A lot of famous men have had certified Bad Takes on the #MeToo movement, with Liam Neeson most recently dipping his toe in those murky waters for some reason, but Matt Damon already claimed his place last year as the face of the “Dudes Who Should Just Shut The Fuck Up” campaign. First there was a story about how he may have inadvertently tried to kill an exposé on the allegations against Harvey Weinstein way back in 2004, then he made the rookie man mistake of explaining that he knows sexual assault is wrong because he has daughters, then he suggested that some alleged sexual harassers are okay because they didn’t do anything that bad, and then Matt Damon decided that it would be a good idea to question why everyone’s talking about bad guys when they could be talking about nice guys like Matt Damon. Basically, he spent the last few months of 2017 doing very few favors for the other people trying to promote Downsizing.
Now, though, after what was presumably an intense period of soul-searching, Damon has finally—finally—returned with a better take. Speaking with Kathie Lee Gifford on NBC’s Today, Damon admitted that he should never have offered his opinion on any of this. “I really wish I’d listened a lot more before I weighed in,” he said, adding that he doesn’t “want to further anybody’s pain” with anything he does or says. Damon also apologized for his comments last year, saying he supports the Time’s Up initiative and that he wants “to be a part of that change and go along for that ride.”
Thankfully, he now knows what his ideal role is on that ride, saying, “I should get in the backseat and close my mouth for a while.” That might not seem like much, but acknowledging that you made things worse simply by offering your opinion is the hardest thing any man can ever do, so Damon probably deserves extra applause for this.