Photo: Presley Ann/Getty Images for CTAOP
Do not expect to see Glen Powell stumping for a Texas senate candidate anytime soon. In an interview with Esquire, the actor said he stays away from politics because he doesn’t enjoy “the discourse.”
“Over time, I realized that politics divide people,” Powell said. “People trying to prove their point — for me, it’s the worst version of a conversation. I genuinely do not like the discourse.” It does sort of seem that Powell thinks politics is simply a conversation that might make things awkward at a dinner party and not something that directly affects people’s real lives. Anyway, he kept talking.
“It’s not as healthy as it once was,” Powell said, bemoaning a bygone era — perhaps the one during which his mother worked for the U.S. Treasury Department during the Reagan administration — when the political arena was more civil. Engaging in politics, he said, “is not presently possible. I applaud people for jumping into those things and fighting for what they believe in. If I were a political person, I would be talking about it. For me, my calling is elsewhere.”
“For me, my calling is elsewhere” is, unfortunately, an amazing way to say you don’t want to do something. A tertiary friend’s birthday party? A boss asking you to do something outside of your scope? Your partner requesting that you wash your bowl immediately so that oatmeal doesn’t get caked onto it? “For me, my calling is elsewhere.”
For Powell, it seems as though his calling is actually in Texas, where he’s bought homes for himself, his parents, and his sisters. Coincidentally, that’s also where the nation’s biggest Senate race is currently taking place. Surely he has an opinion on James Talarico’s attempt to turn the state blue, but I guess it’s “not presently possible” for us to know what that might be.
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