Celebrities; they're just like us. They say all kinds of things in the heat of all kinds of moments. Unlike most of us, they have to deal with the headlines, memes, and endless social commentary that result. Sometimes these outbursts can be instructive about where we are as a society, where we've been, and where we're going. Sometimes they're just bizarre. In each of these 11 cases, they're historical.
The Saturday Night Live alum and star of the new sitcom Bupkis was recently criticized by PETA for purchasing a purebred cavapoo from a New York City pet store. The organization advocates for adopting shelter dogs and tweeted that it hoped Davidson would choose one in in the future. While there's nothing unethical about choosing a purebred—and Davidson says he has severe allergies; cavapoos are a hypoallergenic breed—the comic took the organization's note very personally. According to TMZ, he left a voicemail telling a PETA official off using words we cannot print here.
In July 2015, pop superstar Ariana Grande visited a California donut shop and licked a donut on display. When she spotted an employee bringing a tray of the confections, she said, "What the [expletive] is that? I hate Americans. I hate America." In an apology, Grande wrote,"food is very important to me and I sometimes get upset by how freely we as Americans eat and consume things without giving any thought to the consequences that it has on our health and society as a whole." On Twitter, she added: "need to clean up this mouth of mine & set a better example for my babes. i apologize and i love you. always learning."
In perhaps the most infamous reality show moment of all time, host Tyra Banks went off on contestant Tiffany Richardson during the fourth season of America's Next Top Model in 2005. Banks was disappointed by Richardson's lack of commitment and blew up at her mentee. "We were rooting for you!" she screamed. "We were all rooting for you! How dare you?" In 2017, Banks told Buzzfeed News, "It was such an emotional, visceral moment for me. I had so much love for this girl." Looking back, "Oh my god totally, I wouldn't have done it," she said. "Actually, maybe I wouldn't have aired it."
During the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, Taylor Swift had just taken the stage to accept her award for Best Female Video when West jumped on stage, grabbed the microphone, and uttered the future catchphrase, "Imma let you finish" before declaring "Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!" West later apologized.
It's perhaps appropriate that perhaps the most infamous example of a celebrity outburst caught on tape was committed by one of the most infamous celebrity "news" personalities of all time. In 1988, Bill O'Reilly, then a host of Inside Edition, went volcanic after a teleprompter foul-up. "We'll do it live!" he shouted, using a phrase we cannot print here.
In 1996, the very non-mainstream performer Björk attracted worldwide headlines when she attacked journalist Julie Kaufman as she arrived in a Bangkok airport. According to Newsweek, Björk knocked Kaufman to the ground and smacked her head on the floor after the reporter approached her and said, "Welcome to Bangkok." Björk later apologized, and Kaufman did not press charges.
Jessica Savitch joined NBC as its first female national news anchor in 1977 and quickly gained a devoted audience. In 1982, she was named both the sexiest female anchorperson and the fourth-most-trusted news anchor of either gender. It was perhaps that unique pressure that caused her to unload on the crew of a 1979 NBC News Update, the 42-second national news digest delivered live in prime time, when the stage manager responsible for showing her when she was on the air failed to show up.
In 2005, Tom Cruise visited The Oprah Winfrey Show and jumped onto her couch to declare his love for Katie Holmes. The reaction, both immediate and in retrospect, was of unanimous horror. "Tom Cruise jumped up and his public image crashed down to earth," wrote Lainey Gossip. If memes had existed then, we'd still be seeing them.
During the filming of Terminator: Salvation, Christian Bale freaked out on the film's director of photography, Shane Hurlbut, and threatened to quit the film. In audio footage, Christian is heard threatening Shane, using words we cannot print here: "Do you want me to go and trash your lights. Do you want me to go and trash them? Then why are you trashing my scene?" The actor later publicly apologized for his actions, calling them "inexcusable."
The minor 2004 film I Heart Huckabees managed to generate one of the internet's biggest viral toxic-film-set clips, when star Lily Tomlin and director David O. Russell almost literally came to blows. Reacting to Tomlin's criticism of his capricious direction, Russell went volcanic, calling the Hollywood legend words we cannot print here and knocking props around the set. "We better get some insurance against the director," Tomlin replied.
The 30 Rock star went viral for all the wrong reasons in 2007, when he left a voicemail for his 12-year-old daughter Ireland calling her "a rude, thoughtless little pig" after she missed a scheduled phone call. Father and daughter patched things up, and in 2022, Ireland posted a TikTok video poking fun at the incident while partaking in the trend of dancing to the Ting Tings' hit "That's Not My Name."
