Robert Downey Jnr has said his only regret about his now infamous interview with Channel 4 is that he didn’t walk out sooner.
The actor sat down to talk with Krishnan Guru-Murthy while on a press junket for Avengers: Age Of Ultron but the interview quickly went sour when the reporter began asking Downey Jnr about his personal life.
The Iron Man star became increasingly uncomfortable as the interview progressed and eventually walked out of the room in frustration.
Speaking this week, Downey Jnr was clearly still irked by the turn of events and branded Guru-Murthy a “bottom feeding muckraker”.
“I wish I left sooner. I am completely unevolved when it comes down to civil boundaries like, ‘You know what, you’re weirding me out. You are a bottom-feeding muckraker’. This was the first interview of the day, I didn’t know what to expect,” he said.
“What I have to do in the future is… distance myself from this clown, otherwise I’m probably going to put hands on somebody and then there’s a real story.”
He added that he was taken aback by Murthy’s questions, particularly given the nature of the movie he was promoting.
“I’m one of those guys who always assumes the social decorum isn’t in play and we’re promoting a superhero movie and a lot of kids are going to see it,” he told Howard Stern.
“It has nothing to do with your (Murthy’s) creepy, dark agenda, that I’m all of a sudden feeling obligated to accommodate your weirdo s**t.”
Guru-Murthy has also spoken out on the awkward encounter, saying that he was attempting to get an interesting angle and thought the actor’s response was unnecessary.
“Before Robert Downey Jr arrived one of the PR assistants warned us it could all end in a meltdown, though for very different reasons. For the hour while we set up cameras and lights an extra air-conditioning unit was blasting fridge-temperature air into the room. “He’ll just walk straight out if it isn’t cold enough in here when he arrives,” said the nice lady.
“When he did arrive, and I told him about loving the movie and having a very excited seven-year-old at home who’d love an Iron Man autograph, the minders told me to get going with the interview. Perhaps the truth is that in that kind of bizarre atmosphere, where nobody is acting like a normal human being, warming him up was never going to be easy. But I remain a fan of Iron Man.”
You can read his full response here.
