Hugh Grant "loathes" the internet "with such violence" for clickbaiting him

We here at The A.V. Club rejoice when Hugh Grant is on a press tour for the gems he’s constantly dropping (a favorite: his anecdote about how the hot dogs on Two Weeks Notice “blew my ass out“). Though we love his curmudgeonly ways, Grant unfortunately doesn’t always love how he’s being received. For instance, he once “just for a comedy moment” said he “hated” working on Wonka, he tells Variety in a new interview. “But on the web, it’s become a fact that I hated making that film. And I didn’t hate it all; I loved making it. I’m absolutely thrilled with it.”

To Grant, “That’s what the internet does. It scrubs humor, and it scrubs context to create little clickbait moments. It’s one of the reasons I loathe it with such violence, really.”

As denizens of the internet and purveyors of Hugh Grant News, we can’t fault him for his hatred. But, in all fairness, he hates a lot of stuff. In a recent conversation on Late Night With Seth Meyers, he went over a list of his pet peeves. They include: walking slowly and/or loudly, people wearing backpacks, people wearing backpacks with water bottles, just water bottles, and leaf blowers (a peeve he shares with Cate Blanchett). Of the latter, he says that anyone who uses a leaf blower or hires someone to use a leaf blower “should have it rectally inserted,” which is pretty much definitionally loathing something with violence. 

Not all of Grant’s peeves are petty, particularly the ones with the press. Last year he reluctantly settled a lawsuit against the tabloid The Sun over accusations of tapping his phone and breaking into his home. “[Rupert] Murdoch’s settlement money has a stink and I refuse to let this be hush money,” Grant said in a statement at the time (via the Associated Press). “I have spent the best part of 12 years fighting for a free press that does not distort the truth, abuse ordinary members of the public or hold elected (members of Parliament) to ransom in pursuit of newspaper barons’ personal profit and political power.”