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Jamie Lee Curtis claims her emotional reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death was misinterpreted. In September, the actress appeared on the podcast “WTF with Marc Maron” and tearfully explained that she “did not agree with him on almost everything I heard from him” but hoped he felt “connected to his faith” when he died.
In a recent Interview with Variety Curtis clarified that her comments had been “mistranslated.” “I just talked about his faith in God,” she said. “An excerpt from it mistranslated my words when I wished him well – as if I was speaking very positively about him, which I wasn’t. So it was a mistranslation, which is a play on words, but then again, it’s not.”
People no longer understand ambivalence
Curtis emphasized in the interview that in today’s world it is hardly possible to express two ideas at the same time without being misunderstood. “In today’s binary world, you can’t hold two ideas at the same time,” she explained.
Her attempt to express compassion and human complexity was interpreted by some media as a defense of Kirk’s political ideas. She simply wanted to emphasize that even people with extreme views should not be reduced to their religious or human dimensions.
In the original podcast interview, Curtis said, “While I find his ideas abhorrent, I still believe he is a father and a husband and a man of faith, and I hope that whatever ‘connection to God’ means, he felt it.”
The “vile ideas” presumably included Kirk’s vehement anti-trans stance – an issue that is personally relevant to Curtis, as her daughter is trans.
After that statement, Curtis began the conversation to reflect on other social issues, from 9/11 to the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the footage of the moment Kirk was shot during a lecture at Utah Valley University.
Jamie Lee Curtis on Gaza, empathy and contradiction
In an interview with Variety, Curtis also tried to steer the discussion towards a larger moral and political area of tension. She spoke about Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza and her compassion for both sides:
“I cannot be Jewish and fully believe in Israel’s right to exist and at the same time reject the destruction of Gaza,” Curtis said. “You can’t say that because you’ll be vilified for thinking, ‘I can have both thoughts. I can be contradictory about that.'”