During a movie-promotion press junket, interviewer Krishnan Guru Murthy asked Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. questions about his "dark past."
Downey gave him one chance, then decided to stop the interview. On the Howard Stern show, he explains his exasperation at the line of discussion and says he should have walked off sooner:
For his part, KGM writes that movie press junkets are BS and that he should not have been "interviewing" Downey in the first place.
We don't do promotional interviews on Channel 4 News. We agree with PR people that as well as talking about a new movie for a while we want to ask wider ranging questions on relatively serious topics, and we don't guarantee to run any answers in particular … I do have sympathy for the actors. These interviews are the contractual obligation of being a movie star, and it must be awful to be unable to escape the past. But my sympathy runs only up to a point. If I was going to ask any other interviewee about difficult topics I would probably have a chat beforehand to prepare them. Movie stars don't do that. … Maybe, like a bad relationship, this just isn't working. We want different things out of it. I want something serious and illuminating, they just want publicity. Maybe we and the movie stars should just go our separate ways, and find people more suited to our needs.
All true, but the problem isn't really that KGM asked "difficult" questions during a shmoozy press junket, or that the foofaraw represents a fundamental incompatibility between his journalistic obligations and celebrities' contractually-mandated participation.
The problem is that KGM is just bad at it. He's smarmy and tentative and apologetic and bumbling. His segues into serious topics are comically abrupt, yet he rambles on in the face of his subjects' silence. If he asked his question with confidence, and given Downey Jr. space to say something interesting, he might have something to show for his journalistic approach beyond an empty appeal to its ideals.
