Jamie Dornan opened up about his involvement with the now-viral Imagine video, revealing Kristen Wiig has apologised to him after it received a backlash on social media.
The Fifty Shades Of Grey star was invited to participate in the video by the Bridesmaids actor, after it was organised by Gal Gadot.
Speaking on the Tea With Me podcast, Jamie spoke about how it had been ill-received by many during the coronavirus pandemic, noting that Gal “was trying to do a good and kind thing and just got nailed for it.”
“Listen, it’s a funny thing. Not being on social media, I wasn’t really that aware of the negative reaction to it, but I was made aware quite quickly by some mates,” said Jamie, in response to how he got involved in the video.
“It was early on in the lockdown process. Gal, who organised it, she organised it with Kristen Wiig.”
Jamie explained that he met Kristen while working on a movie slated for release this summer and that they “got on brilliantly.”
He added that because he “would do anything for her,” when she texted him asking to participate in a “thing to try to lift people’s spirits,” he agreed.
After the video was released, it was met with a lot of backlash from people arguing that these celebrities would have been more helpful to those suffering in the pandemic if they had just donated some money instead.
Jamie later said that Kristen texted him to apologise for asking him to be involved and that his friends had even ribbed on him a bit for it, calling him a “pompous, self-righteous, wanker actor.”
Jamie, to his credit, appeared somewhat self-aware about the ordeal, telling the podcast’s host: “I’ll tell you what the problem was. I literally did mine in the toilet of my house ... Quite clearly, people had escaped to their second home. There’s too much acreage in the background, too many beautiful trees swinging, clearly by an ocean, that sort of craic. I was quite aware of that whenever I was doing it, [I just tried] to make it normal.”
He also defended Gal’s idea and reasoning for the video, calling her “a very well-known, successful, beautiful person, who, I’ve never met, but everyone I know says she’s lovely and she’s all about being good and kind.”
He added: “I just got dragged along with it, but listen, what are we going to do?”