In 2021, every celebrity begged you to love them or hate them

Whether they were deliberately stoking our anger or begging to be liked again, a parade of A-listers existed in extremes of public opinion this year, writes Adam White

A who’s who of 2021: (from left) Piers Morgan, Nicki Minaj, Hilaria and Alec Baldwin, Jesy Nelson, Chrissy Teigen and Jeremy Strong (Gareth Cattermole/Dimitrios Kambouris/Angela Weiss/Kate Green/Jamie McCarthy/Theo Wargo/Getty)

In 2021, celebrities came in two flavours: “desperate to prove their righteousness”, and “eager to be as villainous as possible”. The latter cohort took a page from the Donald Trump playbook, which recognised that nothing creates headlines like sparking outrage. The former struggled with the fact that the internet loves little more than to kick a famous person when they’re at their most performatively nice. Everyone seemed to be a Piers Morgan or a Chrissy Teigen, two figures disliked by the internet for different reasons, but only one of them actively enjoying the condemnation.

The year began with the kind of internet scandal that gestured towards a lighter, sillier 12 months ahead. Now in the dark days of late December, we’ve learnt to no longer feel so cocky. But Hilaria Baldwin’s defence of her inexplicably Spanish accent in January did speak to something else that would kick off this year: a very public desperation for stars to be well-liked again. The celebrity spouse – who cooks and strikes yoga poses on her Instagram – was accused over Christmas 2020 of faking her Spanish lilt. Social media produced an alarming amount of evidence that she barely spent time in Spain as a child, therefore probably shouldn’t sound like Antonio Banderas. Was it an elaborate hoax? Were all of those ¡Hola! Magazine interviews deceptive? Was she actually named – gasp! – “Hillary”?