Awkward! An interview with Samuel L. Jackson and James McAvoy and ITV’s Lorraine Kelly went viral over its painfully cringeworthy exchanges.
The TV host, 59, spoke to the men from central London via live satellite on Friday, January 11. She kicked things off with a question about whether it was important to watch Unbreakable and Split before seeing M. Night Shyamalan’s latest release, Glass, in which Jackson and McAvoy reprise their characters of Elijah Price and Kevin Wendall Crumb, in order for it to make sense.
“No,” Jackson quipped before McAvoy shook his head and gave an emphatic, “No.”
“It’s a wonderful standalone piece,” the Pulp Fiction star said. “Not a bad idea, but not necessary.”
Things only got worse from there, with both men taking an uncomfortably long pause before answering the host’s inquiry about the film being “not your usual sort of big, action-packed story.”
“There’s a lot going on, isn’t there?” she asked.
“It’s cerebral,” Oscar nominee Jackson finally said.
The most awkward moment of all, however, came later on, when Kelly remarked that she couldn’t believe Jackson’s age of 71 (“Thank you. I’m not sure what that means, but thank you,” he replied) and that she appreciated both his and McAvoy’s lack of vanity.
“What I love about you two, in all the movies I’ve seen you do, there’s no vanity. There’s nothing like that, you just go for, and you, whatever the part requires, it doesn’t matter how bad you have to look, how horrible you have to be, you just go for it,” she said.
McAvoy, 39, lost his cool at that point, doubling in over in laughter as Jackson turned to his costar and said: “She talking to me or you? Which one of us are you talking to, are you talking to both of us?”
“I’m talking to both of you,” Kelly said through laughs.
“You talking about our dual commitment to, we don’t care how we look?” Jackson clarified.
“Yeah, I think that’s really good ’cause it means it’s really honest,” the journalist replied.
“Oh, OK,” Jackson said, with his castmate laughing. “Thanks, love. We’ve just got really good sense of humor; that’s the only reason we’ve got love in our lives.”
Fans couldn’t handle the clip, flooding the now-disabled comments section with remarks such as, “Thank God that conversation is over, even my dogs were cringing,” and “This interview reminds me of my grandma talking to naughty children who just want to laugh at her.”
One fan stuck up for Kelly, however, tweetingOpens a New Window., “Awkward interview with Samuel L Jackson and James McAvoy on #Lorraine great when actors really sell their films during junkets…this isn’t one of those times.”
