Steph Curry posts Instagram defence of Ayesha after backlash over on-screen kiss

On Wednesday, Warriors superstar Steph Curry released a 90-second video on Instagram from the account "Wardell Curry" defending his wife Ayesha after critics attacked her for an on-screen kiss in the Christmas romcom Second Chance Holiday.

Curry said in the video: "Usually the noise doesn’t bother me, doesn’t bother Ayesha," and added that when people "step on the accomplishments of my wife... [it] kind of speaks to the bigger conversation on how you view women in this world and what they’re allowed and what they’re not allowed to do." The clip followed online criticism aimed at Ayesha for her role in the Hallmark knockoff, in which she plays a dating expert who shares a kiss with a man who is not her husband.

The backlash included comments from former NBA player Gilbert Arenas on his We Said What We Said podcast, where Arenas said, "She doesn’t act like the other superstars’ wives," and added: "You know Jordan’s wife. Cookie, that’s Magic’s wife. Savannah [James], right. We don’t want to hear from you. We just want to know you’re there. You’re fine. You’re taking the pictures, but we don’t want to know you." Arenas also called Ayesha "the only blemish" in the Curry family as former teammate Nick Young nodded along.

The piece noted that Arenas was criticised in turn, saying he should consider himself fortunate that Curry issued a strongly worded response rather than "going the Javaris Crittenton route and pulling a gun on Arenas in the locker room." It said the episode reflected a wider pattern of online commentators policing the Currys’ private life.

Ayesha Curry’s career history was outlined in the article: early acting guest spots on Disney’s Hannah Montana and CBS’s Gary Unmarried opposite Jay Mohr; a blog and YouTube channel that featured recipes such as "Stephen’s five-ingredient game-day pasta"; and a subsequent lifestyle brand that expanded into signature kitchenware, cookbooks, a Food Network show and a CoverGirl deal. The article said critics have held her to different standards, accusing her of upstaging her husband.

The article also cited discussion of the episode on other platforms, saying ex-NFL players Emmanuel Acho and LeSean McCoy debated the kiss on their podcast, with Acho suggesting that Ayesha, through her words and actions, keeps telegraphing to the world that "she’s not that into Steph Curry." It added that the debate often treated acting and on-screen intimacy as if they were real-life signals rather than professional performance.

Wider double standards were outlined by comparison to other celebrity pairings that receive different treatment from the manosphere, the article said, naming the recent marriages and relationships of Coco Jones and Donovan Mitchell, Paul Skenes and Livvy Dunne, and Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, and referencing how high-profile relationships involving Kim Kardashian and her sisters are discussed. It also noted Steph Curry’s mother has faced similar scrutiny since she divorced his father, a former NBA player, in 2021 and remarried last month.

The article described Curry as a "God-fearing, wholesome family man" who speaks up for female empowerment, and listed career facts included therein: a four-time NBA champion and Paris Olympic knockout artist, age 38, through 18 NBA seasons, with activities off the court as a venture capitalist, Hollywood producer and Bay Area philanthropist, and with a public life largely "free of scandal, extramarital or otherwise." It reiterated that the sustained scrutiny of the Currys’ marriage appears driven by a strand of online commentary intolerant of Ayesha’s public autonomy.

The article concluded that the armchair analysis of the Currys’ marriage "isn't likely to stop anytime soon," and reported that Curry’s closing line in his social media statement was: "Keep my wife's name out your mouth."