Matt Damon is learning from his daughters how he can be a better ally — which includes dropping the “f-slur.”
In a recent interview with UK Sunday Times for his film Stillwater, the 50-year-old revealed he was recently given a lesson by one of his daughters about why using “the f-slur for a homosexual” is “dangerous.”
“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application,” Damon revealed to the outlet. “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 went on to detail that his daughter “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,” Damon added. He did not specify which daughter he had the conversation with. Damon shares daughters Stella, 10, Gia, 12, Isabella, 15, and Alexia, 22, with wife Luciana Barroso. Damon has previously apologized for controversial comments regarding sexual harassment in Hollywood.
“There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right?” Damon said in a December 2017 interview with ABC News’ Popcorn with Peter Travers.
“Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated, without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?”
The following month, Damon apologized on the Today show, saying: “I really wish I’d listened a lot more before I weighed in on this. … Ultimately, what it is for me is that I don’t want to further anybody’s pain with anything that I do or say, so for that, I’m really sorry.”
He continued, “And Time’s Up — a lot of those women are my dear friends and I love them and respect them and support what they’re doing and want to be a part of that change and want to go along for the ride, but I should get in the backseat and close my mouth for a while.”
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Damon also addressed (once again) the incident in his recent interview with the Times, when questioned about his previous quotes regarding Harvey Weinstein.
“As the father of four daughters, this is the kind of sexual predation that keeps me up at night,” Damon said. Many were upset that Damon would use the allegations against Weinstein, 69, in the context of fatherhood. To which he told the Times, “I understand. It’s a fair point. Anybody should be offended by that behavior.”
“I just think that there’s a tendency now … Twenty years ago, the best way I can put it is that the journalist listened to the music more than the lyrics [of an interview],” Damon said. “Now your lyrics are getting parsed, to pull them out of context and get the best headline possible. Everyone needs clicks.”
“Before, it didn’t really matter what I said, because it didn’t make the news. But maybe this shift is a good thing,” he added. “So I shut the f— up more.”
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