Elle King faces harsh criticism over Dolly Parton tribute
Elle King has not released a statement regarding her performance during a show honoring Dolly Parton at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.
Elle King speaks honestly about her relationship with her father.
The 35-year-old “Ex’s & Oh’s” singer spoke about her father, 60-year-old comedian Rob Schneider, in an upcoming episode of the podcast “Dumb Blonde,” according to a preview clip shared by host Bunnie XO on TikTok.
The carefully edited video highlighted King’s comments about Schneider from the interview. First, the Grammy nominee said, “I don’t speak to my father for about four or five years.”
In the TikTok clip, King claims Schneider “forgot every single birthday” and recalled celebrating her 18th birthday in summer school. “They brought me cupcakes, and I came home and my dad had forgotten my birthday,” she says.
The singer, who appeared with her father in the 1999 film “Deuce Bigalow,” says if she ever spent a summer with him, “it would be on a movie set.”
She goes on to say that she was a “really, really heavy kid” and that her father sent her “to fat camp” where she got “in trouble” after spraining her ankle and not losing weight. King also claims that Schneider once called her to demand that she stop talking about him to the media.
King also tells Bunnie XO in the clip that she disagrees with “a lot of things he says,” apparently referring to Schneider. She criticized his comments about drag and LGBTQ+ rights after the comedian recently complained on social media about the presence of drag queens at the Olympics.
USA TODAY has reached out to Schneider’s representative for comment.
Bunnie XO captioned the segment, “Elle King talks about her difficult relationship with her father, Rob Schneider.” At the beginning of the preview, the host tells King that Schneider was one of her “childhood crushes,” but later says, based on their conversation, “You’re destroying my fantasy of Rob.”
The full podcast interview will be published on Monday.
Schneider and his ex-wife London King had Elle King in 1989 before divorcing in 1990. The “Grown Ups” star also has two children with his current wife Patricia Schneider.
In a 2023 interview with People, King said she was raised by her mother and stepfather Justin, and her father “didn’t visit very often.” When she released her debut, “Elle King EP,” in 2012, “Schneider wasn’t even in my life,” she said. But King told People at the time that she and her father had since reconnected.
“My father and I have a beautiful and really wonderful, great love relationship with great boundaries,” she said. “I love my father so much.”
Earlier this year, King faced heavy criticism after she appeared drunk during a Dolly Parton tribute concert at the Grand Ole Opry. She recently told the Off the Vine podcast that she had been in a “therapy program” following the incident and that “nobody really knows what I went through behind closed doors.”
“Ultimately, I couldn’t carry on living my life and staying in the situation I was going through,” she said. “I couldn’t carry on living with that intense pain.”
Contributors: Audrey Gibbs
