These celebrity interviews were funny, cringy, disturbing, or all of the above! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at the most shocking, unexpected, and earth-shattering celebrity interviews that left viewers at a loss for words.
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00:00 My weakness caused your pain and your song of sorrow.
00:05 Who's that for?
00:07 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most shocking, unexpected, and earth-shattering
00:14 celebrity interviews that left viewers at a loss for words.
00:17 Where do these words come from, Charlie?
00:18 I don't know all these words that sound cool together.
00:20 It comes from my grand wizard master.
00:25 Number 10.
00:26 Robert Downey Jr.
00:27 In 2015, the actor behind Iron Man sat down with Channel 4 journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy
00:33 to promote Avengers Age of Ultron.
00:36 You said you can't go from a $2,000 a night hotel suite to a penitentiary and understand
00:43 it and come out a liberal.
00:46 And I just wondered what you meant by that.
00:47 The summer blockbuster was hardly Guru-Murthy's top priority.
00:51 Instead prying into Downey Jr.'s prison time, history with drugs, and relationship with
00:56 his father.
00:57 Downey Jr. attempted to remind Guru-Murthy that this interview was supposed to be about
01:01 a movie, but the reporter remained fixated on his personal life.
01:05 We also would like to talk a little bit about you, and I don't know how comfortable you
01:08 are talking about yourself at the moment.
01:11 You have as much time as anyone else will.
01:13 Aside from veering off topic and making him uncomfortable, Downey Jr. feared that kids
01:18 might be watching.
01:19 Your foot's starting to jump a little bit.
01:21 You better get to your next question.
01:22 Guru-Murthy had conducted a similarly unprofessional interview with Quentin Tarantino years earlier.
01:28 It's my job to try and ask you to.
01:30 And I'm shutting your butt down.
01:32 And that's entirely your right.
01:34 This is a commercial from my movie.
01:37 Where Tarantino fired back, watching Downey Jr. walk off was even more jarring.
01:42 You think you're free of all of that?
01:44 Or whether that's still something you...
01:46 I'm sorry, I really don't.
01:47 What are we doing?
01:48 Well, I'm just asking questions.
01:49 That's all.
01:50 Right.
01:51 Okay, have a good night.
01:52 Have a good night.
01:53 Bye.
01:54 Downey Jr. wishes he had left sooner, calling Guru-Murthy a bottom-feeding muckraker.
01:59 Number nine, Lance Armstrong.
02:01 Winning the Tour de France seven years in a row, Lance Armstrong was an inspiration
02:05 to cyclists and cancer survivors alike.
02:08 None of us wanted to believe that we had idolized a fraud.
02:11 It wasn't until Armstrong sat opposite Oprah Winfrey in 2013 that a lot of people accepted
02:16 what was becoming increasingly apparent.
02:18 Yes or no?
02:19 Did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performance?
02:23 Yes.
02:24 Months after being stripped of his titles amid doping allegations, Armstrong confirmed
02:28 that the rumors weren't rumors.
02:30 Did you ever blood dope or use blood transfusions to enhance your cycling performance?
02:35 Yes.
02:36 While Armstrong denied taking performance-enhancing drugs between 2009 and 2010 or encouraging
02:42 teammates to follow his actions, he confessed to cheating with each of his Tour de France
02:46 victories.
02:47 Of all seven of your Tour de France victories, did you ever take banned substances or blood
02:54 dope?
02:55 Yes.
02:56 In a flash, Armstrong went from superhuman to a man backed into a corner, leaving viewers
03:01 with muted disappointment.
03:02 Was it humanly possible to win the Tour de France without doping seven times in a row?
03:11 Not in my opinion.
03:12 Number eight, Samuel L. Jackson.
03:15 Promoting RoboCop, Samuel L. Jackson's interview with KTLA's Sam Rubin turned into a slow-motion
03:21 train wreck when the actor's recent Super Bowl commercial came up.
03:25 Did you get a lot of reaction to that Super Bowl commercial?
03:29 What Super Bowl commercial?
03:30 Oh, you know what?
03:31 I admit my mistake.
03:35 The issue?
03:36 Jackson wasn't in a Super Bowl commercial, but Laurence Fishburne was.
03:41 Rubin and Jackson both appeared bewildered until they realized the reporter's staggering
03:45 mistake.
03:46 I'm not Laurence Fishburne.
03:47 That's my fault.
03:48 I know that.
03:49 That was my fault.
03:50 My mistake.
03:51 You know what?
03:52 We don't all look alike.
03:54 Rubin scrambled to tiptoe around the boo-boo and get the interview back on track.
03:57 You're the entertainment reporter?
03:58 I know.
03:59 I've done the book.
04:00 You're the entertainment reporter for this station?
04:01 Vlog.
04:02 And you don't know the difference between me and Laurence Fishburne?
04:06 Jackson wasn't about to let this slip up slide, however.
04:09 Let's talk about RoboCop.
04:10 Oh, hell no.
04:12 He proceeded to roast Rubin in an outburst so uncomfortable that stunned viewers could
04:16 only laugh on the inside.
04:18 Fishburne admitted that people mistake him for Jackson all the time.
04:21 Of course, most of those people probably aren't entertainment journalists, who clearly should
04:25 have done more research before a live interview.
04:27 Talk about a very short line for your job.
04:30 Number 7.
04:31 R. Kelly By 2019, the controversy surrounding rapper
04:35 R. Kelly had dominated the media for almost 25 years.
04:39 It wasn't until recently that serious consequences started to catch up with Kelly.
04:44 Having been indicted a month earlier, Kelly sat down with Gayle King in an attempt to
04:48 paint a sympathetic portrait of himself.
04:50 And correct me if I'm wrong, that you have never held anybody against their will.
04:54 I don't need to.
04:55 Why would I?
04:56 How stupid would it be for R. Kelly?
05:00 Instead, he went off the rails, making the audience question if what they were watching
05:04 was real.
05:05 Guys, is this camera on me?
05:08 That's stupid.
05:10 Use your common sense.
05:12 Despite insisting that he was innocent and the true victim, Kelly didn't help his case
05:16 as he rose up and pounded his chest in an unhinged fit of sobbing.
05:20 I didn't do this stuff.
05:23 This is not me.
05:24 I'm fighting for my f***ing life.
05:25 Y'all are killing me with this s***.
05:29 Some were surprised that King was able to remain so composed.
05:32 At the same time, King reflected many viewers at home.
05:35 At this point, we briefly pause the interview to give Kelly a moment.
05:39 His publicist helped calm him down.
05:41 I hope this camera keep going.
05:43 No, we're going to let the camera keep going.
05:44 This is not true.
05:46 Few words, just stone-faced confusion and concern.
05:50 Number six, Woody Allen.
05:52 Allen is known for blending quick-witted dialogue with awkward tension.
05:56 Only the latter was on display when Allen appeared on 60 Minutes in 1992, discussing
06:01 his falling out with former partner Mia Farrow, his relationship with Farrow's adopted daughter
06:05 soon-ye Previn, and the accusations of abusing a daughter he adopted with Farrow, Dylan.
06:10 I went up and played with the kids, read them stories, did my usual things.
06:14 We played out on the lawn and had a wonderful time with them.
06:19 And out of this has grown lawyers and psychologists.
06:25 When the latter came up, we expected a straightforward response.
06:29 Allen selected some truly baffling words in an attempt to profess innocence, saying it'd
06:33 be "illogical" for him to do such a thing at this time.
06:36 I had many opportunities in the past.
06:38 I could have quietly made a custody settlement with Mia in some way and done it in the future.
06:43 I mean, you know, it's so insane.
06:45 Allen went on to claim that Farrow was plotting revenge against him while defending his relationship
06:49 with Previn.
06:50 And she has been coached methodically to tell this story because…
06:59 By Mia?
07:00 By Mia, yeah.
07:01 Over 30 years later, some still aren't sure what to say about this interview, or Allen
07:05 in general.
07:06 She may believe it and want to believe it.
07:08 She may believe it and have convinced herself of it.
07:10 Or she may not believe it in the most cynical version.
07:13 Number 5.
07:14 Britney Spears The media repeatedly failed Britney Spears
07:17 during her darkest hours, and few interviews have aged more poorly than her 2003 conversation
07:23 with Diane Sawyer.
07:24 Does your dad have a lot of opinions about what you do?
07:27 Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.
07:30 I mean, not like…
07:32 Disapproving?
07:33 The journalist held nothing back, relentlessly poking into Spears' breakup with Justin Timberlake.
07:38 Sawyer phrased many of her questions in a way that portrayed Spears as the guilty party,
07:43 stressing that she had caused Timberlake pain.
07:52 In reality, Spears was going through a painful period, which she opened up about 20 years
07:57 later in her memoir.
08:09 She reflected on the Sawyer interview as an internal "breaking point," making Spears
08:14 feel as if she was a "bad person."
08:27 While the interview was hard to watch back then, looking at it from a modern lens leaves
08:31 us too upset to talk about it.
08:33 Number 4.
08:34 Joaquin Phoenix We now know that this future Oscar winner's
08:38 2009 appearance on The Late Show was for his mockumentary I'm Still Here.
08:43 At the time, though, neither David Letterman nor the audience knew that Phoenix was playing
08:47 a character.
08:59 Some laughed when Phoenix showed up with a scruffy beard, sunglasses, and a muted demeanor.
09:04 As the interview proceeded, the uncomfortable laughter gradually turned to uneasy silence
09:08 as people wondered what Phoenix was going through and how this interview might wrap
09:12 up.
09:13 Thankfully, Phoenix didn't go Arthur Fleck on Dave, but few knew what to make of it.
09:20 Even with the background information we've since gained, it's hard to find the right
09:24 words to describe this interview.
09:43 Funny?
09:44 Awkward?
09:45 Disturbing?
09:46 All of the above?
09:47 Who can say?
09:48 Number 3.
09:49 Charlie Sheen Where Phoenix's surreal interview was an
09:51 act, this unhinged 2020 appearance was 100% Sheen.
09:57 Following his firing from Two and a Half Men, Sheen met with journalist Andrea Canning.
10:03 No matter how many times we play back this interview, it's difficult to remember what
10:07 Canning asks Sheen because his answers are so nonsensical.
10:11 While quote "winning" and "by winning" were the biggest takeaways, these memes didn't
10:15 even scratch the surface.
10:19 Sheen claimed to be a quote "warlock" with "tiger blood" and "Adonis DNA," but he sounded
10:24 more like a human madlib.
10:32 Eons from now, when another species inherits the Earth, they'll uncover this interview,
10:37 attempting to dissect its meaning.
10:39 Even with their superior intellect and advanced technology, we guarantee they'll be every
10:43 bit as dumbfounded as us.
10:51 Number 2.
10:52 Tom Cruise Nowadays, Tom Cruise leaves audiences speechless
10:57 with his death-defying stunts.
11:09 During the mid-2000s, it was Cruise's interviews that left us more speechless than Oprah's
11:13 poor couch.
11:20 As head-scratching as that appearance might have been, the actor was on Cruise control
11:23 compared to his intense interview with Matt Lauer a month later.
11:28 What started as a friendly conversation about War of the Worlds veered into a commentary
11:32 on Brooke Shields, who had endorsed the antidepressant Paxil.
11:40 It was around the time that Cruise described psychiatry as a pseudoscience that the chat
11:44 turned into a sparring match about postpartum depression treatment and Ritalin.
11:56 Stating each opinion as if it were fact, Cruise revealed a part of himself that was both amusing
12:00 to observe and kind of frightening.
12:28 Number 1.
12:29 Princess Diana, Princess of Wales As long as there's been a royal family, there's
12:33 been an image to uphold.
12:40 When Princess Diana shared her experiences in a 1995 Panorama interview, millions saw
12:46 a dark side of the monarchy for the first time.
12:59 In addition to opening up about her mental health, Diana confessed to her affair with
13:03 James Hewitt while also discussing Charles' relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
13:12 When asked about her husband's ability to rule, Diana didn't give the most encouraging
13:17 response.
13:18 The only thing more shocking than the interview itself was Martin Bashir's dishonest tactics
13:22 in recruiting Diana.
13:35 The same year Bashir retired, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle engaged in another revealing
13:40 interview with Oprah.
13:41 Once again, the world watched in silence, though with more hands raised.
13:58 Which interview left you searching for words?
14:13 Let us know in the comments!
14:22 (upbeat music)