When Matt Rife’s Netflix special, Natural Selection, sparked backlash last month, the comic was keen to let his followers know how unbothered he was by all of the scrutiny.
But the link led to a medical shop website’s page for “special needs helmets,” fueling the backlash as disappointed people called out the ableist “joke.”
Before long, old clips of Matt began to resurface online — including the time that he grabbed Zendaya’s face without her consent, and when podcaster Tana Mongeau shut down his “humbling epiphany” that anyone who hates him is just “jealous.”
And last week, Tana and her Cancelled with Tana Mongeau cohost and best friend, Brooke Schofield, shed some new light on the context surrounding Matt’s now-infamous appearance on their podcast.
In fact, Brooke dropped bombshell after bombshell as she revealed for the first time that she dated Matt at the start of the year.
In the lengthy conversation, Brooke said that in hindsight she believes Matt was “love bombing” her when they first met, explaining: “I wouldn’t say he was my ex or anything because it wasn’t like this serious relationship, but it wasn’t just hooking up with him — I really liked him.”
Soon, more red flags began to appear. Brooke said that she would fly across the country to see Matt and support him at his shows, and when they were apart, he would text her saying how she was all he could think about and he couldn’t wait to see her again.
Brooke said that the next time she saw Matt was when he appeared on her and Tana’s podcast in June, and she was left feeling pretty thrown when he treated her like a complete stranger.
Then, earlier this month, Brooke came across a TikTok video from a woman who said that she was dating Matt earlier this year. When Brooke realized that the timeline was suspicious, she reached out to the user and was immediately added to a group chat with around seven other women who were in the same boat.
During the podcast episode, Brooke also detailed a particularly horrifying incident with Matt that had occurred when she was “still actively seeing him” and they were in a sexual relationship.
Before recording last week’s podcast episode, Brooke said that she reached out to Matt to make sure that she had her “facts straight.” This is when she realized for the first time that he had blocked her number.
But it seems as though Matt found the unblock button after the episode aired, with Brooke sharing a screenshot of an alleged text that he had sent her after she put him on blast — and she had a pretty iconic reaction.
At the end of a photo dump that Brooke posted to Instagram last week, there was an iMessage screenshot showing a text that she had received which reads: “Brooke, this is MR.”
The podcaster’s followers were floored by this exchange, and Brooke confirmed in the comment section that it was real. One person wrote: “There’s no way that’s real can you please confirm that that is indeed real,” to which she replied: “oh it’s real.”
And when somebody referenced the fact that Matt had apparently referred to himself by his initials, Brooke replied: “like he’s JFK.”
While there is no way to verify that Matt actually did text Brooke as shown in the screenshot, this isn’t the first time in recent weeks that Matt has appeared to have been left rattled by the ongoing scrutiny.
In the clip, Dr. Benjamin Caughlin, MD, FACS is shown reacting to a caption that reads: “Me after creating the greatest jawline ever seen just for my patient to get canceled right after…” and while he didn’t mention Matt by name, Matt commented on the video: “Lying about medical history is illegal, just FYI.”
And earlier this month, Matt was heavily criticized for starting “beef” with a 6-year-old boy on TikTok. TikToker Bunny Hedaya had shared a video of her young son reacting to a clip from Matt’s stand-up routine that had gone viral.
