5 Celebrities Whose Quotes Got Taken Totally Out of Context

5 Denzel Washington

Gladiator II came to home media last month, and the campaign pushed you to see it by saying, “They don’t make movies like this anymore.” That’s a borderline-insane thing to say, since one movie like this was made earlier that very year, and its name was Gladiator II.

Some ads for the campaign shed light on this tagline. They’re actually quoting star Denzel Washington, who said, “Movies aren’t made like this anymore.” Okay, that takes the blame off the ad writer who repeated that line, but now we’ve got someone else to blame, and it’s Denzel Washington. 

Except, that clip starts in the middle of his sentence. He gave an interview, talking about the scale of film, and this is what he said: “It’s a ride, it’s a spectacle. It’s on a grand scale. I don’t want to say movies aren’t made like this anymore, I don’t know, but just riding past what looked like thousands of soldiers and the beautiful costumes and the colors and the swords and the shields and the horses, all of it. It’s more than a movie for me.”

He said he didn’t want to say movies aren’t made like this anymore — but hey, he did say it. It’s an exact quote!

4 Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry received some attacks online last month, having supposedly said on a podcast that trans people are “shameful and sad.” This led to wide mockery of him as not just a traitor to the LGBTQ+ community but also a fake intellectual, and an irrelevant has-been.

Fry didn’t call trans people shameful and sad. The question was about one specific group that said lesbians who refuse to have sex with people with penises are equivalent to racists. Fry had supported this group in the past. He supported them in 1991, when they sent Ian McKellen to talk to the Prime Minister, regarding how Britain used to have a special elevated age of consent for gay men. That meeting led Britain to lower that age from 21 to 18, which was still above the age of consent for straight people, which is 16. 

Asked about the old support, Fry now said he doesn’t support the latest push from the organization. And even so, he didn’t call the people shameful and sad but called this shift shameful and sad. Then he pivoted from there to talking about his general complaints with the “community,” which turned out to be a joking anecdote about how when he’d go to clubs, no one found him attractive. “I found other gay people monstrous,” he said. “But I knew that was my own fault, my insecurity. Don’t quote me saying, ‘I hate all gay people,’ because that’s obviously nonsense.” 

That might seem like he’d sidestepped talking about trans issues altogether. But earlier in that same podcast, he brought up the subject of trans people, on his own accord.

This is a free speech podcast (its name is the groanworthy pun Triggernometry), and the hosts asked Fry about a famous quote of his, about how saying, “I’m offended” doesn’t really mark someone as being in the right. “It has no reason to be respected as a phrase,” he said in 2005. “‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?” You might have seen the quote reproduced many times in meme form. 

The hosts wanted Fry to double down on this. They could reasonably expect him to, both because he’d said it before and because you can count on any comedian becoming increasingly skeptical of sensibilities as they age and people invent strange new standards. Sure enough, Fry shared a story about coming to the aid of someone who was arrested over a joke tweet (which is something that actually does happen in Britain), but then he switched gears.

“I’m in a taxi,” he said, “and the driver says, ‘Stephen, you can’t say anything these days, can you?’ And I want to say to him, ‘Here, you’re in a safe space, as people like to say. You’re in a cab with me. You can say anything. What is there that you wanted to say in the past that you haven’t been able to say?’ And they won’t say. Because they know what they want to say is actually disgusting probably to most people. It’s just bad manners. It’s inconsiderate. And yes, I say, ‘So what if you’re offended,’ but at the same time, you recognize it. And a decent person doesn’t want to offend people.” 

They moved on to comedians specifically, and Fry now said, “Unlike Dave Chappelle — and not that Dave Chappelle has no right to say whatever he wants to say as a comedian, I’m not going to argue with that — but it’s a pity that in order to show that they are supremely free in their speech, a lot of comedians today will punch low. I mean, does no one have sympathy for some poor child who believes they’ve been born into the wrong body as far as gender is concerned? 

“Whatever one’s view about real biological sex and gender, not to have sympathy or indeed some admiration for the bravery of children who turn up at school in different clothing and argue their feelings... Not to have any sympathy for it and to use them as the butt of your humor? Bill Hicks used himself as the butt, and you and you as the butt, not some poor minority group that is already mocked enough in life.”

Repeatedly in the conversation, he takes detours to avoid the current hot-button topic of puberty blockers (you can watch the whole podcast to hear his comments with no omissions), but there’s really no way to hear his comments and come away saying they were anti-trans overall. It’s possible he came with pro-trans comments mentally prepared. It’s possible he chose his shirt and tie to form a trans pride flag.

But the briefer the summary, the more misleading it will be. The very title of the podcast episode is misleading. Fry blamed his side for losing politically, so the title grabs a quote to summarize this: “The Rise of the Right Is the Left's Fault — Stephen Fry.”

3 Martin Scorsese

If we go by sheer number of online articles, the most important topic that Martin Scorsese has concerned himself with for the past five years is Marvel movies. This is because every time someone interviews him, they’ll ask one question about his famous past comments on the subject, and then a hundred outlets will publish their own article mentioning just that question and answer.

It started in 2019, when Empire interviewed him about The Irishman. Few read the whole interview at the time, as the interview appeared exclusively in the print magazine, but Empire Online published it online later, after other outlets made one excerpt famous. The interviewer asked him about Marvel movies because they were talking about de-aging, and Captain Marvel had tried this on Samuel L. Jackson much as The Irishman had on Robert De Niro. Scorsese was unable to compare the two results because he doesn’t watch Marvel movies. He doesn’t watch them because Marvel movies “aren’t cinema,” and this quote circulated widely.

More specifically, he said, “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.” A few months later, he wrote an entire New York Times op-ed to clarify this. He wasn’t objecting to superhero movies specifically but pointing out that movies made by committee don’t communicate art in the way auteur films do. 

“They are sequels in name, but they are remakes in spirit,” he wrote, “and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.”

Earlier, he’d called Marvel movies “theme parks” more than the cinema of humans conveying psychological experiences. And now, he clarified that calling them theme parks isn’t itself an insult. Hitchcock movies are theme park rides, sometimes. Denzel Washington called Gladiator II a ride. Theme park rides are fun. But films can be that and also more. 

You’d think an entire essay clarifying a quote would be the final word on the subject, but people keep asking him about it, giving audiences the false impression that this is a crusade he refuses to abandon. When Killers of the Flower Moon came out, GQ did an 8,000-word profile on him, but the headline other outlets picked up was, “Martin Scorsese Says Plethora of Comic Book Movies Are a ‘Danger’ to Culture.” 

Also, you can count on interviews with any superhero actor to bring the matter up at some point. The Times profiled Chris Hemsworth about the discovery that he’s at high risk of contracting Alzheimer’s. What were other outlets’ takeaway from the interview? Chris Hemsworth Slams Marvel Criticisms by Martin Scorsese.

2 Brian Cox

Here’s another supposed feud that the media won’t let die. In 2021, The New Yorker did an article on Jeremy Strong’s acting style, and they interviewed Succession costar Brian Cox about it. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous,” he said. “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare. Actors are funny creatures. I’ve worked with intense actors before. It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job.” 

That’s a fairly benign concern. But that article went viral for the other stuff it covered, and now, people ask Brian Cox about the topic whenever they interview him about anything. 

In 2023, headlines read, “Brian Cox Slams Jeremy Strong’s Method Acting as ‘F—ing Annoying’: ‘Don’t Get Me Going On It.’” And it’s true: Cox said that. But they took that quote from a different magazine’s 3,000-word article, and before it, he said, “He’s a very good actor, and the rest of the ensemble is all okay with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skillset.” 

Then the interviewer asked him if it’s annoying when someone always stays in character. Cox replied, “Oh, it’s fucking annoying. Don’t get me going on it.” Based on how conversation works, you understand that Cox is being funny there, right? He next said, “Strong is talented. He’s fucking gifted. When you’ve got the gift, celebrate the gift. Go back to your trailer and have a hit of marijuana, you know?”

Last month, headlines told us about this ongoing conflict again. “Brian Cox Accuses ‘Succession’ Co-star of Causing ‘Hostility’ for the Cast,” said the New York Post, leading with, “Brian Cox is speaking out (again) about Jeremy Strong’s method acting approach — this time, implying that it caused an even bigger negative impact on the Succession cast than initially believed.”

“Hostility” is a direct quote, sure. But reading that, you’d swear that this is something Cox brought up rather than one thing that came up in a 4,000-word interview he gave to plug the play he and his wife are in. In that interview, The Guardian frames the subject a little differently, first bringing up the old method acting thing and then saying, “But, today, the newly circumspect Cox would like to accentuate the positive. ‘He was wonderful to act with. I had no argument with Jeremy’s acting.’ But? ‘He would be an even better actor if he just got rid of that so there would be much more inclusiveness in what he did.’”

1 Jenna Ortega

Variety gave the world this headline last April: “Jenna Ortega Says Approaching ‘Everything I Do With the Confidence of the Average White Man Changed My Life’ and ‘Made Me Feel Better.’”

We suppose, if you have a bone to pick with average white men, this concept might make you cheer. It would also inspire rage in many white men, and we can assume Variety anticipated this. 

She did say what the headline said she did. But she said this was advice someone else gave her, and the context was her handling a cello on her show without really knowing how to play it. When she says, “And that changed my life,” we can take that as deadpan comic hyperbole, because she’s talking about advice she received on the show she’s doing “right now,” not some formative juncture.

That wasn’t the craziest mischaracterization anyone has suffered, but what we really find interesting is what she said immediately after that in that same interview. The question was, “What question are you sick of being asked?” Surely the answer was that she was sick of being asked about that one dance scene in her Wednesday show. Instead, she said:

“I just feel like a lot of things are soundbites now... I think a lot of times when you do an interview now, people are just waiting for that one bite or one headline. And the things they ask you to touch upon are often trends and viral clips and moments and things that — yeah, sure, it’s fun to acknowledge and appreciate and talk about, but I feel like the internet doesn’t know when to quit it, or when to drop something...

“I feel like people oftentimes don’t even read a full interview anymore. They read a tweet of something that somebody said that probably is misworded and then it’s — that.” 

So, someone whose job it is to comb interviews watched that and said to themselves, “Oh yeah, grabbing one soundbite for a headline. That sounds great. Let me do that right this second.”

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