It was inevitable that the fallout from Ashton Kutcher‘s support of Danny Masterson would lead to the entirety of his public life dating back to when he first shot to fame being sifted through piece by piece, and the results have been about as unpalatable as you’d expect for a number of reasons.
He may have issued an apology video alongside Mila Kunis after word filtered out that they’d penned letters of recommendation to the judge overseeing their former co-star’s court proceedings, the sentiment echoed by the internet was that they wouldn’t have done it had their backing of Masterson became public.
That’s without even mentioning the wide-ranging conspiracy theories and disturbing leaps of logic being made by many social media users after an incendiary post from one of Masterson’s accusers threatened to shine a light on a “secret” that was interpreted as being the key to Kutcher’s downfall.
The latest dredging up of the star’s past has seen his musings on Hilary Duff and the Olsen twins resurface from his time as the host of Punk’d, where he opined that “she’s one of the girls that we’re all waiting on to turn 18, along with the Olsen twins.”
As unconscionable as that is given that he was in his late 20s at the time, it also sits ill-at-ease with Kutcher’s widely-praised work with various organizations that saw him testify in court to having helped save around 6000 people from being forced into trafficking and slavery through the Thorn outfit he co-founded with ex-wife Demi Moore in 2012, as well as Rotary International.
Having been subjected to no small amount of praise for his efforts in combating a major societal issue, the Masterson fallout and comments he made almost two decades ago are now being used as a counterpoint that threatens to do serious damage to all the goodwill he’d built up for his humanitarian efforts.