The decision of Avengers: Age of Ultron star, Robert Downey, Jr., to walk out on an interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy, a Channel 4 journalist, recently made the headlines. While the newscaster already aired his side in an article in The Guardian, it was only on Tuesday when the Iron Man actor took it upon himself to explain his decision to abandon the conversation.
In an effort to promote his latest superhero flick, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Downey, Jr. agreed to sit down with Guru-Murthy to presumably discuss the film. In what could only be regarded as an unexpected turn of events, the actor found himself facing questions from his tumultuous past including his days of drug addiction and his somewhat complicated relationship with Robert Downey, Sr., his father and a famous filmmaker.
"I'm one of those guys where I'm always kind of assuming the social decorum is in play and that we're promoting a superhero movie, a lot of kids are going to see it," Downey, Jr. explained when he came in as guest in Howard Stern's radio show, SiriusXM, as reported by Hollywood Reporter. "This [Avengers] has nothing to do with your creepy dark agenda that I'm feeling all of a sudden, like, ashamed and obligated to accommodate, your weirdo [expletive]," the actor said.
"I'm a 50-year-old guy," he continued, "I'm completely unevolved when it comes to simple boundaries. [I thought,] 'You know what? You're weirding me out. You're a bottom-feeding muckraker.'"
Downey, Jr. then added that Guru-Murthy must have made an assumption that his concurrence with conducting the interview was tantamount to agreeing to "be scrutinized like a kiddie fiddler who's running for mayor."
"I just wish I'd left sooner," the actor said.
He also added that he now has a plan in case this happens again. "What I have to do in the future is I just have to give myself permission to say, 'That is more than likely a syphilitic parasite, and I need to distance myself from this clown," Downey, Jr. disclosed. "Otherwise, I'm probably going to put hands on somebody, and then there's a real story,'" he added.
Meanwhile, Guru-Murthy wrote that Channel 4 News do not engage in "promotional interviews on Channel 4 News." In his piece published in The Guardian, the presenter shared that their team and the interviewee's PR team typically agree to discuss "a new movie for a while," then "ask wider ranging questions on relatively serious topics, and we don't guarantee to run any answers in particular."
