13 Of The Most Controversial Kisses To Air On TV Shows
Vote up the kisses that actually warranted the controversy.
Television has long been a medium that has pushed boundaries and served as a barometer for social and cultural progress. Time after time, TV shows have used scenes of kissing and intimacy to spark conversations about cultural norms and sexuality. Oftentimes, that progress has been met with fierce pushback and resounding anger from conservative groups, or concern over potential advertiser boycotts from the networks themselves.
From Captain Kirk kissing Lieutenant Uhura in a groundbreaking episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, to Roseanne Conner getting kissed by a woman in a bar in an episode of Roseanne, TV shows have often used lip locks to advance acceptance of different social concepts – or, even more often, they've used them to generate controversy with the intent of drumming up ratings.
Occasionally, it's not the on-screen kiss that whips critics into a frenzy, but behind-the-scenes details – such as underage actors being encouraged to make out with older actors or not being given time to emotionally prepare for romantic encounters. Either way, here's a look at some of the most controversial TV kisses, and why they led to so much outrage.
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- Star Trek: The Original Series
- NBC
Who Locked Lips: Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols)
The Big Deal: Perhaps one of the biggest and most important kisses in the history of television came during the season 3 Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Plato's Stepchildren." The passionate lip-lock between Captain Kirk and Uhura is considered to be the first interracial kiss between a white actor and Black actor in American television history, and came only a year after the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage.
Despite the cultural and historical significance of the kiss, it took some trickery on Shatner's part to make sure it aired at all. Concerned that TV stations in the Deep South would balk at the kiss, the show's producers and director decided to shoot two versions of the scene – one with the kiss, and one where the kiss happens off screen. Nichols wrote in her memoir, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, that Shatner intentionally over-acted and made goofy faces in the alternate shots to make sure they had to use the kiss.
"It was so corny and just plain bad it was unusable. The only alternative was to cut out the scene altogether, but that was impossible to do without ruining the entire episode," Nichols wrote. “Finally, the guys in charge relented: 'To hell with it. Let's go with the kiss.' I guess they figured we were going to be canceled in a few months anyway. And so the kiss stayed.”
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- Dawson's Creek
- The WB
Who Locked Lips: Jack McPhee (Kerr Smith) and Ethan Brody (Adam Kaufman)
The Big Deal: In the Season 3 episode of The WB's teen drama – titled "True Love" which aired in May 2000 – Jack McPhee finally expresses his true feelings of love for Ethan, and they share what many consider the first passionate gay kiss between two men on TV. While the storyline ends in heartbreak, as Ethan does not reciprocate Jack's feelings, the scene itself is a groundbreaking moment in LGBTQ+ representation. However, it was one that showrunner Greg Berlanti had to fight hard for.
"I had to threaten to quit, basically because they wouldn't let us have the characters kiss," Berlanti told IndieWire in 2018. “There were shows that were fine to show lots of violence [on the] network, but they wouldn't allow a kiss between two gay characters. They asked me to run the show that year, and part of my agreement with them was that they would allow the character, Jack, to have a kiss. There was a lot of negotiation about that kiss.”
The historic aspect of the kiss, and the potential controversy that the network was worried about, also impacted the performers. Smith recalled in an interview with TooFab in 2019, “It was an intense experience and I remember calling everybody I respected and said, ‘Hey should I do this?’ Doing the first male-male kiss, I remember it was intense. I'm glad we did it and it was part of history."
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- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Paramount Pictures
Who Locked Lips: Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) and Lenara Kahn (Susanna Thompson)
The Big Deal: In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Jadzia Dax is a member of the Trill alien species, who are the combined elements of a host body and a symbiont. In the Season 4 episode "Rejoined," Dax meets Trill scientist Lenara Kahn, and the two seem instantly attracted to one another. It is revealed that Kahn is the widow of a former host that Dax's symbiont was previously attached to, and despite Trill cultural taboos, Dax and Khan share a passionate kiss. Even though the show was set in the distant future, and neither character was human, two actresses kissing on TV sent some fans into a frenzy.
According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, an affiliate in the Deep South actually edited the scene out of the episode when it was broadcast. "Rejoined" got more negative feedback from angry callers than any other Deep Space Nine episode, by far.
However, the episode has a proud legacy, as Terry Farrell explained, "There were quite a few people that were upset, that had thought there should be a warning, because they were upset that they couldn't have a conversation with their children about what the episode was about. So, we did something controversial that, still to this day people come up to me and say, 'Thank you.'"
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- That '70s Show
- Fox
Who Locked Lips: Jackie Burkhart (Mila Kunis) and Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher)
The Big Deal: Years after That ‘70s Show ended, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher went on to get married and welcome two children together. However, their first kiss came almost two decades before they tied the knot when they played boyfriend and girlfriend on the hit Fox sitcom. Kunis, who was 14 when she was cast, revealed in 2022 that she had lied about her age to get an audition and said she ’would be' 18. While the producers knew the truth about her age when filming began, it didn't make things less uncomfortable for her when it came time to lock lips with 19-year-old Kutcher.
In fact, Kunis later revealed that when Jackie and Kelso first make out in the Season 1 episode "Eric's Burger Job," it was Kunis' first-ever real kiss. "I was like, 'Oh, he's so cute, it's the Calvin Klein model!' Then I was like, 'I have to kiss him?' I was so nervous and uncomfortable. I had the biggest crush on him," she told People in 2001. Kutcher said he was equally nervous, recalling, “She acted so cool. She seemed as if she'd done it a thousand times. I was the one with the butterflies in my stomach. I mean, here's this little girl and I have to kiss her. It was nerve-racking.”
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- Stranger Things
- Netflix
Who Locked Lips: Max Mayfield (Sadie Sink) and Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin)
The Big Deal: During the Season 2 finale, when Max and Lucas lock lips at the Snow Ball Dance, neither Sadie Sink nor Lucas Sinclair had any idea that their characters would be kissing when they showed up on set. According to Sink, one of The Duffer Brothers jokingly asked her if she was ready for her big kissing scene with Sinclair, and Sink was overwhelmed with anxiety because she hadn't expected it, and she'd also never kissed anyone before.
"You reacted so strongly to this – I was just joking – and you were so freaked out that I was like, 'Well, I gotta make her do it now,'" Ross Duffer recalled during an episode of Beyond Stranger Things.
Fans of the show were quick to take to social media to express their disgust at what they felt was gross behavior from the Duffer Brothers, although Sink stressed that she wasn't uncomfortable about the experience. "I mean, of course I was nervous because it's a first kiss, right? But I never objected to [it] or felt pushed into anything. I always felt comfortable… if I felt uncomfortable with anything, I wouldn’t have done it."
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- Little House on the Prairie
- NBC
Who Locked Lips: Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) and Almanzo Wilder (Dean Butler)
The Big Deal: Introduced in the Season 6 episode "Back to School," Dean Butler played Almanzo Wilder, the future husband of Gilbert's Laura Ingalls (later Laura Ingalls Wilder). Based on the writings of Wilder, detailing her childhood, Little House of the Prairie told the fictionalized story of real people in the 1870s-'90s in Minnesota. In real life, Laura was a full 10 years younger than her husband – a bigger age gap than the one between Gilbert, then 15, and Butler, then 23. However, that didn't make things any less awkward for the pair. Especially when they shared their first kiss in the episode “Sweet Sixteen.”
Speaking with People at the show's 50th anniversary cast reunion in March 2024, Dean recalled how he wished they'd been closer in age when they shared their romantic scenes. "When I met Melissa in ‘Back to School,’ there was no sign of a woman there. She really was a little girl: bright, incredibly capable, spunky, vibrant, very extroverted," Dean recalled. “I think that there was anxiety on both sides of that kiss and how is this going to go? But we stepped up to it. I've often said to Melissa, 'I wish we could have been a little closer in age when we were doing this.' But that's not the way it really happened.”
Gilbert wasn't particularly excited about the prospect of kissing Butler either. The actress wrote in her book, Prairie Tale: A Memoir, that she “was hit by a perfect storm of disappointment, fear, anger, and nausea… I didn't want to kiss a man. I didn't want to kiss anyone with stubble!”
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