CULTURE

Watch Gwyneth Paltrow Get Sprayed With Water Every Time She Forgets a Lyric and Be Glad You’re Not a Celebrity

Thankfully, a punishment reserved only for celebrities.

by Andrea Park

Gwyneth Paltrow
YouTube/The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Life as a celebrity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While making the requisite press tour rounds, stars have been forced to eat crickets with James Corden, recite headline-making lies with Jimmy Kimmel, and, as Gwyneth Paltrow did this week, get sprayed in the face just for forgetting a lyric during karaoke with Jimmy Fallon.

Paltrow’s televised humiliation came during a game of “Slay It, Don’t Spray It” on The Tonight Show on Wednesday evening. The premise of the “game” is simple: Fallon and his celebrity guest take turns singing along to pop songs with the help of cue cards. After a few lines, the cue cards come to a screeching halt, and if the person singing can’t remember the next lyric, a forceful jet of water comes streaming straight out of their microphone and into their face; if they do get the lyric right, their competitor is allegedly sprayed instead, though that has yet to be seen in the segment’s entire two-episode history.

If you’ve got a thing for witnessing A-list embarrassment, or just want to hear Paltrow sing Ariana Grande‘s “No Tears Left to Cry” in a perplexing Michael Jackson-esque falsetto, smash that play button immediately. Spoiler alert: Despite the fact that all five songs featured in the game are ubiquitous earworms that Paltrow and Fallon, like the rest of the pop music-listening world, have probably belted out in their cars hundreds of times before, when face-to-face with a water-spitting mic, they collectively went zero for five—yes, even on “Hey Ya.”

Though Paltrow plays up her reluctance at having to stand in for powerhouses like Grande and Christina Aguilera throughout the clip, let us not forget that she’s actually dabbled in the pop star life—albeit only onscreen—herself. Not only did she have a three-episode arc on Glee as singing substitute teacher Holly Holliday, but she also did all her own vocals in 2010’s Country Strong (aka A Star Is Born lite). And there’s still a chance we’ll someday be able to stream a full-length album by the Oscar winner: Not long after the release of Country Strong, she vowed not to stop singing, saying, “I may make a record. I may do a musical. I’m not sure, but I’m just very grateful I’m at a place right now where I’ve been given an opportunity to discover this whole new side to myself.”

Related: Gwyneth Paltrow Is Now Taking Credit for Popularizing Yoga