The 20 Biggest Celebrity Fails of 2016

From Zac Efron to Mischa Barton to Chloë Grace Moretz: Delete your account—all of you.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

We love celebrities. We love the entertainment they provide, the glimpse into glamour they give us, and the escape from the increasingly abundant horrors of everyday life they offer. There are websites entirely devoted to, like, documenting every time Kylie Jenner goes to Sugarfish—and they’re very heavily trafficked! That’s how much we love celebrities. But holy Jesus, they can be so terrible and stupid sometimes.

 

For every time Chrissy Teigen awesomely calls out Donald Trump, there’s Matt Damon explaining racism to Effie Brown; for every Jesse Williams speech at the BET Awards, there’s a Justin Timberlake tweeting that “we are all the same.” Underneath the designer jeans, Oscar acceptance speeches, and eight-figure follower totals, celebrities are just people, and people are bad. And just as regular people continued to be questionable decision-makers in 2016—over 62 million people voted for Donald Trump—so too did celebrities. They contorted their mouths to voice wildly uninformed opinions, they lied to our faces, they dated Taylor Swift.

Here’s a list of the biggest celebrity fails of 2016—a year loaded with them. Hopefully, this will be enough to convince you to never make a celebrity your role model.

20. Ben Affleck Rants About “Deflategate”

Not Available Interstitial

19. Gregg Sulkin Sells “Grab Her by the Brain” Hats

Not Available Interstitial

To those who are currently asking, “What is a Gregg Sulkin?” he’s a 24-year-old actor most prominently featured on the Disney Channel, MTV’s Faking It, and Pretty Little Liars; he's known for being Bella Thorne’s ex. It might be debatable how much of a “celebrity” he really is, but this is such a fail it just needs to be included on this list. Because it turns out being unwoke and abusing your wokeness is the same thing. Following the leak of Donald Trump’s “grab ‘em by the pussy” comments, Sulkin eagerly took it upon himself to become an advocate for women. How? With hats! That posited another region to grab women by!

It didn’t take long for people to one, quickly Google Gregg Sulkin, and two, suggest to him that, “Hey, maybe we should just not grab women at all?” 

Among so many other things, 2016 exposed a group of people obliviously patting themselves on the back for being socially aware, as if acknowledging that women and minorities deserve equality is something one should be praised for. Sulkin really went there, and the fact that he did so in service of selling hats makes the whole thing that much more confounding. The guy did apologize—"I am sorry if anyone found the wording offensive, however the intent was to promote women for their intellect and not just their bodies,” he later tweeted. But I don’t know, something tells me he still doesn’t really get it. —Andrew Gruttadaro

18. Justin Timberlake Calls Jesse Williams “Inspiring,” Immediately Says “We’re All the Same”

Not Available Interstitial

17. Blake Lively Says Woody Allen Is “Very Empowering”

Not Available Interstitial

16. Zac Efron Is Thankful for Martin Luther King, Jr. (and His 10 Million Followers)

Not Available Interstitial

15. Mischa Barton Comments on Police-Related Killings… From the S.S. White Privilege

Not Available Interstitial

14. Sean Penn Writes a Very Bad 'Rolling Stone' Story About El Chapo, Inadvertently Snitches on El Chapo

Not Available Interstitial

13. Hilary Duff and Her Boyfriend Get Racist on Halloween

Not Available Interstitial

12. Kit Harington: Victim of Sexism in the Workplace

Not Available Interstitial

11. Chloë Grace Moretz Goes to War With the Kardashians

Not Available Interstitial

10. Dumb Celebrities Attack NFL Players’ Protests

Not Available Interstitial

9. Susan Sarandon Says Hillary Clinton Is “More Dangerous” Than Donald Trump

Not Available Interstitial

8. Tom Hiddleston Becomes Taylor Swift’s Concubine

Not Available Interstitial

7. Amy Schumer’s Entire Year

Not Available Interstitial

6. Lena Dunham Accuses Odell Beckham Jr. of Sexism

Not Available Interstitial

5. Ryan Lochte Destroys a Brazilian Bathroom, Lies to the World About It

Not Available Interstitial

4. Billy Bush Talks Molesting Women With Donald Trump

Not Available Interstitial

3. Jared Leto “Prepares” to Be the Joker

Not Available Interstitial

2. Jimmy Fallon Tousles Donald Trump’s Hair, Cozies Up to Fascism

Not Available Interstitial

1. Taylor Swift Tries to Play the World, but Plays Herself

Not Available Interstitial

Latest in Pop Culture