Reese Witherspoon: Hair Removal Joke Caused Fellow Actress to End Friendship

Years ago, Reese Witherspoon was put to the ultimate Hollywood friendship test when a fellow actress asked her to present an award to her at a prestigious ceremony. Not knowing the nature of the show, she prepared for the occasion by writing up a speech full of jokes about drinking wine, skinny-dipping, and laser hair removal. Witherspoon thought she would pass with flying colors. Instead, the unnamed actress stopped speaking to her.

“We’re not friends anymore. I’m not even kidding — we’re not friends anymore,” Witherspoon told People. “I think she doesn’t like me anymore. I thought it was so funny and it was just, I had the wrong audience. It was pretty bad. Yeah. Not even kidding, she doesn’t talk to me anymore. Oh well.”

The actress admits she still has some lingering embarrassment from misreading the event’s tone. But it’s in the past, or, at least, it was. Speculation around who Witherspoon might have been referencing caused fans to dig for answers using the sparse details provided in the interview. All they knew was that the speech bombed and was delivered at an event she described as “British,” “elegant” and “classy.”

They traced it back to the Britannia Awards, which are presented by the Los Angeles extension of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Witherspoon presented British actress Kate Winslet with the Artist of the Year award at the show’s November 2007 ceremony. According to a transcript uploaded by a Reese Witherspoon fan website, her speech included jokes about when Winslet “peed all over herself in front of Harvey Keitel,” came over to her house to request a play date for their kids as well as some wine, and a few other stories she noted were “too bawdy or tawdry or drunken to tell” — including one about laser hair removal.

Still, it wasn’t an incredibly deep loss, just an embarrasing one. “I didn’t really know [her] that well but she was a very serious, proper actress; she asked me to give her an award. But I had never been to this award ceremony, so I thought it was like a roast. So I got up and I roasted her,” Witherspoon told People. “It literally haunts me.”