How One Terrible Interview Ruined Miles Teller's Career
Miles Teller went from being "the next big thing" to a has-been so fast ... it gave us Whiplash! "The harder they come, the harder they fall," as they say. And that is certainly the case in Hollywood. From Ashlee Simpson's Saturday Night Live lip sync-turned folk dance to rapper B.o.B's unfortunate assertion that the world is flat, all it takes is one bad — or worse; preposterous — moment to ruin a career. While celebrities do sometimes get second chances — like, say, Winona Rider's career revival à la Netflix's Stranger Things after disappearing for years after shoplifting convictions — some mishaps are just too much. Especially for burgeoning stars. Truly, nothing kills an exciting upward trajectory of a new celebrity faster than one wrong move. And that brings us to Miles Teller.
The statuesque young actor burst into stardom as a promising drummer in the 2014 film Whiplash. At the whim of his drill sergeant music teacher J.K. Simmons (who won an Oscar for the performance) Teller's notable turn made him a household name! Not unlike the more recent floppy-haired wunderkind Timothée Chalamet. It just felt like we'd be seeing the star on-screen for decades. But then, something happened.
The well pretty much dried up for Teller, with the actor snagging just two movie roles in 2017, and not much since. Unfortunately for him, Teller fell victim to one of the worst fates: coming off as unlikeable in a high-profile interview. Scroll down for the interview that did Miles Teller in.
Miles Teller came off as sexist in a major interview
So what was the interview that ruined Miles Teller's career? The prominent star was profiled by Esquire for the magazine's August 2015 cover story, and he came off as so unsavory, especially toward its female writer (and a waitress), that it derailed his public perception. Oh boy.
In the interview, he joked that a bar glass was modeled after his privates (he used a much more direct term) to the writer and waitress present. And he demanded the writer cut his meat for him at the table. "I can't cut this," he told the journalist. But the lack of self-awareness went further. "I was thinking about that today, how I probably think I'm better-looking than the public thinks I am," he said. He then elaborated, "I was in one of these forums about a film I did, and it's like, 'This dude is so ugly! How does he get f***ing parts?'" He noted, "Maybe it's because I came from a small town, but I always did well for myself." Lovely!
As of this writing, Teller hasn't won any major awards and was arrested for public intoxication in 2017. He still hasn't made a comeback. He later told Vulture on the profile, "If how that story made me look was how I really was, I'd think I was the biggest d*****bag too ... I know who I am, and it's not who I was in that story." Well, hindsight is 20/20!