25 Unforgettable "Mean Tweets" From Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Twitter hasn't been kind to Barack Obama, Kirsten Dunst or Sofia Vergara over the years

By Zach Johnson Feb 03, 2017 7:45 PMTags
Watch: Kimmel Wants Kanye West to Read His Mean Tweets

Since 2012, more than 300 "mean tweets" have been read aloud on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Celebrities ranging from Will Ferrell to Julia Roberts have participated in the recurring segment, and in 2015, Barack Obama took part in a special "Presidential Edition." Other special editions have featured NBA players, NFL players, college athletes, musicians and YouTube stars.

Some stars, like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Bette Midler, have even done live readings. The latest installment aired Thursday and was timed to Super Bowl LI. It featured professional football players, including Odell Beckham Jr., Rob Gronkowski, Tony Romo and Russell Wilson.

"'Mean Tweets' was my wife's idea," Jimmy Kimmel said of Molly McNearney, Jimmy Kimmel Live!'s co-head writer, while appearing on SiriusXM's The Bill Carter Interview in 2015. "We were sitting at the dining room table. Our mutual friend Kelly Oxford, who is very popular on Twitter, was there. She was kind of going through her Twitter feed and reading some horrible things people were saying about her and to her. I was like, 'That's nothing—listen to this!'"

"I started going through mine, and Molly said 'Oh, this needs to be on the show. We have to have people read their own mean tweets out loud,'" he said. "That's really how it happened."

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Celebrity Mean Tweets From Jimmy Kimmel Live!

As McNearney told Vanity Fair in 2014, she wanted the segment "to shine the light on the ugliness and cowardice of the trolls on the internet" and "to show that these celebrities have a sense of humor about themselves." It's become very popular with celebrity guests, she said. "A lot of people, when they book the show, will ask, 'My client would like to read a mean tweet..."

In no particular order, here are the 25 most unforgettable "Mean Tweets" in the show's history:

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...and that's just a small sampling of the "mean tweets" featured on the show.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 on ABC.