British actress Emily Blunt says she was caught off guard by the impassioned response to her recent comments about her newly obtained American citizenship.
Last month, Blunt told the Hollywood Reporter that watching the first Republican presidential debate made her regret having just become an American citizen: “I became an American citizen recently, and that night, we watched the Republican debate and I thought, ‘This was a terrible mistake, what have I done?'”
In an interview with Howard Stern on Wednesday, the actress maintained her comment was made in good sport.
“I was bummed, I have to say,” Blunt said of the backlash to her comments. “I was sort of astonished by the outrage because it was meant completely as an innocuous joke. So I think I was more just quite taken aback, so it did bum me out.”
“I thought this controversy was ridiculous,” Stern told the actress Wednesday. “Fox News was beating the sh*t out of you… but you addressed it properly.”
“And I think it does make you feel like you’ve gotta be a little cagey,” Blunt added. “I realize political jokes at this time of year may be a little…”
Blunt also revealed that she passed her American citizenship test after answering her first six questions correctly.
“I do [feel good about being an American citizen],” Blunt said. “I have a real affection for the country, and so I’m happy here.”
Of course, Stern couldn’t let the interview pass without asking Blunt why her nude scenes were cut from her most recent film, the drug war thriller Sicario.
“[A nude scene] was in there originally but it came out because we didn’t agree with it,” Blunt said. When Stern asked who she meant by “we,” the actress replied, “My tits.”
“Benicio [del Toro] backed me up,” she added. “It was a scene between he and I.”
Check out more from Blunt’s Howard Stern interview here.