Trending Now: This entertainment story covers the latest buzz, reactions, and updates surrounding Trending Now: Blake Lively, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex: Celebrities who have faced being ‘cancelled’ in 2025 – Fans React..
They are some of the biggest names in Hollywood but this year Kristen Bell, Meghan Markle and Blake Lively were among the A-list celebrities who found themselves on the brink of cancellation.
Media personality Clare Stephens, who has written a book and hosts a podcast on the topic, says no celebrity is immune from the threat of social media pile-on in the social media age, whether that be from a prolonged and orchestrated smear campaign or a tone‑deaf moment that quickly snowballs.
According to Stephens, actor Blake Lively is an example of a high-profile and once popular woman who constantly faces backlash no matter what she does.
“People will say they know that Taylor Swift and Blake Lively are no longer friends and that’s because Blake Lively really is a monster and Taylor Swift found out,” Stephens told host Sarrah Le Marquand on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About.
Listen to Clare Stephens on a new episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
“I think with Blake Lively, the best thing for her to do is to keep working because if she is then in a movie or a TV show that we all love, we’re going to forgive pretty quickly.
“Even Taylor Swift a few years ago was punching bag number one, she was being publicly mocked and shamed, and the way she came back from that was work and putting out new material.”
Another famous woman who has found herself at the centre of a pile-on this year was actress Kristen Bell who sent the internet into a frenzy over a post she shared on her wedding anniversary to Dax Shepard, which many said was in poor taste.
“When I first read it, I did have a visceral reaction, and thought it was a weird thing to joke about in front of millions of people,” Stephens said.
“But then that story spiralled and spiralled – and people dug up old interviews that Kristen and Dax had done and the rumours and the theories about their relationship just continued to escalate.
Listen to Clare Stephens on a new episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
“As I watched it play out, I thought the more absurd the pile-on becomes, the more I do understand why she hasn’t deleted it.
“And she’s not responding, because it becomes a question of: what am I responding to?”
Stephens also pointed out the double standard between the way Meghan Markle has been treated by the media and the way Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was treated before he was ousted from the royal family in November.
“The amount that has been written about Meghan Markle and how evil she is and she’s not nice to staff and she manipulated Harry,” she said.
“And meanwhile, you’ve got Prince Andrew who has actually been accused of a crime.
“The vitriol and the language and the dehumanisation that seems to be levelled towards Meghan Markle is disproportionate to that against Prince Andrew.”
Listen to Clare Stephens on a new episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Stephens, who has written about cancel culture in her debut book The Worst Thing I’ve Ever Done and interviewed prominent Australians who have been “cancelled” on her podcast The Pile-On, says public shaming has always been around but social media has taken it to a whole new level.
“This kind of mob mentality and public shaming has existed for as long as humans have, but what’s different now is the scale,” she said on Something To Talk About.
“When we used to publicly shame people or excommunicate them from our community, there was a limit on it because we didn’t have a global community.
“But now there is no limit. There’s a Bo Burnham song that talks about the backlash to the backlash and it’s so true, sometimes we see people respond to a pile-on by piling on the person who started it and then you’re all swearing at each other and calling each other names.”
Listen to a new episode of the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About featuring Clare Stephens out now wherever you get your podcasts. Find a new issue of Stellar inside the Sunday papers. For more from Stellar, click here.