Hasta La Ideas

After putting up with – and unsuccessfully trying to chip away at – Sir Ben Kingsley’s tendency to sometimes trot out the same anecdotes during media interviews, The Guardian’s Zoe Williams decided to throw caution to the wind.

Having read a report in the Daily Mail detailing the actor’s attachment to a film project about a UK group connected to ISIS bad guy Jihadi John, she forged ahead in that direction. Sir Ben did not appreciate:

“Sorry, what are you talking about?” he says. Imagine he was king, and had arrived at an orphanage in a Rolls-Royce to adopt all the orphans and take them back to his palace, and I was a parking attendant who had stuck a ticket on his car: that gets you about halfway to the derision and disgust in his voice.

I explain the story again: “What did you say I’ve signed? I’ve not signed anything to do with this.” OK, fine, great! “Ah, sorry,” he continues, his revulsion turns to weariness at the petty-mindedness of the human condition. “Can we just stop it right there. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is where there has been an unfortunate invasion on your attempts to be a decent journalist. Because you will get your interlocutor to shutting down immediately.” “Seriously, it’s fine,” I say, thinking, if you’re not in a film called The Secret Evidence, why don’t you just say so? Why is it so indecent of me to ask? “Nothing I say can go viral,” he intones, as if you can control the Internet by force of will.

Let the “Nothing I say can go viral!” memes begin.

P.S. Based on our own experience with in-person celebrity interviews, we can confirm that A-listers sometimes just aren’t in the mood and-or can occasionally chafe at the battering-ram-like grind of a press tour, junket.

Previously on FishbowlNY:
Ben Kingsley Expands Upon His Mother’s Profound Disapproval
 
[H/T: @ChrisLInoa] [Photo: 360b/Shutterstock.com]