wenn22408588

Robert Downey Jr. walked out on an interview yesterday with a British reporter. I recognize this reporter too – Krishnan Guru-Murthy is sort of a famous UK presenter/interviewer and he’s the same guy who hammered Quentin Tarantino (QT gave as good as he got) several years ago about QT’s love of film violence and love of the n-word. In this interview, RDJ is pretty game for the first half, like it’s completely normal to have a sober, intellectual conversation about Iron Man and comic-book movies in general. Skip ahead to about the 3:45-minute mark to see the lead-up to RDJ walking out, which you can see RDJ start to get prickly about politics.

I was sort of on RDJ’s side at first. I mean… yes, he’s promoting a Marvel movie and who cares about a quote he gave about politics five years ago? Then again, people bring up that quote (where he said going to jail made him more conservative politically) a lot about RDJ, and I think he explained it in the most non-committal, uncontroversial way possible, after all, he has to sell this movie to political liberals and conservatives. After that, the interview turns very, very awkward and you can see RDJ looking off-camera to his publicist (or the film’s publicist).

At the end of the day, I want to believe that it was the sort of slimy, awkward, ultra-personal way Guru-Murthy asked about RDJ’s drugged-out past that sent RDJ packing. After all, we know RDJ will talk about his past, sometimes without even being prompted by an interviewer. He’s talked about his past in many, many interviews before. If Guru-Murthy had simply fed some of RDJ’s past quotes back to him and asked, “Do you still believe this?” or “Do you still feel this struggle?” it might have been gone over a lot better. While I support Guru-Murthy’s right – and any journalist’s right – to ask any celebrity any question, I also think it’s fair game for a celebrity to walk out on an interview this creepily awkward.

Photos courtesy of WENN.
wenn22408588
wenn22408591
wenn22408953
wenn22409013
wenn22409448