Actor Woody Harrelson has come under fire for making a joke about coronavirus vaccine mandates during his monologue as host of Saturday Night Live, in which he compared pharmaceutical companies to drug cartels.
Harrelson, taking on SNL duties this week for the fifth time in his career, told a parable about the “craziest script” he has ever read.
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“So the movie goes like this,” Harrelson said. “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes.”
“And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over,” the True Detective star added. “I threw they script away. I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day long!”
Harrelson was quickly attacked on social media and by various entertainment news outlets.
“Thank you, @nbcsnl, for Woody Harrelson’s insipid anti-vax monologue,” one Twitter user reacted. “Who are [you] going to have guest host next week, Scott Baio? Rob Schneider? Kevin Sorbo? Maybe invite Kanye back while you’re at it.”
“Whenever anyone spews anti-vax stupidity, I always think of the countless videos of traumatized/crying doctors, nurses and hospital workers who were climbing over bodies in Covid’s early days,” another lamented. “So yeah, fuck Woody Harrelson.”
Another Twitter user suggested that Harrelson strayed from his “cue cards” and made the jokes “without permission” from SNL.
“Woody Harrelson sounding like an antivaxxer,” another wrote.
Others, however, applauded Harrelson for publicly accusing the media of “being owned by the Big Pharma Drug Cartel.”
“Get ready for the meltdowns…” one Twitter user anticipated.
“Woody Harrelson sums up the Covid scam perfectly,” Rebel News correspondent Avi Yemini tweeted.
“Woody Harrelson calling out big pharma on SNL is [fire],” the Hodge twins wrote.
“People don’t seem to understand, Woody Harrelson is what liberals used to be,” another Twitter user pointed out, reminding readers that before 2020, liberals had always been adamantly against big pharma.
This is not the first time the Natural Born Killers star has shared his distrust in big pharma.
“Think of the billions of dollars that have gone to big pharma,” Harrelson said in a previous interview with Bill Maher. “The last people I would trust with my health is big pharma and big government, because neither one of those strike me as caring entities.”
“They’re all about profit,” he added.
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