Remember that celebrity singalong of John Lennon’s “Imagine” that Gal Gadot organised back in March?
Of all the videos and messages celebrities have been putting out into the world during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s probably fair to say that that was one of the ones that went down the worst.
During the latest episode of his podcast Grounded, documentary-maker Louis Theroux spoke to actor Chris O’Dowd — who appeared in the video — to get his reaction to the backlash.
“First of all, thanks so much for bringing it up!” joked O’Dowd, who is good friends with Theroux. “Second of all, in terms of my interpretation of it, I think the backlash was justified.”
O’Dowd explained that he was asked to be in the video by his friend Kristen Wiig, who starred alongside Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman.
“I’ll do anything Kirsten asks me to do so of course we just did it,” he explained. “It took five minutes, didn’t think about it. I presumed it was for kids, or I know that Gal works for UNICEF — so I presumed it was a charity thing.”
O’Dowd said they were in that first wave of “creative diarrhoea” that momentarily encased the world during the early stages of social distancing.
“It was just a bunch of people running around thinking they had to do something, when we really didn’t,” he said. “We just needed to chill out and just take everything in. So I think any backlash was fairly justified.”
After that, the conversation turned to the broader role celebrities play in society, and how people perceive those in the spotlight.
“Essentially all we’re supposed to do — as you do in a lot of your work — is try and be a mirror to society,” said O’Dowd. “And sometimes it’s polished up a little bit, that’s fine. But if it feels like, ‘What were you doing?’ then we’re failing at our job.
“So then when something like [the “Imagine” video] is thrown on the internet, with very little thought gone into it, then it further exacerbates this idea that, who are these people who are supposed to be representing us?”
Grounded is available now on all major podcast platforms.