In a wide-ranging interview with comedian Joe Rogan, actor Billy Bob Thornton criticized celebrities using award shows for political activism, calling modern ceremonies self-congratulatory events with “dry chicken breast” and speeches about personal greatness.
Additionally, he asked award winners to speak about the people who facilitated their roles, rather than engaging in political grandstanding. He made a series of sarcastic comments about “saving the badgers” with their own massive fortunes, instead of asking for donations.
Speaking about awards, the actor said, “I’ve got plenty of them [awards] and won most of them under the wire, when awards were kind of real still.” Adding, “But these days I just look at it as like, ‘Oh, OK, we’re gonna go over here and, you know, have some dry chicken breast and green beans, you know, and we’ll listen to people get up there and pontificate about how awesome they are.'”
Clearly annoyed with the whole display of hubris many of his colleagues exhibit once behind the microphone, Thornton continued, “There is a time and place for that… you should just stick to what it is. Don’t go up there and talk about saving the badgers in Wisconsin or something, you know what I’m saying?”
Adding more context, Thorton joked, “Well, how about this? If you have a billion dollars, and you want to save the badgers, f—ing save them… That is not, that’s barely gonna cut into your budget. If I had been nominated for an Academy Award when I was 21, who knows what I would have done with it? I think if it had happened when I was 18 or 21, who knows if I’d even be here now because I was a little bit looser back in those days.”
Making his feelings more clear, Billy Bob Thornton declared, “Accept your little award and f**k off.” Building on this point, he noted. “Unless you have really studied stuff and know about a subject fully, who the hell would want to listen to an actor or musician talk about politics?” Watch him here:
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Contrasting his attitude regarding philanthropy and donations to those of normal celebrities, Billy Bob Thornton noted, “I donate to a lot of charities, mainly children’s stuff, but nobody knows it. I don’t go to the award show and talk about it when I’m getting my award.”
Additionally, he criticized Hollywood for its anti-southern bias. “There was a prejudice in Hollywood when I first got out there. There still kind of is. Southerners don’t often get picked or even noticed for things. Like, let’s say, you’re doing a gangster movie in the ’30s in New York, even if you can do the accent, but people from New York can get parts playing Southerners. That still goes on.”
Agreeing with Thornton, Joe Rogan said, “It is like ‘saying how special you are because you’re really concerned about people in Sudan or whatever’ and is their way ‘to let everybody know that you’re an amazing person.'”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video