Uncomfortable Moments Where Celebs Asked Their Fans For Money

The Duggars made a mint on reality TV through 19 Kids And Counting and its spinoffs, but, when the show was canceled amid Josh Duggar's molestation scandal, it appeared that cash may have gotten tight for the massive family — or perhaps they just got downright greedy.

In September 2015, Jessa Duggar and husband Ben Seewald got quite a bit of cyber side-eye for requesting Walmart and Target gift cards in a since-deleted blog post, in which they also revealed that Seewald was taking a break from school to work with Jim Bob Duggar in his real estate business. The couple even still have gifts available on their Amazon registry, at the time of this writing, if you're feeling generous.

However, Jessa wasn't the first of the Duggar women to attempt crowdfunding her future. People reported that Jessa's cousin, Amy Duggar, posted links to her relatively swanky wedding registry on social media, while Jessa's sister Jill and Derick Dillard asked for five different kinds of cereal before tying the knot. And that's not even mentioning how the Dillards also came under fire for allegedly misusing fan donations to their ministry to pay for personal trips. Yikes.

Melissa Joan Hart probably should have had her Nickelodeon alter-ego Clarissa explain crowdfunding. In May 2013, the actress asked fans to donate $2 million to a Kickstarter campaign for a romcom called Darci's Walk Of Shame, in which she'd hoped to star. The campaign featured Hart in a video with her mom explaining to fans where they knew her from (Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina The Teenage Witch) and saying she wanted to expand her acting horizons to "a funny, sexy part," but she provided little information about the actual film other than a rather loose run-down of the plot.

The fundraiser earned just $51,000 of its goal — a small percent of the $2 million she wanted. She explained to The Los Angeles Times after the campaign was canceled, "The whole thing is a gamble. ... I think we started out wrong, we didn't launch it correctly. What we failed to do was let the fans know exactly what the project was." She said, "If we were to go back, what I would do is either shoot five minutes of the movie or have a full cast. We thought we could do it based on 'Hey, here's Melissa. You've liked what she's done, check out what she's going to do next.'"

In June 2013, Zosia Mamet — daughter of playwright David Mamet and actress Lindsay Crouse, as well as then-starlet of HBO's Girls — asked fans to pay for her and her sister's band to record a music video.

Even their request was pretentious. The Cabin Girls, as they called themselves, wrote on their Kickstarter page, "The universe has given us both an opportunity to make a living in our young adult lives as creative people and it is one of the greatest privileges a person could ask for, the ability to do what you love. ... Being in the entertainment industry has its lesser known downsides, like being taken out of the town your family lives in or the demanding schedules that prevent attendance at family functions. We are, despite our wonderful jobs at Girls and Neighbors, just sisters."

The Cabin Sisters asked for $32,000 to record their "Bleak Love" music video, and their outlook was just as bleak as their love was: They "earned" $2,784, or just 8.7 percent of their goal, from 80 backers before the campaign was dubbed unsuccessful and canceled, possibly because music from someone this tone-deaf just can't be good.

Just weeks after Melissa Joan Hart's campaign failed, Shemar Moore — who, like Victoria Rowell, starred on The Young And The Restless (before he became a household name with Criminal Minds, that is) — had a failed Kickstarter for The Bounce Back. Moore aimed for $1.5 million, but only earned $249,459 from 1,349 backers before the campaign closed. In his defense, that amount is nothing to sneeze at, and, with a different sort of fund (like an Indiegogo or a GoFundMe), he may have been able to keep the cash. He did, in fact, launch a successful Indiegogo campaign for $500,000, which he exceeded by more than $137,000 ... but his language could have been better.

"My momma always said, 'Make lemonade out of lemons, baby.' Not that I'm calling you guys lemons," he said in his at-times cringeworthy appeal. "Come on, you know what I mean. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like my lemonade sweet, and right about now I need some sugar."

Yes, Shemar. Some sugar. And if that was the best you could come up with, probably also a script editor.

The cast of the 1970s sitcom Good Times really wanted to make a movie ... but no one really wanted to pay for it. The proposed film would have caught up with the Evans family, but there were a few issues: Esther Rolle, who played the beloved Florida Evans, passed away in 1998, and the surviving cast aimed for $1 million and only earned about $8,758 in donations from 200 backers. Making it even more awkward was the fact that the Kickstarter read, in part, "Only an act of God could stop this movie from happening."

Imagine: Not DC Comics, but DMC Comics. Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC did just that, and he wanted fans to fund the effort. Despite being a multimillionaire, he launched a Kickstarter in 2013 in hopes of funding a 64-page graphic novel in which he's a superhero in 1980s New York City who teaches junior high school by day and beats up drug dealers by night. It earned just $5,537 of its $100,000 goal, but McDaniels still eventually released not just one comic but an entire DMC series ... which means he likely didn't need anyone else's cash to do it in the first place.

Four out of five members of the band Eisley had babies within months of one another and then realized that bringing four infants on tour wouldn't be easy. Thus, they requested $100,000 on Kickstarter to fund their tour in 2013.

"This is going to be more difficult than ever, since we not only have to support ourselves on these tours, but we have four beautiful new mouths to feed, safely transport, and care for," the band wrote. "Our future, which we want to spend with you, requires the use of safer, but more expensive means of transportation."

They faced a ton of backlash for their crowdfunding efforts, which stalled out at $60,277. They later explained that they'd borrowed money from their family and their record label, having taken a loan against their future royalty payments. They stated, "Our nursing babies are too little to leave at home and it would be insanely wrong and dangerous to try to tour with 3 or 4 tiny babies in a van. We have to be in a bigger, safer, vehicle which costs between 15-20K (before fuel, driver, etc.)." Regarding their failed fundraiser, the band continued, "Clearly, we over-shot it but we're not bummed out or discouraged. Neither are we immune to the fact that we found ourselves in the cross-hairs of a Kickstarter controversy."

In May 2012, Amanda Palmer raised more than $1 million on Kickstarter to fund her album Theatre Is Evil. Seeing as she didn't pay for much her album herself, it irked a lot of musicians when she announced on her blog that August that she'd pay musicians on her tour for the project in ... wait for it ... beer and hugs. Commenters pointed out the irony of the celeb opening her statement with "THE GRAND THIEVING IS UNDERWAY," noting that their landlords don't accept hugs or high fives for rent.

Palmer lamented to The New York Times that paying musicians on her tour would cost her $35,000, which she said was more than she could afford. "If you could see the enthusiasm of these people, the argument would become invalid," she whined. "They're all incredibly happy to be here." 

She went on, "If my fans are happy and my audience is happy and the musicians on stage are happy, where's the problem?"

Well, the problem is that she didn't appear to spend her Kickstarter earnings too wisely. Plus, she is an established artist and is married to Neil Gaiman, who is very, very rich. It looks like her self-awareness went the way of her eyebrows.