In the 2010s, Jennifer Lawrence was everywhere. Her continuous stream of major movies helped make her Hollywood’s highest-paid female actor for two consecutive years in 2015 and 2016. Similarly, the press tours for those movies helped make her a beloved celebrity personality.
At the height of her fame, Jennifer was lauded for her candor and quick wit on press runs, which set her apart from her peers and provided us with countless hilarious interview moments, now living on in TikTok and YouTube compilations. But after years of back-to-back promo tours, magazine covers, and box office hits, the tide began to turn on J.Law.
It’s a tale as old as time: A successful woman becomes too successful, and suddenly the world doesn’t want to hear from her anymore. The backlash led Jennifer to take a break from acting, during which time she got married and became a mom. And since her big return, it’s fair to say that she’s adopted a more low-key approach to fame to protect herself and her family from more public scrutiny.
Now, promoting her new movie, Die My Love, J.Law spoke with The New Yorker about her past interviews, calling the younger version of herself in those clips “hyper” and “embarrassing.” “I look at those interviews, and that person is annoying,” she said. “I get why seeing that person everywhere would be annoying.”
Notably, Jennifer name-dropped a memorable impression that Ariana Grande did of her during a 2016 Saturday Night Live episode, describing the impersonation as “spot-on.” In the “Celebrity Family Feud” sketch, Ari mocked J.Law’s style of self-deprecating humor and tendency to discuss food in interviews, saying: “I’m just, like, a snackaholic. I mean, I love Pringles. If no one’s looking, I’ll eat, like, a whole can.”
Looking back on the “uninhabitable” public backlash she was at the receiving end of, Jennifer explained: “I felt — I didn’t feel, I was, I think — rejected not for my movies, not for my politics, but for me, for my personality.”
I don’t know about you, but that last quote actually made me super sad. As Jennifer’s new interview has gained attention, people are re-examining the hatred and how much she seems to have internalized the negativity. One X post about the interview with over 160,000 likes reads: “stop hating on your younger self bitch she was genuinely funny.” Someone else echoed the same point, writing: “I hate when a bad bitch apologizes for being fucking awesome.”
Others talked about how watching her old press interviews remains a “top tier past time,” while someone else suggested that “society doesn’t want women to have vibrant, funny, or loud personalities.”
Straight-up disagreeing with what Jen said about her younger self being “annoying,” someone else recalled that “the public ate her personality up until she got so popular that their need to ‘humble’ her kicked in.” Others compared how this also happened to Anne Hathaway, with the whole “Hathahate” era: “They love you one minute, hate you the next!!”
The trend of tearing down famous women in Hollywood is genuinely miserable, and I’m glad fans are able to remember J.Law’s younger self for the hilarious and outspoken star she was. Let’s just hope she remembers that, too! You can find her full New Yorker interview here.