{"id":416610,"date":"2026-01-19T11:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T11:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/416610\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T11:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T11:36:07","slug":"some-actors-would-prefer-to-go-to-jail-than-be-canceled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/416610\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Actors Would Prefer ‘to Go to Jail’ Than Be Canceled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMatt Damon<\/a> and Ben Affleck<\/a> are sharing their thoughts on cancel culture in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile promoting their new movie, The Rip<\/a>, the Oscar winners stopped by the Joe Rogan<\/a> Experience podcast<\/a>, where the host brought up the \u201cidea that one thing you said or one thing you did, and now we\u2019re going to exaggerate that to the fullest extent and cast you out of civilization for life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon, who agreed with Joe Rogan that cancel culture is a crazy concept, went on to suggest that some people in the industry would probably have preferred to go to prison rather than face lifetime public scrutiny. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever, and then come out and say, \u2018I paid my debt. Like, we\u2019re done. Like, can we be done?\u2019 The thing about that getting kind of excoriated, publicly like that, it just never ends. And it will just follow you to the grave,\u201d the Oppenheimer actor said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAffleck went on to compare cancel culture to the \u201ckind of sixth-grade instinct\u201d to point fingers and be like, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s in trouble.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHumans have dark, fucked up instincts too sometimes to isolate people or get joy out of someone else\u2019s\u2026 they\u2019re in trouble, because maybe because part of it is saying, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s not me.\u2019 So if you can point the finger, everyone\u2019s looking over there, we feel safer, you know?\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd to take any forgiveness out of it is a really fucked up thing because then it makes it impossible to actually go, \u2018All right, yeah, I did that. That was wrong. I get it.\u2019 Because it doesn\u2019t matter; once you\u2019ve said you\u2019ve done it, you become like an outcast,\u201d Affleck added. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t think anybody wants to think the sum total of who you are is your worst moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDamon knows a bit about what it\u2019s like to be at the center of controversy, as he faced backlash in 2021 <\/a>when he told the U.K.\u2019s\u00a0Sunday Times\u00a0that he only stopped using the \u201cf-slur for a homosexual\u201d months prior after his daughter wrote him \u201ca very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor later clarified in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter <\/a>that he has never used the slur personally. \u201cI have never called anyone \u2018f****t\u2019 in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening,\u201d Damon wrote in part. \u201cI do not use slurs of any kind. I have learned that eradicating prejudice requires active movement toward justice rather than finding passive comfort in imagining myself \u2018one of the good guys.\u2019 And given that open hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is still not uncommon, I understand why my statement led many to assume the worst. To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are sharing their thoughts on cancel culture in Hollywood. While promoting their new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[21821,88,36042,15281,206],"class_list":{"0":"post-416610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ben-affleck","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-joe-rogan","11":"tag-matt-damon","12":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}