In an interview with The Sunday Times published after the release of his latest film Stillwater, the actor claimed that he recently stopped using a homophobic slur after his daughter asked him not to anymore.
“The word that my daughter calls the ‘f-slur for a homosexual’ was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application," he said in the interview. "I made a joke, months ago, and got a treatise from my daughter.”
“She left the table. I said, ‘Come on, that’s a joke! I say it in the movie Stuck on You!’ She went to her room and wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous."
"I said, ‘I retire the f-slur!’ I understood.”
As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Damon also addressed criticisms he faced from his previous comments surrounding the many allegations against disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
“I understand," he said in the interview. "It’s a fair point. Anybody should be offended by that behavior.”
He also claimed that his interview comments are being received differently than they used to be: “Twenty years ago, the best way I can put it is that the journalist listened to the music more than the lyrics [of an interview]. Now your lyrics are getting parsed, to pull them out of context and get the best headline possible.”
“Everyone needs clicks. Before it didn’t really matter what I said, because it didn’t make the news. But maybe this shift is a good thing. So I shut the fuck up more.”
