Dear Gossips,

People are talking about TJ Miller today. Because the whole point of TJ Miller’s f-cksh-t is to get people talking about his f-cksh-t while he promotes The Emoji Movie which I wasn’t planning on seeing, f-cksh-t or not. A few weeks ago, TJ Miller was interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter and came off looking like an asshole. This week he’s featured in Vulture and the tone is pretty much the same – he’s here to be your “villain” and has decided that “it’s more important to be polarizing than neutralizing. That’s my position”.

The entire article is at once a sympathetic eyeroll and an envious gasp – not for TJ but for the writer, David Marchese, who had to endure the obvious, and therefore not very artful performance art (he plays an insufferable prick) – because no life is long enough to waste on spending time with TJ Miller but also because, well, we kinda all want an interview with someone who is this intentionally up his own ass, just for the anecdotes. Like, as annoying as Ezra Miller was when I interviewed him a few years ago at TIFF, I’ll never, ever regret it. Ezra wasn’t even 20 at the time and he seems to have grown out of that phase now but what’s TJ Miller’s excuse? He’s 36 years old.

TJ has been busy on Twitter defending himself since Vulture posted the interview. He claims that his comments about why women aren’t as funny as men have been misconstrued, that what he was trying to say was that women aren’t allowed to be as funny as men because of the patriarchy and that his point was that we all have to work together to give women that voice… I think? Then he complained that he’s becoming “click bait” and that he doesn’t like the fact that he gets maligned by journalists who don’t understand him:


What’s the subtext here? The subtext here is that he confuses interviewers who cannot rise to his higher level of intelligence. And so, being the small, stupid people that they are, they lash out and misrepresent him. Which, I guess, is why his publicist was present during the interview. To make sure that he wasn’t misrepresented? Or to actually protect the journalist? I’m not sure. But for someone who claims to not care about Hollywood, having a publicist babysit you is probably the most Hollywood thing a person can do. And if you mention that to him, he might say that he’s 10 steps ahead of you because he’s covered his ass on that front too. As he says, “Contradiction is something to pursue rather than avoid”. 

That’s what he thinks. But, really, what’s the contradiction? Of course he’s too cool for Hollywood. Of course he’s not too cool for Hollywood. They’re all both too cool and not cool enough for Hollywood. It’s the most generic, derivative Hollywood pose. There’s no contradiction in something that’s entirely unoriginal. There’s nothing radical in watching a white guy go out of his way to insult and offend and still manage to be fine. Now tell me if Anne Hathaway could do this and see the same results. Click here to read the full TJ Miller article at Vulture.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey