Name: Top 10 Celebs Who Destroyed Their Careers on Talk Shows
Uploaded: 2026-02-20T17:17:03.000Z
Duration: 11 min 39 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

And today we're counting down our picks for the most shocking talk show moments that devastated the reputation of a guest or even the show's host.

Winning number 10, Bobcat Goldthwaite, the Arsenio hall show, and the Tonight show starring Jay Leno.

I mean, I don't want to be rude or anything, but

will you still be able to help my career?

Appearances on the Arsenio hall show and the Tonight show were all almost unthinkable for outsider comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite before 1994.

As one of the last guests before the end of Hall's show, Goldthwaite spray painted Paramount Sucks on the wall of Stage 29 at Paramount Studios.

Hall had to tackle him to stop the ensuing furniture rampage.

A week later, Goldthwaite sat across from Jay Leno and randomly set the guest chair on fire.

Well, it is sweeps and I love Jay very much.

And I thought, well, what if I. I don't know, what if I set his furniture on fire?

This earned him an arson conviction and a fine.

These stunts told the public that Goldthwaite might not be ready for the mainstream after all.

He never lost a strong cult following as a maverick stand up actor and filmmaker, but

Well, do you see yourself as a role model for our young people?

I think I'm an excellent role model for children.

Number nine, Andy Dick, Jimmy Kimmel Live.

By 2007, comedian Andy Dick's reputation as a troublemaker had lost its charm in the throes of substance use disorder.

He was clearly very intoxicated during his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

I have no idea what he's doing behind me.

The host humored Dick's antics until Ivanka Trump's interview, which the earlier guest kept disrupting by touching her hair and leg.

Kimmel eventually had to call security to forcibly escort Dick out of the studio.

Andy, you promised you would behave yourself.

As audiences finally witnessed his erratic behavior in action, Dick was all but blacklisted in Hollywood for years.

He has since worked towards sobriety, but has never been able to live down his past.

Nor has he ever apologized to Trump for his particularly ruinous harassment.

One of Hollywood's most wholesome stars was looking to break that image in 2003.

Unfortunately, Meg Ryan made the wrong impression when she appeared on Parkinson to promote the gritty thriller in the Cut.

But you don't like the spotlight that goes with it.

It's not something that comes easily or fits naturally.

She grew increasingly irritable as she brushed off Michael Parkinson's questions and told him to wrap it up on the sensitive subject of nudity.

In other words, if you were me, what would you do now?

Ryan would later explain that she wasn't used to the Dynamics of the BBC's commercial free chat show.

Alas, Parkinson cursed her with one of the most lethal labels for an actress.

The ultimately poor reception for in the Cut and other projects effectively ruined Ryan's serious turn.

But with the damage done by the Parkinson appearance, among other scandals, her reputation never quite bounced back.

Number seven, James Fry, the Oprah Winfrey Show.

An endorsement from Oprah's Book club propelled A Million Little Pieces into a bestseller by 2006.

It's a gut wrenching memoir that is raw and it's so real.

Our next book is A Million Little Pieces.

The thing is that James Fry had fabricated much of his so called memoir about his stint in a rehab center.

The whistleblowing website the Smoking Gun reported that key details of James memoir were made up following an expose.

The author went on the Oprah Winfrey show to explain that the very demons behind his substance use disorder compelled him to embellish his story.

He also claimed that he initially shopped the book as a semi autobiographical novel.

I've struggled with the idea of it and no, the lie of it.

Unfortunately, Winfrey's lack of sympathy escalated the media frenzy, costing Frey his manager and a book deal.

Thankfully, he was able to save his career by founding the publishing company Full Fathom five.

Winfrey also publicly apologized for her own deceptive handling of Frey's confession.

It didn't matter what happened on that show because in some ways I deserved it.

You know, I made a mistake and when it kind and at a certain point it came time to pay for it.

Now to the firestorm of controversy facing Paula Deen.

After a leaked deposition revealed her admitted use of racial slurs, a lawsuit alleging racist incidents took a bite out of celebrity chef Paula deen's popularity in 2013.

She might have recovered if it weren't for the Today show.

After bailing on an interview to address the scandal, Deen showed up visibly distraught.

The following week, she mostly just made herself the victim as she denied the allegations and acknowledged past racial remarks.

I'm so distressed that people I've never heard of are all of a sudden experts on who I am.

And you know what distresses me the very most, Matt?

The public questioned the legitimacy of her defense and whether she even fully understood the issue is what I is.

Deen's massive empire had collapsed by the time she returned to today in 2014 to apologize for her tone deaf meltdown.

Her brand has since thrived in niche markets, but it's nothing like it once was.

Americans have historically looked to Phil Donahue as a beacon of serious journalism on daytime tv.

I think we brought a show to daytime television that they always wanted and no one gave it to them.

So in the wake of 9 11, MSNBC commissioned a new talk show to give desperate audiences some perspective.

Then he became a vocal critic of a prospective US invasion of Iraq.

You're always looking, finding evidence to argue there's something wrong with this country.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Top 10 Celebs Who Destroyed Their Careers on Talk Shows

ultimately

figure

disorder

reputation