In a recent interview with Esquire, The White House Plumbers actor Woody Harrelson asserted that he is a very offline individual. So much so, he doesn’t even register when he’s going viral on the internet – even if it’s for controversial reasons.
While hosting Saturday Night Live for the fifth time back in February, Harrelson made a joke about COVID protocols and vaccines, which he later doubled down on. The monologue stirred up some controversy online, though Harrelson claims he was none the wiser.
“I don’t look at that shit,” he told Esquire. The actor compared being active on the internet to reading reviews about one’s performance, an act he equated to taking “a poison pill.”
“Well, people told me it was, shall we say, trending,” he said. “I feel like, ‘I said it on SNL.’ I don’t need to go further with it…other than to say—well, no, I won’t. Never mind. That’s enough.”
But he continued, “It don’t change my life one bit. Not one bit, if the mainstream media wants to have a go at you, right? My life is still wonderful.”
Harrelson was joined by his White House Plumbers co-star Justin Theroux, who added, “I’ve had some real goes at Woody, and I can tell you, he doesn’t give a shit.”
In his Saturday Night Live monologue in February, Harrelson described the plot of “the craziest script” he’d ever received. In the movie, he explained, “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes. And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”
“I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day,” he joked at the time.
In an interview with the New York Times Magazine soon after, Harrelson doubled down on his anti-vax claims and slammed COVID protocols on production sets in Hollywood.
“I don’t think that anybody should have the right to demand that you’re forced to do the testing, forced to wear the mask and forced to get vaccinated three years on. I’m just like, let’s be done with this nonsense,” he said. “It’s not fair to the crews. I don’t have to wear the mask. Why should they? Why should they have to be vaccinated? How’s that not up to the individual?”
This controversy has done nothing to slow down the momentum of Harrelson’s career so far.
The White House Plumbers premieres May 1 on HBO. Harrelson also starred in the sports comedy Champions earlier this year, and he is slated to star opposite his close friend and collaborator Matthew McConaughey in their upcoming Apple TV+ series Brother From Another Mother.