14 DAY TRIAL // With just a few days to go until “Relapse” drops, Eminem is again taking to the media to talk about the celebrities he’s dissed in his most recent tracks, explaining why he chose them and whether he had any issue to being so blunt and, some say, offensive at their expense. Jessica Simpson is one of these celebrities and, according to Em’s recent interview with Metro Times, also the hardest to include because the rapper is a Tony Romo fan.
In the end, Eminem explains, he managed to fight off the temptation not to include a reference to fat Jessica Simpson in his video for “We Made You” solely on grounds of personal preferences. The idea was simply too good to be discarded just like that, the rapper explains, so he ended up by having his very own fat Jessica in the video, along with Tony Romo himself, Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, and British trainwreck but immensely talented Amy Winehouse.
“You know when we were making that video there was the thing with Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo. And the Cowboys are actually my favorite team. So Tony Romo is one of my favorite quarterbacks. I don’t think he’s my favorite – but he’s certainly one of my favorites. So I felt kinda conflicted doing the Jessica thing. […] But then Jessica got fat. I mean, not really fat but she certainly got fat for… well, Jessica Simpson got fat for Jessica Simpson! You know what I mean? And we wanted to stay within the current of what’s going on right now in pop culture. Because I think that my videos are little time capsules. Usually my first singles off of each record are little time capsules of what’s going on in pop culture right at that moment.” Eminem says in reference to the controversial “We Made You” video.
Because of this, not including Jessica Simpson fat would not have been accurate, the rapper further explains. For instance, he wants people to be able to travel back in time (for lack of a better term) with the help of his video and, in this sense, including the Simpson reference was essential especially since the media really went overboard with the story of her getting “fat.”
“So I’ve always wanted people to be able to look back at each video and go, ‘Oh, remember what was going on at that moment!’ You know what I mean? ‘Oh, that’s when Jessica Simpson got fat.’ ‘Oh, OK!’ And even if she gets thin again, that’s fine. But for that moment in time, she was fat. But then I started thinking, like, ‘Man!’ I was telling [manager and former Detroiter] Paul [Rosenberg] and everyone around me, ‘Man, I don’t wanna [upset] Tony Romo and he starts throwing games for the Cowboys!’” Eminem ends by joking.
Fortunately, unlike Nick Cannon, Tony Romo did not take the Jessica Simpson reference personally.