Adam Driver was right to leave his interview with NPR and here’s why
Adam Driver recently walked out of an interview with NPR when they played a clip of him from Marriage Story. He was right to do so, and here’s why.
It’s not often you see a white male actor trending on Twitter and actually take his side, but 2020 is almost here and anything can happen. And that anything includes a renowned radio program completely ignoring an actor’s stated boundaries and mental health issues and then acting surprised when he decides to take himself out of the situation.
So, what happened exactly? Adam Driver was being interviewed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross. He’s promoting both Marriage Story and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Gross decided she wanted to play a clip of Driver from Marriage Story where he’s both acting and singing. Because of this and his well-known anxiety about watching and listening to himself perform, he left the interview.
According to The Daily Beast, there is at least one source saying that Gross and her team already knew about his anxiety and phobia, meaning they disregarded that and played the clip anyway. The executive producer of Fresh Air, Danny Miller, stated that they “didn’t understand why he left.”
It’s not possible that they didn’t know. Why? Because he talked about this anxiety and how he can never watch or listen to himself in something he’s been in on Fresh Air in 2015. They only had to look at their own archives to realize that they shouldn’t play a clip while he was in the room. It’s that simple.
Here is part of the transcript from their 2015 interview:
"GROSS: So I should say, I just listened back to that clip, but you didn’t. You declined to hear it. You took off your headphones. Why don’t you want to hear the clip of your film or your own work?DRIVER: ‘Cause I don’t want to hear the bad acting that probably was (laughter) happening during that clip.GROSS: Does it throw you off to hear yourself?DRIVER: Yeah, no, I’ve watched myself or listened to myself before, then always hate it. And then wish I could change it, but you can’t. And I – you know, I think I have, like, a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change."
Now that the story is out, people are either being snide and making it into an actor being too full of himself or they’re defending Driver as someone who has a phobia or an anxiety and did exactly the right thing.
As someone with diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder, I’ve walked out of my fair share of rooms. Sometimes, it’s just too much and you need to leave the situation before your mental health is damaged. I certainly understand Driver’s actions.
He was taking care of himself. He set up a boundary and someone decided to cross it. They shouldn’t be surprised at the consequences. And they certainly shouldn’t act like they didn’t know.
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