From William H. Macy and Lori Loughlin's perhaps prophetic remarks before the celebrity college
admissions scandal, to Kanye's 'free thoughts' on slavery, these stars could all use a media
training session.
Here are the interviews that came back to haunt these celebs.
It didn't take long for William H. Macy's interview with Men's Journal to come back
to bite him.
In the Q&A, Macy was asked to reveal the best advice he ever received, to which he responded,
"Never lie.
It's the cheapest way to go.
Lies cost you a lot, and they're never worth what they cost."
About a month later in March 2019, the college admissions scandal rocked newsstands.
The scheme, which saw wealthy parents pay large sums of money to facilitate the acceptance
of their children into the colleges of their choice, touched several celebrities, including
Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, who was arrested for her part in the plot.
According to E! News, Huffman was charged with
"Conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud.
[...] [Huffman] made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000 to participate in
the scheme on behalf of her eldest daughter."
Interestingly enough, Macy, in his Men's Journal interview, named his wife as the person he
admires most.
He also noted,
"A little bit of vanity is fine — as long as you're willing to play the fool and look
like an idiot every once in a while."
Jane Fonda has had a long and illustrious acting career.
She's won two Academy Awards and acted in some of Hollywood's most memorable films.
Yet, to some, she's still remembered as "Hanoi Jane," the actress who seemingly rallied against
the US troops in her anti-war demonstrations.
In 1972, Fonda visited North Vietnam to publicly condemn the Vietnam war.
As Time reported, "Fonda appeared on 10 radio programs to speak out against the U.S. military's
policy in Vietnam and beg pilots to cease bombing non-military targets."
On her last day in Hanoi, surrounded by photographers and journalists, Fonda was photographed sitting
atop an anti-aircraft gun.
For this, she was labeled a traitor, criticized, and protested against.
The image looked bad, and Fonda knew it.
She told Variety,
"I am just so sorry that I was thoughtless enough to sit down on that gun at that time.
The message that sends to the guys that were there and their families, it's horrible for
me to think about that."
On her website, Fonda wrote about the incident more in-depth, saying,
"It is possible that it was a set up, that the Vietnamese had it all planned.
I will never know.
But if they did I can't blame them.
The buck stops here.
If I was used, I allowed it to happen.
It was my mistake and I have paid and continue to pay a heavy price for it."
Over the years, Mark Ruffalo has proven himself to be a bit of a spoiler aficionado.
He's revealed more than he should on a few occasions, but the worst of all his spoiler
reveals was actually a sleeper.
It took time and hindsight to actually see how much the actor revealed.
While chatting with Good Morning America during the Disney D23 expo, Ruffalo got to talking
about Avengers: Infinity War.
While Ruffalo looked like he wanted to reveal more than he should, his co-star Don Cheadle
advised against it.
"I can't, can I say?...
No...Can I just give them a little taste?...I wouldn't say too much, but you can say as
much, I mean hey it's your career."
Ruffalo then carefully considered his words and said that "it doesn't end well for the
superheroes."
Test passed — at least temporarily.
But then…
"Wait till you see this next one.
Ha-everybody dies…
Dude...Not everybody...is that?...hey whatever."
Now, to some skeptics, the whole thing looked like a gag.
Ruffalo appeared too eager to make news by giving away juicy information, and Cheadle's
scolding along with Ruffalo's puppy dog act made it seem a little too put-on to be real.
IndieWire — pointing out that Disney owns both Marvel and GMA's parent company, ABC
— noted that some fans believed Ruffalo's error was fake...because if it were true,
Marvel would never allow the interview to be seen.
"Am I in trouble?...
A little…
Is Barry gonna be mad at me?
… Dude I would just move on."
But when Infinity War finally came out, fans realized just how close Ruffalo came to saying
the word "half" — and just how close he was to turning a potentially staged spoiler
into a monumental and very real one.
On January 8th, 2016, authorities apprehended "El Chapo," the infamous Mexican drug lord,
after months on the run.
Having escaped maximum security prison twice and long-eluding authorities, El Chapo, according
to CNN, became, quote, "a symbol of the Mexican government's ineptitude and corruption."
That same week, Rolling Stone published the interview between Sean Penn and El Chapo from
2015.
The optics were awful.
While Mexican authorities struggled to recapture the notorious criminal, the guy from Mystic
River got a face-to-face.
The interview's timing was perfect for publicity, but it created an unwelcome backlash for Penn.
Speaking with CBS News, the actor criticized Mexican authorities who claimed that Penn's
meeting was, quote, "essential to [El Chapo's] capture."
"There is this myth about the visit that we made, my colleagues and I, with El Chapo."
The truth, Penn claims, is that he had no contact with any authorities.
When Katherine Heigl sat down to discuss Knocked Up, one of the biggest films of 2007 and Heigl's
first big movie role as a lead, she decided to challenge the gender dynamics portrayed
in it, telling Vanity Fair,
"It paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable,
goofy, fun-loving guys.
[...] I'm playing such a b----; why is she being such a killjoy?
Why is this how you're portraying women?"
In the immediate aftermath, she stood by her comments, telling The Guardian regarding the
public backlash,
"It was my opinion and I'm allowed to have one.
Isn't it the land of the free?"
Years later, however, as a guest on The Howard Stern Show, Heigl tried to put a different
spin on her comments, suggesting that she was actually criticizing her own choices and
not those of Judd Apatow, the film's writer and director.
But it was too late.
The negative response to her remarks had already made its mark.
Heigl revealed to Stern that she ended up seeking therapy because of the extreme guilt
she felt.
Jesse Eisenberg doesn't do a lot of interviews, and when he does, he doesn't allow for much
of himself to be uncovered.
Speaking with Business Insider in 2016, he was asked for his feelings about doing press,
and he said,
"Ten percent of it is a real joy in being able to be the kind of, let's say, public
face of a thing you feel proud of.
Ninety percent of it is concern that I'm going to misspeak, because I have in the past, and
that seems to be the overriding narrative regardless of the intention or relevance."
That concern has precedence.
In 2013, Eisenberg's interview with Romina Puga went viral for all the wrong reasons.
What, to some, appeared to be sarcastic and harmless banter felt much different to the
interviewer.
"You're trying to find me in a crowded place...oh okay, Romina...That's it?
I would never hear you...The thing is I actually didn't want to find you."
Puga later posted a behind-the-scenes account of the interview to her blog, writing,
"Jesse Eisenberg isn't very nice."
While Eisenberg's sarcastic mocking and teasing of Puga may be categorized as flirting, some
people felt it was out of line, including the subject of his verbal barbs.
"You are like the Carrot Top of interviewers, it's a good thing...I'm gonna go cry now…
No don't cry now, cry after the interview's over, otherwise I'll look like I'm responsible
for it."
But was it so awful that he should be branded a jerk?
Not for Eisenberg.
He feels that people simply miscast his intentions.
According to News Australia, he said of the controversy that was drummed up by the interview,
"A lot of it is just mean.
I remember the interview… but it was just, like, funny."
You just knew that Kanye West was going to take some major heat for his comments during
his May 2018 sit-down with TMZ.
The famed rapper and producer entered some seriously controversial territory when he
appeared to suggest that African Americans were somehow complicit in their own fate during
the slave era, saying,
"When you hear about slavery for 400 years: For 400 years, that sounds like choice."
The backlash was sharp and immediate.
Many fans, celebrities, and even West's friends criticized the star.
Later, while visiting a Chicago radio station, West pointed to his, quote, "mental health
situation" as one of the many factors that led to his strange outburst.
He also apologized for not considering the impact his words would have on people.
"I don't know if I properly apologized for how that slave comment made people feel."
He went on to apologize for hurting people as well as for, in his words, "the one-two
effect of the MAGA hat into the slave comment."
"And I'm sorry for people who felt let down by that moment."
It's hard to read John Mayer's March 2010 Playboy interview without cringing.
The talk went in-depth into Mayer's love life, in which he shared details that he probably
should have more carefully thought through or just omitted altogether.
He over-shared about intimate moments with well-known celebrities.
He described his manhood as, quote, "sort of like a white supremacist," and he dropped
the n-word as if to prove he had a, quote, "hood pass."
As noted by Billboard, the interview sparked controversy among fans and other celebrities,
and the aftermath forced Mayer into an exile of sorts.
In a 2012 interview on The Ellen Show, he said,
"It was a violent crash into being an adult, so for a couple of years, it was just figuring
it all out."
He also said the, quote, "dumb interviews woke [him] up."
Five years after that, Mayer spoke with the The New York Times about getting a second
chance, knowing that the public still hasn't forgiven him for his harsh words.
They say that there's a grain of truth hidden in every joke.
While that may be true, it's not often that we get to see this played out on video, especially
not with celebrities and almost never regarding a major scandal.
But that's exactly what we got with Lori Loughlin.
In December 2017, Loughlin joined her daughter, Olivia Jade, on her YouTube channel.
In the video, the actress guesses the meanings of some of the current slang terms used by
kids.
It was anything but noteworthy — but then the news broke of the college admissions scandal.
According to court documents that E! News obtained ,
"[Loughlin and her husband] agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having
their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team — despite the fact
that they did not participate in crew — thereby facilitating their admission to USC."
Afterward, viewers with keen-ears and memories recalled a joke that Loughlin made in the
YouTube Q&A session.
When Olivia Jade brought up the phrase "England is my city," a line in Jake Paul's "It's Everyday
Bro," Loughlin quipped,
"If you would have said 'England is my city,' I would say, 'Why did I pay all this money
for your education?'"
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