Actress Jamie Lee Curtis fought back tears while discussing the assassination of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk on Monday.
Curtis, 66, broached the subject of the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder during a WTF podcast episode with Marc Maron. “Well... I’m gonna bring something up with you just because it’s front of mind,” she told the host. “Charlie Christ was killed two days ago.”
Maron clarified “Kirk, yeah, Charlie,” to which Curtis responded “Right. Kirk. I just call him Christ... I think because of Christ... Because of... his deep, deep belief.”
The Freaky Friday alum, an outspoken Democrat, noted that despite disagreeing with Kirk “on almost every point I ever heard him say,” she believes he “was a man of faith.”
“And I hope in that moment when he died, that he felt connected to his faith, even though I find what he, his ideas were abhorrent to me,” Curtis said, audibly crying on the podcast. “I still believe he’s a father and a husband and a man of faith. And I, I hope whatever connection to God means that he felt it.”
The conversation stemmed from a discussion about how the internet transformed media, leading to discourse about concerns with modern media desensitizing the people who consume it.
“My point is, yesterday was 9/11. I know there is video of his assassination, I know people who’ve seen it,” the actress said, comparing it to watching the Twin Towers fall.
“Today, we as a society are bombarded with imagery,” Curtis said. “So we don’t know what the longitudinal effects of seeing those towers come down over and over and over and over again. Or watching his execution over and over and over again.”
The actress also referenced the Zapruder film, the recording that unintentionally documented President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
“But it’s, as you know, the Zapruder film is the only visual document that moves, that shares that horror of what happened,” the actress pointed out, unlike videos depicting Kirk’s violent death, which have proliferated on social media over the past several days.
Curtis noted that unlike previous generations, the constant bombardment of graphic media have made society “numb” to horrors like Kirk’s passing.
“But here we have now these images and we are inured to them. And we are numb to them,” she said. “We don’t know enough psychologically about what that does. What does that do? That kind of, I don’t ever wanna see this footage of this man being shot.”
Kirk was fatally shot on Sep. 10 during a campus event at Utah Valley University. His death has since sparked nationwide outrage and discourse, with many prominent figures in politics and Hollywood weighing in on his assassination.
Besides Curtis, other major celebrities that have publicly mourned Kirk include The Office star Rainn Wilson, late-night host Stephen Colbert, Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger, and comedian Rosie O’Donnell.
