Stars Who Fired Back At Their Interviewer On Live TV

Interviewing celebrities isn't always easy, neither for the interviewer nor for the stars themselves. It can be tricky to come up with questions that an actor or musician hasn't already answered 40 million times previously, and sometimes out-of-the-box inquiries about movies, television, and music can get everyone involved into trouble, too.

Female celebrities often fall into traps of being asked about their outfits and their bodies, which many interpret (and sometimes rightfully so) as being misogynist and insensitive. Stars of both sexes often fall victim to personal questions about their private lives or dark pasts that they've tried to bury or move beyond. Others take technical difficulties to new heights, either exploding into tantrums or talking smack into a microphone they don't realize is on.

Whether it's rude questions about a celebrity's body, bringing up personal (and sometimes criminal) subjects a star would rather avoid, trite questions riddled with sexism, or just poor manners, these stars all made it quite clear when they'd had enough — and they let their interviewers know it in a big way.

While promoting Legend (2015), a movie in which Tom Hardy stars as bisexual gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, at the Toronto International Film Festival, Hardy wasn't happy with a reporter who asked about his real-life sexuality.

"In the film, your character Ronnie is very open about his sexuality. But given interviews you've done in the past, your own sexuality seems a bit more ambiguous," the interviewer said. "Do you find it hard for celebrities to talk to the media about their sexuality?"

"What on Earth are you on about?" Hardy asked.

The interviewer clarified that he was referring to a previous magazine interview Hardy had done years prior.

"I don't find it difficult for celebrities to talk about their sexuality," Hardy said. "Are you asking me about my sexuality?"

"When the interviewer said, "Sure," Hardy asked, "Why? And then puts an end to that reporter's question with a mic drop of a "Thank you."

Hardy later reflected on that viral moment in an interview with the Daily Beast. "That was a public forum, and for someone to inelegantly ask a question that seemed designed entirely to provoke a reaction ... It's important destigmatizing sexuality and gender inequality in the workplace, but to put a man on the spot in a room full of people designed purely for a salacious reaction? To be quite frank, it's rude ... There's also nothing ambiguous about my sexuality, anyway. I know who I am."

Jerry Penacoli struck again on Extra in a May 2012 interview with Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner to promote The Avengers (2012). He opened the segment by asking Johansson, "Were you able to wear undergarments?"

"You're like, the fifth person who's asked me that today," she said. "What is going on? Since when do people just start asking each other in interviews about their underwear?"

A laughing Penacoli replied, "Because it is such a skintight..." Johansson cut him off at the pass, telling him, "I'll leave it up to your imagination. Whatever you feel like I should be or should not be wearing under that costume."

Penacoli asked her, "Is it inappropriate?"

"To ask someone what kind of underpants they wear?" an incredulous Johansson said.

"I didn't ask you what kind," Penacoli snapped.

"You asked me if I was wearing any," Johansson said.

Soon Renner and Penacoli began mansplaining that he simply asked what she wore underneath, to which an exasperated Johansson replied, "Overalls. Dungarees. You can't wear clothes under it! It's like a wetsuit, practically ... Okay, maybe it's a little more than a wetsuit. Was I wearing underwear? I mean, gosh. Ask Joss [Whedon]."

"I did," laughed Penacoli.

"You asked Joss what kind of underwear he wears?" ScarJo scoffed. "What kind of interview is this?"

We're guessing Penacoli didn't really ask Whedon about his underpinnings, but the jury is still out. Underwear seems to be this guy's thing.

In 2008, Solange Knowles embarrassed herself on TV because she believed someone asked her about Jay-Z selling his 40/40 Club in Las Vegas ... except, well, no one did.

Host Monica Jackson introduced Knowles with, "Ashlee Simpson stepped out of her big sister's shadow to become a star, and now Solange Knowles, who has a very famous sister as well, is launching her own unique music career."

"Good morning. I have to say, that was not a very professional introduction before," Knowles said. "Please don't tie me into family and my brother-in-law's establishment."

"Ok, well, we do apologize, but I don't know if we talked about your brother-in-law's establishment," Jackson said.

"No no no, I'm talking about just a few minutes ago," she said, to which a man offscreen quipped, "That wasn't live, Solange. That wasn't on TV."

The rest of the interview went smoothly, but the network's anchors ripped into Knowles afterward.

"No wonder Solange Knowles isn't the famous sister," anchor Dave Hall said later. "Apparently [her] publicist told Monica she was only allowed to talk about Beyonce's little sister's new album and not the drama with the 40/40 Club. Monica didn't bring it up during the interview, but things still got a little awkward ... She was promoting her new album, whatever it's called, nobody cares. It's gonna be in stores, not that any of you care. What a little brat ... Quit gravy training off your sister and get your own career."

At the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards, TNT's red carpet reporter, Danielle Demski, stopped Angie Tribeca star Rashida Jones for a chat ahead of the show. It began innocuously enough, with everyone complimenting Jones on her beauty and Jones discussing her Emmanuelle Ungaro gown. It got cringe-worthy, however, when Demski commented on Jones' skintone.

"You look amazing — gorgeous! You look like you've just come off an island or something," Demski said. That's not so bad, but then she added, "You're very tan, very tropical."

Jones, the biracial daughter of African-American music legend Quincy Jones and caucasian actress and former model Peggy Lipton, was understandably a little baffled at the clueless comment. She told Demski, "I mean, you know, I'm ethnic."

Demski, laughing to perhaps keep from crying, said through a toothy grin, "It's just being ethnic. That's all it is!"

Uh, awkward.

In a January 2014 interview on her short-lived daytime talk show, Katie Couric asked transgender model Carmen Carrera, "Was the whole process painful, physically, for you?" and "Your private parts are different now, aren't they?"

Laverne Cox, who accompanied Carrera on the interview, gently told Couric, "I think that the preoccupation with transition with surgery objectifies trans people, and then we don't really get to deal with the real, lived experiences. The reality of trans people's lives is that so often we're targets of violence. We experience discrimination disproportionately to the rest of the community. Our unemployment rate is twice the national average, if you're a trans person of color it's four times the national average. The homicide rate in the LGBT community is highest among trans women. If we focus on transition, we don't actually get to talk about those things."

Couric later addressed that episode in an interview with the Daily Beast: "When some people were very critical, of course it hurt me I felt terrible ... I discussed it with Laverne [Cox] and I wanted, maybe foolishly, to use myself as an example to really have a teachable moment on the show. That was my intent and I guess I did it at the expense of making myself seem like an insensitive buffoon — which I guess I was ... I think that I made a mistake, and I wanted to make sure that people knew that I recognized I made a mistake."

At the 2016 Golden Globes, Jennifer Lawrence, typically a press favorite, left a bad taste in journalists' mouths when she called out a reporter for looking at his phone while speaking to her.

"You can't live your whole life behind your phone, bro," she cracked. "You can't do that, you've got to live in the now." The reporter apologized, then continued his question, asking, "How do you see yourself for Oscar night?"

Instead of answering the question, she snapped, "We're at the Golden Globes. If you put your phone down, you'd know that."

Lawrence was criticized as being insensitive and rude when the moment went viral because the reporter spoke with a thick accent, leading many to believe he may have been looking at translations on his phone if English was his second language. She eventually did answer the reporter's questions, and the reporter, who hasn't been identified, could be heard laughing during the exchange. Some reports claimed the reporter was actually trying to take cell phone photos of Lawrence at the time of the exchange.

Anne Hathaway later came to Lawrence's defense, writing on Facebook: "It's become pretty clear that the Jennifer Lawrence 'scolding' was taken out of context and that she was dryly joking with a journalist who was indeed using his phone to take photos of her. Let's not continue the sad but common practice of building people — especially women — up just to viciously tear them down when we perceive them to have misstepped."

Mila Kunis, who came to the United States from Ukraine as a child, is fluent in Russian. That skill came in handy when she was promoting Friends With Benefits (2011) with co-star Justin Timberlake in August 2011 and she decided to blast a reporter for asking a relatively innocuous question.

The reporter asked Timberlake in Russian at a press conference, "What brought you into movies? Why are you in movies?" Pretty harmless, right? Kunis asked for clarification, to which the reporter replied, "Many showbiz people move to movies and sometimes it's for the better, but why is Justin in movies?"

It didn't sound like the reporter meant to be shady, but perhaps her intent got lost in translation, and Kunis took offense to the question on Timberlake's behalf. She snapped back in Russian, "Wait, you're asking why he wants to be in movies? Well, what you rather have him do?" Timberlake began to speak, but Kunis cut him off, telling him, "Hold on." She then spoke to the reporter again, telling her, "Well, if he wants to make movies, and he can, why shouldn't he? What kind of question is that? Why are you here?"

A flustered Timberlake chuckled and pointed to Kunis following the exchange, telling the crowd, "This is my bodyguard."

Emma Thompson was all of us when she snapped on a Sky TV interviewer who asked her about the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in spring 2018.

"[There's] not a single thought about it in my head to share with you, I'm so sorry," Thompson said (via the Daily Mail). "I haven't even ... it doesn't occur to me actually, my son is getting married next year so I am much more sort of dealing with that but really I have nothing to say about it."

Fair enough ... except her interviewer wouldn't drop the darn subject and subsequently asked Thompson if she had any well-wishes for Harry and his Suits star bride on their big day.

"Obviously, yes, but I don't know them," the Love Actually star said, audibly and visibly irritated. "Of course I do ... Stop it, just stop it, OK? Stop doing the 'Let's talk about the royal wedding.' ... Just give the poor kids a break."

In 1975, movie star Helen Mirren was subjected to what may have been one of the most sexist interviews ever with Michael Parkinson, who referred to her as a "sex queen." Parkinson told her, "You are, in quotes, a 'serious actress,'" to which she gently replied, "In quotes? How dare you?"

Then he asked if her "equipment" and "physical attributes" hindered her acting.

"I'd like you to explain what you mean by my 'equipment' in great detail," Mirren replied. "A successful and serious actress ... can't have big bosoms, is that what you mean?"

He then asked if her chest got in the way of audiences appreciating her craft.

"What a crummy performance if people are obsessed with the size of your bosom over anything else," she said. "I would hope that the performance and the play and the living relationship between all the people on the stage and all the people in the audience would overcome such boring questions."

Parkinson later asked her why she previously said she liked men with greasy hair and leather jackets, and she slayed him. "It's not so much that I like men who look like that — but I strongly dislike men who look in another way," she said, glancing at Parkinson's outfit. "Like men who wear very nicely cut suits."