Fame, wealth, and privilege often go hand-in-hand. When someone has lived in that bubble for a long time, or even their entire life, they can lose touch with what life is like for people outside of it. They sometimes seem to forget that not everyone has access to the same resources — from organic food to personal staff — as they do. As a result, they may offer advice or make remarks that come off as, well, super privileged and out of touch.
Here are 17 times celebs made out-of-touch comments about money and privilege:
During a 2009 interview, Mariah Carey was told by the interviewer that his to-do list included “pay bill.” She responded, “Pay who? Bill who?”
In her parenting book “The Kind Mama,” Alicia Silverstone advised postpartum mothers to take as much time as possible to do nothing but “lying-in” with their newborns “instead of hurrying on to the next thing.” She wrote, “I know what you’re thinking: Who am I to tell you that you should consider taking time away from work? I assure you that it’s not something that only the super-privileged and trust-fund endowed can afford.”
While interviewing Danny Pudi in 2020, Larry King asked him about the luxuries he can’t live without — then rejected his answers, telling him, “Coffee and socks are not a luxury.”
In 2010, Dina Lohan reportedly called the police on a Carvel ice cream store that refused to give her the cake she ordered for free when she tried to pay with her daughter Lindsay’s “Carvel black card.” She told Radar, “It just shows how we [Lohans] get treated so much worse than regular people.”
The black card was a promotional gift that offered Lindsay free ice cream for 75 years, but the employees confiscated it from her mother. Carvel stated, “Unfortunately, the Lohan family has been abusing the card. While the card was issued in Lindsay’s name only, her extended family has repeatedly used the card without her present. After more than six months of numerous and large orders for ice cream, we finally had to cut off the card and take it back.”
In 2018, Gwyneth Paltrow told the Wall Street Journal, “I went to do a yoga class in LA recently, and the 22-year-old girl behind the counter was like, ‘Have you ever done yoga before?’ And literally I turned to my friend, and I was like, ‘You have this job because I’ve done yoga before.'”
In a 2022 “Late Night” monologue discussing record-high gas prices following American sanctions against Russia, Stephen Colbert said, “A clean conscience is worth a buck or two. It’s important. I’m willing to pay $4 a gallon. Hell, I’ll pay $15 a gallon because I drive a Tesla.”
In 2012, Simon Cowell told GQ, “Money brings you security and choice. You can make decisions in a different way if you have a lot of money. But when you have nothing, you have a naivety, and a more fearless attitude because you have nothing to lose.”
Discussing the challenges of parenting with the Times magazine in 2014, Salma Hayek said, “You have to work very hard to please them all. If you are making pizza, there is one who doesn’t like cheese, and another who hates tomato. Our chef sometimes looks so downhearted. He’s always saying, ‘Madam, what are we going to do?'”
In 2009, Snoop Dogg told CNBC about how, in high school, he worked his way up from general math classes to calculus. He said, “If you stop at general math, you’re only going to make general math money.”
In 2021, Dixie D’Amelio told Vogue, “I fully got into college [in] August of 2019 and I decided not to go just because traveling back and forth was going to be a lot…I was also really scared because I saw someone make a TikTok saying that they would play my songs at a frat party, and that’s really what, like, turned me away from going to school because I don’t think I could handle that level of embarrassment.”
In 2013, Spencer Pratt told Ok! Magazine that he and his wife, Heidi Montag, “made and spent at least $10 million” in a single year because they fell for a conspiracy theory. He said, “The thing is, we heard that the planet was going to end in 2012. We thought, we have got to spend this money before the asteroid hits.”
Discussing her aspirational wellness lifestyle and mental health in 2020, Gisele Bündchen told the Guardian, “[People] just have to make the decision of working at it. That’s the problem with today’s society, people want instant gratification where it’s you know: ‘I want to do something, and [when] I wake up I want to look like this.’ I’m like, ‘Er, well, you know for me to cure my panic attacks, it took months. I could have taken a pill, but I decided no. I’m going to wake up every morning, and I’m going to meditate and do breath work.’ It took months…Everything starts with discipline.”
And in 2010, Gisele Bündchen told Harper’s Bazaar UK, “I think breastfeeding really helped me keep my figure…Some people here [in the US] think they don’t have to breastfeed, and I think, ‘Are you going to give chemical food to your child when they are so little?’ I think there should be a worldwide law, in my opinion, that mothers should breastfeed their babies for six months.”
Responding to criticism that, unlike many of his peers, he didn’t use his music to address police brutality in the US in 2015, A$AP Rocky told Time Out, “I’m A$AP Rocky. I did not sign up to be no political activist. I wanna talk about my motherfuckin’ lean, my best friend dying, girls, my jiggy fashion and my inspirations in drugs. I live in fucking Soho and Beverly Hills. I can’t relate. I go back to Harlem, it’s not the same. It’s a sad story. I gotta tell you the truth. I’m in the studio, I’m in fashion houses, I’m in these bitches’ drawers. I’m not doing anything outside of that. That’s my life. These people need to leave me the fuck alone.”
A year later, the interview resurfaced, leading to renewed criticism. In response, Rocky told The Breakfast Club that the quotes had been taken out of context. He said, “The racism is real. I don’t go to middle America cities. We’re in the major markets. We don’t know what it’s really like for the people who go to work and come home everyday. …. We don’t know how they get along. What I see and try to promote is unity.” He went on to compare the damage his previous comments did to his legacy to the way sexual assault allegations ended Bill Cosby’s career.
Discussing her runway career with Love magazine in 2018, Kendall Jenner said, “Since the beginning, we’ve been super selective about what shows I would do. I was never one of those girls who would do like 30 shows a season or whatever the fuck those girls do.”
After being called out by other models, she apologized on Twitter, writing, “I was misrepresented in a recent interview over the weekend, and it’s important to clarify the meaning. It was intended to be entirely complimentary but unfortunately, my words were twisted and taken out of context. I want to be clear. The respect that I have for my peers is immeasurable!”
Discussing red carpets in 2015, Natalie Portman told Harper’s Bazaar, “I get asked so many questions about the Middle East, and I’m like ‘Can you please just ask me about my dress? Let’s just talk about the dress!’…I like to look at what people are wearing, but I do see the sexism in it. Yeah, you could reject it all, but I don’t know anyone who has done that and been able to maintain the level of work I’d like to maintain.”
And finally, in 2013, Dr. Dre and his Beats Electronics co-founder Jimmy Iovine donated $70 million to USC to build a new academy with their names on it. Six years later, Dr. Dre posted about his daughter’s college acceptance on Instagram, writing, “My daughter got accepted into USC all on her own. No jail time!!!”
Following backlash, he deleted the post.
