Lights, camera, and off-stage action: The celebrity feuds that took centre stage

We love nothing more than a celebrity feud, whether it’s real, rumoured or otherwise, and the internet is lighting up over the bad blood between podcasters Alex Cooper and Alix Earle, and potential beef between Euphoria co-stars Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney.

There’s something very satisfying in seeing privileged famous people mired in the muck of often petty grievances, jealousy or just a good, old-fashioned personality clash.

It’s schadenfreude. It’s gossip. And it’s an opportunity for people to take a side, thereby inserting ourselves into a story that everyone knows but actually has nothing to do with us.

Still, it makes you feel a part of something bigger, and by declaring your affiliation with either, for example TeamAniston or TeamJolie, you stake on a version of your values. It’s a form of the constant negotiation of what we do and don’t accept as community norms which naturally comes out of conflict.

Gossip has always been a part of how humans organise themselves but we no longer live in little medieval villages or hamlets, and many people don’t even know their neighbours.

So the global machinery of celebrity has replaced what previously were whispers about old mate Rob from next door walking out on his wife and three kids, or Crystal from up the road, who thinks it’s OK to say the N-word outside of a neo-Nazi rally.

At least if you’re casting judgment on The Rock, it’s unlikely he’s going to walk in to the office kitchen behind you.

Yes, we love a celebrity feud.

It’s also knowing that for all the stage-managed personal brands and reputation management, sometimes, things escape those controlled confines. A publicist can’t be a miracle worker. Even the most talented thespian will struggle to pretend to like someone they just don’t.

ALEX COOPER VS ALIX EARLE

Proof that just because you look alike, doesn’t mean you’re each other’s yums. The Alex Cooper and Alix Earle feud has become obsessive fodder for the internet in recent days.

The two new media influencers-podcasters-creators-wannabe moguls started off as if not besties then at least collaborators who saw the mutual value in their professional relationship.

Cooper, 31, who hosts the hugely popular Call Her Daddy podcast, signed TikTokker Earle, 25, to her media network, Unwell. Earle left Unwell over a year ago, and since then, has been posting suggestions that something went down between them.

For her part, Cooper called out Earle directly, and challenged her to outline what her problem is, pointing out that she’s not under any NDAs and can say whatever she likes.

Which Earle still has yet to do despite several instances in which she has teased that she will. Perhaps, someone who has leveraged social media attention for fame, Earle understands the moment she talks is the moment she has to stop milking the drama for likes.

For now, it’s been a back-and-forth of passive-aggressive jibes — Earle scored a video to Lesley Gore’s song You Don’t Own me — and the promise of spilling the tea.

ZENDAYA VS SYDNEY SWEENEY

They’re two of the biggest and busiest actors of the moment, but the Euphoria co-stars are said to have fallen out in the very long break between season two and three. This one is just starting to brew with unsourced tattling in tabloid newspapers.

Depending on what you believe — if any of it at all — the conflict arose from either Zendaya getting miffed at Sweeney allegedly flirting with her husband (?) Tom Holland whenever he visited set, or the fact that Sweeney is a Republican who registered in Florida AFTER Donald Trump won the nomination in 2020.

Political difference, after all, has been a catalyst for many friendships fracturing.

That would all just be rumours and gossip, except eagle-eyed observers noted the distinctly icing dynamic between Zendaya and Sweeney at the third season premiere of Euphoria in Los Angeles earlier this month.

Zendaya reportedly arrived a full hour late for the screening which wagging tongues said was to avoid having to run into Sweeney on the red carpet. There certainly were no photos of them together, especially as Zendaya also skipped the after party at Chateau Marmont.

CHARLIZE THERON VS TOM HARDY

Mad Max: Fury Road was notoriously a difficult shoot for all involved. It was physically taxing, it was hot and it was isolated.

Those conditions seemed to have contributed to the infamous on-set feud between Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, who spent months together in close quarters filming from the front cab of a vehicle.

Nerves were frayed and tempers flared between two actors who work very differently — apparently Hardy is more physical and loose, and often late, and Theron is more cerebral and reliable. One particularly bad day was when Theron waited three hours for Hardy to show up for a shot.

In a book by Kyle Buchanan, director George Miller explained it as, “The story is all about self-preservation. If it’s an advantage to you to kill another character, then you should do it, and you don’t think twice about it. I think that crept into the actors.”

Those who worked on the production said the animosity actually started in pre-production and they two wouldn’t even look at each other off-camera.

Co-star Nicholas Hoult described it as being on summer holidays and the adults in the car were arguing.

Theron agreed with his assessment, “It was horrible! We should not have done that, we should have been better. I can own up to that.”

SARAH JESSICA PARKER VS KIM CATTRALL

At the 2004 Emmy Awards, it was pretty obvious that all was not well with the awesome foursome when Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis were all palling around while Kim Cattrall sat on her own.

“Are we the best of friends? No. We’re professional actresses. We have our own separate lives,” Cattrall said at the time.

The tensions reportedly stemmed from money because Parker was bumped up to executive producer from the second season onwards and was being paid more than everyone else. When the series was wrapping up in 2004, Cattrall had intimated that financial discrepancy was one of the reasons the show was ending.

Things came to a head when Cattrall declined to be part of a third Sex and the City movie, and by 2017, she had openly said she was never really friends with her co-stars. She even said of Parker, “I think she could’ve been nicer, I really think she could’ve been nicer, I don’t know what her issue is”.

This was always one of the most talked about feuds because it was such a contrast to the friendship on the show. But hey, it’s make-believe, not real life.

Still, Cattrall may have had the last laugh. For the And Just Like That revival series, Parker had to wear a truly ludicrous bonnet while Cattrall filmed a very quick cameo scene without any of the other actors or the showrunner, Michael Patrick King, and collected a massive paycheque.

BETTE DAVIS VS JOAN CRAWFORD

The enmity between the two grand dames of Golden Age Hollywood was so infamous they even made a TV show about it, and called it Feud. It doesn’t get more definitive than that.

Even though their hostilities lasted 40 years and got very nasty, it’s important to remember that this was not an industry, especially under the old studio system, that encouraged women to be friends with each other. It was good business to keep actors feeling pitched against each other and a little bit paranoid.

Decades before they made What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, it was rivalry for a man, Franchot Tone, that sparked the feud. Davis fell for him, Crawford got him instead. What Davis did get, and which was denied to Crawford, was an Oscar.

Crawford then won her first Oscar for a role Davis turned down, and by the time What Ever Happened to Baby Jane came around in the early 1960s, the two were already considered past their prime, and vying for the very few roles available to women of their age.

The tensions on set were palpable, and there were contemporaneous reports that Davis kicked Crawford in the head and Crawford filled her own pockets with rocks during a scene in which Davis had to drag her body.

After the movie’s release, Davis was nominated for an Oscar but Crawford was not, and Davis later accused Crawford of campaigning against her when she lost to Anne Bancroft.

They remained enemies until Crawford’s death and Davis apparently said, “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”

DWAYNE JOHNSON VS VIN DIESEL

Two beefy men with beef. If you weren’t wearing your glasses and they weren’t to scale, you could mistake one for the other. Maybe that was always the problem, there’s only room for one bald action star.

The first reports of unpleasantries surfaced in 2016 largely focused on clashes on the set of the 2017 franchise entry, The Fate of the Furious. In a 2016 social media post, Johnson said that while his female co-stars on the film were always amazing, his male colleagues were “a different story, some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals, while others don’t”.

He went on to say they were “chicken s—t” and “candy asses” and that when people see the movie, they should know that he’s not acting in some scenes, that his blood was “legit boiling”.

Sources close to Diesel then started to background media that it was Johnson who was unprofessional and constantly holding up production by being late.

They tried to bury the hatchet, at least publicly, with Johnson claiming he’s very close to Diesel and Diesel saying that in his house, Johnson was “Uncle Dwayne”.

With that much money at stake, everyone has to play nice. Although it didn’t last for long. More words were exchanged — Diesel implied he had to coach Johnson’s performance, and Johnson said Diesel was manipulative.

But either they’ve finally arrived at a détente or the money was just too good, because Johnson is now back in the F&F fold.

ALYSSA MILANO VS SHANNEN DOHERTY

Sisters on screen but definitely not sisters in real life. The Charmed co-stars’ quarrel was legendary to the show’s fans because it ultimately blew up to a point that Doherty, the series’ star left after three seasons.

Milano has said that she felt like an outcast from the get-go because Doherty and Holly Marie Combs, who played the third sister, were already really good friends, and described the dynamic as being “like high school”.

Doherty had already had problems on the set of 90210, especially with Jennie Garth, and had developed a reputation for being a “bad girl”, something the media played up. Did that reputation maybe colour how people perceived her later on? Likely.

Doherty later said when Combs was in hospital, Milano and her mother had gatekept her from visiting, which led her to cry every night throughout the second season’s production.

When Doherty left the show, she made public comments that there was too much drama behind the scenes and she no longer wanted that in her life. She would later claim on her podcast in 2023 that Milano had her fired.

Combs backed this up, and said that she had at the time been in a meeting in which she was told that the production had to let either Doherty or Milano go and if it was Milano, she had threatened to sue them for a hostile work environment.

Milano disputed this a year later, and added, “I don’t know one other show where the cast still speaks ill of the experience a quarter of a century later.”

When Doherty died from cancer in 2024, Milano graciously wrote, “It’s no secret Shannen and I had a complicated relationship, but at its core was someone I deeply respected and was in awe of.”

TAYLOR SWIFT VS KANYE WEST

The conception of this feud is also one of the most iconic moments in pop culture history. There is no one who doesn’t remember West interrupting Swift on stage at the VMAs with his ramble, “Imma let you finish, but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time”. Yikes.

The next day, West expressed his regret on Jay Leno’s show, but what he didn’t seem to do, which Swift confirmed a week later, was to call her to apologise. Two months later, Swift exacted her revenge in her trademark way, she sang about it while hosting Saturday Night Live.

Many believe she wrote about him in her song Innocent, and it seemed like all was quiet on the West(ern) front, but by 2013, West said he didn’t regret storming the stage. Two years later, he wrote on his song, Famous, that he had made her famous by that incident.

Then enter: Kim Kardashian. The reality TV mogul told GQ that Swift had given her approval for West’s lyrics, which was disputed by Swift’s teams. Then Kardashian shared a video which appeared to show Swift and West on the phone, allegedly discussing those very lyrics.

There were more chapters still, but if you fast forward to now, you have to give the victory to Swift. She’s not banned from the UK.