Welcome to the wild world of cancel culture, where one misstep, offensive remark, or controversial action can lead to a swift and often brutal demise in the public eye. It’s probably a term you’ve heard before. But what does it mean to be canceled? Simply put, cancel culture refers to the act of boycotting or rejecting a celebrity, brand, or idea due to their perceived wrongdoing or offensive behavior. It’s a way for the public to hold individuals and companies accountable for their actions and to demand change. The whole thing that recently hit Balenciaga is a perfect example.
While the world has certainly witnessed its fair share of deserved cancellations, there’s a plethora of canceled celebrities who many believe have been unfairly axed from the public sphere. Cancel culture is a powerful tool for social justice, but it’s also regularly used as a weapon to attack and ostracize individuals without fully considering the context or nuance of their actions.
From controversial statements to misconstrued actions, many celebrities have faced the public’s wrath and have been left to pick up the pieces of their shattered careers. But were they really deserving of such harsh punishment? That’s what people have been discussing on Reddit when a user asked which celebrities can be considered cancel culture victims. Buckle up because we’re about to dive deep into the lives of famous people who faced intense public scrutiny and backlash, leading many to believe they could be considered unfairly canceled celebrities. Will they ever be able to make a comeback? Only time will tell.
Before we dive into the list, it’s important to note that many examples of cancel culture make it a polarizing topic. It’s up to each person to decide, based on their own values and experiences, whether or not someone deserves to be canceled, and this list is not meant to condone or justify any offensive behavior. Rather, it’s intended to shed light on the complex and occasionally unfair nature of cancel culture and spark a conversation about its role in our society.
This post may include affiliate links.
Sinéad O'Connor for ripping up the picture of the pope on "Saturday Night Live" to protest child abuse in the church.
Brendan Fraser. The dude spoke up about being sexually assaulted and was never heard from again until recently. He seems like such a good guy so I'm glad he's back in the spotlight.
All the women - and there is quite a list - who got blacklisted when Harvey Weinstein didn't get his way.
Dixie Chicks for opposing the Gulf War.
I'm still a fan of the Dixie Chicks. Plenty of actors, musicians, and other famous people voiced opposition to the Gulf War. Natalie's method and timing were what got them cancelled.
Monica Lewinsky.
Corey Feldman literally warned about child abuse in their business and was speaking from experience and was shut down and that cunt Barbara Walters said "you're damaging an entire industry."
Barbara Walters lost every remote shred of respect I had for her after that and I didn’t respect her much to start!!
Eartha Kitt, a cat woman in 3rd season of "Batman." Got blacklisted from Hollywood for calling out the president at the White House about the war.
Winona Ryder. She shoplifted a few things. She got shut out for quite a while after that. Glad she did well in Stranger Things. It was refreshing to see her again.
They had no choice but to cast her. She herself is strange and unusual.
Richard Gere. The man was really popular as an actor until he mentioned the poor treatment of Tibet by the Chinese government.
I thought that he became unpopular because of all the hamster rumours
Rebecca Black: Puts out bad song on YouTube = death threats.
She was 13 years old…. Who makes death threats to a teenager, anyway, let alone anyone at all?
Yoko Ono. Yeah, she’s weird, but she didn’t break up "The Beatles." Paul McCartney has said multiple times that "The Beatles" broke up because John Lennon was difficult to work with, not because of Yoko, but because of his inflated ego.
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Lennon was abusive toward her. So if you throw that into the mix, you've got an already abused woman being abused further by millions of Beatles fans and ostracized by the industry whilst quietly getting on with a whole load of charity work and donating thousands to the poor and the needy. What an absolute b!tch.
The Liam Neeson cancellation bothered me. The guy was brave enough to share a feeling he had decades ago as a young man and that he felt lucky not to have not had an opportunity to act on those feelings and somehow people interpreted it as Liam Neeson is racist. If anything, his story is an example of the kind of growth we need people to be sharing. Nobody is ever fully formed.
Kathy Griffin. She was right about Trump and everyone knew it.
I’m not sure that posting a drawing of her holding his severed head was the right thing to do, though, knowing that his wife and children could see it should they have read the news that day. His teenage son was understandably, distressed, and terrified when he found out about what Kathy Griffin had done. Whether she was right about him is one thing. Expressing that by making what amounted to a death threat and celebrating the unjustified distress she caused other human beings in the name of political activism is absolutely disgusting! I don’t care what side of the political aisle someone is on: that sort of conduct is undignified and unhinged!
Katherine Heigl. All she did was talk about how the conditions were when working on Grey's Anatomy and she got blacklisted. Ellen Pompeo said the same thing years later yet she was praised for it. So unfair how seniority f*cks everything up.
Fiona Apple - got blacklisted for giving a true (but somewhat edgy) stance on Hollywood culture.
Colin Kaepernick. When you google him it says, American activist. It's like he never even played football.
What planet are you on? When I google him, it says "Colin Rand Kaepernick is an American civil rights activist and football quarterback who is a free agent. He played six seasons for the San Francisco 49ers in the National Football League." He was a mediocre QB anyway. I'm not just pulling that out of my a**e, I was still watching the NFL while he was an active QB.
I liked Mira Sorvino as an actor and then gone because of Weinstein. Hope she gets more roles soon.
Iggy Azalea. She was one of the first women to come forward about T.I. and his wife's sexual misconduct. Also got labeled a cultural appropriator and a racist by them and black Twitter. If she's a bad person for trying to rap while white then so is Eminem.
George Michael. A public bathroom may not be the best place to get freaky, but at least it was consensual.
Mo'nique. Oprah and Tyler Perry teamed up to make sure she will not get a role because she refused to promote a movie where her salary was low.
I never understood Oprah's appeal. Hey America! Y'all made this random woman rich! WTF, dudes?
Sarah Silverman. She did a blackface bit that was targeting how messed up blackface is, and people called her out for being racist. It’s so weird because things like empathy and understanding are genuine aspects of being a critically thinking person, but it’s been weaponized into this weird need to feel outraged at anything without actually evaluating the thing.
Sacha Baron Cohen for being too political.
Apu from "The Simpsons." Like no one cares about the "Family Guy" or "South Park." Why now, he’s been around for decades, why not before?
"Why not before?" Society is an ever-changing beast. Many people of Indian descent felt unhappy a white guy voiced an Indian character, but they needed someone to make their point first before the rest of them spoke up. How many decades were spent with Bill Cosby's victims being ignored until Hannibal Buress used his time in the spotlight to call out Cosby's behaviour? Confidence is hard enough to muster as it is, but to find it after being abused, and having your abuse proverbially swept under the rug for nearly 40 years is soul-crushing.
Timothy Hutton. Now proven innocent. Lost millions and was booted from a hit show. He's suing them now and I hope enough to keep him happy for years.
Rachel Nichols. A female sports reporter on a great run on ESPN was spied on by a camera being left saying that ESPN's policies for minority representation should not supersede her contractual obligated work (hosting the NBA finals.) She did not say anything bad about Maria Taylor (the person ESPN wanted to switch her with), and any other minorities other than the policies themselves were a result of ESPN's poor diversity choices.
Aziz Ansari. From what was reported, it was all consensual and just sounded like a bad date. "Master of None" was peaking and then that happened and he kinda vanished.
Disagree. I don't think he should have been cancelled. He wasn't, but it did affect his career. But her description of what happened is far from consensual. The difference was between coerced consent and enthusiastic consent. He behaved really poorly and kept not taking no for an answer, and clearly missed some signals. It wasn't a crime, and she made mistakes too, but I found it really creepy and he needs to learn from that experience.
Nathan Fillion. "Firefly" deserved a second season.
That's more of a Firefly thing. You can't cancel Nathan Fillion. Dude is second only to Brendan Fraser.
Katherine Heigl. While trash - talking her writers isn’t great she did call out the outrageous hours the cast and crew work (18 hours + a day) which is crazy dangerous and everyone just called her ungrateful.
Paul Reubens. Although he has been somewhat uncancelled since.
From what I read he turned himself into the police and was charged earlier this year with possession of child pornography, so I don't know if we should be counting him as "uncancelled" just yet.
Aunt Jemima.
So this and Uncle Ben's are in the same group because that's how they used to call slaves in some situations. Didn't know that before and I'm not qualified to comment on how bad the names sound to people whose ancestors have been enslaved and called this
"Hailey Bieber. I'm not a fan of her, I actually love Selena, I just thought that it's time for people to move on and be kind to anyone."
"Jenna Marbles. Did she do some inappropriate and cringe things? Yes. Were most of those things literally a decade ago? Also yes. And she has given heartfelt apologies since then. I don't understand the purpose of canceling someone who has already changed."
Lindsay Ellis. That wasn't social justice, that was bullying and harassing someone to admit online that they were sexually assaulted as a young adult.
Let me bust out a tiny violin: she cheered on cancel culture until it came for her.
"James Gunn. I hope he's recovered from all that garbage."
Homie's just got a huge job at DC, is about to release GotG Vol3 with Marvel, is engaged (or married, I forget), and will be in demand for his services and talents for years to come. If he hasn't recovered from initially being fired by Disney, he hides it very well.
Paul Ruebens.
"Melanie Martinez. I know her reputation is better and she's kind of been uncancelled but the number of people who just threw her stuff away and decided she was guilty with no evidence and a story that changed I don't even know how many times."
Kate Smith. She was not racist and was a proud democrat. What the Flyers did to her was appalling.
Cavetown. He said some accidentally hurtful things… when he was a teenager.
Wasn’t Rose McGowan canceled for basically calling out the shady stuff that Harvey Weinstein and others were doing?
Nope. Rose McGowan got the heat when she went ballistic on everyone. She started with the trans community and then just started randomly jumping at other people at any chance she got. It was also hilarious to have her constantly bash her own show (Charmed) then she jumped back on how good her show was and constantly trashed the reboot of it.
Gilbert Godfrey. He made a joke too soon about a natural disaster but it was just that - a joke. He lost his Aflac gig and other jobs because of it which I felt was way too much. He was amazing and hilarious.
You don't make jokes about something like that while people are still searching for the bodies of their loved ones amid the wreckage of their homes and city.
"I was pretty bummed when 'Crashing' on HBO got canceled a few years ago."
"Garrison Keillor. As far as I could tell, he touched someone on the small of their back during a photo."
If "as far as you can tell" is "strictly exactly only what Garrison said about why he was fired and no other perspectives."
Taylor Swift in 2016.
"CallMeCarson. Literally was canceled for being in a relationship with a 17-year-old as a 19-year-old. I don't get how it is so big thing."
Fatty Chris Hardwick. Investigations were done, and no wrongdoing was found, looked like it was a case of a toxic ex. The guy's career isn’t the same as it was. He was on the rise, getting tons of opportunities, just gotten married, and then BOOM his ex came out with all kinds of allegations that were denied by pretty much everyone that knew them. Arbuckle. Really sad story.
Pete Rose. He was canceled before being canceled was a thing.
Hartley Sawyer. He was great in the "Flash." His old tweets are old, so f*ck it.
Where is Johnny Depp on this list fgs he was cancelled out of The Pirates franchise for baseless allegations by Amber Turd.
A good proportion of these have not been canceled. I don't think cancelled means what these posters think it means....
Where is Johnny Depp on this list fgs he was cancelled out of The Pirates franchise for baseless allegations by Amber Turd.
A good proportion of these have not been canceled. I don't think cancelled means what these posters think it means....
