Well, fam, here we are again. The ever-growing tide of sexual harassment allegations claims at least one new famous man every week, and this week it’s Ryan Seacrest. Seacrest is best known for hosting American Idol and helping to build the Kardashian empire, but it turns out he might be kind of a creep.
The allegations of abuse and harassment come from Suzie Hardy, a former E! News stylist who worked with Ryan Seacrest from 2007 to 2013. She says that she was subjected to “years of unwanted sexual aggresssion” from Seacrest, and the details are pretty terrible. She says that he slapped her butt hard enough to leave a mark, grabbed her crotch once, and aggressively flirted with her for years.
There are also other witnesses, with one co-worker saying they saw Seacrest push Hardy’s head into his crotch repeatedly while she was keeling to tie his shoes. That’s obviously awful, but we really need to take a moment to laugh at the fact that Ryan Seacrest does not tie his own shoes. This is a man in his forties worth over a quarter billion dollars, but velcro might be an option he wants to consider!
Suzie Hardy first reported the abuse to her human resources department back in 2013, and she was predictable let go just a few weeks later. Give me a moment while I scream into a pillow. Hardy came forward anonymously with her story last fall, and E! promised to conduct their own investigation into Ryan Seacrest’s conduct. We love investigations that aren’t independent or anything, they’re totally unbiased and impartial!
In an outcome that is truly, monumentally shocking, E! found that there was “insufficient evidence to support the claims against Seacrest.” AHHHHHHHHHHHH. I’m not saying I have personal knowledge about any of these allegations, but it’s painfully predictable that the pretty white man is found innocent while the woman is painted as some lying bitch who’s just mad about losing her job. I’ve seen this movie before, and I did not enjoy it.
An E! spokesperson defended the investigation, saying it was “extremely comprehensive and thorough. Over the course of a two month process, our outside counsel interviewed more than two dozen people regarding the allegations, including multiple separate meetings with the claimant. The investigator is an attorney with nearly 20 years experience and is highly regarded professionally. Any claims that question the legitimacy of this investigation are completely baseless.”
Ryan hasn’t personally said anything about Hardy’s accusations, but his attorney said they’re untrue, and that Suzie just wants to get $15 million out of Ryan. There’s no way to know for sure if the allegations are true, but if they are Ryan is so fucking canceled. He’s pretty busy right now, with his talk show with Kelly Ripa, the Oscars coming up this weekend, and the American Idol reboot (ugh) starting in March. We’d hate for anything to, you know, ruin Ryan’s big fancy career, but like time’s up sweetie.
Images: Giphy (2)
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The bar for a TV reboot has officially been lowered. The finale of American Idol was barely a year ago, but now three out of four major networks are fighting over who’ll get to bring it back. If you just audibly groaned, that’s the correct emotional response. Welcome to Trump’s America.
If you’re wondering how we got here, let’s break it down: earlier this year, word got out that FremantleMedia, the show’s production company, was shopping around a revival and was in talks with Fox and NBC. The info was vague, but it didn’t come from nowhere. Somewhere in LA, we could already sense Ryan Seacrest getting his tips re-frosted and Paula Abdul popping half a bottle of Xanax. That somehow fell through, but then yesterday news broke that ABC now wants to bring American Idol back next year. Apparently the show is “the hottest property out there,” which is either a blatant lie or a very scary truth.
We’re really unsure what we did to deserve this. Sure, we liked American Idol back in like 2004 when we were in middle school and we thought Ruben Studdard was a lovable teddy bear, but who the fuck thinks this is a good idea now, in 2017? The show was literally canceled a year ago because of bad ratings, so what makes all these TV execs think it’ll make them a shitload of money this time around? This is like when you answer a fuckboy’s 2am “U up?” text for the 16th time hoping that this time he’ll ask you for a relationship. At this point, Hollywood producers have less creativity than Simon Cowell’s supply of shirts.
None of us are excited for the potential return of American Idol, but here are a few 2000s reboots that we could get behind:
1. ‘The O.C.’
Pour one out for this classic, gone too soon. All they really need to do is find a way to bring Marissa back from the dead, and this could be lit AF. Honestly we’d watch Mischa Barton just live her life on a hidden camera, so someone should make this happen.
2. ‘The Hills’
Look, we know everything that happened on this show was fake as fuck. So what? It was entertaining as hell, and we’d love to see some of these girls (*cough* Lauren and Heidi) forced to be in the same room again. Now that they’re like, all moms there would be a super interesting new dynamic. LC forever.
3. ‘Sex and the City’
Yes, we know they did two movies and the second one sucked. We don’t care. This epic girl squad deserves a full season reboot, no questions asked. Doesn’t HBO just like, keep Sarah Jessica Parker locked in their offices or something?
4. ‘Paris Hilton’s My New BFF’
Moment of silence for the fact that this ever existed. Yes it’s trashier than the culmination of all my late-night decisions, but we would watch a reboot of this show in a heartbeat. Now the poor contestants would have to help Paris DJ at some club in Ibiza and compete to be the first to release a sex tape, and it would absolutely be an incredible shit show.
5. ‘Friends’
We will never not want a legit Friends reunion. We know it probably won’t ever happen, but nevertheless, we persist.
6. ‘Gossip Girl’
Need we say more? If you could get Blake Lively to leave her palace complex in upstate NY, this could truly be epic. Leighton Meester definitely doesn’t have anything better going on, and we would kill to see Blair Waldorf as a mom.
7. ‘Punk’d’
This could just come back on Youtube or some shit like that, but who doesn’t want a little bit of Ashton Kutcher running around fucking shit up in their day? Horrible people, that’s who. Still waiting for Ashton to pop out of the woodwork and tell us we’ve all been punk’d for the last six months tbh…
8. ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’
This show was everything. Stupid jokes, cool ~magic~, and Melissa Joan Hart getting herself into literally every embarrassing situation you could imagine. Netflix, start the paperwork, because this would be the perfect thing to bring back. We’ll take 10% on the back end as a small finder’s fee.
9. ‘Alias’
Now that Jennifer Garner is officially done with Ben Affleck’s bullshit, she could use a project to really devote her energy to. Aka time to bring back Alias! Jen was always an underrated badass, and she could definitely get back into it.
10. ‘The Amanda Show’
Amanda Bynes has had a rough few years, and we really have no clue where she is now or what she’s been up to. Seriously, where’s Amanda? Can someone please let us know or alert the proper authorities? Wherever she is, Amanda needs to find a way to become a normal person again, and going back to her roots would be the perfect thing. Bring in the dancing lobsters, rake in the cash.
