounded the Kardashian clan, the stadium experience wasn't the
first time these two have been given the pariah treatment from a crowd. In 2015,
Kylie and Kendall were mercilessly booed at the Billboard Awards when introducing Kanye's
live performance. Undeterred by the noise, they at least stuck on message during their brief spiel.
Ryan Seacrest is one of the biggest personalities in the entertainment industry,
and he's made it thanks to his ability to win over even the most antagonistic
of crowds. That talent was put to the test in 2013 in Denver's Mile High Stadium, home of
the NFL Broncos. When his name was announced during pregame festivities to kick off the
league's football season, the crowd started booing the celebrity. In return, Seacrest belted out,
"I only know of one other countdown that might be as big as this one!"
It was enough. Right after that, Seacrest's enthusiasm brought the masses back onside
when he delivered a thunderous tribute to football greats from all 32 NFL franchises.
After the game, he posted a photo on Instagram of himself with cheerleaders
rehearsing in a barren stadium for the pregame bit, captioned with the self-deprecating comment,
"Which one of these doesn't belong?"
It's not as though Seacrest had no relationship to football,
either. He was a devastating defensive back during his teens,
playing for Dunwoody High School in Georgia. The team even won a state championship.
In late 2013, Tom Hanks was cajoled by Martin Short to visit Canada to catch a football game.
It was no ordinary match, but the 101st annual Grey Cup game in Regina,
a city roughly the size of Rochester, NY. From the moment he touched down,
Hanks became the city's star attraction. The novelty of Forrest Gump's presence
even dwarfed Short's celebrity cred, as locals already recognized the Ed Grimley
portrayer as a homeboy via his early days on the Toronto-filmed "SCTV." The actors
really got into their football outing and even sat in the commentators' chairs for a while.
There was one problem. Regina is home to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, one of the game's
finalists that year. Their opposition was the Tiger-Cats, a team from Hamilton, Short's native
city. Naturally, Short convinced Hanks to support the Cats, which didn't go over well with fiercely
loyal Roughriders fans. This became especially obvious when TV cameras caught the two celebrities
chanting the visiting team fight song before the game, to a chorus of boos from the bleachers.
Short probably expected the reaction, and Hanks appeared unfazed. All that
Hollywood support was to no avail, since Saskatchewan won the game,
but Hanks apparently still had a blast. He told The Leader-Post,
"I never thought I'd see a Grey Cup in my lifetime. I'm a lucky man."
NASCAR's fan base has a pretty vocal political slant. Michelle Obama,
then-President Barack Obama's first lady, found that out the hard way,
when she showed up at the Homestead-Miami racetrack in Florida in 2011 for NASCAR's
final Sprint Cup event of the season. Thousands of race car fans booed her. The ESPN broadcast of the
event clearly indicated a negative and vocal crowd reaction, perhaps not only directed at Obama,
but also against Dr. Jill Biden. Both women attended the event to promote
the Joining Forces government initiative, supporting the country's military families.
Fortunately, the roar of V-8s quickly eclipsed the crowd noise. A White House
statement to outlets including CBS News downplayed the incident,
claiming both women were well treated by NASCAR's administration, saying,
"Mrs. Obama and Dr. Biden enjoyed their visit to the speedway and are looking
forward to working across the country to honor America's veterans and military families."
Contrary to the crowd reaction, NASCAR drivers slated to run in the day's
race gave the two women a standing ovation during a pre-race meeting.
It's tough to figure out what was on the minds of the San Diego Padres management back in 1990
when they thought that getting comedian Roseanne Barr to sing the national anthem would be a good
thing. True, Barr was already a huge star due to her runaway sitcom smash "Roseanne," but vocalist
probably wasn't included in her list of artistic credentials. So when the celebrity was enlisted
to perform "The Star Spangled Banner" as part of a baseball double-header against the Cincinnati
Reds, organizers and spectators didn't know at the time that all hell was about to break loose.
Barr wailed the anthem, totally out of control and off-key.
"Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light…"
The chorus of spectator boos that almost drowned out the celeb were far more in tune than Barr,
who seemed to treat the occasion like one of her standup gigs. She later told The Washington Post,
"I was singing in my act at the time — and I am a good singer — I
was flattered and fully intended to sing a good version of the song."
Once the song ended, Barr added insult to injury by spitting on the turf and grabbing herself
before exiting the field. The fiasco did more than anger fans and embarrass the Padres brass;
news spread across the country, even earning condemnation from President George H.W. Bush.