From Joe Jonas To Jonah Hill, Famous J-Name Men Did Not Have A Good 2023

Stephanie Soteriou
·18 min read
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At the start of each year, it’s almost impossible to predict which celebrities will end up dominating the headlines over the next 12 months.

But in 2023, it soon became clear that there was actually a bit of a trend to the famous men who would ultimately end up having a worse year than others — and it’s all to do with their first initial.

You see, either of their own making or just as an unfortunate side effect of being in the public eye, this year a disproportionate amount of J-name men have found themselves in the news cycle for the worst of reasons. Don’t believe us? Here are 11 examples.

1. Jake Gyllenhaal

2023 was a year that started like any other; the ball dropped, the air was cold, and Jake Gyllenhaal was facing the wrath of Taylor Swift fans. It’s fair to say that this has been par for the course since around 2012, when Taylor first released her emotional heartbreak song “All Too Well,” which is about their short-lived romance. However, things came to a head at the start of this year. In case you missed it, “All Too Well” had a bit of a resurgence in 2021, when Taylor shared an extended version of the track alongside her Red rerecording, which added extra insight into her and Jake’s relationship that painted him in a pretty terrible light. At the time, Jake’s social media pages were inundated with comments from Swifties calling him out for the way that he had apparently treated her an entire decade earlier, as well as drawing attention to their nine-year age gap.And two years later, Jake was still getting backlash from fans. When Taylor’s Eras tour kicked off back in March, fans made a trend out of mocking the Hollywood actor during Taylor’s live performance of the song. Several concertgoers revealed that Swifties around them chanted “fuck Jake Gyllenhaal” during the show, and videos appeared online of fans holding up photos of him while Taylor sang. Others went so far as to get T-shirts with Jake’s face printed on it and red X’s over him.And while being attacked by Taylor’s fans is nothing new for Jake, his treatment during the early days of her Eras tour can certainly be considered the soft-launch of the 2023 J-Name curse. 

2. Jim Toth

While Jake was being vilified throughout the month of March, Jim Toth and Reese Witherspoon announced their divorce after 11 years of marriage.At first, everything appeared to be plain sailing, and in a cordial joint Instagram statement the former couple said that they’d “enjoyed so many wonderful years together.” They went on to insist that they will be “moving forward with deep love, kindness and mutual respect for everything we have created together.”But by April, Jim was facing widespread mockery online after pop culture fans became aware that he had left his top position at talent and sports agency CAA to join the short-lived streaming service Quibi in 2020. If you didn’t know, Quibi is kind of the Fyre Festival of streaming services and ended up being a monumental failure despite securing $1.75 billion and a roster of A-list talent for its launch. It closed down after just six months.Radar Online reported that Jim jumping ship for Quibi was when things started to go “horribly wrong” between him and Reese, and the fact that the very next year Reese reached new levels of success and was crowned the richest woman in Hollywood was soon speculated to be a factor in the breakup. After all, it was reported that these “different directions” ultimately led to the divorce, and when Jim wasn’t being accused of struggling with the fact that Reese’s success had overshadowed his own, he was being ridiculed and pitied for his “terrible investment.”Splitting from your Hollywood star wife and having your bad business decisions aired for the world to laugh at? That’s got to hurt. 

3. Joe Alwyn

Back to Taylor, just one month into the Eras tour it was announced that she had split from British actor Joe Alwyn after more than six years together — and the mess that followed has been a lot, to say the least. The breakup caught pretty much everybody off-guard, and while neither star has ever publicly addressed it, just weeks after the news was made public Taylor released a brand new song called “You’re Losing Me,” which appeared to shed some light on the situation.The song is told from the point of view of somebody who is “dying” in their relationship and desperate for their partner to fight for them, only to be left feeling like their pain is an “imposition.”Throughout their relationship, Taylor and Joe were incredibly private and rarely discussed one another or attended high profile events together. Previously, Taylor said that this approach was a joint decision, but after the split the story began to change and Joe has been heavily vilified as a result. We are now eight months on from the breakup, and the uber private actor’s name has been back in the headlines following a series of surprising events. Firstly, Taylor’s friend and collaborator Jack Antonoff dropped the bombshell that “You’re Losing Me” had actually been written and recorded almost 18 months before Taylor and Joe broke up. Days later,  Taylor's publicist, Tree Paine, made the uncharacteristic decision to shut down online gossip that Taylor and Joe had been  secretly married, saying that the speculation was causing “pain and trauma.”Taylor herself was also accused of shading Joe in her Time Person of the Year interview as she praised her new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, for “showing up” and being “proud” of her while subtly debunking some of her love songs that were thought to have been inspired by Joe. Amid all of the drama and online backlash from Taylor's fans, Joe has kept his usual low profile. But it remains to be seen whether further details of the split will be revealed whenever TS11 rolls around.

4. Jonah Hill

Fast-forward to July, and Jonah Hill’s ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady publicly accused the actor of being “emotionally abusive” as she shared a series of screenshots of their alleged text conversations to her Instagram Story.The screenshots were sent by somebody saved in Sarah’s phone as “Jonah,

5. Jackie Chan

While Jackie Chan didn’t do anything new in 2023, a whole bunch of stuff from his past resurfaced on social media to both shock and scrutiny. It all started in July when somebody tweeted a scene from Jackie’s movie Ride On and mistakenly thought that it was a tender real-life moment between the actor and his daughter. It was quickly pointed out that the woman in the clip is actor Liu Haocun —  and that Jackie is estranged from his actual daughter. It was originally claimed that Jackie disowned Etta Ng Chok Lam in 2017 for being a lesbian, and that she and her wife have been experiencing homelessness ever since.And while it is true that Etta and her wife have opened up about experiencing homelessness in recent years, Jackie actually disowned her before she was even born and it is not thought that the two have ever met. This is because Jackie cheated on his wife, Joan Lin, with Etta’s mom. He reportedly cut off contact with her mom as soon as he learned of her pregnancy, and didn’t offer any financial assistance in bringing up their child. This story alone left many people horrified, but they weren’t prepared for what they would find when they looked further into Jackie’s personal life. In fact, Jackie himself admitted to being “a nasty jerk” in his memoir Never Grow Up, which was first published in Chinese in 2015 and translated to English three years later. In his book, Jackie confessed to visiting sex workers and being crass with money after shooting to fame, which included driving drunk and crashing his expensive cars. When the paparazzi tried to take photos of his car crashes, Jackie said that he would threaten to punch them. However, the most shocking revelation in the memoir is Jackie’s recollection of angrily throwing his son, Jaycee, across the room when he was just two years old. He wrote: “I picked him up with one hand and flung him across the room, and he crashed into the sofa. With the amount of force I used, if he’d hit the back or armrests, it could have been quite serious.”After the incident, Jackie said that Jaycee was alert whenever his dad wasn’t in a good mood, with Jackie admitting: “He still gets frightened whenever he hears me give him an order.”A clip of Michelle Yeoh calling Jackie a “chauvinistic pig” during a 1997 interview with David Letterman also resurfaced, with many saying that they will never be able to look at Jackie in the same light again.

6. Joe Manganiello

Also in July, it was revealed that Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello were getting a divorce after seven years of marriage, and speculation quickly began to grow that there was more to the situation than meets the eye. It was revealed that Joe had initiated divorce proceedings while Sofia was still celebrating her birthday in Italy, and a source went on to tell Page Six that Joe had been a “largely unsupportive partner.”They suggested that Joe had felt threatened by Sofia’s career growing while he failed to reach the peaks of what his own career had been when they first met. “Sofía was always there to take care of Joe, while his career was never what it was when they met. I think he’s been threatened by her success and joie de vivre,” the insider explained.This comment sparked fierce criticism of Joe, and just last month Sofia admitted that it has been a “difficult” year for her. Joe hasn't publicly commented on any of the reports.

7. Jesse Rutherford

Jesse Rutherford has been under scrutiny ever since his relationship with Billie Eilish was first made public last October, but things reached new levels in August. The 11-year age gap between the two stars coupled with Billie being a huge fan of Jesse’s for years before they met sparked discourse about a problematic power dynamic between them.They met for the first time when Billie was just 16 years old, but she was 20 and he was 31 when they started dating. Amid the backlash, the two stars leaned into the criticism around their age gap by dressing up as a baby and an old man for Halloween last year, and when their split was confirmed in May, Billie’s rep insisted that things were “amicable.”But three months later, Jesse horrified people when he appeared to make “disrespectful” and “disturbing” references to Billie in his new song “POV.”In the track, Jesse sings: “She's been listening to me since 2013 / I know she's got daddy issues, welcome to the family.”  While Billie has an incredibly close relationship with both of her parents, some believe that Jesse's reference to

8. Joe Jonas

And just as the Jesse Rutherford drama was calming down, Joe Jonas stepped up as it was revealed that he and his wife Sophie Turner had split. This breakup caught everyone — and we mean literally everyone  — off-guard  as Sophie later claimed in legal papers that she didn’t know that Joe was filing for a divorce until it was in the news. But this was just the tip of the iceberg, with Joe being accused of orchestrating a misogynistic smear campaign when source quotes attributed to his camp constantly dunked on Sophie in the press. Various insiders suggested that Sophie was an unfit mom who partied too hard in spite of the heaps of evidence that prove neither of these claims are true. While Sophie and her team maintained a dignified silence in the press, legal filings claimed that Joe had abducted their children as Sophie requested the “immediate return” of their daughters to England. Joe denied these claims, but public opinion of him continued to sour and it was eventually announced that he and Sophie will be handling the rest of their divorce in private.

9. Jimmy Fallon

Also in September, Rolling Stone ran an exposé on the “toxic” work environment behind the scenes at The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. According to the report, this stemmed primarily from Jimmy Fallon’s “erratic” behavior, with one of the 16 past and current employees at the NBC talk show who spoke to the publication saying: “It was like, if Jimmy is in a bad mood, everyone’s day is fucked.”They added that Jimmy “might fly off,” with it being alleged that employees would fear Jimmy’s belittling behavior and “outbursts” if he was in a bad mood.“Everybody walked on eggshells, especially showrunners,” another former employee claimed. “You never knew which Jimmy we were going to get and when he was going to throw a hissy fit.”As a direct result of this hostile environment, it was said that dressing rooms at the studio would be used as “crying rooms” where staffers could go to decompress in private. A follow-up article published by Rolling Stone just hours later reported that Jimmy and his showrunner, Chris Miller, had addressed the situation in a team Zoom call. Two staffers that were in the meeting said that Jimmy apologized to everybody in the call and insisted that he didn’t intend to “create that type of atmosphere for the show.”“It’s embarrassing and I feel so bad,” he purportedly added. “Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends… I feel so bad I can’t even tell you.”Jimmy later alluded to the exposé on his show in October, but didn't directly address any of the accusations in the piece.

10. Jason Momoa

More than a year after Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial came to an end, troubling revelations about Amber’s Aquaman 2 costar Jason Momoa came to light in October. Previously sealed court documents were released in September and obtained by Variety the following month. One of these documents consisted of notes from Amber’s psychologist Dr. Dawn Hughes, who Amber’s legal team had brought in to testify during the 2022 trial. The notes detail a hostile Aquaman 2 set, and include Amber’s allegation that Jason would trigger her by showing up drunk and dressed like Johnny while pushing for her to be axed from the production. “Jason said he wanted me fired,” the notes read. “Jason drunk — late on set. Dressing like Johnny. Has all the rings too.”While Jason’s rep declined to comment at the time, a DC spokesperson insisted that Jason had “conducted himself in a professional manner at all times on the set.”But a source close to Amber doubled down, saying that the notes were taken during a session she’d had with Dr. Dawn on Dec. 27, 2021, and confirmed that they were in reference to Aquaman 2.Jason is yet to publicly acknowledge the allegations in the court documents.

11. Justin Timberlake

Finally, nobody has faced fiercer scrutiny this year than Justin Timberlake — another famous man to be held to account for his past actions in 2023.As you are probably aware, the way that he treated Britney Spears following their 2002 split resurfaced online amid the release of her memoir, The Woman In Me, in October.While the heat has undeniably been growing on Justin in recent years, it reached new levels thanks to Britney’s revelations. This included the star opening up about having a secret abortion during her and Justin’s three year relationship because he “didn’t want to be a father.”In the book, Britney says that the abortion remains “one of the most agonizing things” that she has ever experienced, and that if it’d been left up to her alone she never would have gone through with it. She also detailed Justin playing guitar while she was left “crying and sobbing” on the bathroom floor after the procedure.In addition, after Justin spent years benefiting from and fueling the narrative that Britney had broken his heart by cheating on him, Britney claimed that he had actually cheated on her “a couple of times” when they were together. Unsurprisingly, Britney sharing her side of the story for the first time since their split more than 20 years ago triggered an onslaught of criticism for the way that Justin had behaved. He was called out on social media for crude comments that he’d made about his and Britney’s sex life, the way that he had ridiculed her mental health when it was clear that she was struggling, and for publicly vilifying her.Justin was also widely mocked after Britney recounted the way that he had “tried too hard to fit in” with the Black scene while they were dating, with the star detailing a particular cringeworthy exchange that he’d had with the R&B artist Ginuwine. At the time, Justin did not publicly respond to the backlash, but the fact that he turned off comments on his Instagram posts suggests that he was rattled. Furthermore, a source close to the star told ET: “In recent years, Justin has tried to be supportive of Britney from a distance. They dated so long ago, but he still has respect for her. Justin and Jessica [Biel, Justin’s wife] just want everyone to grow and evolve instead of continuing to bring up the past.

With a new year just around the corner, it remains to be seen whether the curse of the J-name men will continue into 2024. But in the meantime, the Jameses, Jacks, and Johns of the celebrity world should probably be on high alert.

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