30+ People Are Sharing the Worst Celebs Apologizing, & They’re So Bad

Disney has had its fair share of controversy. While it’s a company whose supposed purpose is to maintain the magic and make children happy, it’s also super greedy and money grabbing, like when it fined a school $250 for showing The Lion King at an event without a license.

Sure, people need to follow proper channels. Still, the school never should have been fined in the first place when all they were trying to do was raise money for charity — not profit off of the film.

Terry Crews is usually very outspoken, but he received some backlash when he belittled Gabrielle Union’s experiences on America’s Got Talent by saying he never experienced racism on the show, and then doubling down and saying the only woman he needs to please is his wife.

This seems like an apology made out of guilt trips from fans, not a genuine place. Belittling others’ experiences just because you haven’t experienced them is one of the worst things one can do.

John Schnatter, the brain behind pizza chain Papa John’s, resigned as their chairman in 2018 once an interview was exposed in which he used a derogatory slur and said other negative things about African Americans in his childhood.

It’s good that he’s making an effort to undo his internalized racism, but in his apology interview, he seemed more upset about who leaked what he said than by the effect his actual words had — which made his “apology” very inauthentic.

During the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement, many fans were upset that more celebrities didn’t use their “platforms” to speak up about what was going on. One such person being criticized was Tyler Joseph of the band Twenty-One Pilots.

He decided to respond with humor, and while his response is pretty funny, it probably wasn’t the best timing. He uses his platform to advocate for a lot of causes, though, so maybe the criticism was a bit unfair.

Everyone is probably sick and tired of hearing about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. But we don’t care, because they’ve got many reasons to be on this list. In this case, they’ve been included for their cringy apology video to Australia.

They snuck in their dogs, bypassing the country’s strict biosecurity laws, and seemingly apologized with this “Australia is important” drab video. Many people believe they didn’t genuinely feel remorse, and we have to say that we’re inclined to agree.

Rapper DaBaby was in hot water for making a few inappropriate comments towards the LGBTQ+ community at a concert. Shows started getting canceled and criticisms rolled in, so he tweeted what was supposedly an apology for his words.

Whether or not he intended to offend people is irrelevant, and the fact that he deleted the apology after people were still shunning him shows that it wasn’t actually genuine — but rather an attempt to get his shows and income stream back.

Lea Michele is known in the theater world as a true diva, and it definitely isn’t a compliment. She got called out by a Glee co-star for bullying and microaggressions on set and posted a lengthy apology.

The line stating “how my behavior towards my fellow cast members was perceived by them” makes it a major non-apology, though, as she was implying that they were overreacting or misconstruing things. It didn’t go down well with her co-stars nor with the public.

Sienna Mae Gomez is a TikTok star, or former star — depending on how you look at it. With over 13 million followers, fans were shocked when another TikTok influencer, Gomez’s ex-boyfriend, accused her of assault. She denied the allegations and disappeared for a month.

When she came back, she shared a weird video in which she doesn’t apologize, makes everything all about her, and then performs a completely irrelevant dance routine. Talk about being completely disconnected from reality.

Matt Damon is showing his age when it comes to getting with the socially-aware times. He apparently would casually use a certain slur in conversation up to a few months ago, when his daughter had to literally write him an essay on why it was wrong.

He shared it like it was a cute story that he learned from his mistakes, but he didn’t really. That word has been inappropriate for a very long time, if not always — and as someone who studied at Harvard, he really should have known better.

Will Smith has spent the majority of his career as the beloved goofball. Very few people had a bad thing to say about him. However, that all changed when he assaulted Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars.

He’s since released a six-minute apology video, and while he does try to own up and not make excuses, the video seems very practiced and robotic, and he doesn’t seem to actually show much remorse — other than for how his actions reflected his fans’ views of him.

Madonna has graced the world of pop for a long time, releasing hit after hit and staying relevant after all this time. But, she has slip-ups like any other human — and one of them was using a hashtag with the N word to refer to her son.

She said it was “all about intention” and that she used it as a term of endearment towards her son, but that just doesn’t cut it. She shouldn’t have used the word in the first place nor made excuses about it.

Bette Midler had always been considered an LGBTQ+ ally, until she tweeted about Caitlyn Jenner’s show being canceled, in which she misgendered Caitlyn and mused about her “going back to being Bruce.” It didn’t go over well.

In saying “I seem to have misread the temper of the times”, she implied that she doesn’t actually feel bad for what she said, but more so that she didn’t realize people would be offended by it. That’s not exactly an apology, Bette.

If there’s one thing celebrities seem to have a bad habit of doing, it’s making important days that have nothing to do with them all about themselves. Take Zac Efron, who tweeted about being “grateful for Martin Luther King Jr. and 10 million followers on IG.”

He’s right that the post was insensitive, but adding the line “to anyone who I offended” delegitimizes an apology. It takes the responsibility off of him and puts it on those who took the post the “wrong way.”

Country music is unfortunately plagued with problematic stars, and Blake Shelton is no different. He had a multitude of tweets going back as far as 2009 with awkward racist and homophobic undertones, so he tweeted this… apology? We aren’t sure what to call it.

Blake is basically saying here “I’m sorry I’m not sorry.” Humor that’s inappropriate and immature to the point of hurting other people isn’t humor anymore — it’s mean and it’s harmful. And once again we have the “to anyone who may have been offended” caveat.

Madison Beer is an American singer who rose to fame when Justin Bieber shared one of her YouTube covers. Her favorite book is the controversial story Lolita, and she caused a stir on Twitter when she admitted to “romanticizing” it.

The story is about an older man who’s obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, so needless to say, her comment didn’t go down very well. She eventually apologized, but before she did so, she tried to justify her comments — which kind of undermined her apology.

Logan Paul is into wrestling now, but before that, he was a very successful YouTuber — although one always embroiled in one controversy or another. He really crossed a line when he visited a certain forest in Japan and filmed some pretty inexplicable things.

How exactly is filming someone’s deceased body raising awareness? He absolutely did it for the reviews and only changed his story when he got called out on it. It’s shocking that he was able to make any sort of comeback after something so terrible.

Sarah Dessen is an author whose books tend to be put into the young adult (YA) category. When she saw a quote from a university student criticizing one of her books, she decided to tweet the quote and call the girl cruel.

What ensued were authors and fans alike calling the girl names and harassing her, driving her off of Twitter. It turned out the entire thing was taken grossly out of context, which caused Dessen to tweet this weak apology.

Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton shared a video on social media of him shouting at his nephew for wearing a princess dress that his nephew said he had asked for as a Christmas present. He posted an apology, claiming that he loves his nephew “feeling free to express himself.”

Apologies mean nothing if you then like tweets showing you don’t actually feel any remorse or that the situation warranted an apology, Lewis. Hopefully, his nephew still feels comfortable wearing whatever he wants!

Perhaps it should be a priority for up-and-coming celebrities to have someone go through their Twitter feeds and make sure any old, stupid tweets are deleted before they blow up. Professional tennis player Tennys Sandgren would have benefited from this service.

An old tweet surfaced of him saying a visit to a gay club “left his eyes bleeding”. He then tweeted a lame apology where he still refers to it as a “bad experience”. He didn’t exactly explain himself, did he?

Wiley, who was being called the “godfather of grime” music, had a very swift downfall when he went on a Twitter rant about Jewish people, comparing them to the KKK and implying they had more power and money than they deserved.

He got permanently banned from Twitter, and he somewhat apologized in an interview later — yet he never really took back what he said. Instead, he just said that it should have stayed “between him and his manager,” who was the inspiration for the rant.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a Netflix film starring Israel Broussard, and centering around an Asian-American character. It’s ironic, then, that Broussard tweeted “Dogs can sense earthquakes. Too bad Japan ate them all” after the 2011 massive earthquake.

He also liked several offensive tweets, and when people pointed it all out, he tweeted this lame “life lesson” apology. But actions speak louder than words, Israel, especially in this case.

Iggy Azalea is another artist who fell “victim” to previous ignorant, offensive tweets being dug up. She was set to appear at Pittsburgh’s Pride festival, but she stepped down after other artists started pulling out because they didn’t want to perform with her.

People found tweets where she used offensive homophobic terms and so, she tweeted this apology. It’s actually not bad, and what’s important is that she put action behind her words by backing out of the festival to let people focus on “the true purpose of the event.”

Ciara and Rihanna had a minor Twitter feud back in 2011. Ciara was a guest “fashion judge” on a show, where she made some comments about how she met Rihanna at a party and she wasn’t exactly nice. Rihanna immediately tweeted about it.

You can see that she apologized in the end, but it was a pretty pathetic apology. She made it all about her, saying Ciara had hurt her instead of just admitting she overreacted. At least Ciara accepted the apology.

Awkwafina is an up-and-coming comedy actress, but she’s already had her fair share of controversy. The criticism comes from the fact that she seems to only use a “blaccent” when she’s trying to be funny, which indicates it’s not really a way she naturally talks.

She released a statement, but she didn’t really apologize. Instead, she just tried to justify her use of the accent by talking about her own complex racial identity. She deservedly received a lot of criticism and has since left Twitter.

Mischa Barton was one of the queens of the early 2000s TV dramas, having starred in The O.C. After the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, she attempted to post about the situation, but the photo she shared on Instagram was of her on a yacht in a bikini.

The juxtaposition threw people off and made it “hard for them to take her seriously,” so she deleted the post and apologized on Twitter. She apologized for the post going “out of context,” but what is out of context is the weird photo she attached.

Professional golfer Tiger Woods has made headlines for a lot more than just his career. Although it has now been years since this scandal, we remember the tabloids as if it happened yesterday.

After initially denying the multiple allegations made against him, Woods released an apology video in which he owns up to his mistakes and admits that he convinced himself “that normal rules don’t apply…” Right, because with fame comes an unlimited supply of ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards.

Gina Rodriguez, the star of the TV show Jane the Virgin, seems to have a long-standing history of questionable feelings towards black people. So, when she got in trouble for singing the N word on a social media video, people weren’t particularly surprised.

She then “apologized” for singing along to the song, which wasn’t really much of an apology as she didn’t seem to care about using the word itself and what it meant. She lost a lot of fans that day.

Kevin Hart, like so many other celebrities, was called out for homophobic tweets and jokes from his past — which caused him to step down as the host of the Oscars in 2018. The Academy told him to apologize or step down, and he refused and stepped down, but then apologized anyway.

This is just one of many apologies he’s issued on the topic, which is probably why it isn’t a great one. He seemed more concerned with stepping down so he doesn’t take away from the evening, not because he regrets the things he tweeted.

Doja Cat is an American rapper and singer, and also a highly problematic person. Most of us have read recently about her rift with Noah Schnapp, but she also tweeted homophobic slurs about other artists in 2015.

How exactly is this an apology, Doja? It’s more like a weird rant trying to justify her use of the word. She got tons of backlash, apologized again, and has since deleted all of the tweets. It all seems very insincere, Doja.

Roseanne Barr is well known for her sitcom, Roseanne, but she got kicked off the reboot after tweeting horrible things about a White House advisor. She had a really strange excuse, though, when confronted about the tweets.

We’re pretty sure that racist tweets are not a side effect of sedatives, Roseanne — and any expert would say the same. She didn’t even actually apologize, she just blamed her behavior on the sleeping pills, but the public didn’t buy it.

Mark Wahlberg may be doing well now, but he has quite the dark and troubled past. When he was younger, he and some friends attacked an Asian man and hurled racial slurs at him. Wahlberg was arrested.

It’s good that he’s owning up to his mistakes — but 45 days in jail does not create a brand new, anti-racist person. It seems like he said he was learning to do better, but didn’t really do all that much…

Fresh Off the Boat is a groundbreaking American sitcom that takes a humorous approach to the lives of American immigrants. When the show got renewed, one of its stars, Constance Wu, tweeted a bunch of angry messages about the renewal.

Fans were understandably upset by it, feeling it was disrespectful to both the show and her co-stars, and that she was getting a big head. She posted a lengthy apology, but it sounds more like excuses and backtracking than genuine remorse to us.

Mario Batali is an American celebrity chef, and also apparently very tone deaf. After being accused of misconduct by four women, he tweeted an apology, but the apology wasn’t enough for him. He rounded it off with something very strange.

He shared a recipe. It’s really hard to take someone’s apology for very grave allegations seriously when they tag a cinnamon roll recipe onto the end of it. It just seems inappropriate and an immature way to try to get back in people’s good graces.

Kevin Spacey, the former star of Netflix’s House of Cards, had a very swift and brutal fall from grace when actor Anthony Rapp accused him of inappropriate advances when he was only 14 years old. Spacey responded with a very weird “apology.”

First, he undermines Rapp by saying “if I did behave then as he describes,” and then he goes on to come out! It’s a weak attempt to win brownie points by trying to overshadow what happened in his past.

James Charles made beauty history when he became the first male brand ambassador for CoverGirl. He quickly lost that opportunity, however, when he tweeted “I can’t believe we’re going to Africa today omg what if we get Ebola?…”.

He quickly deleted the tweet, but the internet had already seen it. Then, in his apology, he kept referring to Africa as a country. He later clarified he meant South Africa, but the damage was already done. Better luck next time, James.