Adam Levine Said Blake Shelton Is ‘Not a Nice Guy’

Adam Levine and Blake Shelton worked together as coaches on The Voice, where they developed a playfully combative rapport. While Shelton recently left the show, Levine rejoined it. Kelsea Ballerini, another judge, said Shelton warned her about Levine. Levine responded by saying that Shelton wasn’t a good guy.

Adam Levine told Kelsea Ballerini that Blake Shelton is a bad guy

Before Ballerini met Levine, she said she was worried about her new coworker because of Shelton.

“Blake really made me nervous,” she said, per Us Weekly. “He was like, ‘Adam’s tough. Sometimes he’s mean. He’s competitive. He’s ruthless.’”

Ballerini said she actually enjoyed working with Levine despite what Shelton said to her.

“He was wrong,” she told Levine. “You’re lovely. You’re nice.”

Levine told Ballerini it was actually Shelton who was the bad guy.

“I feel like Blake was hazing you when he did that,” he told Ballerini. “He’s mean. He’s not a nice guy.”

Levine joked there were a finite amount of circumstances in which Shelton would be nice to another person.

Adam Levine said he checked in with Blake Shelton about crossing the line

Shelton and Levine were two of the original coaches on The Voice. He said they all banded together at the start of the series.

“When we started The Voice, like, no one knew. It is now what it is, but back then it was a mess. Like, no one knew what was going to happen,” Levine said on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “They threw these people, these four people in these four turning chairs. And this is something we all know about now, but back then we were like, ‘This is weird.’ And so we all felt like part of this team, you know?”

Levine said he and Shelton fell into a dynamic where they “started kind of dissing each other casually.” Levine realized he needed to check in with Shelton to make sure they weren’t taking the joking too far.

“We had a really specific moment where we were in each other’s trailers,” he said. “I was like, ‘Hey, is there ever too far? Is there a too far for you? Is there an over the line for you?’”

Shelton confirmed that he didn’t have any problem with it.

“And he’s like, ‘Buddy, you hit me as hard as you want. You will never go too hard,’” Levine recalled Shelton saying. “And I think he pretty much stayed true to that. I got more sensitive than he did.”

Levine even joked to Meyers that he “forgot” who the unmemorable Shelton was.

The country singer once said he was mean before meeting Gwen Stefani

While Levine was just making a joke at Shelton’s expense, the country singer has described himself as a jerk. He said he’s softened a great deal since meeting Gwen Stefani.

“I don’t want to remember what I was like before Gwen, actually,” he told Entertainment Tonight backstage at The Voice.

He believed his relationship with Stefani made him a kinder person.

“I’m a little bit of a jerk to you still,” he told fellow Voice coach, Kelly Clarkson. “But I was a jerk to everybody … Look how nice I am now!”