Elle King calls dad Rob Schneider ‘toxic’: ‘He’s just not nice’

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In an interview on Bunnie XO’s Dumb Blonde podcast, Elle King is opening up about her “toxic” relationship with her father, Rob Schneider.

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In a teaser for the episode that was shared to TikTok, the Ex’s & Oh’s singer lashed out at the comedian after he criticized members of the drag and LGBTQ community.

“I go for like four or five years without talking to my dad,” King said of Schneider. “I disagree with a lot of the things that he says. You’re talking out of your ass and you’re talking s*** about drag and, you know, anti-gay rights. And it’s like, get f***ed.”

Earlier this summer, the 60-year-old Saturday Night Live alum was given the hook in Saskatchewan following a comedy set that included jokes aimed at Justin Trudeau and material that was deemed “transphobic, misogynistic and anti-vax.”

One attendee wrote on Reddit that Schneider ran afoul of the crowd with remarks aimed at Trudeau’s response to COVID-19 and his assessment that the coronavirus pandemic was a “scam-demic.”

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“He then moved to transphobia saying that ‘back in my day we liked our women without penises’ and told an anecdote about how he told his son, who is ‘bad at sports’ to say he is a girl to get a better chance,” they continued.

Another patron called his performance “awkward as hell.”

“(He) went on about how ‘dumb’ women are in an audience that was about 50% women, made anti-trans, anti-science jokes. Had people walk out before the main event as well as some people complaining to management. Went on for about an hour before they shut him down and took him off stage with security escorting him out,” they wrote in an account posted to Reddit.

During an appearance at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in December, Schneider delivered zingers aimed at transgenderism (“It’s only been a couple of years since we’ve learned that women could have d***s”) and said state’s offering slavery reparations was like “paying child support for a child you never had to a woman you never f***ed.”

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He also told the audience that if he “had a dime for every gender, I would have 20 cents.”

Last month, Schneider lambasted a segment of the opening ceremonies for the Paris Olympics that featured drag queens in a tableau that echoed Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

“I am sorry to say to all the world’s greatest athletes, I wish you all the best, but I cannot watch an Olympics that disrespects Christianity and openly celebrates Satan,” Schneider wrote on X. “I sincerely hope these Olympics get the same amount of viewers as CSPAN.”

Schneider posted a still from the act in a follow-up message on the social media platform, writing: “Guys with their genitalia hanging out in front of children?! Drag Queens?! I wasn’t sure if I was watching the Olympics or if I was watching a school board meeting…”

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But King said she doesn’t agree with her dad’s opinions. “He’s just talking out of his a** and I want to use this opportunity to say that I disagree. I do not agree with what he says,” she said.

Elsewhere in the clip posted to TikTok, King accused her father of forgetting special occasions. 

On her 18th birthday, she said that her classmates brought her cupcakes “and I came home and my dad forgot my birthday.”

King, 35, was raised by her mother and stepdad in Ohio and didn’t reconnect with Schneider until she was much older. But she said that they had a strained relationship when she was younger.

“If I would ever spend a summer with my dad it would be on a movie set. I would just get lost in the shuffle. If I ever messed up a shot, if I ever was talking, I would get in f***ing trouble,” the four-time Grammy nominee recalled.

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“He also didn’t have a very good reputation. I don’t want to be associated with him. He’s just not nice,” she added.

King also said that the two frequently fought over her weight and her penchant for tattoos.

“I was like a really, really heavy child. My dad sent me to fat camp … and then I got in trouble one year because I sprained my ankle and didn’t lose any weight,” King recounted. “I had already started getting tattooed and it was like 108 degrees. So I had to wear sweaters because my dad was very anti-tattoos or any form of self-expression … Very toxic and very silly.”

The two reconnected as she got older, but King said she has no plans to try and repair her relationship with her dad.

“You can’t control anyone else’s actions and you can’t control people’s feelings. All you can control is how you react and what you do with your feelings,” she said.

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