Howard Stern

Howard Stern is sorry he’s been such a jerk, said Lacey Rose in The Hollywood Reporter. In 2017, the shock jock had a life-changing health scare when doctors told him they’d detected a growth on his kidney they’d have to investigate through surgery. “All I’m thinking is, ‘I’m going to die,’” Stern says. “And I’m scared s---less.” It turned out to be just a harmless cyst, not cancer, but the experience rocked Stern, now 65, to his core. For most of his radio career, he had felt invincible and was willing to say or do literally anything to entertain his audience. Now he is filled with regrets, unable to listen to many of his old interviews without cringing over his narcissism. “Now I find it gross,” he says. “I was a child. I didn’t know what was up and what was down, and there was no room for anybody else on the planet.” He regrets being a lousy husband to his first wife and an absentee dad to his three daughters, now grown and living elsewhere. He squirms over how he treated celebrities he interviewed on the air, including the late Robin Williams. “I loved Robin Williams, but there I am beating him over the head with, like, ‘Hey, I hear you’re f---ing your nanny?’ I could have had a great conversation, but I’m playing to the audience. I was so completely f---ed up back then.” He says he is trying to be a much better person. “I’d feel really s---ty if I hadn’t evolved,” he says. ■