Joey King has had enough of you and your opinions about her career choices. Well, not “had enough” exactly, but the 27-year-old actress sat down with Dax Shepard on his “Armchair Expert” podcast this past Monday and basically said the internet’s judgment doesn’t touch her real life anymore. And honestly? Good for her.

So What Actually Happened Here

King got candid about criticism she’s faced throughout her career, the kind of stuff that comes with being a working actress in the age of Twitter (sorry, X) and Instagram comment sections that never sleep. “There’s been just, like, a feeling that comes with a public perception and how that makes you feel,” she told Shepard. Which, yeah. That’s the deal for basically every famous person now, isn’t it? You can’t escape it even if you want to.

Here’s the part that actually stuck with me. King said, “If it should make you feel anything ever, especially how accessible it is to see what everyone says about you online.” That’s such a specific way to put it, and I think it gets at something real. It’s not that criticism didn’t used to exist. It’s that now you can just… scroll right into it. At 2am. While eating cereal. There’s no buffer anymore between “someone said something mean about me” and “I am now reading it in real time.”

The Shift In How She Deals With It

What’s interesting here is King didn’t say the criticism stopped hurting or that she’s built some impenetrable wall around her feelings. That would honestly be a little hard to believe, not gonna lie. Instead she described a shift in perspective. “But now I’m just like, ‘Wait a minute, good or bad, whether they’re saying really nice things, really mean things, really untrue things about my beliefs, whatever they’re saying, my real life is great,'” she said. “It doesn’t permeate that at all.”

The “Whatever They’re Saying” Part Is The Whole Point

I want to sit on that quote for a second because I think it’s easy to skim past. She’s not saying the criticism is wrong or that people should stop. She’s saying it doesn’t reach her. Which, if you think about it, is kind of the healthiest possible relationship to have with public opinion when you’re a famous person. You can’t control what strangers think. You can only control whether you let it move into your house and rearrange the furniture.

“My real life is great. It doesn’t permeate that at all.”

The Act alum (still one of her best performances, if you ask me, that show was genuinely unsettling in the best way) went on to explain why. “I still get hired to do roles I love. I still have a really nice life at home.” Simple stuff. Almost boringly simple. But that’s kind of the point, right? The loudest online opinions don’t actually determine whether her career keeps moving or whether she’s happy at home. Those are two completely separate systems that just happen to exist at the same time.

This Is Bigger Than Just Joey King, Though

Look, I’ve covered enough celebrity interviews over the years to recognize a pattern when I see one. Every few months some actor or musician goes on a podcast and talks about “not reading the comments” or “staying off Twitter” like it’s some revolutionary act of self care. Usually it comes across a little rehearsed. A little PR-approved. This one didn’t feel that way to me, and I think it’s because King wasn’t pretending the criticism doesn’t exist or that she’s above it. She’s just drawing a line around what gets to affect her actual life versus what stays as noise on a screen.

That distinction matters. A lot of celebrities say “I don’t care what people think” and it comes off as defensive, like they’re trying to convince themselves as much as anyone listening. King’s version felt more like she’d actually worked through it. Which, given her career started when she was basically a kid (she’s been acting since she was four, if you can believe that), makes sense. She’s had a couple decades to figure out how to separate the noise from the signal.

The Practical Magic Context Nobody’s Talking About Enough

It’s worth mentioning that this conversation didn’t come out of nowhere. King has faced some specific backlash related to her casting in projects, including reportedly around a role tied to the “Practical Magic” universe, and fans online have not been shy about sharing their feelings on casting choices, storylines, basically anything you can imagine. That’s just the nature of beloved franchises. People get protective. Sometimes weirdly protective, if I’m being honest. You’d think some of these comment sections were guarding the crown jewels instead of arguing about a movie sequel.

And that’s really the backdrop for all of this. It’s not criticism in a vacuum. It’s the specific, relentless kind that comes from being attached to something people already love and have strong opinions about before you’ve even done the work. That’s a tough position to be in as an actor. You’re inheriting decades of fan expectation the second your casting gets announced.

What This Actually Means

I think the bigger takeaway here isn’t really about King specifically, it’s about how public figures are learning (slowly, unevenly, but learning) to compartmentalize in a way that previous generations of celebrities never really had to. There was no comment section for a movie star in 1985. Bad reviews came from actual critics with actual editors, not an anonymous account with an egg avatar and forty followers who watched three minutes of a trailer.

King’s approach, separating “what people say” from “how my life actually is,” seems like a pretty reasonable survival strategy for anyone living that kind of public life now. Whether it’s sustainable long term, who knows. It’s not entirely clear yet whether this kind of mental separation holds up when the criticism gets really personal or really loud, and every celebrity has their breaking point eventually. But for now, at 27, with a career she seems genuinely proud of and a home life she describes as “really nice,” she sounds like someone who’s found something that works.

Maybe that’s the real lesson here. Not that you should ignore criticism entirely, but that you get to decide how much real estate it takes up in your actual life. Easier said than done, sure. But King seems to be doing it. And honestly, that’s more than a lot of people managing far less public scrutiny can say for themselves.