{"id":447472,"date":"2026-02-03T23:54:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T23:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447472\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T23:54:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T23:54:07","slug":"smartless-host-jason-bateman-faces-backlash-about-charli-xcx-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/447472\/","title":{"rendered":"SmartLess Host Jason Bateman Faces Backlash About Charli xcx Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSmartLess is getting online backlash after an awkward exchange between co-host Jason Bateman and guest Charli XCX<\/a> about her decision not to have children.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the episode of the popular podcast, which aired Tuesday, the singer spoke about her experience growing up as an only child, in which her parents were incredibly supportive of career, even chaperoning her to the raves she would play as a young performer. But she added that without siblings to fight with, she did not learn how to handle conflict well until later on.<\/p>\n

\n\tBateman then asked the 33-year-old if she would like to have one child or several, to which the singer replied: \u201cI actually don\u2019t really want to have kids.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat could change,\u201d she continued. \u201cI love the fantasy of having a child, like naming it sounds so fun. But that is exactly a sign to me as to why I should not have one, the fact that that feels like the coolest part about it. Maybe I\u2019m not ready.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI mean, I guess I\u2019m backing into giving myself a half-assed compliment here, but my wife did not want to have kids, so the story goes. She said once we started going out she thought, \u2018OK, I think I can have a kid with this guy.\u2019 So you might find somebody,\u201d Bateman continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWell, I\u2019m married,\u201d Charli responded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere you go. I gotta read a newspaper one of these days,\u201d Bateman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe singer laughed off the response in the largely friendly exchange, but some fans of the Brat star online read negatively into the exchange as putting pressure on a woman to have children, with some also pointing to the lack of research Bateman had done before having her on as a guest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPress representatives for SmartLess and SiriusXM, home of the podcast, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBateman\u2019s questioning aside, the lack of research is a central conceit of the show, which launched during the pandemic as a pastime for friends and now hosts Will Arnett, Sean Hayes and Bateman. Each episode, one host brings on a guest, for which they\u2019ve prepared questions, who is unknown to the other two, who then ask questions on the fly. Charli XCX was a guest of Hayes, who had prepped questions and unearthed the origin of her stage name: her former MSN screen name.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis strategy, and the camaraderie between the hosts, has helped propel the podcast to a more than $100 million multiyear<\/a> deal, a Golden Globe nomination and off-the-cuff discussions, such as a freeform conversation with Jake Gyllenhaal about Bateman\u2019s downhill biking abilities.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut as Tuesday\u2019s episode showed, there can also be pitfalls to this strategy, as during the course of the episode, Bateman also learned that Charli had coined the term \u201cbrat.\u201d\u00a0She joined the podcast to promote her A24 movie The Moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne silver lining: Charli proved that even though she was once an only child, she\u2019s learned something about handling conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SmartLess is getting online backlash after an awkward exchange between co-host Jason Bateman and guest Charli XCX about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[19905,88,2294],"class_list":{"0":"post-447472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-charli-xcx","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-podcasts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}