27 Celebrities Whose Co-Workers Dislike With The Passion Of A Thousand Suns

Let’s be real: The entertainment industry is full of rich, entitled celebrities who are constantly told their cookie don’t crumble, so a disturbing amount of them are likely people you wouldn’t want to know IRL. So when one earns a reputation among other celebs for being awful, well, they must be truly awful!

With that in mind, here are 27 celebs who were reportedly despised by an alarming number of the people who worked with them:

1. If you watched Dance Moms, you surely remember Abby Lee Miller screaming at young dancers, making children cry, and generally behaving like somebody running a military prison. Well, according to several former students, things were every bit as miserable as they looked. Let’s start with Maddie Ziegler, the show’s breakout star and the dancer Miller frequently singled out as her favorite. You might expect Maddie to have fond memories of the woman who helped launch her career. Instead, she revealed that her family spent the final three seasons of Dance Moms trying to get out of the show. Why? She described the environment as toxic.

Maddie said Miller taught her that failing to win a competition meant she was somehow less valuable as a person. She also said the dancers weren’t supposed to watch their competitors or become friends with them. And when Maddie finally left the show, Miller reportedly became so distraught that Maddie and her family felt guilty about their decision. Maddie eventually stopped speaking to her former teacher entirely.

Nia Sioux had an even more troubling experience. In her 2025 memoir Bottom of the Pyramid, she alleged that Miller made racist comments about her hair and body. According to Nia, Miller once questioned whether she wished she had “white-girl hair” and said that her braids looked awful and compared them to “a log coming out of the side of her head.” Nia also recalls Miller telling her mother she wanted slim, similarly sized blonde girls with blue eyes — not a Black girl she referred to as “a Tootie,” referencing the character from The Facts of Life — and even said “Well, you know your people have flat feet.”

Miller has pushed back against the criticism, asking why Maddie continued participating if it was so awful. Maddie, of course, had already explained that her family was trying to escape contractual obligations. And not everyone hated Miller. JoJo Siwa, for example, has defended her former teacher.

But when the student you favored most says she never wants to speak to you again, and other former students describe the experience as bullying, the judges aren’t going to give you a very good score.

2. James Corden has earned a reputation for being difficult (we all remember the drama about him being rude at a restaurant and the owner banning him, right?) but apparently it got bad enough during the run of Gavin & Stacey that one of his own co-stars basically staged an intervention. Rob Brydon started hearing enough stories about Corden’s behavior that he took him out to lunch. Brydon recalled telling him, “I’m just hearing these things about you, and you’ve got to know that the way you behave has an effect on people.” Even Corden’s sisters apparently got involved, telling him, “Don’t be a dickhead.” Corden doesn’t really dispute any of this, either. He’s admitted that fame went to his head, that he became “spoilt and brattish,” and that he was “a little bit rude to people.”

Then Mel B, who was a guest on The Late Late Show with James Corden more than once, said he was one of the biggest “dickheads” she’d encountered in show business. Her explanation: “You always have to be nice to the people that you work with,” specifically mentioning production staff, camera operators, sound, and lighting crews, but Corden “hasn’t been very nice.” Is there anything nice to say about Corden? Well, Meryl Streep, who worked with him on The Prom, said “it’s fun to work with him.” So he got a thumbs up at least, from the Great Lady herself.

Corden may not have listened to the advice, because TV director Craig Duncan, who worked with him on A League of Their Own in 2013, later called him “the most difficult and obnoxious presenter I’ve ever worked with.” Duncan says that, before he took the job, a producer asked him, “How are you working with difficult presenters?” Then, during filming, Duncan said an impatient Corden started telling him how to position the cameras and eventually snapped, “It’s so obvious how you shoot it. You’re stupid.” Duncan ended his account with, “I hope I never, ever work with you again.”

3. Barry Bonds is baseball’s all-time home run king, a seven-time MVP, and one of the most talented athletes ever to put on a uniform. Sure, there’s the whole, uh, steroid thing, but other than that he’s a good guy, right? RIGHT? Well, apparently, even being one of the greatest players in history doesn’t make your teammates want to spend time with you. In fact, while Bonds was playing college baseball at Arizona State University, his teammates reportedly voted to kick him off the team! Why?

According to Jeff Pearlman’s biography Love Me, Hate Me, Bonds developed a reputation at Arizona State for showing up late, skipping practices, and generally acting like the rules that applied to everyone else didn’t apply to him. Coach Jim Brock eventually became so frustrated that he allowed the players to vote on whether Bonds should remain on the roster. The result? Twenty-two players voted to kick Bonds off, while only two voted to keep him.

Former ASU first baseman Louie Medina also recalled the vote, although he remembered just one player voting to keep Bonds. Medina explained that it wasn’t necessarily that everyone disliked Bonds; rather, he had his own rules, particularly concerning whether and when he showed up for practice.

Brock ultimately kept his superstar, apparently deciding that the vote wasn’t unanimous enough to justify losing one of the most talented players in college baseball. But think about that — his teammates had a future seven-time MVP on the team, but still would rather have somebody else in the lineup.

Bonds didn’t exactly become Mr. Congeniality when he reached the major leagues. He annoyed his Giants teammates by establishing his own territory in the clubhouse: Four lockers (while most players had one), an oversized black leather recliner, his own television, plus personal trainers, publicists, a massage therapist, and other attendants. Pearlman described the arrangement as something approaching a private clubhouse within the clubhouse. Teammate Russ Davis joked, “I’m waiting for the water bed.”

During a game against Pittsburgh, Bonds allegedly failed to charge hard enough after a ball hit by Jason Kendall, so pitcher Danny Darwin confronted him about the play in the dugout. The argument escalated as the two men exchanged pushes and punches. Bonds suffered a cut above his left eye, while Darwin had a cut on his wrist.

And then there was the time following a 1990 Pirates’ playoff game against Cincinnati, when Bonds publicly criticized teammate Jeff King, who was dealing with a back injury. On the team flight home, R. J. Reynolds confronted Bonds over his criticism of King. Rather than simply arguing, Bonds shoved a slice of pizza in Reynolds’s face.

4. I was a big Chevy Chase fan growing up in the 1980s, thanks to comedy hits like Fletch and the Vacation movies, so I was surprised when, at film school in the 1990s, my comedy teacher — who had worked in the industry for decades — told me that Chevy Chase was the kind of guy who, if you saw him walking toward you on the sidewalk, you’d cross the street to avoid him. That glowing opinion (and yes, that’s Chase-ian sarcasm) seems to be backed up by a number of people who worked with him over the years. In 1985, when Chase returned to Saturday Night Live as a guest host, Terry Sweeney — the show’s first openly gay male cast member — described him as a “monster.” Sweeney claims Chase turned to him and said, “Oh, you’re the gay guy, right?” before suggesting a sketch in which Sweeney had AIDS and was weighed every week. (Chase denies this happened.)

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Then, in 1989, Chris Columbus — who would go on to direct Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, and the first two Harry Potter movies — was originally hired to direct National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. But after just two meetings with Chase, Columbus quit before filming began. He later said, “I realized I couldn’t work with the guy,” and recalled leaving their second meeting thinking, “He’s not engaged. He’s treating me like shit. I don’t need this.” Columbus has said he badly needed the job at the time, which makes his decision to walk away even more striking.

Years later, Chase seemed to piss off much of the cast of NBC’s Community. Donald Glover said Chase would try to disrupt his scenes and make racially charged cracks between takes, including, “People think you’re funnier because you’re Black.” After one particularly bad night of what the show’s creator Dan Harmon called Chase’s “non-P.C. verbiage,” Harmon said he apologized to Glover. Glover later offered a surprisingly empathetic explanation for Chase’s behavior, saying, “I just saw Chevy as fighting time — a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over. I can’t help him if he’s thrashing in the water. But I know there’s a human in there somewhere — he’s almost too human.” Chase responded that he was “saddened to hear that Donald perceived me in that light.”

Joel McHale has also talked openly about how bizarrely physical his relationship with Chase could get on Community. McHale said the two got into physical confrontations “multiple times,” with pushing and shoving escalating into what he jokingly called “advanced horseplay.” McHale said Chase would sometimes actually want to fight him. During one boxing scene, Chase kept needling McHale to hit him harder — at one point telling him not to hit “like a pussy” — until McHale finally connected with a hard punch and separated Chase’s shoulder. McHale later devoted part of his memoir to, as he put it, “how to fight Chevy Chase.”

Pete Davidson was even less diplomatic. After Chase publicly trashed the modern incarnation of Saturday Night Live in 2018 — calling Will Ferrell “just not funny,” and saying of Eddie Murphy’s Stevie Wonder impression, “It’s not that hard, for Christ’s sake. Your skin’s the same color. You just put on some sunglasses and do this” — Davidson called Chase “a f—ing douchebag,” “a genuinely bad, racist person,” and said, “I hate that dude.” He then went after Chase’s post-’80s career: “He had a really big career and then it stopped because everybody realized he’s a jerkoff.” Davidson was especially angry that Chase was attacking the show and Lorne Michaels, saying, “No matter how big you get, you can’t forget, like, what that guy did for you.”

5. Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler once called Axl Rose “the most ruthless and meanest person” he had ever met. Years later, Adler upgraded that assessment: “He’s not a diva, he’s an asshole. One of the greatest assholes of all time — and I say that with love.” His bandmates also hated his habit of taking the stage VERY late. Duff McKagan wrote that “almost every night” the band could hear crowds getting “antsy and then ugly” while they waited backstage. He later recalled audiences of 50,000 chanting “bullshit, bullshit, bullshit” while the rest of Guns N’ Roses sat around waiting for Axl, sometimes for two to four hours. Duff said there was “a lot of anger within the band” over it, but they were reluctant to confront him too aggressively because they feared “he would just fly home.”

Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, meanwhile, remembered that people backstage were instructed not to be in any hallway Axl might walk through. Once, though, he spotted Rose being escorted down an otherwise empty corridor wearing “Axl Rose” sneakers, tiny red shorts, a backwards baseball cap, and a floor-length fur coat. Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland was no fan either. When Rose attacked Slash and his new band Velvet Revolver, Weiland fired back: “Get in the ring. Go to the gym, motherfucker, or if you prefer, get a new wig, motherfucker.” He then called Rose a “fat, botox-faced, wig-wearin’ fuck” with an “unoriginal, uncreative little mind.”

Rose’s lateness was especially troubling in Montreal in 1992, when Metallica’s James Hetfield was badly burned by pyrotechnics and they had to end their set early. Duff wrote that Guns N’ Roses “could have saved the day” by going on immediately and playing a long set — “the professional thing to do, the right thing to do.” Instead, the night ended with Guns N’ Roses cutting their own set short and the audience rioting.

Finally, during a 1991 show, Rose spotted a fan taking pictures, ordered security to confiscate the camera, and when they didn’t move fast enough, yelled, “I’ll take it, goddamn it!” He then dove into the crowd, tackled the fan, and struck people before being pulled back onstage. Rose then blamed the “lame-ass security,” threw down his microphone, and walked off — helping trigger the infamous Riverport riot.

6. Naomi Campbell is one of the most successful supermodels in history, but many of her employees have had less than enjoyable experiences with her. In 1998, Campbell was accused of attacking her assistant, Georgina Galanis. Galanis alleged that Campbell struck her with a telephone during an argument. Campbell eventually pleaded guilty to assault and was discharged without a criminal record after expressing remorse.

Thankfully, that taught her to be a nicer employer and… Wait, I’m now seeing that in 2006, Campbell got into an argument with her housekeeper, Ana Scolavino, over a missing pair of jeans. During the confrontation, Campbell threw her cellphone, which struck Scolavino in the head. The housekeeper required medical treatment. Campbell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault. And yes, for the record, that is two separate convictions for assaults with a telephone.

Campbell has also faced other lawsuits from former employees alleging mistreatment, although she denied several of those accusations and not all resulted in findings against her. In later interviews, she acknowledged problems managing her anger and discussed efforts to change her behavior.

7. Long before producer Phil Spector was a convicted murderer*, multiple legendary musicians described working with him as genuinely frightening. Leonard Cohen remembered Spector as being obsessed with guns to the point that “the music was a subsidiary enterprise.” At one point, he said, Spector put an arm around him, pressed a .45 into his neck, and said, “Leonard, I love you.” Cohen replied, “I hope you do, Phil.” He later called the album they made together “grotesque.” Meanwhile, during sessions for John Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, Spector reportedly fired a pistol into the ceiling. Lennon’s response was: “Phil, if you’re going to kill me, kill me. But don’t fuck with me ears. I need them.”

*In 2003, actor Lana Clarkson was found dead in Spector’s mansion. Spector claimed she had shot herself, but prosecutors argued he put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger; after a mistrial, he was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years to life.

The Ramones’ Dee Dee Ramone wrote that Spector once pointed a gun at his heart, and Johnny Ramone says Spector made him play the same opening chord to “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” over and over for hours. Blondie considered making an album with him, but noped out of there after Spector answered the door with a gun in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. His home was also ice-cold, and he wouldn’t let anyone stand up. Chris Stein’s verdict: “He was too weird — a little creepy for Debbie, too.”

On top of all that, his wife and collaborator in the ’60s, singer Ronnie Spector, says he turned their home into a near-prison with guards and fences, hid her shoes to make it harder for her to leave, and told her mother he had a glass-topped coffin in the basement where he would display Ronnie’s body if she ever left him.

8. Sharon Osbourne became famous as the sharp-tongued wife and manager of Ozzy Osbourne, and then turned herself into a television personality on shows like The Osbournes and The Talk. What a nice story! Wait, hold on. I really shouldn’t get ahead of myself. It turns out that some people who actually worked alongside her apparently found it considerably less charming. In March 2021, Osbourne became involved in a heated confrontation with The Talk co-host Sheryl Underwood while defending her friend Piers Morgan, who had been criticized for his remarks about Meghan Markle.

When Underwood asked her to explain why she was defending someone whose comments many people considered to be, you know, racist, Osbourne reacted angrily, becoming increasingly emotional and demanding that Underwood explain what Morgan had said that was racist. At one point, Osbourne told Underwood not to cry because she believed she was the person who ought to be upset.

But then the situation got considerably worse. Former co-host Holly Robinson Peete alleged that Osbourne had complained she was too “ghetto” for the program before Peete was dismissed in 2011. And former panelist Leah Remini accused Osbourne of making offensive remarks about colleagues, including other hosts. Osbourne strongly denied the accusations, but the network nevertheless launched an investigation following the on-air confrontation, and in March 2021, CBS announced that Osbourne would leave the show. The network said its review concluded that her behavior during the broadcast did not meet its standards for a respectful workplace.

9. If you didn’t live through the ’90s you might not know who Steven Seagal is, but for a decade or so he was a legit action star who built his career playing intimidating tough guys who could beat the hell out of everyone around them. The problem? According to a surprising number of people who actually worked with him, he acted like that IRL too. John Leguizamo’s story is probably the wildest. While rehearsing 1996’s Executive Decision, Leguizamo said Seagal walked in and announced, “I’m in command. What I say is law.” Leguizamo thought he was joking and laughed, so Seagal slammed him into a brick wall with an aikido move, knocking the wind out of him. “All I could say was, ‘Why? Why?'” Leguizamo later joked that when it came time to film Seagal’s death scene, “I showed up so early. I wanted to see him die. It was like a fantasy.”

And no, time did not heal that wound. Years later, Leguizamo said he based his washed-up movie-star character in The Menu partly on Seagal because, in his words, “He’s kind of a horrible human.”

Michael Jai White has also spoken about Seagal’s reputation for getting too physical with stunt performers. White said that Seagal would hit stuntmen for real and hit them “really hard.” According to White, Seagal never tried that with him.

Stephen Lang, who worked with Seagal on Fire Down Below, had his own bizarre encounter. Lang recalled Seagal approaching him in a muumuu and pointed slippers and greeting him with, “So, you’re the thespian.” At one point, Lang told him, “I’d prefer it if you never came within six feet of me.” Why? “Because I never know if you’re gonna hug me or kick me in the balls.” Seagal supposedly assured him, “I would never kick you in the balls,” before adding, “Well, maybe.”

Brian Cox, who appeared with Seagal in The Glimmer Man, was even more brutal. In his memoir, Cox wrote, “Steven Seagal is as ludicrous in real life as he appears on screen.” He said Seagal carried himself “as though he’s on a higher plane to the rest of us,” before adding that while he was definitely on a different plane, “it’s probably not a higher one.” Stephen Tobolowsky also acted in The Glimmer Man, and when asked which words best described the experience — trauma, terror, or beauty — answered, “Let’s put in trauma and terror. Let’s scratch beauty, put in confusion.” He also recalled being summoned to Seagal’s house for a 10 a.m. audition, sitting in a living room full of elaborate saddles, and then waiting until around 12:30 for Seagal to finally come downstairs because he’d apparently been asleep.

And then there’s Seagal’s notorious 1991 stint hosting Saturday Night Live. The episode has become legendary inside the show for all the wrong reasons. Rolling Stone described him as the “consensus pick for ‘worst host ever'” among people working there at the time, with stories of him rejecting ideas, pushing material designed to make himself look tough, and generally making the week miserable.

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10. René Redzepi might not be as recognizable to casual television viewers as Gordon Ramsay, but in the world of fine dining, he’s one of the most influential chefs of the past several decades and the founder of Copenhagen’s Noma. But according to former employees, what happened behind the kitchen doors was nowhere near as nice as the dining room. In March 2026, The New York Times published an investigation based on interviews with more than 35 former Noma employees that documented allegations of physical violence, public humiliation, and intimidation spanning years.

One of the most messed-up incidents reportedly happened in 2014. According to two former chefs who witnessed it, Redzepi became furious after a sous-chef played techno music in Noma’s production kitchen, so he ordered 40 employees outside into the cold where he publicly berated the chef before punching him in the ribs. He then reportedly refused to let the employees return to work until the chef said he liked to give oral sex to DJs in front of everyone.

Another former employee said that when Redzepi noticed a tiny mark left by the tweezers used to arrange petals on a plate, he grabbed the chef who plated it by his apron, slammed him against a wall, and punched him twice in the stomach. One former employee told the Times that coming to work felt like going to war… which sounds about right.

Redzepi disputed some details in the accounts but acknowledged that his past behavior had hurt employees. He’d previously admitted in a 2015 essay that he had been a bully and a terrible boss at times.

Following the 2026 investigation, Redzepi stepped away from Noma. He apologized and acknowledged that the restaurant’s efforts to improve its workplace culture couldn’t undo the harm of the past.

11. Faye Dunaway was a big deal in the ’60s and ’70s, starring in Bonnie and Clyde and Network (for which she won an Academy Award), but if you listen to her co-stars, she was also a big you-know-what. After working together on the 1976 TV movie The Disappearance of Aimee, Bette Davis was asked in 1988 by The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson who the worst person she’d ever worked with was. Davis quickly answered, “Faye Dunaway.” When Carson asked why, she continued, “Well, she’s just totally impossible,” calling her “uncooperative” and “very unprofessional.” Davis even claimed, “Everybody you can put in this chair will tell you exactly the same thing.” Yikes!

Davis went after Dunaway again in her book This ‘N’ That, saying that in her entire career she’d only criticized two actresses (the other being Miriam Hopkins) and said Dunaway’s “name is most appropriate. Several times I wished I could have ‘Dun-away’ with her.”)

James Woods, who was also in The Disappearance of Aimee, apparently agreed. He recalled that Dunaway “threw something at me because I ad-libbed a line,” then added, “She was just so rude. If Bette Davis can be nice to people, Faye Dunaway ought to be buying them limousines as presents.”

Then there’s Mommie Dearest. Co-star Rutanya Alda, who played the assistant character to Dunaway’s Joan Crawford, said, “My first day on the set, she slapped me. Instead of doing a stage slap, she slapped me on the cheek, hard and for real.”

And Dunaway’s Chinatown reputation was already legendary years earlier. Roman Polanski said she was “a gigantic pain,” while Jack Nicholson nicknamed her “the Dreaded Dunaway” — or simply “Dread.” Polanski later described her obsession with her character’s makeup, saying she would redo it after nearly every take and that it “took forever.” He also recalled daily arguments over tiny script changes: she’d fight him over removing a couple of words, then come back half an hour later and decide he’d been right all along.

Lastly, singer Jill Sobule (“I Kissed a Girl”) was an extra on the Denver, Colorado set of The Disappearance of Aimee, and had quite the experience: “Faye Dunaway was hours late and we were all waiting for her, sweating through our costumes on the hottest day of the summer in an un-air-conditioned church. [When she] finally arrived, she was in the foulest mood and didn’t know her lines. She yelled at people and huffed off the set . . . It was like something out of Valley of the Dolls.”

12. In 1998, four musicians who worked extensively on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sued Lauryn Hill, saying she failed to give them the songwriting or production credit they deserved. Hill called the suit “without any merit,” but settled out of court. Then there’s pianist Robert Glasper, who said he and a band rehearsed 10 hours a day for a week for a 2008 show, only to be told the day before the gig that Hill didn’t like how they were playing and wanted to cut everyone’s pay in half. He also said, “She likes to fire bands. I can rattle off 15 guys off the top of my head. She will go on tour with a band, and in the city where they’re doing their show, she will hold auditions.”

In 2011, guitarist Jay Gore sued Hill for unpaid wages, claiming, “After shows, Hill would demand that the musicians and road support personnel attend meetings where she would engage in a person-by-person critique and berating. At one point, Hill made a statement in front of the tour personnel to the effect that ‘I can’t believe I am paying you fools, you should be paying me.'” She didn’t exactly endear herself to her Fugees bandmates either. After an attempted reunion went badly, Pras Michel said, “Before I work with Lauryn Hill again, you have a better chance of seeing Osama Bin Laden and [George W.] Bush getting a latte.”

13. Jared Leto has a reputation for taking an extremely immersive approach to roles and staying in character between takes, but it goes beyond the usual high-maintenance method acting B.S. of other actors, according to some of his co-stars. Viola Davis, for example, recalled that while filming Suicide Squad, Leto had a “henchman” enter the rehearsal room carrying a dead pig, drop it on the table, and walk out. “He did some bad things, Jared Leto did,” she said. “He gave some really horrific gifts.” Davis said the stunt made her wonder, “Is he crazy?” and later joked that if Leto had personally sent her one of his notorious gifts, she would have enlisted her former-football-player husband to “take care of the Joker.”

Co-star Adam Beach said Leto sent Margot Robbie a love letter and a black box containing a live rat. Robbie screamed when she opened it — and then, remarkably, kept the rat as a pet. Will Smith watched Robbie open the box and joked, “I was playing Deadshot, but if I had pearls on I would have clutched them.”

Smith also said that despite working with Leto for six months, “I’ve never actually met Jared Leto.” That’s because Leto remained the Joker whenever they interacted. “We’ve never said ‘Hello,'” Smith said. “I’ve only spoken to him as Deadshot and him as the Joker.” Major eye roll. (Can you tell I’m not a fan of method acting?)

For the record, Leto has pushed back on this rat story — sort of. In a 2021 GQ interview he said, “I never gave Margot Robbie a dead rat. That’s just not true,” adding that he’d actually brought her vegan cinnamon buns from a place in Toronto. Of course, Robbie never said the rat was dead. And Leto didn’t address the pig, the condoms, or the anal beads at all.

Leto himself claimed during the film’s publicity tour that he sent cast members anal beads and “used condoms,” explaining that he wanted to create “an element of surprise” because the Joker “doesn’t really respect things like personal space or boundaries.” He later clarified that the condoms were not actually used. Oh, well, in that case it’s totally fine, Jared!

The reputation followed him to Morbius. Because his character initially has a debilitating illness, Leto reportedly insisted on using crutches even between takes. Director Daniel Espinosa confirmed that Leto’s commitment became so impractical that bathroom trips could take around 45 minutes, and production eventually worked out a compromise: they would push him to the bathroom in a wheelchair so everyone wouldn’t have to wait as long. Co-star Adria Arjona said his hunched posture was so extreme that “I remember fearing for this guy’s spine. There should have been a physical therapist on call.” I guess no one said, “Bro, relax. You’re making Morbius.”

This wasn’t entirely new behavior. After making Requiem for a Dream, Leto publicly apologized to co-star Jennifer Connelly for his behavior during the shoot, although neither of them has publicly specified exactly what he did. He did say he’d lived on the streets in New York while preparing to play a heroin addict and stayed deep in the character throughout production, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

14. I know, I know. You love Bill Murray. I do too. But he sure as hell belongs on this list! Geena Davis’s problems with Murray started before they’d even begun filming 1990’s Quick Change. During an early meeting, she says Murray repeatedly pressured her to let him use a large massage device called “the Thumper” on her despite her repeatedly saying no. Davis later said she came to see it as Murray testing whether she would be “compliant.” She also said he later screamed at her on set in front of hundreds of people. And when Davis later watched him tear into somebody else, she told him, “Man, I can’t wait for you to do that to me again, because now I know how I’ll react.” According to Davis, Murray replied, “Oh, I don’t have to. You behaved after that.” Yikes.

In 1991, the very next year, Murray seriously pissed off his co-star Richard Dreyfuss on the set of What About Bob? Dreyfuss recalled that Murray came back from dinner drunk, got nose-to-nose with him, and screamed, “Everyone hates you! You are tolerated!” Then, according to Dreyfuss, Murray picked up a heavy glass ashtray and threw it at his face, missing him. Dreyfuss summed Murray up as “an Irish drunken bully.”

Murray has disputed both Davis and Dreyfuss’s accounts. In 2025, he called Davis’s claim that he’d screamed at her in front of hundreds of people “outrageous.” And of Dreyfuss’s ashtray allegation, Murray said, “That’s not even true.” He acknowledged throwing a glass during the incident, but said he threw it at the ceiling, not at Dreyfuss.

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Then there’s Lucy Liu. During a Charlie’s Angels rehearsal, Liu said Murray suddenly began “hurl[ing] insults” at her in front of everyone. At first, she literally looked behind herself because she couldn’t believe he was talking to her. When she realized he was, she confronted him. Liu later described his language as “inexcusable and unacceptable” and said, “I was not going to just sit there and take it.” Years later, crew members from the movie apparently approached her and thanked her for standing up to him.

And Anjelica Huston was wonderfully direct about her experience with him on The Life Aquatic. She said, “He was a shit to me.” Her example: during their first week filming in Italy, Murray invited the entire cast to dinner except Huston. She said watching everyone sheepishly head off to dinner knowing she had deliberately been excluded “was worse than anything.” Later, when Murray greeted her and said, “I missed you,” Huston replied, “You’re full of shit. You didn’t miss me.”

If you love Bill, maybe you can take solace in this: Huston said he was extremely kind to her after her husband died, and Davis acknowledged that Murray could be funny and affable. But there’s no denying that four completely different co-stars, on four completely different movies, felt humiliated, intimidated, or simply left wondering what the hell just happened.

15. James Brown sang “I feel good!” but his musicians rarely did. Drummer Clyde Stubblefield said Brown fined them constantly — and sometimes you didn’t even need to make a mistake, just do something a little different. Trombonist Fred Wesley said Brown tried to control “every aspect of your life,” from what happened onstage to how musicians looked. Brown could be spectacularly petty about his rules, too. Wesley remembered playing so hard at the Apollo that his lip split open and a tiny spot of blood landed on his uniform. Brown fined him $50. “I thought that was kinda unfair since he worked me so hard,” Wesley said. “Got a $50 fine, I wasn’t making but $200.” Wesley also said that Brown could make $350,000–$500,000 in a week while keeping his band payroll around $6,000, and he begrudged even paying that much. Oh, and sometimes he withheld pay too.

A teenage Bootsy Collins — whose band the Pacemakers was recruited after most of Brown’s previous band walked out — said Brown would deliberately tear the band down even after a great show: “Any time that you knew you’d played a great gig, and the people were loving it, he’d call you into his dressing room and say… ‘You just ain’t on it. You just ain’t on the one.'” Bootsy said Brown once told a sax player to throw his horn away because he was playing “trash,” and at one point told the whole band, “Y’all the greatest band in the world, but you just can’t play.” Bootsy eventually concluded Brown was deliberately messing with them to make them practice harder.

No mention of Brown in this context would be complete, though, without mentioning that in 1988 he reportedly stormed into an insurance seminar carrying a pistol and shotgun after becoming furious that someone had used his private bathroom. He then fled police in his pickup, leading them on a two-state chase and continuing to drive for miles even after officers shot out his tires.

16. In 2020, Lea Michele’s Glee co-star Samantha Ware responded to one of Michele’s Black Lives Matter posts by saying she made her first TV job a “living hell.” How, you ask? Ware said Michele told people that she would “shit in my wig,” and later described “the silent treatment, the stare-downs, the looks, the comments under her breath, the weird passive aggressiveness.” Ware added Michele even threatened her job in front of the cast. Heather Morris, who played Brittany, chimed in by saying, “Was she unpleasant to work with? Very much so.”

Naya Rivera, meanwhile, wrote in her memoir Sorry Not Sorry, that her friendship with Michele deteriorated as Santana became a bigger character. Eventually, she wrote, Michele “started to ignore me,” until “she didn’t say a word to me for all of Season 6.”

Then came Glee‘s supporting players. Dabier Snell said Michele once refused to let him sit at a cast lunch table because, according to him, “I didn’t belong there.” Jeanté Godlock said Michele referred to background actors as “cockroaches.” And Spring Awakening co-star Gerard Canonico, who had worked with Michele years before Glee, reacted to her apology by writing, “You were nothing but a nightmare to me and fellow understudy cast members. You made us feel like we didn’t belong there.” He added, “I tried for years to be nice to you to no avail.”

There are even smaller stories that somehow make the picture worse. Monica Moskatow said she was hired as a Rachel Berry lookalike for a Glee premiere event in 2009. According to Moskatow, Michele sought her out, looked at her, and said, “Oh my God! Could they have picked someone uglier!” Moskatow said Cory Monteith saw how hurt she was and immediately told her, “Don’t listen to her, she’s just jealous, you’re beautiful.”

Michele apologized in 2020, saying she did not remember making Ware’s specific “wig” comment but acknowledging that she had acted in ways that hurt people. She wrote that whether it came from “my privileged position and perspective,” immaturity, or simply being “unnecessarily difficult,” she was sorry. Ware was not impressed, saying the apology showed Michele “hasn’t learned anything.”

17. At 95 years of age, William Shatner comes across as fun and lovable (and impressively cogent for his age). But I’m sorry to tell you that, according to several of his co-stars on the legendary original Star Trek, he was not quite so fun or lovable. In 2022, George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu, the helmsman of the USS Enterprise, was asked whether the original Star Trek cast had gotten along. He said, “Yes. Yes. YES. Except for one, who was a prima donna.” In case there was any doubt who he meant, he later added that none of them really got along with Shatner, describing him as “self-involved” and someone who “enjoyed being the centre of attention” and “wanted everyone to kowtow to him.”

Takei said that if Nichelle Nichols had a line and the crew was setting up her close-up, Shatner would pull the director aside for a whispered conversation. Then, suddenly, the camera would be repositioned so that Shatner was in the shot reacting — and Nichols had lost her close-up. Takei said it happened often.

Along those lines, Walter Koenig, who played Chekov, recalled that during one setup, Shatner objected to where Koenig was standing, apparently because he didn’t want him so prominently in the shot. Koenig joked back, “I’m just doing what you would do, Bill.” According to Koenig, Shatner snapped, “That’s neurotic! That’s neurotic!” and did a dramatic double take.

James Doohan, who played Scotty, got into it too, saying, “I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don’t like Bill. He’s so insecure that all he can think about is himself.” Doohan also reportedly refused for years to participate in Shatner-related projects or interviews, which is a pretty committed way of saying, “I hate that guy.” Nichelle Nichols even apparently eventually confronted Shatner about how the rest of the cast saw him. In Shatner’s own later account, Nichols told him that she and several of their co-stars had “quite disliked” him during the original series and viewed him as “cold and arrogant.” Shatner wrote that he was “horrified to learn this, ashamed that I hadn’t realized it.”

In fairness to Shatner, he has a very different interpretation of all this. Decades later, he said his former castmates were “bitter and embittered,” accused Takei of having “never stopped blackening my name,” and complained, “Sixty years after some incident they are still on that track. Don’t you think that’s a little weird? It’s like a sickness.”

Interestingly, the public complaints I could find are overwhelmingly about his Star Trek years; I couldn’t find a comparable pileup from his later shows. So maybe he mellowed with age, or maybe the original Star Trek was one dysfunctional set.

18. If you want a female version of Shatner — where her co-stars from one show hated her but there was little drama on her other shows — there’s Alyssa Milano. Rose McGowan, who joined the show after Shannen Doherty left, went absolutely nuclear on Milano in 2020. In the middle of a Twitter fight that started over politics, McGowan suddenly pivoted to their Charmed years and accused Milano of throwing a fit in front of the crew and yelling, “They don’t pay me enough to do this shit!” McGowan added, “Appalling behavior on the daily. I cried every time we got renewed because you made that set toxic AF.” Then she finished with: “Now, get off my coattails you fucking fraud.” Now tell us what you really think, Rose. (This, btw, all came two years after McGowan said, “I don’t like her… ’cause I think she’s a lie.”)

And then there’s Shannen Doherty, whose departure after Season 3 became one of the great behind-the-scenes dramas of early-2000s TV. Years later, Doherty said there was a “competitiveness” with Milano and accused her of creating a “weird divide” between Doherty and Holly Marie Combs. Doherty said the situation got so emotionally miserable that “I think I cried every single night.”

Milano herself has acknowledged that things got extremely cold between her and Doherty. She once said, “There were times when I’d come in and say, ‘Good morning, Shannen,’ and she didn’t say anything to me. And there were times when she’d come in and say, ‘Good morning, Alyssa,’ and I wouldn’t say anything to her.” Things apparently got bad enough that a professional mediator was brought in.

I’ve saved the messiest claim for last, though, and it came from Holly Marie Combs. Combs said producer Jonathan Levin later told her that production had been backed into an “it’s one or the other” situation and that Milano had threatened to sue over a hostile workplace environment. Doherty was ultimately fired. Combs has since argued that Milano had the power to stop that outcome but didn’t, saying, “Alyssa also had the power to say no, I don’t want that. But she did not.”

Not true, according to Milano, who has said she “did not have the power to get anyone fired.” She said a professional mediator and an on-set producer investigated complaints and collected testimony from the cast and crew, after which the studio, network, and Aaron Spelling made the decision. So, like Shatner, she may not be universally hated, but man — what was she (and he?) doing on the set of that show?

19. Legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich was so disliked by his band that they secretly recorded his tirades, which became famous as “The Buddy Tapes.” On one, Rich screeched, “I’m accustomed to working with number one musicians. I’m NOT accustomed to working with half-assed kids who think they wrote the fuckin’ music business. You got a long fuckin’ way to go. You’re all a bunch of fuckin’ children! There’s not a man among you…not one man who can go out there and play the job like a man!” On another, after the band made a single mistake during a set, he bellowed, “How DARE you call yourselves professional! Assholes!! You got nowhere to fuckin’ go the next set ’cause if I hear one fuckin’ clam from anybody, you’ve had it. One clam and this whole fuckin’ band is through TONIGHT. Try me!”

Rich wasn’t just having a few bad nights. A review of his biography Traps, the Drum Wonder called Rich “foul-mouthed, foul-tempered, sometimes violent” and said he fought with his wife, Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, his manager, the IRS, and members of his own band, “whom he treated without mercy.” Another review said Rich played “sadistic practical jokes on his closest friends.” Let’s end on another quote from the tapes: “What kind of playing do you think this is? What kind of miscues do you call this? What fuckin’ band do you think you’re playing on, MOTHERFUCKERS! You wanna fuck with me on the bandstand?!”

On top of all that, he famously berated trombonist Dave Panichi for having a beard, giving him two weeks to decide if he wanted “a beard or a job.”

20. Val Kilmer was undeniably talented — and the 2021 documentary Val really humanized the guy, but wow, did he rack up some shitty reviews from the people who actually had to work with him. Batman Forever director Joel Schumacher said Kilmer wasn’t merely a temperamental actor — he was “a deeply troubled man in need of psychiatric help.” Schumacher said Kilmer could be incredibly charming, but on set he sometimes displayed what he called “tear-the-wings-off-a-fly behavior.”

According to Schumacher, the two eventually had such a nasty confrontation that Kilmer shoved him against the wall of his trailer after Schumacher challenged the way he was treating an assistant director. Schumacher said Kilmer then didn’t speak to him for two weeks, adding, “It was bliss.”

The director who REALLY had to put up with some B.S., though, was John Frankenheimer, who directed not one but two people on this list for the film The Island of Dr. Moreau. He said, “It was dreadful working with Val Kilmer. They don’t come any worse.” And Kilmer’s Tombstone co-star Stephen Lang apparently got so tired of Kilmer’s intensity that he finally told him, “Look, from now on, Val, I’m just going to discount the first, say, 90 seconds that we’re together because it takes that long for you to get through your bullshit.”

To Kilmer’s credit, he eventually acknowledged that the reputation had cost him work, and said that his intensity often came from caring deeply about the work. Still, when one director says you need psychiatric help and another says “they don’t come any worse,” then yeah, I think you’ve earned a spot on this list.

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21. There are a lot of reasons to think Sean “Diddy” Combs isn’t the best dude, but here’s one more — a lot of musicians who worked for him had brutal things to say about the experience. Rapper Mark Curry said, “There’s different ways you can kill a person… I’ve noticed him kill a lot of people’s spirits.” Another former Bad Boy artist said, “I don’t have anything nice to say when it comes to my time with Bad Boy. It was not a good experience and one I really don’t want to relive.”

At least he paid his musicians well. Wait, sorry, he didn’t do that either, apparently. Mase blasted Combs in 2020 saying he “purposely starved” his artists and alleged that Diddy paid him just $20,000 for his publishing rights when he was 19. Mase said he later offered $2 million to buy the rights back and was turned down. (Combs eventually returned publishing rights to Mase in 2023.) Then there’s former Danity Kane singer Aubrey O’Day who said working under Combs was “torture,” full of mind games, betrayal, manipulation, and women pitted against each other. She also claimed she was fired because she “wasn’t willing to do what was expected of me — not talent-wise, but in other areas.”

Then there’s what happened in 1999, when music executive Steve Stoute alleged that Combs and two other men beat him with a telephone, chair, and champagne bottle after Combs became angry over an edit of Nas’s “Hate Me Now” video. Stoute suffered a broken arm. Combs later pleaded guilty to harassment, paid Stoute an undisclosed settlement, and was ordered to attend a one-day anger-management program (which, I’m sure, fixed everything).

Working in the Bad Boy offices wasn’t much better. One source described Combs as “so volatile” that people did whatever he said just to stay in his good graces, and former Bad Boy president Kirk Burrowes said that Combs never forgot a grudge. Other employees said you had to learn how to “speak Puffy” if you wanted to survive there, and that “He’s someone you don’t want to make an enemy out of.”

22. Marlon Brando may be one of the greatest actors who ever lived, but judging from some of the people who actually had to work with him, he was no genius at being nice. Burt Reynolds said, “Marlon Brando was an unbelievable arsehole.” Reynolds said Brando disliked being compared to him physically and was rude when they finally met at a party, accusing Reynolds of capitalizing on looking like a younger Brando. Reynolds said he responded by promising him he wouldn’t get fat.

Frank Sinatra’s experience with Brando on Guys and Dolls was even more poisonous. Sinatra had wanted the role of Sky Masterson himself and reportedly resented watching a non-singer get the plum part (so take this with a grain of salt), but he mocked Brando’s Method acting, called him “Mumbles,” and at one point reportedly told director Joseph Mankiewicz, “When Mumbles is through rehearsing, I’ll come out.”

Christopher Reeve was just as blunt after working with Brando on Superman. Asked whether it had been exciting to work with one of his acting idols, Reeve said, “Not really, no. The man didn’t care.” He added that Brando “took the two million and ran” and complained that watching someone of Brando’s ability “phone it in” was painful because Reeve himself cared so much about the work. That is a pretty brutal review from the guy playing your son.

Sophia Loren’s story from A Countess From Hong Kong is darker. In her memoir, she recalled that Brando suddenly “put his hands on me.” She said she immediately warned him, “Don’t you ever dare to do that again. Never again!” According to Loren, he never did — but “it was very difficult working with him after that.” She later described Brando as someone whose personal problems could make life difficult for the entire crew.

And then there was Dennis Hopper on Apocalypse Now. Hopper later said, “We had a lot of problems together.” Their relationship got so bad that Brando reportedly refused to be on set when Hopper was there, forcing parts of their material to be filmed separately. Which is honestly impressive: most people who hate a co-worker just avoid them at lunch. Brando apparently made production redesign the workday around it.

To be fair, plenty of actors revered Brando and spoke about learning from him, and Loren herself still called him a “great, great actor.” But yeah… sounds like at times the method actor was a method asshole.

23. When guitarist Eric Erlandson met Courtney Love through an ad she’d placed looking for musicians, he was “pretty scared off right away” and found her “kind of overbearing.” He joined the band anyway, reasoning that Love’s intensity needed “some focus and discipline.” Hole drummer Patty Schemel, meanwhile, said making Celebrity Skin was one of the worst periods of her life. When producer Michael Beinhorn pushed to replace her on the album with a session drummer, Love’s explanation was brutally matter-of-fact: “Look Pats, he’s got a guy. It’s just business, okay?” Schemel said, “I lost my mind… it just broke me.” She left the band, and later wrote that the experience helped send her back into addiction.

Bassist Melissa Auf der Maur has a more affectionate view of Love — but even hers comes with a pretty extraordinary description. In 2026 she called Love “a maniac and a hero — and yes, you can be both.” And Erlandson, for all his loyalty, later described Hole’s internal dynamic like this: “Courtney’s erratic, everybody knows Courtney.”

Did I mention that at Lollapalooza in 1995, Love had a dust-up with Bikini Kill singer Kathleen Hanna. Hanna said Love struck her, and Love herself later bragged, “I punched out Kathleen Hanna.” Hanna responded by screaming, “I challenge you to a feminist debate in any university in America!” Love later pleaded guilty to assault and got a suspended one-year sentence plus anger-management classes.

24. David Crosby once said, “Almost everyone I’ve ever worked with hates me. I can be an asshole.” And…pretty much. His former Byrds bandmate Roger McGuinn called Crosby “insufferable,” particularly because of his political rants during concerts, and another Byrd, Chris Hillman, thought Crosby had a superiority complex. The two fired Crosby in 1967, saying he was “impossible to work with” and that they’d be better off without him. Crosby then co-founded Crosby, Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young). The group had tremendous success, but the personal relationships eventually became a disaster. By 2021, Stephen Stills was the only member he was still speaking to, and in 2016, his once close friend Graham Nash called him “fucking awful” and said, “I’ve saved his ass for 45 years, and he treated me like shit.”

Crosby also wrecked his relationship with Neil Young after Young separated from his wife of 36 years, Pegi, and began dating Splash star Daryl Hannah. Crosby publicly commented, “He’s hanging out with somebody that’s a purely poisonous predator now — and that’s karma.” Years later, Crosby admitted: “Neil has got a genuine beef… I said I thought she was a predator. OK, he can be mad at me.”

Even modern musicians were unlikely to be fans. He said his dog could beat Kanye West at chess, and after Phoebe Bridgers smashed a guitar on SNL in 2021, Crosby called it “pathetic” and “stupid.” Bridgers responded by calling him a “little bitch.” Crosby struggled for years with cocaine and heroin addiction and finally got clean while serving prison time in 1986 on drug and weapons charges. He had also endured major personal tragedy, including the death of his girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car accident when he was in his 20s. Is that an excuse for being a dick? Probably not! But it’s worth mentioning. Seems like he had a big mouth and knew the damage it did, which makes it a little sad.

My favorite “bad behavior moment” of Crosby? When he lied to the press that he was kicked out of the Byrds because they were prudes who didn’t like his song Triad (about a threesome), and not because of his obnoxious behavior.

25. David Byrne, according to the other Talking Heads, was a huge pain in the ass. Bassist Tina Weymouth said, “He will use you until he has no more use for you,” and blamed others when things went wrong. Byrne also, despite spending more than a decade making hugely successful records with them, referred to his former Talking Heads bandmates as merely “people I used to play with.” Drummer Chris Frantz accused Byrne of taking sole writing credit for “Warning Sign” even though Frantz helped write it. Byrne also took virtually all of the songwriting credit on the first pressing of Fear of Music, despite Frantz arguing that songs like “Life During Wartime” grew out of Weymouth’s bass line and the band’s collective work. After the others complained, some of the credits were revised — including “Life During Wartime,” which is now credited to all four Talking Heads.

Frantz added that when he and Weymouth’s side project, Tom Tom Club, went gold, Byrne simply stared out the window and said nothing, later dismissing their success as “merely commercial music.” Byrne later told a newspaper that Talking Heads had broken up before actually telling the other three Talking Heads.

Byrne himself basically admitted he was impossible when he described his attitude toward collaborators as: “Nobody understands what I want to do. I have to be the boss guy. ‘No, don’t do it that way. You’ve got to do it this way. No, you f—ing idiot.'” He conceded, “I might have been right but you don’t have to deal with people that way.”

26. The Smiths’ Morrissey is unlikely to be on any of his former bandmates’ Christmas lists. Drummer Mike Joyce sued him and Johnny Marr over not being paid fairly in the band and won: the court awarded him £1 million in back royalties and a 25% share going forward. More than 30 years later, Joyce said he still has no relationship with Morrissey: “I don’t feel it will ever happen between myself and Morrissey.” Bassist Andy Rourke kept playing with Morrissey after the group broke up, and even wrote “Yes, I’m Blind” and “The Girl Least Likely To.” But when he was asked years later if he was paid for his songwriting, he replied simply: “I don’t get paid for it.” Asked why he didn’t challenge Morrissey, he said, “He’s impossible to get ahold of.”

And then there’s guitarist Johnny Marr, who, while remastering the Smiths catalog, offered an olive branch by emailing Morrissey, “You can really hear the love in it.” Morrissey didn’t respond. Marr eventually said: “You can only try and be friendly with someone for so long without getting anything back. You just think: ‘Ah, fuck it.'” Morrissey wasn’t any better when the band was together. There’s a famous story that he fired Rourke (who was struggling with heroin addiction) with a note left on his car reading, “Andy — you have left The Smiths. Goodbye and good luck, Morrissey.” Morrissey denies that story, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Morrissey also didn’t impress the judge when Mike Joyce successfully sued for a fairer share of the Smiths’ royalties. The judge described Morrissey as “devious, truculent and unreliable where his own interests were at stake.”

27. Former Met general manager Schuyler Chapin said that opera singer Kathleen Battle “is the only artist I know of in my 43 years of dealing with artists who has managed to alienate practically everyone in every single place where she’s ever been.” And there were receipts. At the Boston Symphony, Battle bombarded management with petty complaints about her hotel food and threw the assistant conductor out of rehearsals. At the San Francisco Opera, she apparently antagonized the chorus and orchestra so badly that, after she left, backstage employees had T-shirts made reading “I SURVIVED THE BATTLE.”

Things got even stranger at the Met. In 1988, Battle reportedly drove mezzo-soprano Tatiana Troyanos to tears by repeatedly demanding staging changes that put Troyanos at a disadvantage. She was also said to forbid people at rehearsals from looking at her. In 1994, when Battle was accused of mistreating colleagues during rehearsals for The Daughter of the Regiment, general manager Joseph Volpe fired her and canceled her future engagements. Reportedly, when the cast was told, they applauded. Battle disputed the characterization, saying she had never been told about any “unprofessional actions,” but the reaction from colleagues was hard to miss.

Here’s one more “yikes” story — Battle once pulled out of a Vienna Philharmonic concert just three hours before curtain, forcing the orchestra to cancel the entire performance — reportedly the only time in its history that had happened.

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