A Complete Breakdown of Miles Teller's 'Esquire' Interview Drama Years After the Actor Was Labeled 'Kind of a D---'

Miles Teller has been saying "no" to doing press profiles for the past 10 years.

In 2015, Esquire published a profile of the Eternity actor that infamously opened with the journalist "trying to figure out if he's a d---." The article also labeled him "kind of a d---" more than once and claimed he would "charm the world with his d---ishness."

One part read, "So yeah, he is kind of a d---. But the thing is, you agree with him: His admittedly limited body of work so far, his oeuvre—a word you define and spell for him, so who's the d--- now?—is pretty great."

The term resurfaced midway through the profile: "You wonder how much he really doesn't give a s---. Because it kind of seems like no one gives more of a s--- about what he does. Enough that, yeah, he has to be kind of a d--- about it. How can you not like that?"

The men's magazine also shared the link on X, formerly Twitter, alongside the caption, "Miles Teller is on a quest for greatness (with a bit of d---ishness too)."

After the profile was published, Teller replied to the tweet promoting the interview.

"@esquire couldn't be more wrong. I don't think there's anything cool or entertaining about being a d--- or an a------. Very misrepresenting," he wrote on X.

Teller revisited the infamous profile in an interview with Playboy one year later.

According to the Paper Tiger star, he had become — "in a way" — more cautious in interviews.

"There are not that many checks and balances with print," he said. "In that case, or in any case, they can paint you however they want to paint you. For an actor, if they're looking at your work, they're seeing it two years after you did it. But I've got these movies coming out that totally contradict your image of me. You don't even know what I'm working on now."

Teller revealed he has come to terms with the fact that he cannot control his public image.

"If somebody wants to do a hit piece, they'll do a hit piece. In that case, the Esquire reporter had her mind made up long before I showed up. What's frustrating is that she calls me an a------, and then because it's in a magazine, people say, 'Oh, he must be.' But I've had however many years of being myself, and I know the kind of person I am," he explained. "I will defend the person I am through my actions. People can make of it what they want."

In a separate interview with Vulture in 2017, Teller said he was "the biggest d------bag, too," if "how that story made [him] look was how [he] really was."

"The main idea in that story was that Miles Teller doesn't give a rat's a-- what you think of him," he said. "That's really not true. I absolutely do care what people think about me."

He continued, "I can't put much weight into whether the public likes me because the more important thing is that, as an actor, I can truly say that there's not a single director or actor who I've worked with who'd have a bad thing to say about me. I've never missed a day of work. I've never not known a line. So I feel good about where I am."

In the end, the 2015 Esquire profile did prompt changes.

"The reason why I have not done profiles is because I said, 'Wow, if I'm not doing this interview on camera, this person can misquote things or put things out of order or say things that didn't happen,'" he explained to IndieWire more than a decade after the profile was published. "It felt like such a violation of what actually transpired."

Teller said, "I told my team, 'Guys, I don't think I'm doing this again, because I'm reading this and this doesn't sound like me to me.' This is not life, so why would I ever want to be a part of something where they can just put that in?'"

The Michael star expressed how "unfortunate" it is that being a good person "doesn't sell."

"How you treat people truly, that's what matters… The actors, the directors, the crew, the producers, you can't hide who you are when you're on set," he continued.

Amid renewed buzz surrounding the interview, a reporter alleged Teller once gave a bizarre answer to a basic question.

"I interviewed Miles Teller and Jai Courtney for one of the Divergent movies ('memba them?) and asked them 'What's the next big thing you have coming up?' To which Teller immediately replied, 'My d---!'" Jim Vejvoda, director of entertainment content at IGN, shared on X.