Whoa, so Beyoncé Actually Cried Backstage When Kanye West Ruined Taylor Swift’s VMAs Acceptance Speech

Shannon Barbour
Updated
Whoa, so Beyoncé Actually Cried Backstage When Kanye West Ruined Taylor Swift’s VMAs Acceptance Speech

From Cosmopolitan

  • During the 2009 MTV VMAs, Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech and said Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video was one of the best of all time.

  • According to a Viacom executive, the incident made both Beyoncé and Taylor cry.

  • Pink also reportedly “chewed him out” during a commercial break.

This year is the 10th anniversary of when Kanye West stole Taylor Swift’s moment during the 2009 MTV VMAs in a misguided attempt to give props to Beyoncé for having one of the best videos of all time. It was such a huge and controversial incident that even then-President Barack Obama commented on it and called Kanye a “jackass.” For years, nobody truly knew what went down backstage before Queen Bey accepted her own award and graciously gave Taylor time to deliver the speech she had initially planned. Now, to mark that momentous day, Billboard published a whole oral history of the show and it includes some juicy details about how Beyoncé and Taylor both cried backstage and how Pink got involved.

Photo credit: Jeff Kravitz - Getty Images
Photo credit: Jeff Kravitz - Getty Images

First off, Kanye reportedly wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near the stage when everything went down. He was initially seated 11 rows back but was moved toward the front “to have more men in the shots of the front rows.”

And in an interview for the report, Viacom president Van Toffler recalled the moment after Kanye made an enemy of Taylor for basically forever and he said, “I walk behind the stage—and sure enough, there is Beyoncé and her dad, and she is crying.”

In the meantime, Billboard reported that Pink “chewed him [Kanye] out for ruining a young artist’s moment.”

Toffler added that when he saw Beyoncé was so upset, he came up with a plan to try and tie everything up with a nice bow by the end of the show. He explained:

“She was like, ‘I didn’t know this was going to happen, I feel so bad for her.’ And that’s when it started to click in my head, and maybe hers, about potentially having the whole arc play out in that one night. At some point, I let her know that she was probably going to be up on the podium at the end of the show for an award. And wouldn’t it be nice to have Taylor come up and have her moment then?...I would normally not say anything, but I had two crying artists.”

And the rest is history! JK, it’s totally not because Kim Kardashian, Taylor, and Kanye still occasionally take shots at each other, but that’s pretty much all that happened that night.

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