Academy Award-winner Matthew McConaughey says the entertainment industry should accept Donald Trump as president and attempt to work with him.
In a Sunday interview on BBC One’s cultural and political affairs program “The Andrew Marr Show,” McConaughey, 47, responded to Marr, 57, asking of Trump, “Do you think it’s time that maybe Hollywood and the cultural elite of America gave this guy a break?”
“Well, they don’t have a choice now,” McConaughey said. “He’s our president. And … as divisive of an inauguration and time that we’ve ever had, at the same time, it’s time for us to embrace [and] shake hands with this fact and be constructive with him over the next four years.”
The “Dallas Buyers Club” Oscar-winner went on to say, “So even those who most strongly may disagree with his principles or things he’s said and done — which is another thing, we’ll see what he does compared to what he had said — no matter how much you disagreed along the way, it’s time to think how constructive can you be. Because he’s our president for the next four years, at least. President of the United States.”
Many entertainers have spoken out against the Trump administration’s plans, which reportedly include government defunding of the arts. Time magazine counted 50 entertainers and authors, including Oscar winners Jennifer Lawrence and Julianne Moore, as well as Miley Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres, Rihanna, Seth Rogen, J.K. Rowling, Bruce Springsteen and Kerry Washington, who tweeted in opposition to the recent immigration ban.
Meryl Streep earned the ire of conservative commentators last month following her acceptance speech for the Golden Globes’ lifetime-achievement award. Without mentioning Trump by name, she denounced “this instinct to humiliate” that “filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing,” and adding, “We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call him on the carpet for every outrage.”
