Julia Roberts has admitted that she still loves listening to The Smiths despite Morrissey‘s past controversies.
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Morrissey is name-checked in Roberts’s new film After The Hunt, in a scene where a character expresses her surprise that The Smiths’ music is playing despite his controversial political views.
His perceived proximity to the far-right made headlines as far back as 2016, when he hailed the Brexit result as “magnificent” and called Nigel Farage a “liberal educator”.
Later, in 2018, Morrissey said that he “despises” racism and fascism in an open letter that threw support behind the far-right party For Britain, which Anne Marie Waters formed following her departure from UKIP after Farage dubbed her and her supporters “Nazis and racists”.
Backlash continued in 2019 when Morrissey wore a badge featuring the logo of far-right anti-Islam political party For Britain during an appearance on Fallon, something he went on to address in an interview held by his nephew, Sam Etsy Rayner.
When asked by Rayner to clarify his political position, the musician says he had “never” been a supporter of UKIP or of Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, but said that “it’s obvious that [Farage] would make a good Prime Minister.”
Despite that it was recently revealed that he declined an invitation to perform at Reform UK’s party conference.
Speaking about her own view on Morrissey and The Smiths in a new interview with The Sunday Times, when asked about separating the art from the artist, cancellation, and if it is best to just bin your copy of ‘The Queen Is Dead’, Roberts said: “I love the Smiths. If we do that, we cheat ourselves from having a fully realised understanding. If you don’t know what it is that you’re being shielded from – how can you know better, do better, create better?”
She added: “Some things are big, horrible, ugly. And we can all agree that, ‘Yes, that was bad. Let’s not do that again’. But, then, there are other times where you think, ‘Well, who’s to say that this should be put in a barrel, set on fire? Who says that?’ We need nuance.”
After The Hunt is released in the US on October 10 and will be shown in the UK at various screenings at the BFI Film Festival from October 11.
Elsewhere, Morrissey closed applications to buy his stake in The Smiths.
He took to his website to share that he had “no choice but to offer for sale all of his business interests” in The Smiths to any potential investors or parties.
He explained in a statement: “I am burnt out by any and all connections to [Johnny] Marr, [Andy] Rourke, [Mike] Joyce. I have had enough of malicious associations. With my entire life I have paid my rightful dues to these songs and these images. I would now like to live disassociated from those who wish me nothing but ill-will and destruction, and this is the only resolution.”
A subsequent update shared that the email address has been “switched off” due to a “colossal response”.
