Earlier this week, Tom Cruise sparked a minor media outrage, after quotes he gave in a deposition in his libel suit against Bauer Media seemed to suggest that the actor felt that being away from his daughter on long movie shoots was analogous to serving in Afghanistan. Of course, it was eventually clarified that those quotes were taken out of context—clarified by TMZ, who took the quotes out of context in the first place, then put them in a giant headline—and that, obviously, Tom Cruise does not truly believe he is constantly fighting a grueling war for the fate of the world, at least not one involving humans. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop the story from becoming something of a PR disaster—one that, like so many other disasters, Mark Wahlberg could have shut down right away, if only he’d been there to stop it.
During a post-screening Q&A of his new film Lone Survivor, in which Wahlberg portrays real-life former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Wahlberg scoffed at a question regarding his training for the film—as well as any actor who might pretend their training even comes close to what real soldiers experience.
For actors to sit there and talk about ‘Oh I went to SEAL training,’ and I slept on the — I don’t give a fuck what you did. You don’t do what these guys did. For somebody to sit there and say my job was as difficult as somebody in the military’s. How fucking dare you? While you sit in a makeup chair for two hours. I don’t give a shit if you get your ass busted. You get to go home at the end of the day. You get to go to your hotel room. You get to order fucking chicken. Or your steak. Whatever the fuck it is.
Concluding his possible digs at Tom Cruise and definite digs at non-hamburger meats, Wahlberg apologized for “losing my shit,” admonishing the crowd, “Don’t ask any more questions tonight.” And alas, the world was forever denied the knowledge of whether Mark Wahlberg and his fellow cast members felt like real brothers.
Oh wait, no. They do. So, that’s settled.