Back when Clueless hit theaters, fans probably would've had a hard time believing that Stacey
Dash would become one of Hollywood's most controversial stars. Alas, today is not 1995,
and in more recent years, Dash's viewpoints and outspoken nature seem to have taken the
wheel. Here's how she ruined her career.
The beginning of the end for Dash's public reputation was her affiliation with frequently
criticized right-wing talking heads like Piers Morgan and Sean Hannity. In 2012, she kicked
off her career as a political commentator by appearing in a single episode of Piers
Morgan Live. A cameo on Hannity followed shortly thereafter, and by 2014, the star was an official
Fox News contributor. Unfortunately, her newfound TV success didn't last as long as her fervent
support for Donald Trump.
According to reports from Us Weekly, Dash was "temporarily suspended" from her position
less than two years into her contract following an outburst during an episode of Outnumbered,
in which she claimed that then-President Barack Obama didn't, quote, "give a s---" about terrorism.
Dash only managed to cling on for a few more months until her contract was up for renewal,
and the network gave her the axe. According to The Hollywood Reporter, this came in the
fall of 2016 after numerous controversial rants on topics like transgender rights and
immigration, as well as using the Pulse nightclub tragedy as a Donald Trump endorsement. This
didn't go unnoticed by the Twittersphere, which was so unsympathetic that her firing
basically became a national holiday. One user wrote,
"Dear karma, good job on Dash."
And that appeared to be the general consensus online.
Dash is entitled to her own opinion, which is why her 2012 endorsement of Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney only elicited some eye rolls and a few nasty Twitter comments.
As The Washington Post points out, the star wasn't immune to racial backlash, but that
backlash was nothing compared to what was on the horizon when she waged a war against
BET, her Hollywood peers, and Viacom CBS, the same company that supported some of her
most prolific TV storylines.
During a 2016 Fox & Friends rant, she said,
"If we don't want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET
Awards and the Image Awards, where you are only awarded if you are Black."
According to The Washington Post, Dash's statements about the awards shows aren't even true. Though
the BET Awards were created to predominately celebrate Black artists, who were largely
ignored by other networks like MTV, the show still regularly nominates artists from various
ethnicities. Justin Timberlake got four nominations in 2013 alone. Not to mention that, in the
past, Dash has worked with BET, who promptly asked for their check back and published a
gallery called,
"Every Time Dash Proved She Was Clueless."
Throughout Leonardo DiCaprio's massive film career, he's achieved several major nominations
while remaining a vocal advocate for the planet's ongoing environmental issues. He serves on
the board of numerous environmental protection organizations.
When DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for his role in The Revenant in 2016, Dash threw him
under the bus. In an essay on her website, Dash mocked DiCaprio's acceptance speech,
where he spoke out about the threat of climate change. Claiming that the actor's warnings
were, quote, "too much" and trying to disprove his comments, she wrote,
"Leonardo DiCaprio, quit being Chicken Little — the sky is not falling."
This did nothing to help align Dash with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
who've been looking to reduce their environmental impact year after year. According to Reuters,
in 2020, they even banned plastic water bottles and chose a sustainably farmed menu, with
a number of stars opting for eco-friendly looks. Meanwhile, Dash was busy on Twitter
calling Al Gore "ridiculous" for his global warming film An Inconvenient Truth.
In recent years, Hollywood has been working on its problem with LGBTQ+ visibility. As
Them magazine notes, 2019 saw a "record-high number of gay, lesbian, and bi characters,"
but an unfortunate "absence of trans characters."
It's clear that there's still a lot of work to do, though people like Hunter Schafer,
whose Euphoria role was critically acclaimed, or Elliot Page, who graced TIME's cover in
2021 to discuss transgender rights, are helping pave the way.
As Hollywood moves in a more inclusive direction, Dash has put herself in direct opposition.
In 2016, the star released her memoir, There Goes My Social Life: From Clueless to Conservative,
in which she ragged on Caitlyn Jenner for using the women's restroom. In an Entertainment
Tonight interview discussing her book, she went as far as saying where she thinks transgender
people should go to the bathroom.
"Okay then go in the bushes, I don't know what to tell you."
She claimed she was being made to suffer because transgender people, quote, "can't decide what
[they] want to be that day."
"I'm not gonna put my child's life at risk because you want to change a law."
Needless to say, that didn't exactly align her with the so-called "liberal agenda" she
claimed was being pushed by Hollywood, which is coincidentally responsible for her casting.
Dash may not have done herself any favors when she aligned herself with a controversial
film project that may very well go down as one of the most disastrous in history. As
the Daily Beast reports, Roe v. Wade — which they called the, quote, "craziest, most controversial
movie of the year" — was "chaos" from the very beginning.
The anti-abortion film supposedly chronicles the 1973 Supreme Court decision that guaranteed
a woman's right to an abortion with a "pro-life tilt," but a leaked script revealed that the
project reportedly pushed "conspiracy theories and lies." According to The Hollywood Reporter,
the movie was met with a casting nightmare as actors continuously ditched out after reading
the script. Beyond that, the flick struggled to find financing, with critics regarding
it as little more than anti-abortion propaganda.
Dash stars as the founder of the National Right to Life Committee. She's even joined
in the film by controversial right-wing pundit Tomi Lahren. Clearly, this is a film that
has a very niche appeal, which is perhaps why it forewent the prestige of the film festival
circuit and, according to Page Six, premiered at a Hyatt Regency in Orlando during the February
2021 Conservative Political Action Conference.
At every turn, Dash seems to criticize her peers rather than stand by them — which
certainly doesn't help her reputation in the industry. This was more than apparent when,
in the same year that she started a war with BET and Black History Month, she likened Grey's
Anatomy star Jesse Williams to a, quote, "plantation slave," accusing the Black Lives Matter activist
of being "racist" towards white people. Referencing the actor's now-viral 2016 BET Humanitarian
Award acceptance speech, she wrote in a scathing blog post,
"You've just seen the perfect example of a HOLLYWOOD plantation slave. But the fact that
you were standing on that stage at THOSE awards tells people you really don't know what [you're]
talking about. Just spewing hate and anger."
Williams has long been an outspoken human rights activist and produced the 2016 documentary
Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement. His impassioned acceptance speech condemned
systemic racism and police brutality, urging viewers to mobilize for change.
As Hollywood was just months away from the bombshell Harvey Weinstein scandal and the
launch of the Time's Up movement, Dash had a take on feminism that angered all genders
across the board. In the same Entertainment Tonight interview where the former Clueless
actress suggested that transgender people should urinate in bushes, she claimed that
feminism had, quote, "emasculated men." She said,
"We are the most powerful creatures on the planet, women. That's why I hate when they
say I don't get this, I don't get that. I'm like, 'Come on! We have the men. We raise
the men. So, let's start letting them be men.' Stop trying to be men. Let's be women. "And
let's let men be men. Let's empower them to be men, because I feel like they're falling
away."
She also vaguely accused feminists of trying to take men's jobs, claiming she didn't have
to, quote, "try to beat a man or try and get a man's job to be a feminist."
You either love Sharknado or you hate Sharknado. Either way, Dash may have learned something
from the fourth and worst performing installment of the series, in which she starred as a mayor
only to get crushed by a house. If anything, she learned when to concede. This served her
well during her 2018 congressional run.
Fresh off the heels of a Fox News firing, Dash hit pause on her acting career and jumped
into politics that February. According to CNN, she filed paperwork in California's 44th
district, an overwhelmingly Democratic district, where it looked like she had almost no chance
of winning. For reference, about 83 percent of people in that district voted for Hillary
Clinton in 2016. Dash had already established herself as a fervent Donald Trump supporter
and rabid conservative.
About a month later, Dash withdrew from the running, claiming,
"The overall bitterness surrounding our political process, participating in the rigors of campaigning,
and holding elected office would be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of my family."
If Dash took a step back in 2020, it may have been because she was navigating a tough divorce
and the negative headlines that came in its wake. According to TMZ, her marital problems
first emerged in September 2019 following a terrifying 911 call, in which she appeared
to claim that her husband, Jeffrey Marty, had put her into a chokehold — which her
manager refuted, despite TMZ obtaining the audio. But in the end, Dash was ultimately
arrested for alleged domestic battery because Marty had scratch marks. According to NBC
News, the charges were dropped.
For a while, it seemed like Dash and her fourth husband were soldiering on, but Dash filed
for divorce in June 2020. According to TMZ, she put the day after her arrest as their
date of separation. At this point, her acting career had already taken a hit. The star claimed
that she was making just $2,500 a month in income. Weirdly enough, Marty — in a probable
effort to speed things along or avoid paying spousal support — reportedly tried to get
the marriage annulled by claiming he was essentially hypnotized into it.
As TMZ reported, Marty claimed that Dash's pastor, quote, "unexpectedly and suddenly
proclaimed that it was God's will" for him to marry the star, and that he used "hypnotic
prayer techniques," which hampered his ability to consent to the marriage. Dash reportedly
wasn't against an annulment, though her attorney brushed off the claims of hypnotism.
Since landing a spot on Fox News and positioning herself as a political pundit, Dash has racked
up an army of bad PR over her outspoken nature. This has directly isolated her from her liberal
peers in Hollywood, and as she claims, has cost her roles. In 2018, during her short-lived
congressional run, the actor told The Guardian that her auditions were few and far between
— and that politics were solely to blame. She said,
"You're tolerated only if you fit their liberal profile. I've been blacklisted. I don't even
get [...] auditions."
Nonetheless, the star is looking for redemption, and it seems like Hollywood may slowly be
warming up to it. Following the Capitol riots in January 2021, Dash abandoned her support
for then-President Donald Trump, telling the Daily Mail she was, quote, "done" — and
even apologizing for her past behavior. She said,
"I've lived my life being angry, which is what I was on Fox News. I was the angry, conservative,
Black woman. And at that time in my life it was who I was. I realized in 2016 that anger
is unsustainable and it will destroy you. [...] I don't want to be judged, so how dare
I judge anyone else. So if anyone has ever felt that way about me, like I've judged,
that I apologize for because that's not who I am."
"What people don't know is I made a lot of mistakes because of that anger."
Dash has a handful of projects slated for 2021 and beyond, so the future may be looking
bright after all.
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