Actor Matt Damon is contradicting an interview he gave the U.K.’s Sunday Times in which he described an incident where his daughter confronted him about using an offensive term to describe gay men. Damon released a statement to Variety late Monday claiming the interview was incorrect and he has never personally used the “f-slur.”
As The Daily Wire reported, the “Jason Bourne” star received massive backlash after being quoted in the Sunday Times saying, “I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!’ She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”
But in his statement to Variety, Damon insisted his original story isn’t true.
“During a recent interview, I recalled a discussion I had with my daughter where I attempted to contextualize for her the progress that has been made – though by no means completed – since I was growing up in Boston and, as a child, heard the word ‘f*g’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to,” he said.
Damon went on, “I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003; she in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly. To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice.”
In somewhat stilted, academic language that made heavy use of terms popular in the social justice movement, the 50-year-old star concluded that The Sunday Times got the story wrong:
“I have never called anyone ‘f****t’ in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind. I have learned that eradicating prejudice requires active movement toward justice rather than finding passive comfort in imagining myself ‘one of the good guys’. And given that open hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is still not uncommon, I understand why my statement led many to assume the worst. To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.”
Damon stopped short of claiming he was misquoted, however, and The Sunday Times has not yet addressed the discrepancy between their version of the conversation and Damon’s.
As an international celebrity, Damon likely felt pressure to respond after he began trending on Twitter, with thousands of posts blasting him as homophobic. In addition to social media outrage, the gay rights group GLAAD also put out a statement addressing his comments.
“The conversations that have arisen after Matt Damon’s original interview and subsequent remarks today are an important reminder that this word, or any word that aims to disparage and disrespect LGBTQ people, has no place in mainstream media, social media, classrooms, workplaces, and beyond,” said Head of Talent Anthony Allen Ramos. “There needs to be accountability at a time when anti-LGBTQ slurs remain rampant today and can fuel discrimination and stereotypes, especially when used by those outside of the community to defame or describe LGBTQ people.”