The Biggest Celebs Have Been Fired Too — Here Are Their Stories Of Failure

We live in a time of economic instability brought about by a number of factors, not least of which is the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, tens of millions of people were let go from their jobs in the first few months of the pandemic, and job insecurity has continued as COVID has stretched into its third year. Being laid off or fired is never easy. "Grief can be a very real response," a former psychotherapist named Aricia Shaffer told Live Career. "... If work is their entire life, it can be devastating."

Losing a job is a common experience that a lot of people go through at some point in their lives, and that includes celebrities. Some of the most famous people in the world have been there, working day jobs one minute and finding themselves unemployed the next. As with normal people, sometimes it was their fault; sometimes it wasn't. What all of the stars on this list have in common, though, is that they were able to turn things around, and they have all enjoyed long and fruitful careers since their days on the chopping block. Here are their stories of failure.

Many struggling actors and musicians work food service jobs while they get their entertainment careers off the ground, and a young Nicki Minaj was no exception. The budding rapper worked at multiple Red Lobster locations, she told Jimmy Fallon years later. "I have gotten fired from all three or four of them," she revealed to the talk show host, grinning proudly. She clarified that she was given the boot because she confronted a customer who stiffed her on the tip and stole her pen. "I walked up to the car, I banged on the car window, and I said, 'Give me my pen!'" She added that she gave them the finger with both hands, and that didn't go over well. "My manager fired me on the spot," she recalled.

Minaj has spoken on her history of failed pre-rapper jobs before, telling GQ that she worked as a customer service rep for a bit. "I like dealing with people, but I don't really like a lot of bulls***, so maybe customer service wasn't the best job for me," she admitted.

The "Super Freaky Girl" rapper has amassed an impressive estimated net worth of $100 million since her time serving seafood. When the hitmaker announced a retirement from music that would ultimately be short-lived, her former employer teased her on Twitter. "Now that you've redeemed yourself as a server, you're welcome to come out of retirement with us!" Red Lobster wrote.

Pharrell Williams is known nowadays for his legendary songwriting skills, his "Happy" hit song, and his wacky choices in "but-is-it-fashion" headwear. However, Williams wasn't always as successful as he is now. In fact, he was fired multiple times from his fast food jobs at McDonald's. "I wasn't the best employee," he admitted in an interview with supermodel Naomi Campbell, for her "No Filter with Naomi" series. "I got fired every time from my McDonald's jobs. I don't know, I wasn't very driven, work-wise, in my teen years." 

The artist went into more detail about his past with the chain on "Late Night with Seth Meyers," explaining that he was thinking too much about music when he should have been focused on his job. "At a certain point, you know, they realized that I was no help," he said. "I was only good at eating the chicken nuggets."

His relationship with McDonald's wasn't ruined irreparably. In fact, Williams was a co-writer of the iconic "ba da ba ba ba... i'm lovin' it" jingle for McD's, which was first released in a full Justin Timberlake song, according to Pitchfork! From Williams' chicken nugget days to his career high of multiple Grammy Awards, the singer-songwriter-producer extraordinaire has racked up a staggering estimated net worth of $250 million.

Nowadays, Cardi B is world-famous as the rapper behind hits such as "WAP" and "Bodak Yellow," but back in the day, she was a supermarket cashier looking out for her friends. She told Fader that she was let go from her job because she gave a coworker a discount they weren't technically allowed to have. However, the manager who dismissed her had a suggestion for Cardi. Some might call his advice unconventional; others might call it "inappropriate." Regardless, it wound up changing the path of Cardi's life. "He was like, 'You're so pretty, you got a nice body,'" she recalled. "He told me to go across the street to New York Dolls, the strip club. That's when I started stripping."

At first, Cardi was unsure about her new career. "I felt a little bit of shame," she admitted to Complex. "I imagined my mother shaking her head." Still, the star noted, she made more money in one day than she had in an entire week selling groceries. Her job at New York Dolls led to Instagram fame, which led to a stint on "Love & Hip Hop," and the rest is pop culture history.

In the years since she was fired, Cardi has built up an impressive fortune. According to Celebrity Net Worth, she's now banked around $40 million. That's a lot of shifts at the supermarket!

Oprah Winfrey is now one of the richest women on the planet. Forbes, which named her the 23rd most powerful woman in the world in 2021, estimates her net worth to be $2.6 billion. They note her investments in Weight Watchers, her profitable, long-running talk show, and ownership of her OWN network as major contributors to her staggering wealth, more than earning her the title of "media mogul."

However, it wasn't always that way. Before she became a beloved household name known worldwide, Winfrey worked as an anchor on WJZ in Baltimore. It was, evidently, not a good time in her life. "It shook me to my very core, and I didn't even know at the time that I was being shaken," she later told Baltimore's Sun Magazine. Winfrey described a work environment filled with sexual harassment. 

She was ultimately demoted from reporter to daytime talk show host, leading a program called "People Are Talking." She reflected to Bloomberg that she had often been written up as a reporter for being "empathetic" to the people she was covering, which wasn't what the network was looking for. "This is what I now know with age and perspective: that many times getting demoted [or fired] is an opportunity for something else to show up," she advised. You get a pink slip! You get a pink slip! 

In 2009, then up-and-coming comedian Jenny Slate joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live." Her time on the show turned out to be short-lived. In her very first episode, Slate ad-libbed an f-bomb, which is, of course, not allowed. "SNL" creator Lorne Michaels fired her. While everyone naturally assumed that her accidental cursing was to blame, Slate revealed years later that she just didn't fit in. "That's not why I got fired," she told InStyle. "I just didn't belong there. I didn't do a good job, I didn't click."

After her time on "SNL" was cut short, Slate struggled with stage fright. "I was incredibly disappointed in myself," she said on "Off Camera with Sam Jones," recalling that being a cast member on the long-running sketch show was something she had been working toward since she was little. "After I got fired, I was so humiliated in every way."

Nowadays, Slate is super-successful. She's starred on hit shows like "Parks & Recreation" and "Big Mouth," been in films like "Venom" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once," and she created the critically-beloved character "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On." According to Celebrity Net Worth, she has an estimated fortune of $6 million. "I think I would tell myself that there are secret doors in every experience," she reflected to Entertainment Tonight.

Ellen DeGeneres' celebrated daytime talk show ended in 2022 after 19 seasons on air (per NPR), but the "Finding Nemo" star has been through a number of controversies over the course of her career. As Barack Obama noted when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she was not received as the trailblazing example of lesbian representation on television that fans now celebrate her for. "She did pay a price," Obama said (via PinkNews). "We don't remember this. I didn't remember this. She did. For a pretty long period of time — even in Hollywood."

He was referring to the fact that she famously came out on her sitcom "Ellen" as she was going public with her sexuality in real life, and the reaction was not positive. Her ratings fell off a cliff, and the show was canceled the following year. "It's just too controversial, nobody wants to deal with it," DeGeneres told Entertainment Tonight at the time; she later admitted on ABC News' "20/20," "It destroyed me."

Her talk show, though, was a successful comeback, and DeGeneres' net worth now stands around $380 million (via Forbes). But she once again faced public backlash; as Page Six noted, numerous former employees went public with allegations of toxic workplace harassment on her talk show, which is no longer around.