Jessica Simpson Hilariously Responds to Subway Tuna Controversy

Jessica Simpson has long had a sense of humor about her rise to fame and the “bimbo” stereotype that has hounded her for most of her career. Fans of The Newlyweds, her iconic reality television show documenting her marriage to ex-husband Nick Lachey, will remember her confused reaction to canned tuna. “Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish?” Simpson wondered at the time. “I know it’s tuna but it says, ‘Chicken By the Sea.’ Is that stupid?” And with that silly question, a meme was born before memes were a thing.

Simpson has made joking references to this hilarious faux pas several times in the past, and the latest has her responding to a controversy surrounding Subway. The sandwich franchise is facing allegations that their tuna sandwich doesn’t in fact contain any tuna. Subway denies these claims, but the rumor mill is definitely churning. Simpson caught wind of this news, and retweeted it with a hilarious response: “It’s OK [SUBWAY]. It IS confusing.”

Simpson posted a similar joke on Instagram in 2017 when Whole Foods discovered that their chicken salad actually contained tuna. “It happens to the best of us [Whole Foods],” she wrote. Simpson has definitely come out on top after being humiliated by this reality TV moment for years.

While promoting her recent memoir Open Book, Simpson spoke about her time on Newlyweds and how the MTV series put unbearable pressure on her relationship with Lachey. “He’s eight years older than me so he was already so grown up when I wasn’t,” Simpson explained, “so once I started to, you know, get covers and get endorsement deals that were separate from him — ’cause we did everything together — there was a little bit of tension. And, like, a lot less support. And I just felt in our marriage that we really were kind of spinning and trying to tolerate each other towards the end because we were so used to being mixed up or onstage or you know, the world took us in so many ways, and they put us as a trophy couple that we actually weren’t. I mean, we were at the beginning but it fell out pretty quick.”

Simpson also explained on Buzzfeed’s AM to DM podcast that she struggled with the ditzy persona that she had adopted on the show. “I felt like I was being a phony, and I didn’t want to continue on with that,” she said. “It wasn’t real anymore. It wasn’t reality. It wasn’t who we were. There was lots of eye-rolling, and that was real stuff.”