Damon who told a British paper on the weekend that he only “retired the F slur” this year, now claims he has “never” used it.
Matt Damon has attempted to backtrack on comments he made to The Sunday Times revealing that he retired the f-slur” just “months ago” after being told off by his daughter.
The 50-year-old released a long statement to Variety saying he doesn’t use “slurs of any kind” and that his comments in The Sunday Times were misunderstood and “led many to assume the worst.”
Addressing the controversy, Damon attempts to explain himself.
“During a recent interview, I recalled a discussion I had with my daughter where I attempted to contextualise for her the progress that has been made – though by no means completed – since I was growing up in Boston and, as a child, heard the word ‘f*g’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to,” Damon said in the statement.
“I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003, she, in turn, expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly.
“To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalised it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice.”
The statement contradicts the comments the Bourne Identity actor made to The Sunday Times when he said he has recently used the “the f-slur” as a “joke” while “at the table” with his family when one of his daughters told him off.
“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” he told The Sunday Times.
“I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter. She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!’,” Damon said, referencing the 2003 film in which he plays a conjoined twin with Greg Kinnear.
“She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous. I said, “I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”
