Rocker Rick Springfield calls out host in awkward TV interview: ‘Am I boring you?'
Anchors Savannah Guthrie, Jenna Bush Hager and Kaylee Hartung, delivered a cringe-worthy TV moment when they welcomed the rocker onto the show by belting out one of his hits.
But as it turned out, they were singing the chorus of another '80s hit, 867-5309/Jenny, by Tommy Tutone.
Fellow co-hosts Al Roker and Craig Melvin quickly pointed out the embarrassing gaffe, before 75-year-old Springfield quipped, 'Very close.'
Things got more awkward when Sydney-born Springfield sat down on the couch with Roker, Melvin and Jill Martin for a more intimate chat.
As the singer was discussing his 1980s hit Jessie's Girl, an action from Melvin caused him to get off track.
'It's really taken on a life of its own after I recorded it and put it out,' Springfield began. 'You can't really plan anything like that and you can't really foresee anything like that – that just happened.'
He then paused briefly before asking Melvin, 'Am I boring you?' after the host apparently yawned mid-interview.
'No, no, no, not at all, Rick. I apologise. It was a cough,' Melvin replied with a nervous laugh.
But Springfield was a good sport about it all, laughing off the incident while assuring Melvin: 'Dude, it's early. Don't worry about it. I'll probably yawn too.'
Later in the interview, Melvin asked Springfield about a brain injury he sustained during an onstage fall in 2000.
Springfield replied with a blank expression and looked around the room before playfully replying, 'I'm sorry, what?'
The joke prompted Roker to crack up and say, 'I like this guy!'
At the conclusion of the interview, the hosts were so impressed by Springfield's quips that Melvin said, 'Rick Springfield, I had no idea you were so funny, by the way. Come back, come back anytime.'
'He has vaulted into the top five of favourite guests,' he added.
Indeed, Springfield later took to Instagram to say he had a blast on the program.
'Had a fun time with the gang at @todayshow this morning!' he captioned a happy snap of them posing for a photo.
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Shortly after the show had ended, Siwa broke up with Ebbs (who very publicly called her out on it) and announced she was dating her male Big Brother co-star. She doubled down on her comments inside the house, saying in an interview with YOU magazine that she felt "pressured" into labelling herself a lesbian. "And I think I did that because of pressure," Siwa said, adding that a lot of it came from "inside the [LGBTQIA+] community at times." "From people I know, from partners I've had," she added. RMIT University's senior public relations lecturer Dr Damien O'Meara said: "We have plenty of bi and pan people who don't feel welcome in our community." He believes Fletcher and Siwa are offering a good opportunity to start a conversation and "challenge the erasure that's taking place". Around the same time, Fletcher released her single Boy, signalling to fans she was in a relationship with a man. But her decision to archive all her previous social media posts about her music on same-sex relationships led to fans accusing her of erasing her queer identity. "When you've made your entire brand of wlw (women loving women) music and art, only to turn around and talk about how 'magical and liberating' it is to be with a man, it just feels like it was all a phase for you," one social media user said. Dr Natalie Krikowa, a senior lecturer at the School of Communications at the University of Technology in Sydney and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, said both artists were entitled to talk about their relationships but there should be an additional level of "care, empathy and respect" given to fans who have come to expect something different. "I think it is important that these conversations are had without it escalating into biphobia and bi erasure, because there is a fine line that we should not be crossing." Fletcher talked about the backlash she received in a TikTok video and has now unarchived all her posts. "My queerness is not a phase, I have always identified as a queer woman," she said in the video. Dr O'Meara pointed out that the 31-year-old's brand is through her music which is "very personal". "It explores her feelings and what she's going through, and a lot of her music has always said, 'well, this is what I'm dealing with right now.' And so, if we think of that as Fletcher's brand, what we have is her using her music to explore this," Dr O'Meara said. Bi erasure and biphobia are terms for the questioning or dismissal of bisexuality. But Dr O'Meara said Siwa and Fletcher had actually opened up an important conversation about bisexuality. Author and editor of Nonsense Newsletter Patrick Lenton, who is bisexual, agrees. "Invalidating that relationship and being angry about it stems from believing that bisexuality or queerness as a sort of broader thing isn't as valid as something say like lesbianism," he said. He added that Siwa, as a 22-year-old, is discovering what her sexuality is "in a very public platform, in real time." "In that particular case, I would've hated for anyone to be viewing and commenting on my sexuality journey when I was that young, because it was a mess." Mr Lenton said there is a lot of online gatekeeping " over who is valid in their queerness and who is allowed to be queer," pointing to bisexual actor Kit Connor (from Netflix's Heartstopper). "He was basically bullied into coming out before he was ready, because people were saying 'oh he's not queer enough to play a queer role' and it's really weird and backwards idea of looking at things." Sarah Scales, a PhD candidate at Swinburne University who is researching parasocial relationships and celebrity scandal, said part of the problem here is the "parasocial interaction" many people have with celebrities, which is a one-sided relationship that is usually between a fan and a celebrity that has no mutual development. She said people can feel upset, disappointed and betrayed if they feel their trust has been broken with someone they look up to, or someone they see within themselves. She said JoJo Siwa's fans may have reacted more favourably if she addressed her relationship breakdown with Kath Ebbs earlier and was more open about her attraction to Hughes. "If they heard it from her first in a more active way, it might have been different."
