The Most Uncomfortable Celebrity Interviews Of This Past Decade

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When a celebrity sits down for a one-on-one interview, it always seems harmless enough ... at first. Yet often these exchanges can go awry in a really bad way. If you're a celeb who has a sketchy past, for example, you definitely don't want to be asked about it while you're in the middle of a press junket — but that's precisely what some interviewers do. 

Regardless of how it goes down, there's a lot at stake for stars and interviewers alike. In the past 10 years, we've seen plenty of celebrity interviews take a nasty turn, ending in cursing, screaming, and blatant walkouts. While a lot of these stars "behaved badly" to protect their reputation, others — perhaps knowing the power of a good viral story — seemed to provoke their interviewers with a little taste of the unexpected.

No matter who wins this cat-and-mouse game, the atmosphere can be tense, to say the least. Here's a look back at some of the most uncomfortable, cringeworthy celebrity interviews of this past decade, just in time to ring in the New Year.

Australia's version of 60 Minutes knew exactly what it had on its hands when a 2011 interview with Sarah "Fergie" Ferguson, Duchess of York, took a turn for the worse. The problem arose after the show made Fergie re-watch the incriminating 2010 undercover footage that allegedly showed her offering to "open doors" to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, in exchange for a £500,000 payment from a reporter posing as "an international business tycoon."

Though she didn't face legal repercussions, the fallout from the scandal included Fergie not getting an invitation to Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding or Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's nuptials and a lengthy lawsuit. It's not surprising Fergie didn't want to relive that moment it in front of the camera, so she stormed off the set. The show's producers capitalized on the moment by making it the centerpiece of its promo and billing it as "the weirdest interview you'll ever see."

In reality, Fergie eventually returned to the show and completed what her manager, John Scott, told The Telegraph was "a banal interview and her demeanour reflected that." Her handler described the showing of the undercover footage as an ambush and "entrapment," an allegation the program's executive producer, Hamish Thomson, scoffed at: "She agreed to talk about the issue, as she has already extensively done, so it certainly wasn't entrapment."

Krishnan Guru-Murthy actually got off relatively light with Robert Downey Jr., because the journalist got himself pummeled with return fire back in 2013 from director Quentin Tarantino after attempting to draw a corollary between violent films — of which Tarantino has made many — and mass shootings. The interview took place during promotion for the director's Django Unchained, which has no shortage of violence. As Guru-Murthy repeatedly attempted to discuss a potential correlation, Tarantino simply declared, "And I'm shutting your butt down." 

For his part, Tarantino made it abundantly clear that he'd already spoken on the subject at length since the start of his career, and that his only intention for Guru-Murthy's interview was to sell his movie. We're pretty sure if you reached into Tarantino's back pocket at that moment, you'd see that his wallet had Bad Mo — well, you know where we're going with that.

Canadian news anchor Nathan Downer found himself in a tough situation in 2014 after he enraged Mike Tyson with a question about his shady past. Citing the controversy surrounding Tyson's meeting with disgraced Toronto mayor Rob Ford, Downer asked Tyson if he thought people had a problem with it because Tyson is a "convicted rapist."

Tyson treated the question like it was Evander Holyfield's ear, which is to say that he latched on and didn't let go. His promoter, seated beside him, gamely tried to diffuse the situation, but a clearly incensed former heavyweight champ interrupted with this observation about Downer: "You know, it's so interesting, because you come across like a nice guy but you're really a piece of s**t." The cursing escalated from there, despite Downer's warning that they're on live TV. "I don't care, what are you going to do about it?" Tyson responded. Downer stopped the interview a minute later amid another hail of obscenities. Downer thanked Tyson for his time, to which the boxer replied, "F**k you."

Amazingly, Downer later tweeted, then deleted (via the New York Post): "No ill will toward Mike Tyson. He lashed out at me and that's okay. Not taking it personally."

It seems Samuel L. Jackson stole a page right out of Joan Rivers' playbook in 2014: When an interviewer shows you disrespect, you immediately return the favor. When Jackson stopped by KTLA morning news to promote Robocop, reporter Sam Rubin couldn't wait to ask him all about his career. The problem was, he confused Jackson with another African-American actor, Laurence Fishburne. Right after asking Jackson about his "Superbowl commercial" and seeing the confused look on Jackson's face, he realized his flub and apologized for the mix-up.

Jackson, of course, didn't let this go by without totally taking him down. The whole thing was terribly awkward, with Jackson at one point saying to Rubin, "You're the entertainment reporter for this station, and you don't know the difference between me and Laurence Fishburne?" Rubin sputtered apologies and later ended the interview by saying, "I'm probably going to get spanked in the most extraordinary way, with good reason." 

A month later, however, Jackson still wouldn't let it go, tweeting a photo of himself wearing a shirt saying, "I'm not Laurence Fishburne." Fishburne himself, however, said that it was a common mistake — and just like how people used to confuse Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino back in the day, "It's not a bad problem to have."

How do we not include the "slavery was a choice" interview? That's right, for those of you living in caves, Kanye West went on TMZ Live in 2018 in an attempt to explain his experiment with "free thought," a concept he was practicing on his Twitter account. During the chaotic, stream-of-consciousness interview, which you can watch here if you have 30 minutes and a handy supply of Excedrin, West mused on everything from "mental imprisonment," to his liposuction procedure and resulting opioid addiction, to the aforementioned slavery remark. 

His exact quote from the headline-making interview was: "When you hear about slavery for 400 years — for 400 years? That sound like a choice. Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all?" The statement was so objectively outrageous, a TMZ staffer named Van Lathan called West out on the spot.

Afterward, the rapper took to Twitter to clarify his remarks. In a series of since-deleted tweets, West attempted to explain that he was referring to "mental enslavement." In a tweet from that batch that remains live, he wrote, "The universe has a plan. I knew that TMZ would be awesome." It certainly was. We're just not sure it was in the way West thought it was.

When actor Malik Yoba showed up for an interview with The Root in September 2019, everything seemed nice and friendly — until the interviewer brought up one topic. According to the publication, a transgender woman took to Facebook earlier that month, accusing Yoba of soliciting underage trans sex workers, and rumors had started to fly about Yoba's history with the trans community. When The Root interviewer decided to ask about the allegations, that's when everything hit the fan.

When asked for his thoughts on the trans sex workers who accused him of fetishizing the community, Yoba denied any knowledge. As the interviewer pressed further, Yoba became more upset, saying to the reporter, "You and I sat for four hours the other day, and we decided how we were going to approach this." At one point, the interviewer replied, "We are recording, and the more you talk, the worse it looks for you."

"What did you just say?" Yoba responded, leaning forward in his chair. Later, Yoba claimed, "It's a setup. I don't like this. We said that we were going to focus on policy. And you're staying on allegations, homey ... What the f**k is wrong with you?" Yoba ripped off his microphone during the rant and demanded the crew give him the cameras' SD cards, but they refused. He later made another video refuting the accusations in the form of a freestyle rap.