Matt Damon Gets Apology and Retraction Over ‘Inaccurate’ Post On Actors Strike Affecting His Company

By Tommy ChristopherJul 15th, 2023, 1:26 pm
 

Actor and producer Matt Damon got a quick retraction and an apology over an “inaccurate” post about remarks he made that made him appear sympathetic to the studio companies.

The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union went on strike Thursday against the  Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), joining the Writers’ Guild of America in grinding Hollywood to a halt over issues like Artificial Intelligence and compensation in the streaming era.

Damon spoke to Deadline Hollywood shortly before the strike was announced, as he walked the red carpet for the Oppenheimer premier. Hie remarks were posted with this caption:

Matt Damon at the #Oppenheimer premiere says that the Hollywood labor strikes will be brutal for actors and his own production company, which has shut down one of his company’s films

But the video shows Damon offering unequivocal and vehement support for the actors, and only an incidental mention of his company:

Ben and I just started this little independent studio and, you know, we’re we’re three and a half movies and we’re shut down on one of them right now. We’re just waiting for everything to resolve. So and it’s you know, it’s brutal for our sister unions, it’s brutal for IATSE, you know what I mean? It’s like…

And it’s going to be tough for for for for the actor, for 160,000 actors. So nobody wants a work stoppage. But if our leadership is saying that the deal isn’t fair, then, then we got to… We got to we got to hold strong til we get a deal. That’s fair for for for working actors. You know, it’s the difference between having health care and not for a lot of, for a lot of actors. And we got to do what’s right by them.

Producer/Writer/Director Eric Haywood remarked “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Deadline pull an about-face *this* abruptly. Matt Damon’s lawyers must’ve REALLY got in that ass, lol,” and posted screenshots of both tweets.

Damon’s remarks were picked up by the entertainment press and included in news packages on the strike. He and the rest of the Oppenheimer cast walked out of the premier when the strike was announced.

Watch above via Inside Edition.

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