14 Celebrities Who Were Betrayed, Backstabbed or Otherwise Thrown Under the Bus
Janet Hubert has since forgiven Will Smith. She’s a better person than any of us.
Selena
A nurse-turned-fan club president, Yolanda Saldívar, worked her way to the top of the Selena industry, becoming her retail agent. She then stole $60,000 from her businesses. When Selena confronted her about it, she shot her in the back. Saldívar was recently denied parole after 30 years in prison.
David Letterman (and Conan O’Brien)
According to fans and executives alike, Letterman was the “obvious choice” to succeed Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, but Jay Leno had secretly whipped up a contract clause years earlier that guaranteed him the hosting spot if Carson stepped down. Fast-forward 18 years, and this time it was Conan who had an ironclad contractual claim to the chair. After just a few episodes, Leno complained and was reinstated as host.
Heather Locklear
Denise Richards encouraged her friend Locklear to divorce Richie Sambora — then dated him before the ink had even dried. She later explained that the couple were separated and the friends had had a falling out before any smooching began: “Yes, I got together with Heather’s soon-to-be ex-husband, but no, I didn’t have an affair with him.”
Shirley MacLaine (or Maybe Debra Winger)
MacLaine and Winger hated each other while filming Terms of Endearment together. In her 1995 memoir, MacLaine recounted a time when the two were arguing over where to stand in a scene — Winger said “How’s this for a mark?”, then, according to MacLaine, “She turned around, walked away from me, lifted her skirt slightly, looked over her shoulder, bent over, and farted in my face.” Which is the bigger betrayal: a fart to the face, or immortalizing the fart of a stressed young starlet?
Uma Thurman
Her financial advisor secretly siphoned $1 million off of her, and gave it to his ex-girlfriend.
Janet Hubert
Will Smith, famously an easy guy to work with, labeled Hubert as “difficult,” which likely got her kicked off of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Smith even reveled in it at the time, saying, “I know she is going to dog me in the press. … She has basically gone from a quarter of a million dollars a year to nothing.”
Lady Gaga
She was pals with celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, up until they got drunk and did an ill-advised interview together. He “started asking me really terrible questions. He was supposed to be my friend, and I felt betrayed, so I started crying. My friend had to come in and pull the camera out, they wouldn’t turn the cameras off.”
The Kardashians
We’ll always caution against having sympathy for a Kardashian, but Caitlyn Jenner really screwed them over when she made her transition a huge public spectacle instead of being candid with her family. Khloe Kardashian said they first learned the details from Jenner’s big Diane Sawyer interview, then “once things started going, (Caitlyn) would only want to talk to us on camera.” In the meantime, they were hounded by the press and paparazzi, who were often delivering information to them for the first time.
Taylor Swift
Similarly, Swift doesn’t need you to shed a tear for her, but Katy Perry pulled a jerk move when she hired a bunch of Swift’s backup dancers. According to Swift, “She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me.” Swift decisively got her ass by writing the hit song “Bad Blood” about the whole ordeal.
Paris Hilton
Her ex-boyfriend, Rick Solomon, sold their sex tape to a porn company without her consent: “I just felt so betrayed. This was not some random guy; this was someone I was with for a few years.”
Winona Ryder (or Perhaps Gwyneth Paltrow)
The two were best buds in the ‘90s, but after Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, Ryder claimed that the part was originally meant for her, and that Paltrow had seen the script at her house and auditioned behind her back. Paltrow swears that Ryder was “hellbent on taking me down” and made up the story out of “jealousy.”
Debbie Reynolds
After Elizabeth Taylor’s husband died, Reynolds denied rumors that Taylor was hooking up with her husband. Then she called Taylor’s hotel room, and her phone call was answered by none other than her own husband.
Marlon Brando
Frank Sinatra was pissed that Brando got the Guys and Dolls lead over him, but had to maintain a veneer of professionalism while the two filmed together. People were worried Sinatra was going to pull some mob shit, and it seems like he may have — Brando was abducted at gunpoint by three mysterious thugs who threatened to kill him.
Madonna
Madonna lost a boyfriend and a trainer in one fell swoop: “Once I had a Filipino trainer. She was gorgeous and very talented as a trainer, but she fucked my boyfriend. So I fired her.”
