Jamie Lee Curtis Breaks Silence on Backlash After Charlie Kirk Comments

Jamie Lee Curtis broke her silence after receiving “threatening” backlash following her emotional reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death.

“An excerpt of it mistranslated what I was saying as I wished him well — like I was talking about him in a very positive way, which I wasn’t,” Curtis, 66, clarified in an interview with Variety, published on Tuesday, October 28. “I was simply talking about his faith in God. And so it was a mistranslation, which is a pun, but not.”

The actress further explained that we live in a “binary world today,” so “you cannot hold two ideas at the same time.” Curtis noted that you get “vilified for having a mind” that holds two thoughts that might be contradictory.

“I don’t have to be careful,” Curtis said, despite her status as a public figure. “If I was careful, I wouldn’t have told you any of what I just told you.”

She continued, “I would have just said, ‘Hi, welcome. I baked you banana bread. Here’s my dog. Here’s my house, blah, blah, blah. What do you want to know?’ I can’t not be who I am in the moment I am.”

The Variety interview was conducted one day after Curtis appeared on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast last month. Curtis brought up Kirk’s death during the conversation.

“I’m going to bring something up with you just because it’s front of mind. Charlie Crist was killed two days ago,” she said during the September 15 podcast episode. “Sorry, Kirk. I just call him Crist, I think, because of Christ, because of his deep belief.”

When her comments initially surfaced, several social media users were confused by what appeared to be support from Curtis when Kirk had spoken out publicly against the transgender community. Curtis’ daughter Ruby is a trans woman.

Curtis acknowledged that she disagreed with Kirk on “almost every point I ever heard him say,” but wanted to discuss his strong religion.

“I believe he was a man of faith, and I hope in that moment when he died that he felt connected to his faith,” she continued, getting emotional. “Even though I find what his ideas were abhorrent to me, I still believe he’s a father and a husband and a man of faith, and I hope whatever ‘connection to God’ means, that he felt it.”

Kirk died at age 31 after being shot and killed while speaking at an event on the Utah Valley University campus on September 10. Police arrested Tyler Robinson after identifying him as Kirk’s alleged shooter on September 12. He is currently being held at the Utah County Jail without bail.

A video of Kirk being shot has been circulating on social media since the incident occurred. Curtis said on the “WTF” podcast that “we don’t know what the longitudinal effects” are of seeing Kirk’s “execution over and over and over again” online.

“We are numb to them, but they are in there,” Curtis continued. “We don’t know, we don’t know enough psychologically about what that does. What does that do?”