Ben Affleck is being called out for allegedly censoring the press during a promotional tour for his upcoming film The Accountant, in which he appears to play a nerd who’s dangerously good at math. (If I am understanding the trailer correctly, Affleck’s character’s special power is scribbling math problems furiously on the windows of state-of-the-art office buildings.)
Sam Rubin, a journalist with KTLA, spoke on air on Tuesday of an interview he conducted with Affleck last Sunday, during which someone on Affleck’s PR team allegedly interrupted and told the star to “stick to the film.”
Rubin also alleges that Affleck’s PR team demanded that a different reporter edit comments Affleck made about drug use out of his interview. Per The Hollywood Reporter:
“‘But wait, it gets worse,’ Rubin said. [Affleck’s PR] said ‘studio people’ were editing someone else’s video interview they had just conducted because of a joke about drug use. ‘They were taking out a remark he had actually made of his own freewill and cutting it out of the interview they were giving to somebody, because they think you might not understand it, you might not get Ben’s sense of humor, it might make him look bad.’”
This isn’t a good look for Affleck, who has a history of requesting that certain details of his life be stricken from the record, or never brought to light at all. 2015’s Sony e-mail leak revealed that Affleck had asked the Finding Your Roots produces to edit out slave owners from his family’s lineage. Affleck later apologized, saying he was “embarrassed.”