Kate Upton's "Cat Daddy" video might have sped up her trajectory to fame, but when the supermodel was doing that silly dance in her bikini, she had no idea it would be seen by millions of people.
The year was Upton was a year-old swimsuit model who was shooting with Terry Richardson. Richardson took a video of her behind the scenes demonstrating the "Cat Daddy" while in a red string bikini. Richardson then posted the cheeky video on YouTube, but the model had no idea he had planned on sharing it publicly and confronted him about it.
"Yes, I did. I was like, 'That was disrespectful, you could have told me!'" she told Alexa Chung in an interview for British Vogue. "Now, obviously, it's fine."
After a brief ban by YouTube because of its supposed explicit nature, the video went on to rack up more than 22 million views and the rest is history.
As for Richardson, he doesn't take credit for Upton's celebrity: "No. Kate was born a star."
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entertainmentterry richardsonKate Uptonbritish vogueKate Upton Was Actually Not Cool With the Video That Made Her Famous
Back in , not long before her supermodel status booked her frequent campaigns for Express, Guess, and the like, you might remember that a then-unknown, year-old Kate Upton starred in a viral video shot by Terry Richardson entitled "Cat Daddy." (The infamous clip featured the model in an itsy bitsy teenie weenie bikini as she danced for Richardson.) But while "Cat Daddy" is arguably what skyrocketed the model to household-name status, she's now saying that she was less than comfortable with Richardson's decision to release it to the world without her permission.
In a new interview with Alexa Chung for Vogue UK, Upton reveals that she was under the impression that the video was created just for fun, and was thrown for a loop when she discovered it was on YouTube for the world to see. "I was like, 'That was disrespectful. You could have told me!'" she told Chung.
Retrospectively, she's A-OK with how things panned out, telling Chung there are no hard feelings between her and Richardson: "Now, obviously, it's fine."
In , a viral video of Upton performing the Cat Daddy dance to the song of the same name by The Rej3ctz helped make her famous.
Uploaded without her permission by fashion photographer Terry Richardson, the video shows Upton doing the Cat Daddy in a microscopic string bikini. While it was not meant to be seen, the video launched her into the spotlight.
&#;Upton was horrified because the behind-the-scenes video had been filmed for fun, not something she expected would make the final cut,&#; Alexa Chung wrote in British Vogue.
&#;That was disrespectful, you could have told me!&#; Kate reportedly told Richardson after the video&#;s release. They have since reconciled and appear to be friends.
Terry Richardson uploaded a video of model Kate Upton performing the Cat Daddy dance (Credit: Terry Richardson)
One year earlier, in April , a video of Upton doing the Dougie hip-hop dance at a Los Angeles Clippers game helped land her the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover.
Publisher Wayne Sterling told the New York Times, “We all know that social media now creates its own reality. &#;
“If you become a YouTube star among teenagers, you have even more recognizability than a TV star. Kat
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In Kate Upton’s Vogue UK interview, the model/actress takes a walk down memory lane, stopping to shed some light on the now-infamous "Cat Daddy" video, which many attribute as her first real claim to fame. Upton admits she was not happy with Terry Richardson, a fashion photographer who's generally considered yucky in scientific terms, for leaking the video. She remembers saying, "That was disrespectful, you could have told me!" It seems the bad blood didn’t last long though, with Terry telling Vogue UK to not thank him for his stardom because she "was born a star." Upton forgave and forgot the invasive move, saying, "Now, obviously, it's fine,"
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