When people ask me what I do for a living, I like to tell them I make fun of celebrities. It’s the biggest part of my job and I’m pretty good at it. Usually it’s pretty easy to find an angle for a story; there was basically no chance I was going to say Harvey Weinstein is innocent and a good guy and that the entire Me Too movement was a Russian psyop to bring down Donald Trump’s political enemies, which is a thing a former British MP said.
This story, however, is a little harder for me. You see, Chloe Dykstra, who you may remember as… uhh… Train Passenger in Spider-Man 2 and Model #3 in an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place, has written a Medium post accusing a former ex-boyfriend whom she doesn’t name but is obviously Chris Hardwick, of being emotional abusive. The problem is that they’re both just terrible.
Hardwick is famous for being on shows that air after a show and talk about what happened in the show, which is not a thing that ever needed to happen. He also built his brand on being a nerd despite currently being married to an heiress who’s half his age. Dykstra, on the other hand, is famous for dating Chris Hardwick and… umm… Oh, she played Triple H in Max Landis’ wrestling doc Wrestling isn’t Wrestling, even though I don’t think she actually spoke in that. There’s basically no reason for anyone to have ever heard either of their names.
Dykstra’s post about Hardwick’s alleged behavior says he established rules for their relationship, which isn’t all that unusual, we all have boundaries and someone like Hardwick who is obviously a Type A maniac control freak would absolutely establish those early on.
I “should not want to go somewhere at night”. My nights were expected to be reserved for him, as he had a busy schedule. This alienated me from my friends.
I was to not have close male friends unless we worked together. All photos of male friends were to be removed from my apartment. This was heartbreaking for me, as my best friend happened to be male.
That’s not a red flag to you? She says he gave here these “rules” two weeks into their relationship, it’s not like she can say “I was so in love with him so I stayed” without sounding like a crazy person, they had literally just met.
As he was sober, I was not to drink alcohol. Before we began dating he said, “I noticed you have a glass of wine with dinner. That’s going to stop.”
Um, yeah, in general it’s pretty gauche to drink in front of someone with a substance abuse problem, specifically your significant other.
I was not to speak in public places (elevators, cars with drivers, restaurants where tables were too close) as he believed that people recognized him and were listening to our conversations. Our dinners out were usually silent, him on his phone.
Yeah, I’ll bet people are just waiting to get some dirt on Chris Hardwick. Of course I believe Chris Hardwick thinks people care about Chris Hardwick, but let’s be honest; no one cares about Chris Hardwick.
The first time I told him I loved him after 6 months of hoping he’d say it first, his response was (and I quote), “I think I love you too, f****t.”
That’s really odd. Is that a joke? I mean, my girlfriend and I bust each other’s balls on a regular basis. Not the first time we said I love you, mind you, but fairly regularly. Is the implication here that Chris Hardwick thought the woman he was in a heterosexual relationship with was a f****t? Or is this just to let us know that Hardwick still used the word f****t in jokes he made in 2011/2012 to make sure we aren’t on his side?
Because of my leaving him for someone else, he made calls to several companies I received regular work from to get me fired by threatening to never work with them. He succeeded. I was blacklisted. With the assistance of a woman who’d gained my trust and my heart over the past year, he steamrolled my career.
I’m sorry, but I find this hard to believe. How much work does one person really have to do to get Chloe Dykstra blacklisted? She was an extra in like, three movies. If you consider “cosplayer” to be your profession, well… no, just no.
Dykstra goes on with more details, but I don’t think they’re really important. She basically says Hardwick didn’t care about her, he just wanted her to sleep with him and look good standing next to him. Basically, she’s saying he’s Donald Trump in a Pac-Man suit, which is not all that hard to believe.
Nerdist, the company Hardwick founded and basically only exists on the force of his personality, removed all references to him from their websites, sort of the way Joseph Stalin did when someone displeased him. Legendary Entertainment, the parent company of Nerdist, also issued a statement.
“Chris Hardwick had no operational involvement with Nerdist for the two years preceding the expiration of his contract in December 2017. He no longer has any affiliation with Legendary Digital Networks,”
It’s hard to say when being a shitty boyfriend crosses the line to emotional abuse. As Dykstra herself points out, Hardwick has told a very different story about their relationship in the past, including alleging Dykstra was constantly cheating on him and that dating her was part of a mid-life crisis for him, wanting to date someone who was young, hot and vapid, essentially.
But in the end, they’re both terrible. I have no trouble believing Dykstra primarily dated Hardwick to raise her own profile; she claims he basically forced her to take work with his company, but she’s had no other work to speak of. And Hardwick is, at the end of the day, a P.T. Barnum-esque hype man just packaging “nerd culture” and selling it to the public in order to meet celebrities and raise his own status. Everything about the guy screams vapid phony and all he’s done with his entire life is repackage consumerism as a lifestyle for outsiders.
I guess you skipped over the part where he had her blacklisted in the industry. But think of the men and their careers
I don’t know what part of anything I said would lead anyone to believe I was in the least bit concerned with protecting Chris Hardwick’s career, such as it is. He married into the Hearst family, I’m sure he’ll be fine without my help.
How did she need to raise her profile. Her Dad is a god in SFX (John worked on Star Wars) and I’m sure all sorts of doors were opened for her. Also, she hosted some show on Syfy on the matter. I didn’t know she acted in movies.