During an interview with Esquire, actor Woody Harrelson refused to back down from an SNL monologue of his in which he ripped into the Big Pharma companies, calling them “the biggest drug cartels in the world.”
That came in the context of him speaking about why he doesn’t read criticisms of himself or his performances, saying, “I don’t read it. It’s like when reviews come out for movies. I don’t look. Well, I did one time. I was in this play in San Francisco with Sean Penn in 2000. At one point, I was stretching in the place that I was renting there and there was an LA Times, and it had a picture of me and Sean on stage. I’d only been hearing, “Oh my God, the critics just love you! You’re going to be so psyched!” Well, it just so happened that the paper was open to the review, and I started reading it. Oh, it just went after me. It fucked me up for at least two, three performances. It’s a poison pill.”
When the interviewer asked, as a follow-up on that answer, if the backlash from his SNL monologue was something that “registers” with him, he said, “Well, people told me it was, shall we say, trending. No, I don’t look at that shit. 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 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.”
For reference, during the SNL monologue, he said, “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.”
Continuing, he then said, “I threw the script away. I mean, who is gonna believe that crazy idea! Being forced to do drugs? I do them voluntarily all day long.”
Woody Harrelson's monologue! pic.twitter.com/FAEcBDnIKu
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 26, 2023
Harrelson also spoke on his libertarian political beliefs during the interview, saying, “There are things that the liberals do that I think, ‘What f***ing idiots.’ And then there’s also conservative ideology that strikes me as odd. I consider myself, really, an anarchist. … Well, I’m probably more of a libertarian.”
Continuing, he pointed out that government seems to work only for its paymasters, Big Business, saying, “I never see government work. It always seems to be working for the people who got you there. It’s businessmen working for bigger businessmen. It’s not businessmen working for their constituents. I think government just usually sucks … am I wrong?”
He then noted that even the social programs people give as examples of why the government are necessary are just a way for it to try and sweep up more money from people, saying, “Even the social programs, they do it reluctantly, and they’re just always trying to gobble back what they can from the social programs.”
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