5 Celebrities Who Foreshadowed Their Bad Behavior
At this point, the only celebrities that haven't been outed as garbage people are probably Tom Hanks and that Baby Yoda puppet -- and we might give them both a quick Google before publishing this article just to be sure. But as blindsided as we sometimes are when a star's bad behavior is finally exposed, some famous people foreshadow their allegedly gross behavior in their work, like Easter Eggs filled with awfulness, such as how ...
Chris D'Elia Played a Sexual Predator on You
In a crushing blow to the scraggly unwashed dude community, stand-up comedian Chris D'Elia was recently accused of sexual misconduct. After multiple women (several of whom were minors as young as 16) came forward with stories of D'Elia sending inappropriate texts, the comic has been dropped by his agency and booted from the new Netflix movie Army of the Dead, where he was replaced by beloved comic Tig Notaro (who apparently no one realized could have just hired in the first place). Weirdly, one of D'Elia's most recent performances was in the Netflix series You where he played ... a Los Angeles stand-up comedian who was secretly a sexual predator targeting young girls.
This isn’t the only time D'Elia's IMDB page awkwardly reflected his real-life scandals, he guest-starred in an episode of Workaholics in which he plays a child molester. The episode "To Friend a Predator" was promptly pulled from streaming services in the wake of the allegations, which D'Elia denies. Although he did apologize for his "lifestyle", which apparently just didn't include the things he was being asked to actually apologize for.
Ellen DeGeneres Conducted More Than a Few Cringe Interviews
While a lot of us assumed that the worst thing going on behind the scenes of Ellen Degeneres' talk show was her fascistic rules forcing ever guests to dance their way on stage regardless of their comfort level, it turns out things were a lot worse than that. As we know now, that's not exactly true. Multiple people have accused the show of fostering a "toxic" work environment full of sexual misconduct and harassment. This comes after the "open secret" that Ellen is allegedly kind of a jerk hit social media.
But looking back at the show itself, even on camera there were plenty of cringe-ass Ellen moments. Of course, there was the time Dakota Johnson called out Ellen's calculated insincerity, or the time she defended palling around with George W. Bush. But there was also the time she randomly ridiculed Celine Dion's young son's long hair.
Most creepily, was the notorious 2008 interview with Mariah Carey, in which Ellen confronted Mariah with pregnancy rumors. After making it clear that she didn't want to talk about it, Ellen forced her guest to prove she wasn’t pregnant by downing a glass of champagne on camera. Which is straight-up Bond villain-level shit.
Carey was, understandably, "uncomfortable" because she was pregnant but wasn’t actually announcing it yet because she had previously had a miscarriage. This pregnancy also resulted in a miscarriage, but who knows, maybe that very sensitive piece of information will just be used as the basis for some other new wacky/ghoulish game if the Ellen show ever comes back.
Luc Besson's The Professional is Somehow Creepier Than You Realize
Director Luc Besson is best-known for movies like The Fifth Element and Lucy -- that movie in which Scarlett Johansson is given a drug that expands her brain power, somehow allowing her to understand foreign languages and physically control TV sets. In 2018 Besson was accused of rape by actress Sand Van Roy; the case was later dropped and eventually reopened in 2019. Meanwhile, multiple other women accused Besson of sexual harassment, including two students, bringing the total of alleged victims to nine.
While Besson denies everything, it's perhaps not incidental that his most famous work is, in retrospect, super gross. Leon: The Professional is the acclaimed story of an assassin who befriends a 12-year-old girl, played by Natalie Portman in her acting debut.
If the story of a young girl moving in with a random grown-ass man wasn't "uhhhh" enough, the original screenplay, penned by Besson, features a scene in which the young Mathilda seduces Leon and he is "unable to oppose her." Again, he is an adult and she is a literal child. This movie is an unsubtle rape fantasy '90s Hollywood sold to America as an action movie in the vein of Speed. Making things somehow even worse, the movie was allegedly "inspired" by Besson's real-life relationship with a 15-year-old girl who he first met when she was 12. Even the Bollywood version, which is a wacky musical, had the good sense to make the character 22. Yikes.
Ryan Adams' Schtick Plays Way Differently Now
Forcing certain older Canadian rock stars to cling to the letter "B" for dear life, a 2019 New York Times story exposed the "manipulative" behavior of musician Ryan Adams. The singer was accused of dangling "career opportunities while simultaneously pursuing female artists for sex" and engaging in "inappropriate online sexual communications with someone he knew was underage." Ex-wife Mandy Moore called his behavior "psychologically abusive."
This news caused many to rethink, not just their jean jacket and black graphic t-shirt collection, but Adams' music itself. Like Adams' track-for-track cover of Taylor Swift’s album 1989 which some decried for its gatekeeper-y undertones; implying that hip musical elites couldn’t enjoy Swift’s songs without this dude's intervention and indie cred. He also changed some of Swift’s lyrics, seemingly swapping "skirt so tight" for "ass so tight" in the song "Style." And some of his own songs reflect his alleged abusive behavior. The tune "Nobody Girl" is, according to Rolling Stone, "an almost boastful portrayal of gaslighting."
So many of Adams' songs packaged his emotional neediness in musical form that, while it may play well in pop songs, in retrospect is forever tainted by the crapsack behavior that those same feelings allegedly led to off-mic.
Woody Allen's Filmography Reads Like a Rap Sheet of Crimes
Acclaimed director Woody Allen is famous for movies like Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and the one where he literally plays human semen (which apparently seemed like a good idea back in the '70s). Most recently he's been shunned by popular culture after everyone finally acknowledged the accusation that he sexually assaulted his daughter Dylan Farrow in the early '90s (which Allen denies).
Not helping his ranking on the Creep-O-Meter, Allen dated a 16-year-old when he was 41, and most famously began a relationship, and later married, his partner Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon Yi Previn. Now his movies don’t even play in American theaters, and presumably most parents don’t need any help deciding between Antz and A Bug's Life.
If you look back at Woody Allen's career, his work is filled with Batman villain-esque clues to his abject grossness. Obviously, there's Manhattan, Allen's Oscar-nominated 1979 movie about a Woody Allen-like dude who is dating a 17-year-old high school student. Don't worry, she wasn't actually played by a 17-year-old, she was played by ... oh, 16-year-old Mariel Hemingway.
As further evidence that this classic film was just a front for Allen to creep on teenagers in real life, Hemingway recently recounted how Allen flew to her parents' house in Idaho and "repeatedly asked her to go to Paris with him." Which he probably thought would seem more charming than terrifying with addition of some Gerswhin tunes. Then there's Stardust Memories, one of his most seemingly autobiographical films, which, oddly features repeated references to incest including a scene where he asks his girlfriend if she had "a little crush" on her own father.
Even before he was a filmmaker, Allen's work oddly anticipated his alleged crimes. As a stand-up comedian, Allen relentlessly ridiculed his ex-wife, even using a picture of her as a prop on television like some kind of jackass Carrot Top routine. When his wife was sexually assaulted, he made jokes about her being raped in his act. After the barrage of emotional abuse, she eventually sued him for $1 million. But somehow our parents all paid to see this guy dress up like anthropomorphic sperm.
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