14 DAY TRIAL // Matt Damon has more explaining to do: a short while after he talked over a black woman on a film panel to say that diversity behind the camera didn’t really matter, which led to the term “damonsplaining” to be coined, he is defending himself after an interview that made him look homophobic.
Damon is promoting his latest movie, the Ridley Scott-directed “The Martian,” and he’s been doing countless interviews over the course of the past few days. One of them was with The Guardian, which touched on the topic of how actors should maintain a sense of mystery about their personal lives, to be more convincing and compelling on camera.
This also extended to gay actors, for whom coming out publicly was a career-killer, Damon said, offering the case of British actor Rupert Everett as an example. You will find his exact quote below, at the end of the article.
Damon defends himself on The Ellen DeGeneres Show
A short while ago, Matt stopped by The Ellen Show and, as expected, the first thing on the agenda was talking about the controversial comment that had already gotten him a lot of negative media attention. After all, it did sound like he was suggesting that all openly gay actors go back in the closet and never mention a thing about their private lives ever again.
According to Damon, his statement was taken out of context and he was misquoted. He says, as you can see in the first video below, that he was merely talking about how it befits an actor to keep himself uninteresting as an individual so he or she can deliver more convincing characters.
“I was just trying to say actors are more effective when they’re a mystery, right?” he says. “And somebody picked it up and said I said gay actors should get back in the closet. Which is like, I mean it’s stupid, but it is painful when things get said that you don’t believe. You know what I mean? And then it gets represented that that’s what you believe.”
Damon also laments that the media today isn’t held accountable for “taking something and just running with it,” which is what happened here with his misquoted comment. Everyone wants to get more clicks or sell more copies of a magazine, so naturally his comment was everywhere within minutes of being published by The Guardian.
Matt Damon finally makes it on Kimmel
On a brighter note, Matt Damon finally made it on Jimmy Kimmel last night - sort of. The two have been “feuding” for years because Kimmel won’t let him come on his show, so on the latest, Damon had to pretend he was Dr. Phil to get on the set.
Kimmel then played a pre-taped segment of their couples therapy sessions, during which they discussed their long-standing feud and what they would do next to bring it to an end. And then he kicked Damon out of the show again, so it’s safe to say that the feud is not even close to an end.
You can see the hilarious segment in the second video below.
