The Most Controversial Tyler Henry Moments Explained

The ever-growing genre of televised clairvoyance has seen its fair share of notable acts. With stars like Theresa Caputo gaining popularity in the 2011 TLC reality show "Long Island Medium," it's been clear for a while just how massive the genre has become. This popularity hit a new high when Tyler Henry made his rounds. As a young prodigy who found stardom at just 19, Henry was widely known for his show, "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry," where he often gave readings to notable celebrities. 

Henry popularized the genre in a way that had never been seen before, which undoubtedly drew a slew of prying eyes. Among the numerous tragic details of Henry's life, he has also faced scrutiny over his alleged psychic abilities. As he noted in a 2018 interview with Metro Weekly, being Hollywood's medium can be a "very controversial career," whether it's due to vocal skeptics or the responsibility he feels for those who seek him out for spiritual guidance. Whether you believe in his clairvoyance or not, Henry's public shortcomings have left a poor taste in some viewers' mouths. From the more nuanced controversies to the seemingly problematic ones, here is a complete breakdown of some of the most controversial Tyler Henry moments over the years.

Tyler Henry's main use of his clairvoyance is to connect his clients to people they've lost. On one hand, this can be very helpful for those grieving. However, it can also potentially cause harm. This was the case during Season 1, Episode 5 of "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry," when Henry did a reading for NFL player Michael Sam. Henry's first connection was seamless as he relayed information brought to him by a close friend of Sam's who had died. Following this, Michael promptly asked Henry if he could give some insight into his missing brother, Julian Sam.

According to Michael, Julian went missing in 1999 and was pronounced dead after two years, with no confirmation as to whether that was truly the case. Henry then confirmed that Michael's brother could be alive, saying that he didn't get "a deceased vibe" and giving Michael hope that he might still find his lost brother. Henry, however, wasn't completely sure. This led some fans to criticize the medium for conveying sensitive information without concrete evidence. "Don't say he's alive if you don't have 100% proof," a user wrote underneath an upload of Michael's reading on YouTube. "You are giving this poor guy false hope." This became apparent in the years following the episode. As of 2025, Julian is still missing.

In 2016, Tyler Henry was making headway as an on-screen personality through his E! Network reality show, "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry." As the public became aware of the psychic's claims of clairvoyance, "Today" invited him to give a reading to Matt Lauer, who was then a prominent on-air news personality for the network. Henry's reading to Lauer was incredibly personal. He shed light on various insights about Lauer's maternal grandfather, his deceased father, their shared love of fishing, Lauer's health, and more. What Henry failed to foresee, however, was Lauer's incoming sexual assault case in 2017. After an anonymous NBC employee filed a complaint against Lauer for sexual misconduct, Lauer was promptly fired from "Today," which sparked other allegations regarding his behavior.

Henry's moment with Lauer ultimately aged poorly. Fans flooded the comment section of their conversation on YouTube, quipping about Henry's inability to predict Lauer's legal woes. This also fueled skeptics, like "Last Week Tonight" host John Oliver, who mocked Henry in a 2019 episode of the show. Of course, Oliver was sure to take jabs at Lauer and his behavior at NBC, but not without debunking Henry's alleged abilities. Oliver noted that many of the points Henry made were information Lauer already shared with the public, such as his deep connection to fishing with his late father. This led Oliver to suggest that Henry could have researched Lauer beforehand and presented that information as an eye-opening revelation.

Oftentimes on "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry," Tyler Henry finds himself giving a reading to a celebrity who is skeptical of psychics in general. Not only does this open the conversation about the validity of psychics, but it also provides great TV moments as viewers get to watch Henry turn these skeptics into believers through the course of the show. His most notable clash with a celebrity, however, was his back-and-forth with British musician Boy George, who was infamously the most stubborn skeptic he had on the show.

In Season 1, Episode 8 of "Hollywood Medium," Boy George detailed that he discovered Henry through his manager, Paul Kemsley, who convinced him to sit down with the medium. As Henry started the session by connecting Boy George to people he has known who have died due to alcoholism and drug abuse, the British musician was visibly uncomfortable and unwilling to validate these parts of Henry's reading. Boy George expressed how "vague" he felt Henry's findings were, which deterred Henry, who could not proceed with his readings unless his insights were validated. Kemsley intervened, telling Boy George to work with Henry, which led to an uncomfortable exchange between the two. Henry was eventually able to turn the situation around. However, Boy George's skepticism did make for one of the more awkward interactions in the show's history.

The main job of a medium is to create a spiritual link between their clients and loved ones they've lost. In Tyler Henry's case, he got criticized for being a "grief vampire" by various sources. As Hollywood's go-to medium, Henry has allegedly communicated with notable stars who have died, like Robin Williams and Brittany Murphy. However, many have criticized these readings as exploitative, one of the most notable examples of which was his spiritual connection with The Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls.

In the Season 2 finale of "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry," Henry sat with rapper Lil' Kim, who had a well-documented relationship with the late rap legend. Of course, this opened up a conversation about Biggie's death because his killer has never been found. Through Henry's spiritual connection to Biggie, the Hollywood medium noted that the late rapper had a strong suspicion that someone wanted him dead. Given that his foreknowledge of his own death is already a widely circulated public theory — something Lil' Kim herself confirmed —  this didn't reveal anything more about the mystery of his death. Underneath a YouTube short of a clip of Lil' Kim's reading on the show, a user noted that Henry was "literally saying nothing that hasn't been published already." Redditors also deemed this moment worthy of the subreddit "r/cringe," with most comments in the thread denying his alleged clairvoyance.

For as many predictions as Tyler Henry made that were eerily accurate, he also made a fair share that were just wrong, which is something he has accepted as part of being a medium. Given his 2017 visit to the Kardashian household, it became clear that psychics can't get it right all the time. In Season 2, Episode 12 of "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry,"  Henry gave a reading to Khloé Kardashian. Aside from connecting Kardashian with her late father and warning her of potential health issues, Henry also touched on her love life. He clarified the state of her connection with her ex-husband, Lamar Odom, and warned her to stay away from men with "M" names. When Kardashian asked Henry about her relationship with Tristan Thompson, he relayed that everything would be fine as long as they worked around their respective schedules. 

This, however, couldn't be further from the truth because in 2018, Thompson was outed for cheating on Kardashian with multiple women after getting captured on video with a woman in New York. He upped the ante in 2019 when he yet again got caught in another cheating scandal with Jordyn Woods. Suffice it to say, Kardashian and Thompson eventually fell out, but it's hard to dismiss Henry's misstep when Kardashian asked him about the future of their relationship.

Since Tyler Henry's transition from child clairvoyant to Hollywood medium, he has quietly made it a point to prove his psychic abilities to skeptics. His curiosity led him farther down this path in Season 4, Episode 9 of "Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry," when he underwent a brain scan conducted by Dr. Drew Pinsky and Dr. Andrew Hill during a live reading for "Jackass" star Steve-O. What they discovered was that Henry exhibited brain activity similar to that of someone who was falling in and out of sleep while he was doing his reading. 

Dr. Drew later noted that these findings weren't enough to fully confirm Henry's clairvoyance. Instead, Dr. Drew theorized that there may be some empathic connective link between him and his clients that causes him to experience such an intense shift in brain activity. These results didn't do much to convince skeptics, nor did they satisfy some believers, either. Underneath the episode's 2024 upload to the show's Facebook page, fans rushed to defend Henry and debunk Dr. Drew's scientific theories. Others took to the comments section of its upload on YouTube to question Henry's method for reading his guests and debunk the brain test altogether. "My main problem with this is, it's too easy to find info on famous people and their families," one user wrote, while another suggested that they'd like to see him "do readings on non-famous people who have no social media" instead.

However Tyler Henry's claims of clairvoyance may appear, his spiritual inclinations can help in fostering connections between his clients and those they've lost — but not for investigative purposes. Former skeptics Howie Mandel and Jackelyn Shultz couldn't help but ask if Henry ever used his abilities to aid law enforcement during his appearance on the "Howie Mandel Does Stuff" podcast in 2024, to which he responded, "There was a case actually on my Netflix show where I worked with a private investigator."

The instance he was talking about was Season 1, Episode 2 of his 2022 Netflix show, "Life After Death With Tyler Henry," when he was given two unsolved cases. While many may assume that his clairvoyance can help investigators make some headway in these cases, Henry appeared incapable of doing so. In one of the cases, Henry attempted to help private investigators find a missing woman. What he came to learn through remote viewing — a method he tends to use on subjects who have not departed — was that this missing woman went by an alias he didn't provide to the private investigator. Similarly, Henry was given an older case in which a woman's son was killed. The only information Henry was able to provide at the time was that the suspicions surrounding the son's disappearance were rooted in foul play. Ultimately, both cases remained unsolved, which didn't do much to deter skeptics and fans alike, one Redditor of whom deemed him a "20-something-year-old who goes around exploiting people's grief."

One of the more emotional findings on "Life After Death With Tyler Henry" was that his mother, Theresa Koelewyn, learned the truth about her birth family after taking an at-home DNA test. It turned out that her adoptive mother, Stella Guidry Nestle, had kidnapped Koelewyn at a very young age, leading Koelewyn to assume that Nestle was her biological mother. Through a long history of abuse and, later, a conviction for which Nestle was sentenced to two life terms, Koelewyn learned that Nestle wasn't actually her mother. This revelation was certainly eye-opening for both Koelewyn and Henry, but it was probably even more eye-opening to his viewers for all the wrong reasons. 

Given his clairvoyance, it's easy to assume that his powers could have given him some insight into this knowledge ahead of time. In a 2022 interview with "Today," however, he declared that his personal connection to the situation ultimately prevented him from gaining insight into it. This, however, didn't deter some Instagram users from pointing the finger at Henry for not getting another psychic to step in early on. "So, none of Tyler's psychic helpers mentioned to him that his grandma wasn't his grandma?" one wrote. "Sus!" It wasn't all bad, and some fans were quick to defend Henry in the YouTube comment section of his Today interview. "It is not uncommon for those gifted, like Tyler, to not be able to see or read their families and those closest to them," one user stated.

More public scrutiny of Tyler Henry ensued when his live show "Live From the Other Side With Tyler Henry" hit Netflix. With live cold readings at the center of the show's format, skeptics certainly had a lot to say about the abilities he allegedly showcased in front of a live audience. This couldn't be more evident during the first episode, when Henry had Chrishell Stause from "Selling Sunset," her sister, Shonda Davisson, hairstylist Chris Appleton, E! host Nina Parker, and actor Molly Burnett all on for a live reading.

A universal critique of Henry's clairvoyance is its vagueness, and this came to light when he spoke on the loss of Stause's parents, who both died of lung cancer. Henry's insights, such as that Stause became her mother's caregiver during her time of need, were widely known and glaringly obvious. The main critique of the episode, however, was his methods for finding spiritual links. During the episode, Henry asked if anyone else on the couch had dealt with a family member who was diagnosed with "cervical, breast, ovarian, or uterine" cancer. One viewer dubbed this "laughably predictable" on IMDb, saying it was a desperate attempt to find some spiritual connection. Not to mention the person he was referring to was Parker, who publicly spoke about her mother's breast cancer diagnosis before the show aired. Publications like Skeptical Inquirer and The Guardian noted that these instances represented the overarching problem with Henry's live show.

Although one of the more divisive aspects of Tyler Henry's career is the vague nature of his predictions, Henry can sometimes provide some specific insights that lead to some accurate predictions for his clients. Despite this, there are other cases where fans exaggerate or seem to read too much into his clairvoyance. An example of this was shown in Season 1, Episode 5 of his live show "Live From the Other Side With Tyler Henry," in which he gave Ricki Lake and her husband, Ross Burningham, a live reading. During their appearance, Henry suggested that he had a vision that Lake may have lost personal belongings to either fire or water. Henry's choice of words made it appear as if Lake had experienced this already. Lake promptly asked if Henry saw a house fire happening in the near future, to which he replied, "No," and noted that there was an emphasis on "water."

Mass confusion came shortly afterward when Lake's home in Los Angeles caught on fire. Lake herself later took to Instagram with a clip from her reading with Henry to convince her followers that he predicted the house fire, causing fans to suggest that he accurately predicted this occurrence. This wasn't completely the case, however. Skeptical Inquirer provided the transcript of the episode, clarifying that Henry didn't, in fact, predict that Lake's Malibu home would catch on fire.