After Bullying Contestant, Fired ‘X Factor’ Judges Will ‘Never Work Again’

Two panel judges on New Zealand’s X Factor were fired early this week for crudely berating a contestant, and now peers and fans seem to have drawn up an assessmentof their careers: they’re finished.

X Factor NZ judges Natalia Kills and Willy Moon, who are married, attacked contestant Joe Irvine during Sunday’s live broadcast, which can be seen in the now viral video below.

“I am embarrassed to be sitting here in your presence having to even dignify you with an answer of my opinion,” Kills told the contestant, while husband Willy chimed in: “It’s like Norman Bates dressing up in his mother’s clothing. It’s just a little bit creepy and I feel like you’re going to stitch someone’s skin to your face and then kill everyone in the audience.”

The couple proceeded to hurl a wide array of unflattering adjectives Irvine’s way. Words like, “disgusting,” “cheap,” “sick,” and “absurd” were used, but in the end, it was the musical magistrates who were tried in the court of public opinion and swiftly fired when TV3 laid down the gavel.

Now, Louis Walsh, a panel judge on The X Factor UK, has gone after the couple, and he’s not alone.

“Number one, I don’t know who they are,” Walsh said in an interview with Irish radio station RTE2fm this week, reports the Daily Mail. “It’s cruel, it’s not right. These shows are supposed to be fun.”

He continued: “People sit back and they want to be entertained, they don’t want to hear people taking people to pieces… She obviously has no class, no taste, she’ll never work again I reckon, honestly. I mean, who’s going to hire her? Nobody.

British musician Ed Sheeran also added to the discussion on Twitter, when he told his 12.8 million followers: “@jooe63_joe don’t worry about what anyone else says man. Enjoy yourself with it, that’s what singing is about, not what other people think.”

Singer Ellie Goulding tweeted: “You sort of have to be, you know, vaguely relevant to have your style stolen just saying.” She later deleted the post, but IBT obtained a copy.

Goulding ultimately decided to show her support, by tweeting:

While celebrity opinion hasn’t been kind to Kills and Moon, the backlash is mild in comparison to the outrage everyday users shared on social media. (We won’t go there.)

Watch the now former X Factor judges’ attack on contestant Joe Irvine: