1. Famous music producer Suge Knight recently called out stars like T.I., Rick Ross, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Drake, and The Game for not speaking out about the current allegations against P. Diddy. Knight, who is in prison for manslaughter and used to manage Tupac, said there was “no whistleblower” and that “nobody is stepping up. … [They] knew what was going on.”
3. Similarly, Elton John used an awards show to call out a colleague he has long feuded with: Madonna. At the 2004 Q Awards, he accused her of not singing live after she won Best Live Act. “Madonna, best live act? F*** off. Since when has lip-syncing been live? Sorry about that, but I think everyone who lip-syncs on stage in public when you pay, like, 75 quid to see them should be shot. Thank you very much. That’s me off her Christmas card list, but do I give a toss? No.”
4. Of course, we also have to mention one of the most famous awards show call-outs. In 2015, Miley Cyrus, who was hosting the VMAs that year, referenced Nicki Minaj’s tweets (about “Anaconda” not being nominated for Video of the Year) in an interview, saying they “sounded very Nicki Minaj, which, if you know Nicki Minaj is not too kind. It’s not very polite.” Then, at the VMAs, after Minaj won Best Hip Hop Video, Nicki Minaj famously called out Miley Cyrus for her comments.
5. Appearing on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett’s podcast, Sarah Paulson called out fellow actor Trish Hawkins for once emailing her six pages of notes after watching her performance in the off-Broadway play Talley’s Folly, in which Hawkins had previously appeared. “I’m going to say this, and I’m not going to ask you to cut this out because I don’t f–king care,” Paulson said, naming Hawkins and adding, “Hi Trish! Hi Tricia!”
Paulson then worried aloud, “Am I going to get sued? I don’t care. Because I think this is outrageous. But she came to the play, proceeded to say — she looked at me up and down and then she went, ‘Your dress is yellow. Mine was pink.’ And I thought, ‘What?’ Cut to two days later, I got an email that was six pages long of notes and a communication to me about what she had done when she had done the play, what she recommended I do,” Paulson continued. “It was outrageous. It was really outrageous. Trish Hawkins, I have not forgotten it, and I hope to see you never.”
6. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lorde criticized Selena Gomez and her song “Come & Get It.” She told the magazine, “I love pop music on a sonic level. But I’m a feminist, and the theme of her song is, ‘When you’re ready, come and get it from me.’ I’m sick of women being portrayed this way.”
7. In return, Selena called Lorde out for her comments, saying they were “not feminist” and “not supporting other women.” She continued, “That’s my honest opinion; that’s what I would say to her if I saw her. … I actually covered her song in all of my shows that I’ve done so far. I’m not sure if I’m going to continue that.”
8. After country star Morgan Wallen was caught using the n-word, fellow country singer Maren Morris responded to a tweet about the use of the slur not representing country music with, “It actually IS representative of our town because this isn’t his first ‘scuffle’ and he just demolished a huge streaming record last month regardless. We all know it wasn’t his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse.”
9. And Kurt Cobain once called Axl Rose “a fucking sexist and a racist and a homophobe,” saying, “You can’t be on his side and be on our side. I’m sorry that I have to divide this up like this, but it’s something you can’t ignore.” Also, he added, Rose’s band Guns N’ Roses “can’t write good music.”
10. Moving on from music to fashion for a bit, Tim Gunn has called out multiple celebrities for being rude. In one example, he called Taylor Momsen, who he worked with on an episode of Gossip Girl, a diva. “She was pathetic; she couldn’t remember her lines, and she didn’t even have that many. I thought to myself, Why are we all being held hostage by this brat?” He told E! News. He accused her of being “on her phone during every break,” saying, “She annoyed the entire crew.”
11. In a riskier move, he’s also called out fashion legend Anna Wintour for being rude. “I just wish that she navigated the world with a little more respect for other people,” he said, calling her a “history revisionist” and saying his relationship with her is “hostile.” He also criticized Vogue, saying, “There is so much that happens at that unique publication that is so of another world and another planet. I’m happy to have a bad relationship with it because I wouldn’t want to have a good one.”
12. After years of rumors that Bill Murray had been cruel to Lucy Liu on the set of Charlie’s Angels, Liu finally called him out for his behavior in 2021, describing an on-set incident. “As we’re doing the scene, Bill starts to sort of hurl insults, and I won’t get into the specifics, but it kept going on and on,” she recalled. “I was, like, ‘Wow, he seems like he’s looking straight at me.’ I couldn’t believe that [the comments] could be towards me because what do I have to do with anything majorly important at that time?”
“I literally do the look around my shoulder thing, like, who is he talking to behind me? I say, ‘I’m so sorry. Are you talking to me?’ And clearly he was, because then it started to become a one-on-one communication,” Liu continued. “Some of the language was inexcusable and unacceptable, and I was not going to just sit there and take it. So, yes, I stood up for myself and don’t regret it. Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down. And I would not stand down, and nor should I have.”
13. Another actor who called out an inappropriate costar years later is Natasha Lyonne. On Conan O’Brien’s podcast, Lyonne told a story about James Woods being creepy toward her while filming Scary Movie 2 when she was in her early twenties. She called him out for hitting on her, saying, “It was a crazy move, dude.”
14. Amber Tamblyn also accused Woods of hitting on her when she was 16. Woods denied doing so, but Tamblyn held her ground, writing an open letter to Woods. She said Woods invited her and a friend to Las Vegas before she was famous, telling her it was a “great place” and asking if she’d been. “You tried to make it sound innocent,” Tamblyn wrote. “This is something predatory men like to do, I’ve noticed. Make it sound innocent. Just a dollop of insinuation. Just a hair of persuasion. Just a pinch of suggestion. ‘It will be so much fun, I promise you. Nothing has to happen, we will just have a good time together.’ I told you my age, kindly and with no judgment or aggression. I told you my age because I thought you would be immediately horrified and take back your offer. You laughed and said, ‘Even better. We’ll have so much fun, I promise.'”
15. Rebel Wilson called out costar and producer Sacha Baron Cohen for trying to get her to do full-frontal nudity in The Brothers Grimsby, even though she had a no nudity clause in her contract. A body double was being used instead, but she said Cohen still tried to get her to do the scene: “They got [the double] to do all this stuff,” Wilson told Marie Claire. “Sacha would go, ‘See, she looks good.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not doing it. I don’t care what you say.'”
16. After Elon Musk misgendered his own daughter and otherwise made wildly problematic remarks, including saying she was dead and “slightly autistic,” Marlon Wayans called him out. “I don’t like what he be saying about his trans child,” Wayans said. “You don’t treat them babies like that, you don’t disown your baby. Love your child!” Wayans’ son Kai is trans.
17. Kathy Griffin also publicly called out Musk — in particular for his comments on being able to travel to Mars in a few years and for his past “dating” behavior. “Don’t be falling into that fucking cult. Elon Musk, that fucking guy is nuts,” she said, revealing, “He went out with a girlfriend of mine, and he parked outside her house for four fucking days. Right, that guy’s gonna send you to Mars in four years? Don’t count on it.”
18. But the best Musk call-out is probably from his on-again, off-again partner Grimes on Twitter. After Musk tweeted, “pronouns suck,” Grimes publicly replied, writing, “I love you but please turn off ur phone or give me a dall [sic]. I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn’t your heart.” She later deleted the tweet.
19. Appearing on the Dumb Blonde podcast, singer Elle King similarly called out her father, comedy actor Rob Schneider, in the wake of his anti-trans comments. “He’s just talking out his ass. I want to use this opportunity to say I disagree. I do not agree with what he says. I believe in all forms of love. I just believe in anyone finding their happiness and their joy in whatever way, whatever capacity that is,” she said, also stating, “I don’t want to be associated with him” and calling him “just not nice.”
“I disagree with a lot of the things that he says. You can want someone to change so much and ultimately, you can’t control anyone else’s actions. You can’t control people’s feelings. All you can control is how you react and what you do with your feelings,” she said. She also revealed, “My dad forgot about every single birthday. I spent my 18th birthday in a summer school and they brought me cupcakes and when I came home, my dad had forgotten,” she said, revealing her father also sent her to “fat camp” and that she would be in trouble with him for not losing weight or getting in the way on film sets.
20. In a lighter example, notable queer musicians Tegan and Sara hilariously called out Jojo Siwa on TikTok after Siwa declared she wanted to “start a new genre of music” called “gay pop.” Of course, there is already a large amount of queer pop out there, and it certainly is not being led by Siwa.
21. After Katt Williams made several comments against other Black celebrities, including Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Cedric the Entertainer, Tiffany Haddish, and Steve Harvey, Dave Chappelle called him out in a stand-up set. “What part of the game is this?” he said. He didn’t say anything about any of these white boys. None of these white boys function like that.” He continued, “Katt is one of the best painters in the game. So why are you drawing ugly pictures of us? Stop.”
22. Amid all the controversy with Matty Healy — after he made racist comments about Ice Spice and admitted to watching porn where Black women are brutalized — fellow singer Rina Sawayama publicly called out Healy during a performance. “I wrote this next song because I was sick and tired of these micro-aggressions. So tonight, this goes out to a white man that watches Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”
23. Boygenius singer Lucy Dacus also called out Matty Healy around the same time. After Healy tweeted a joke about suggesting to Dacus that he start a band called “girl [r-slur]” in reference to her band name, adding, “I don’t really hear from her that often,” Dacus replied, “You don’t hear from me at all.” Healy then temporarily deactivated his Twitter account.
