David Foster slammed for calling wife Katharine McPhee ‘fat’ on ‘American Idol’
They’re not over it.
A resurfaced video has pitted Katharine McPhee’s fans against her husband, David Foster.
The video, which went viral on TikTok and since prompted countless response videos, is from a concert performance of the couple’s first show together.
During the show, McPhee, 40, can be seen talking into the microphone, recounting to the crowd about how she first met Foster, 74, when she appeared on Season 5 of “American Idol” in 2006. Taylor Hicks ultimately won her season, which also included Chris Daughtry and the late Mandisa.
She met her future husband, “When I was a little chubby and cheerful contestant on ‘American Idol,’ look at me smiling,” she told the crowd, pointing up to an old photo of herself on a big screen behind her.
“Oh yeah – you were fat,” Foster replied, as the audience laughed.
“’I was a little chubby, okay? Just young,” she replied.
“That’s so bad. Especially in front of so many people. I want to cry for her,” one fan wrote on TikTok.
“This made my heart hurt. This beautiful girl was NEVER fat. You don’t call your wife fat. As a joke or serious,” a second person commented.
“If he can say that in front of a crowd, imagine the insensitivity comments in private
Yolanda’s comments make a bit of sense now,” one fan slammed, referring to Foster’s ex-wife, Yolanda Hadid.
The Grammy-winning record producer and McPhee tied the knot in 2019 and welcomed a son in 2021.
Before McPhee, Foster was married four times, including to Hadid (from 2011 to 2017), the mother of models Gigi and Bella Hadid, making him their stepfather during that time.
“I know Bella and Gigi went through it in that house omg bless their hearts,” another commenter wrote on TikTok.
“He threw Yolanda away the second she fell I’ll and gained a little weight and showed slight signs of aging. It was so cruel,” another viewer wrote.
McPhee has previously spoken out about struggling with eating disorders and having bulimia in the past. The singer and actress told ABC News that her bulimia was getting “really out of control” around 2005, when she auditioned for “American Idol.” She eventually sought treatment at an intensive inpatient program.
She also spoke out about how she struggled with her mental health after gaining weight during her pregnancy.
In 2021, she told Dr. Berlin’s Informed Pregnancy Podcast that “the biggest challenge” during her pregnancy “was really the body-issue stuff.”
“It just suddenly came up in a way that hadn’t been present in a long time,” said McPhee.
She added, “Feeling like there was a relapse after getting pregnant was really shocking and upsetting and concerning for me, because I was suddenly so obsessed with food, starting from this first trimester, and I had such a distortion of the way that I looked.”
McPhee said that she even contacted her former psychiatrist, who told her “that it’s really common for women who have struggled with eating disorders in the past to have almost a relapse, in some sense, when they enter pregnancy.”
She described her pregnancy experience having cravings as, “You’re like, ‘Is this just the eating-disorder version of me or is this actually my body?’ … Suddenly, the cues felt really different, and I didn’t know how to interpret them,” she said. “When I did eat, I would feel really full and it was very confusing [and] made someone who felt like I had it figured out, the food issues, [feel like] suddenly I didn’t have any of it figured out.”
She added, “There’s just a lot of anxiety. But I weathered it and I’m just really grateful I’m at the end of it [and] that I feel this good and that I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘Yeah, my legs, my thighs, my arms are a little bit thicker, but I’m okay with it.’ “