By Dustin Rowles | News | January 31, 2025 |
In last night’s Pajiba Love, Mike shared an account of Reese Witherspoon losing a friend after she roasted that friend at a “classy” awards show. That friend has now been identified.
It was Kate Winslet.
So, here’s what happened (via Just Jared): Back in the aughts, Reese Witherspoon presented an award to Winslet during the 2007 BAFTA/LA Cunard Britannia Awards. Unfortunately, I can’t find video of that presentation, but Witherspoon’s remarks were as follows:
“I always wanted to be a European movie star, wear giant sunglasses, elaborate neck scarves, smoke hand-rolled cigarettes, and have savoir-faire and gravitas,” Witherspoon said. “Imagine my good fortune when Kate Winslet moved into my neighborhood, rang my doorbell, and said, ‘Darling, Sam [Mendes] is off shooting, and I believe our children are the same age. Could they possibly have a playdate? Oh, by the way, it’s almost 9 o’clock, and I’ve had nothing to drink. Do you have any wine?’”
During the speech, Witherspoon also poked fun at Winslet for “pee[ing] all over herself in front of Harvey Keitel” in Holy Smoke and joked that she couldn’t tell more of their stories because they were “too bawdy or tawdry or drunken to tell,” including the time they “contemplated laser hair removal.”
Winslet is a classy person. She doesn’t like having her business shared in front of a large audience, and as a result, she didn’t take kindly to the roasting and ended their friendship, much to Witherspoon’s dismay. “So this friend of mine — who I didn’t really know that well, but she was a very serious, proper actress — asked me to give her an award,” Witherspoon recounted to PEOPLE this week. She told the story about the time she presented an award at an awards ceremony she thought was supposed to be “like a roast,” and recalled during the presentation that she had brought up “the time we got laser hair removal?!”
“We’re not friends anymore. I’m not even kidding — we’re not friends anymore. I think she doesn’t like me anymore,” Witherspoon told Will Ferrell in that PEOPLE interview. “I thought it was so funny, and I just had the wrong audience. It was pretty bad. I’m not even kidding; she doesn’t talk to me anymore. Oh, well.”