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July 11, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
45:44
20220711_piers-morgan-uncensored-mickey-rourke-part-one
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Britain's Got Talent Auditions 00:14:24
I'm Piers Morgan uncensored coming up tonight.
A whole football team's worth of candidates are now battling to be next Tory leader, most of them promising massive tax cuts.
But how will they pay for them?
And who will be Britain's next Prime Minister?
He's Wimbledon champion, but no vax Djokovic, except to miss the US Open because of his stance on COVID.
Should the anti-vax poster boy be allowed to compete in America?
A gray day for Macy.
The award-winning singer sparked a global furore by daring to describe what a woman is on this show.
The mob has now forced her to walk back a comment.
Why?
And he's burned every bridge in Tinseltown, but he always bounces back.
He's Hollywood's comeback king, and he's back again tonight, live and uncensored.
There is the great man preparing for our jewel.
good evening.
Well, good evening.
I'm Piers Morgan, uncensored.
Now, people often tell me there's no such thing as cancel culture.
It doesn't exist.
It's in my head.
But it does exist.
It's very real.
It involves delusional mobs who shame, abuse, and vilify anyone who dares share an opinion that doesn't conform to their own narrow worldview.
And here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
Macy Gray.
You might recall that last week the award-winning singer appeared on this show.
And I asked her a very simple question.
If I asked you what a woman is, what would you say?
Let's say a human being with boobs.
How do you have to start there?
Yeah, I mean, the dictionary is quite straightforward.
It just says it's an adult female, right?
I will say this and everybody's going to hate me, but as a woman, just because you go change your parts doesn't make you a woman.
Right.
Sorry.
If you want me to call you a her, I will, because that's what you want.
But that doesn't make you a woman just because I call you a her and just because you got a surgery.
Well, that was very clearly Macy Gray's honestly held opinion.
It's what she actually thinks.
But I warned her that she would face a backlash and so she did.
In fact, the retribution was as vile as it was predictable.
She was bombarded with torrents of vicious abuse online and branded an ignorant bigot and a transphobe.
Rolling Stone magazine, to their shame, called her hateful before hysterically claiming her rhetoric could have deadly consequences.
Now remember what Macy Gray's crime was.
She just said that a woman is a human being with boobs and a vagina.
Yet that apparently will spark deadly consequences.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, one of the very few public figures who has the nerve to face down this noxious mob, came to her defense and quipped that she would buy Macy Gray's back catalogue.
Macy Gray herself initially stood by her right to the opinion she expressed, posting this, all of you threatening and calling me names because I said something you don't agree with, be whatever you want to be and bleep off.
Well, good for her.
But unfortunately, her resolve didn't last very long.
Sadly, the mob rules and their abuse intensified.
And Macy eventually caved.
Just one day later, she went on NBC's Today program in America to issue effectively a grovelling meaculpa.
You were on the Piers Morgan show and there was a question about trans women.
I think that if you in your heart feel that that's what you are, then that's what you are, regardless of what anybody says or thinks.
But yeah, I've learned a lot, absolutely.
And I'm glad I did.
Have you, Macy?
What have you really learned other than the mob rules?
That's the way it works these days, isn't it?
You pander to the woke brigade or you'd be damned forever.
And for those people who think this is all trivial culture war stuff, a peculiar obsession of people who spend too much time on Twitter, we'll take a look at this post from J.K. Rowling yesterday when she talked about the impact that it's had on her, this cancelled culture.
Endless death and rape threats, threats of loss of livelihood, employers targeted, physical harassment, family address posted online with picture of bomb-making manual, aren't mean comments.
If you don't yet understand what happens to women who stand up on this issue, back off.
That's happened to her.
It's happened to many other women who've tried to stand up for women's rights.
That's why this is so serious.
It's why women are scared to stand up for women.
It's why Macy Gray has backed down.
They're bullied and abused until they cave.
And this is what the so-called inclusive, be-kind liberals are like in real life.
Here's a clip from a trans pride parade in London on Saturday.
Lovely people, let's be clear.
I've always stood up for trans rights, loudly and proudly.
I believe trans people are entitled to fairness and quality as much as I am.
But still this poison posse delights in falsely calling me a transphobe.
Well, phobia means fear, and I'm definitely not scared of this dumb mob.
The only thing I'm afraid of is living in a society where awful people like this think they can bully and spew their toxic hate and abuse towards anyone who disagrees with them.
What Macy Gray said to me is what she feels.
It's her honestly held opinion.
What she said to NBC is what happens when a public figure is cowed into submission.
And that is a tragedy in any democracy.
It's time we stopped bowing to this mob.
It's time we took on the mob and stopped them bullying people like Macy Gray.
Well tonight 11 Tory MPs are now vying to run the Conservative Party and the country, announcing their bids in a blaze of dodgy slogans, tote girling videos and mostly uncosted promises.
It's been a battle of rags to riches sob stories so far, more of that in a moment.
But first, I have publicly and privately invited all 11 candidates onto this show for an interview.
Here was my tweet yesterday, an open invitation for a robust and fair exchange.
The boxing legend Frank Bruno replied to say he's looking forward to seeing them face me, asking, I wonder how many will turn down the invite.
Well, Frank, we now have the answer.
All of them.
Yep.
Despite a few nibbling and saying they may or may not come on, they've all bottled it.
What are they scared of?
They're demonstrating the same courage and tenacity as the gutless weasel they've just ousted, Boris Johnson, who was so terrified of facing me in an interview, he ran and hid in a fridge to avoid it.
Morning, Prime Minister.
Everybody, come on, good morning, Britain, Prime Minister.
Mr. Johnson, why do you have five minutes?
You're live on good morning.
Could you talk to Piers and Susanna for me?
I'll be with you in a second.
I'll be with you in a second.
I have an earpiece here in my hands, ready to go.
Unbelievable.
He never did come out of the fridge.
I never did get to interview him.
Well, the invitation stands.
Come on, candidates.
Don't be as gutless as Boris.
We all know how that ended.
How can the public trust you to run the country in these difficult times if you don't even trust yourselves to survive an interview with me?
Just grow a pair of a lot of you.
Well, Talk TV's political editor Kate McCann has all the latest on the runners and riders.
Ms McCann, how are you?
Evening, Piers.
I'm good, thank you.
How are you?
So we've got 11 of them and possibly Pretty Patel to make it a dozen, some of whom may be a dirty dozen.
We don't know yet, according to the rumours I'm hearing.
All sorts of smears being levelled at quite a few of the candidates.
Where are we, do you think, in terms of having any idea yet who the final two may be?
Well, we know already, having listened to Graham Brady tonight, that the rules have been set and they say that you need 20 nominations to meet the first stage and then 30 for the second.
So there are some candidates who've either met that or are pretty close to it.
Rishi Sunak, he's on 40.
Penny Mordent, she's on 26 and Tom Tugenhart on 22.
So I would say those three are looking pretty secure tonight.
And then there are some at the bottom end, including Sajid Javid, who's on 13 nominations, Grant Shap's on 10, for whom things are looking a little bit more dicey.
Now, there are some MPs who haven't come out publicly and announced who they're supporting yet.
So those numbers could well change.
They're changing all the time.
But it's an interesting question, Piers, about why not some of those candidates are not more willing to put themselves in scrutiny's way, if you like.
Why they're not willing to come out and answer questions.
Suella Brufferman, to her credit, did do that today.
She took just about as many media interviews as she possibly could.
The first remember to announce her candidacy while still remaining in the cabinet as the Attorney General, which some say is an interesting decision.
But others have yet to put their head above the parapet, including Penny Mordent, who's seen as a pretty, you know, good runner in this leadership election.
She's in second place at the moment in that tally.
She's also topping a Conservative home poll of people that members would like to see go forward.
There is a suggestion that some of these candidates want to keep away from the media as far as they can to get through the early stages on numbers alone before they have to face that scrutiny because it might well be difficult for some of them who haven't faced it before.
I mean what's quite amusing at the moment are these videos they're all producing which remind me a bit of the audition trail on Britain's Got Talent where the bigger the sob story the more they think it'll work with the with the public.
Let's take a little mash up look at some of these videos.
Family is everything to me and my family gave me opportunities they could only dream of.
Oh this is where I used to live.
This is the shop that my parents used to have.
I will work day and night to lead a party and a government that puts more money in your pocket and secures a better life for you and your family.
I've served our country in uniform and in parliament.
I'm ready to serve again.
My father arrived in the UK from Pakistan in 1961.
He had one pound in his pocket and got a job driving buses.
I will deliver.
Someone has to grip this moment and make the right decisions.
I mean I'm sorry but it is funny.
You've got to laugh watching some of these right?
I mean they're very slick, very bullish, pretty cheesy and of course they're all designed to tug at the heartstrings aren't they?
Yeah I would say some of them are slicker than others though and in fact there was a suggestion today that Liz Truss's video was under a bit of scrutiny from the Foreign Office because some of the footage allegedly had been shot by the civil service and so there was a question over whether it might have to be removed from her video.
I think she was fine at the end of the day.
But it's interesting because these videos are not pitched at the country.
This is not an election which we'll all get to vote in.
They're pitched at Tory voters so they really do have a recurring theme.
There's a lot of union flags in there.
There's a lot of very traditional music.
Some of those values that we've seen again and again and if you listen out for slogans you'll hear them repeated.
Military background, military heritage.
Jeremy Hunt, who has no military background of his own, was picking up his own father's military background over the weekend.
I think they've all identified some of the points that the membership are going to want to see and they're trying to tick those off in these early stages.
And most unbelievably of all, of all the developments in the last week, is our old friend, Mr. Dudderidge, whatever his name was, the guy that refused to talk to me because his wife would divorce him.
He's now been made a minister, right?
He has been made a minister.
You're right.
I mean, look, Boris Johnson was going to have to try and find people to take up those positions.
And there had been a question mark over who would want to do that because they may well be booted out when a new leader comes in.
So clearly, James Dudderidge has decided that his time is now.
Well, maybe it's not too late for Dudderidge to run for the top job.
Let's just take a look at him in action with you and I the other night.
Does he think he's now Britain's comical alley?
Sorry, I've got Piers in the end.
The only person that's comical here is Kidney should get to the next one.
Well, if you can hear me, if you can hear me.
If you can hear me, you're being...
I love Kate.
I will answer to Kate, but I'm not going to answer to you.
I think it's very, very bad TV.
I don't need to be disconnected.
There he is, Minister of State.
It'll go a long way.
Kate, good to talk to you.
We'll be, I'm sure, back tomorrow night with the ladies and all this.
It's going to be very interesting.
What happens over the next 10 days?
Well, Novak, Djokovic really is quite extraordinary, extraordinarily weird and, in my opinion, dumb.
Just moments after securing his seventh Wimbledon Crown, Novaks reiterated he has no plans to change his anti-COVID vaccine stance ahead of next month's US Open.
That means he won't be able to enter the country, which requires all international visitors to show proof of their COVID vaccine status.
He'll likely now miss the chance to claim a record-equaling 22nd Grand Slum title.
I'm not vaccinated and I'm not planning to get vaccinated, so the only good news I can have is them removing the mandated green vaccine card or whatever you call it to enter United States or exemption.
Well, join me now as a former tennis star, Wimbledon commentator Andrew Castle.
As you're speaking exhausted.
Do you know?
I played today.
Did you really?
Just to remind myself how difficult the game was.
I probably should have done it before commentating on the series and the finals and everything.
It's a really hard game.
It is a hard game.
It's a really hard game.
My hamstring is now screaming at me.
I was playing at my local club with a bloke that I would normally beat fairly handily, but it was tough today.
It was a hell of a final.
The Hard Game of Finals 00:15:08
I watched it all.
I mean, it was interesting because Kyrios, let's start with him.
He's such an extraordinarily divisive character.
Yeah, what do you make of him?
Well, I tried, I spent a lot of time before the final whacking him, to be honest, because I found his baby is so ridiculous and actually just pathetic.
And then when we got to the final, I actually felt myself beginning to sort of root for this.
He's obviously a brilliant player.
He's obviously charismatic.
He's got something about him.
He's compelling to watch.
But then as the final went on, his behaviour got more.
Let's just take a look at some of the highlights of his antics.
In a Wimbledon final, there's no other bigger occasion.
He didn't believe me.
And then she did it again.
It nearly cost me the game.
She's jumped out of her mind the first row, speaking to me in the middle of the game.
I know exactly which one it is.
So tell me, it's the one in the dress with the one that looks like she's had about 700 drinks, bro.
Not big enough.
Is it big enough for you?
Every time!
40-15, 41!
Why do you stop?
Why?
What's his name?
401?
Oh!
That's you!
It's all of you!
Now, just to be clear, he is shouting all that at his girlfriend, his sister, his dad, and his manager.
Well, he was shouting that to Renault Lichtenstein, who's actually from France, not Lichtenstein, who was the umpire in the chair.
There was a woman across the...
But most of that stuff was aimed at his family.
A lot of that stuff was urging the family to encourage him more.
Yeah, but you see, he's a man under strain.
He's 27 years of age.
He's a petulant brat.
He's Andrew.
He's 27 years old.
He's vulnerable, okay?
And yet he is sensitive.
He's talked about self-harming.
He's talked about depression and all of that sort of stuff.
He's everything that this generation now not hold dear, but now are focused on the title of the people.
But he doesn't excuse that kind of petulant brat.
But you see somebody under pressure, and that's what they do in a situation.
Well, then don't play tennis professionally.
Well, I mean, but this is what people have been saying to him for years.
If you want to maximize your potential, you're going to have to stop that.
Can he actually stop it?
I was very surprised to see him in the Wilmot Final.
I don't think he'd have been there if he'd have played Raffin Adal in the semi-final, who had to pull out with the abdominal strain.
But I mean, I think it's a story that everyone can relate to.
A very complicated bloke who manages to go all the way to the final and then actually do himself credit for the future.
If I shouted at my family members like that in a Wilmot and final, one of them would come out of there and give me a slap.
And quite rightly.
Why should they put up with it?
But what's he doing when he does that?
I mean, come on, you're an attention.
We're all attention seekers when we're on the telly, aren't we?
I would never abuse my own family on national television, in front of a billion eyeballs.
Well, I mean, a lot of the tennis.
And a lot of the players have done in the family.
You'll never do that.
No, you get told off afterwards.
No, if you try and tell him off, he'll take another three, four, five months off.
Is he good for the game is the question.
The answer is a day later, you and I are talking about him.
You've got an opinion.
I've got an opinion.
And he's really good at the game, too, because you don't make women of final anymore.
He's good, but I think he got out psyched by Djokovic, who had just got caught in the school.
Well, Djokovic, look, as a tennis player, don't start the Novax stuff.
No, no, we're close at the moment.
Talk about the tennis to your face.
Let me say for the record, Djokovic is an unbelievably brilliant tennis player.
Right.
One of the greatest to ever play the game.
I'm watching him in here.
He was Metronome.
I was there on Friday when he destroyed the British guy who put up a good fight, but he did the same thing.
He lost the first set and then destroyed him.
And he's a machine and he's fantastic.
Personally, I'm a Federal Nadal guy, but I can appreciate Djokovic's amazing talent.
And the amount of title speaks for itself.
Here's what I have a problem.
I don't understand what he's doing with this COVID vaccine stuff, which could end up costing him the legacy of greatest player of all time.
But you don't understand anybody that makes a choice not to have the vaccine.
No, no, I do.
Do you?
No, no, I understand it.
They're perfectly entitled to do it.
I just don't understand a guy who's in his position could be the greatest tennis player that's ever lived.
Yeah.
Statistically.
Yeah.
And yet he is going to miss probably the USO because America doesn't change the rules.
And I see people...
Here's my problem with it.
I see that he's a massive role model to a lot of people.
Most of the anti-genuine, anti-vax loons on social media have latched on to Djokovic as their hero, their poster boy.
He's the reason they're not taking the vaccine.
And I do have a problem.
You still follow that stuff?
Well, I do follow it a bit.
Because for me, it's over.
The pandemic's not over.
Well, apparently not.
But for me personally, I've just had to just go, that is it.
I've had my injections.
I'll have more.
I know some people object and that's the way they feel about it.
What does it tell you about Novak and other people in that situation regarding their thoughts about the vaccine that he has just said, even if I can have history, which I've been looking for since the age of eight years old when I first picked up a racket, and I'm still not going to take it.
He says he's dumb as an ox to me.
Well, you think it's dumb.
I think it's a committed point of view that we have to do.
Do you think America should change the rules and let him in?
No, because, I mean, listen, I know you're very good at lobbying to change rules and all the rest of it, but they've got rules.
He's decided not to be vaccinated.
Unless something changes, he won't be there.
It's just an impasse.
I don't think he'll play.
I think that's a great shame.
Do you not think it's just weird?
There was another thing I wanted to talk to you about.
When you were at GMB a while back and I was in talking about something or other, you said to me, where would Serena, because there was this argument at the time about Serena and where she would be in the men's rankings, and you came up to me and you said at the time she'd be in the top 250.
No, she'd be in the top thousand if she's lucky.
You said at the time top 250.
Well, no, if I did, I've since always said, I think I saw McEnroe say she wouldn't get him a top 750.
Is that right?
Yeah, probably about right.
It was just something, it's just things that you say stick in my head and it's been annoying me.
Well, I've ever said, I don't remember saying 250.
I've always, in my head, always thought I said.
Maybe you're riling me up at the time.
I might have been.
He's obviously stuck with it.
Andrew, you did a great job, Commentary.
I enjoyed it very much.
And these guys get everybody talking.
I get it.
I think it's a great shame that Djokovic has, whether he wanted to or not, become this poster child for the anti-vax brigade.
I just don't know why he would feel comfortable being that guy, but he does, and that's it.
Good to talk to you.
Nice to see you, Piers.
Thank you.
I think right now, Serena wouldn't beat the top 2,000, by the way.
When was the last time you played?
Last time I played tennis would have been about two years ago.
I thrashed my middle boy, Stanley, who's about 23, took him apart on a grass court.
So thank you for asking.
It's good to see you, Andrew Castle.
Uncensored next from Hollywood Hotshot to Hollywood Has Been and back again.
Actor Mickey Rourke will be here live and uncensored from Hollywood.
Before that, I'll be joined by my peers Pack, Avis and Tina and Quentin Letts.
They're frothing at the mouth over there, the pack.
Look at them.
Like a pack of dobermans.
Well, Mickey Rourke is waiting live and uncensored in Hollywood, but joining me now is my Piers Pack.
And tonight I've the drivial journalist Avis and Teeth and the Times' political sketchwriter.
Quentin Letz.
Welcome to both of you.
Thank you.
Start with Macy Gray.
I'm a writer, Seeming Quentin, you've never heard of her.
Never heard of her.
Great.
You know about her story.
But having seen what's happened to her.
You should be her publicity agent.
What do you think, though, of the way that this mob now moves around?
Where even women who try and define what a woman is, in my estimation, the way it probably ought to be defined, they get hounded so badly.
One of your earlier clips, you showed a press comment.
And Rolling Stone magazine was having a go at it, wasn't it?
That's the hippie magazine it used to be.
What happened to live and let live?
And what happens, the wokies now, they hold these people's, they threaten their careers, basically.
If you're a star and they hold them below the water until they submit.
Like the old sort of boxing moves, you know, you hit the floor, I submit.
And until they give up, they hold them back.
But as soon as you apologise, it's a disaster.
Yeah, because I think this is why I didn't apologise when I left Good Morning Britain over disbelieving Meghan Markle.
Because what's the point apologising, Ava?
Even when you apologise, it makes no difference.
If the mob's decided you're saying the wrong thing, you have to be cancelled.
It's not a mob.
Actually, the mob was the other side.
J.K. Rowling jumping straight on Twitter to say that she'd sided with Macy Gray when that was actually not what she meant at all.
J.K. Rowling is part of that mob.
Really?
Yeah, 100%.
Do you know what's happened to JK Rowling?
She's fueling it as well.
She's fueling it.
She's really got a problem with trans women.
I don't need to say that.
I don't need to teach you how to suck eggs.
But she is leading the charge on that.
What did she say that you disagree with as a woman?
Well, do I, well, as a woman, myself.
If I ask you, what is a woman?
What is the answer?
Well, I think that's too nuanced to ask.
I think that Macy Gray was responding to this sort of hyperbole that we've gotten ourselves into with self-identification, a concept that doesn't actually exist.
I mean, I'm not going to turn around to a woman who doesn't have a uterus and say you're not a woman.
You say it doesn't exist.
I mean, we literally now have in women's sport male athletes who transition and are now demolishing.
No, no, there are now numerous examples.
Well, I mean, I don't.
But even if there's one example, you say self-ID doesn't happen.
Of course it happens.
It doesn't.
They're literally going, I'm now a woman, and they're now competing against women.
It doesn't though, because every single example that you use to make self-identification sound problematic actually doesn't even make sense.
Like we talk about prisons and what if someone's self-IDs and gets into a female prison, you know, warden.
What if they do?
But well, what about all of the sexual assault that goes on there anyway?
You're going to stop people being in cells altogether.
It's already an issue.
What you may be saying, this is right, Avie.
It's a minority pursuit.
This is a minority problem.
It is a minority pursuit.
That's what puzzles me that people get so cross about this.
And yet it is, it's a very, very, an obsessive minority.
It's getting totally.
But all of the, you know, the issues that we have with bathrooms, prisons, they all come down to this issue of assault.
Look, if a man is going to assault you, they're going to do it no matter if there's a female emblem on it.
It's not really about that.
It's about whether a woman is allowed to stand up and say what she thinks a woman is without being destroyed.
It's odd that the way that the women who comment about this get beaten up really badly by Twitter.
It's horrific.
Whereas blokes, we blokes sort of go on about it.
Perhaps no one's listening.
Here's a woman where I think deserves some opprobrium, and this is Andrea Jenkins, who unbelievably is an education minister now for this country.
And this is her outside Downing Street when there were a group of people.
And Ava, I think you were there at the time when this happened.
And this is how she responded to people giving her a bit of a hard time.
She literally flipped the bird out.
This is an education minister.
I'm sorry.
I thought that was ridiculous behaviour.
Unbelievable.
She was charging up Whitehall as well.
She already had a vendetta.
She, you know, she's one of those characters that normally you kind of keep at bay.
She's quite an angry backbencher.
You don't normally let her go on the television.
And this is a pure example, perfect example of why you don't.
But she's now in government.
Yeah, but I mean, look who's in government.
It's basically the idea.
Oh, no, but she's still in government.
I mean, Quentin, we defend that kind of behaviour.
I think you're getting a civilized man.
You're getting very sensitive in your old age.
I didn't realise you were so censorious and keen to talk about it.
I don't think education ministers should be flipping the bird at people outside Downing Street.
Do you?
I'm quite rude sometimes, people say, but I don't do that particular gesture.
But there was quite a heated day.
People were very upset, and also there were some agents at the gates of Downing Street.
I think we need a return to civility in public life, and this is not what we're doing.
Go back to the 1950s, Piers.
That's what you're wrong.
Let's talk about, for a moment, let's talk about President Joe Biden.
Because I've just written a column actually for the New York Post about Biden.
Because the New York Times did this withering excoriation of him, basically accusing him of being asleep at the wheel at 79 as he is now.
This was, unfortunately, for him, on the day it came out, he did this in a speech talking about Roe versus Wade.
It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of the men who do so.
End of quote.
Repeat the line.
End of quote, repeat the line.
Quentin, that was what the script writer had put at the end to make sure that he stopped the quote and then repeated the line.
And he read it out like Ron Burgundy, an anchorman.
Pin sharp, he ain't.
But is it a problem though?
Is it a serious problem now?
His mental deficiencies, which clearly we can see them.
I don't know enough about it, but I do, and I can see where you're coming from, Piers.
But he has been elected.
And that is the difficult thing for those who wish to replace him with Kamala Harris.
Well, there is a mechanism.
There is a mechanism.
And Ava, the mechanism is not like here.
He couldn't have a bunch of his team queuing up to say no confidence and he goes.
The mechanism is the 25th Amendment, which can be deployed to remove a serving president if it's deemed that he no longer has the faculties to perform the office and the function of president.
I think we're heading that way with Biden.
But no one thought to deploy that when the last bloke was talking about the president.
Well, actually, I think that's a very good point.
And in fact, Mike Pence, I think, did consider it.
And people have said they should have done.
But it has been deployed before, of course, when presidents have been shot, like Reagan was shot.
It was deployed then temporarily and so on.
Is there an argument?
I mean, as someone on the left, Joe Biden's performance as president in 18 months has been a disaster.
I mean, today, two-thirds of Democrats in a new poll, the New York Times, said they don't want him to run again in 2024.
Two-thirds of Democrats.
Well, I mean, just to be clear, Joe Biden's never been on the left.
He's probably centre-right.
He's probably closer to the Tories are in our country than he is to Liberty.
Would you like to see Alexander Ocasio-Cortez?
I would love that, Piers.
Of course he is.
I'd love that.
And hell would freeze over.
It is a problem also when you consider what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.
And Putin will be loving this, I'm afraid.
Final question on Djokovic.
Where do we stand about this idea of whether he should be allowed to play, should America bend the rules for Djokovic, let him in?
Well, it's up to the Americans, of course.
If we want to go in, we have to show COVID vaccination.
It's up to the Americans whether or not they let him in.
But I'm more live and let live about this than you.
I think you've become a bit of an ayatollah about this, Piers.
And I agree slightly with what Andrew Castle was saying earlier about, you know, the COVID, the sense of crisis around COVID over the pandemic is still there.
The sense of crisis and sort of urgency in the messaging has, I think, slipped a bit.
So it wouldn't worry me.
And he did just beat that tattooed Oik from Australia.
Kiriels.
Hey, would you ever imagine a million years being able to date someone like Nick Kiriels?
Would I date them?
Money Power vs Authoritarians 00:09:37
Yeah.
You shouldn't ask me that.
Yeah, quite a bit.
It's very unfair.
I'll come to you in a moment.
Would I date Kiriel?
I find a lot of women are curiously attracted to him.
But what do you mean?
Why are you asking me if I would date him?
Just curious whether you think he's someone you could ever date.
I wouldn't.
Generally, with women dating.
I haven't even thought about him in that realm.
I'm more of a Parliament girl.
Really?
Yeah.
More of what girl?
Parliament girl.
Ask me that question.
All right, well then purely professionally, with all the candidates, which one do you think actually would be the least offensive to you to become Prime Minister?
To become Prime Minister?
Grant Shapps, I think, actually.
Yeah, I think he sounds like a lot of people.
I think he sounds really reasoned, actually.
I thought it was really interesting today.
He was speaking earlier and he was talking about the culture war, which a lot of the others are getting behind.
Kemmi Badenochi's desperately trying to use that to get in.
And he was very measured on it, actually.
Very measured on the culture war.
Piers Pack, I'll leave it there.
I've got Mickey Rourke.
You don't mind being the warm-up man to Mickey Rourke, do you?
No, no, I do anything you tell me to.
Thank you very much to both of you.
I appreciate it.
Well, uncensored next, Hollywood's Comeback King, the uncancellable Mickey Rourke, live and uncensored.
Look at him.
Magnificent.
Half of the black.
What does that mean, uncensored?
Welcome back to Viz Morgan Uncensored from Hollywood Hotshot to Hollywood Hasbeen and back again.
Acting legend Mickey Rourke defies cancellation and a stunning and sometimes scandalous career spanning 40 years, including a lost decade in the Hollywood wilderness.
He's fought and feuded with the titans of Tinsel Town, has an opinion on almost everything.
And I'm delighted to say he joins me now live from Los Angeles.
Mickey, great to see you.
Great to see you.
I heard you muttering before we went to the commercial break, what does uncensored mean?
And I would say you.
You are an uncensored man.
Well, I'm my own man.
How have you been?
I've interviewed you numerous times over the years.
You look in great shape.
Yeah, The COVID thing actually helped me out a little bit because I was able to go around all the different sports shops and get all the workout equipment I needed for close to a year and a half.
So I did nothing but like train for, you know, 45 minutes twice a day and did a lot of reading and soul searching and kind of tried to figure out, well,
I was working out a game plan for the third chapter and trying to go over all the mistakes I made the first two chapters and not making them again because it just made life difficult for me, you know.
And I've said this before, you know, about over 20 years ago, I was sitting in my, I was in London actually at Blake's Hotel, sitting on the phone with Richard Harris.
And Richard gave me some really good advice about, he said, Mickey, man, he said, listen, you can't beat them.
There's too many of them.
And they got too much money and they've got, he says, you just got to pull back.
And I got off the phone with Richard and I thought, nah, I'm going to do it my way.
And, you know, and I made a big mistake because I really, Richard had been there before me and I really was an asshole not to take Richard sound good advice that he gave.
What have you learned about yourself, Mickey, in this?
It sounds a fascinating journey you've been on here.
What have you learned most about yourself?
Well, you know, the biggest thing was I came from a very shameful upbringing.
And it was very violent and it was very physical, abuse and mental.
And when I left home at like 14 or 15, I didn't realize, I was so happy that the physical pain was over because that was horrifying.
That went on for nearly 10 years.
But I didn't realize that it was going to fuck me up in my head, my way of thinking, my way of dealing with people, because I, you know, you have a choice when you're abused physically.
At the time, I wasn't thinking about it mentally.
There comes a time, and it happened when I was about 14.
And when you're living in shame, there's nothing worse than that.
So you've got two choices.
You either live in shame and you become like a broken soul, a broken person, or you get hard.
And I chose to get hard.
Not by choice, just by survival.
And as the years passed and I messed everything up that I tried to accomplish, you know, I take the blame for it because by me getting hard with everything and everybody alienated me from, I became, as my therapist told me, a scary person to deal with.
And I didn't know how to turn the off switch off.
And have you learned, Mickey, have you learned how to turn that off now?
I've learned, well, it's interesting.
I went to therapy for 23 years, and I didn't ever think I would.
But the therapist said to me one day, he said, after about three or four years out of the 23 I went, he said, you have absolutely no regard for repercussions or accountability.
He says, that's just not in your DNA.
And I realize with dealing with people who deal from an authoritarian place, producers, who think that they can treat you a certain way because they're the ones with the money and the power, they finally ran into a cat.
They didn't give a fuck about their money and power.
You've got to watch your language, Mickey.
I'm sorry.
I'm afraid I have to apologize when you do that, but I understand why you feel this way.
Yeah, I apologize though.
I'm just saying, you know, people who have money and power, they really feel that they have this thing where they can treat you a certain way.
But I made a decision a long time ago when I was 14 that I got to be a man.
And I had to be a man at 14.
And later on, as the years went by, even with the success and the destruction of my career, it was always important for me, because of where I came from, to be a man first and then actor second.
You know, I interviewed just before the wrestler came out, and it was an incredibly powerful interview because you'd been in the wilderness for so long then, and then suddenly the wrestler came along and propelled you back to the top again.
What was that moment like for you?
Yeah, but I'm back in the wilderness after the wrestling.
You're not really, though, are you?
I don't think you're not.
Not really, because what I learned to do was I wasn't going to let anyone put me on the shelf.
Yeah.
All right?
Because I've got enough ability and I've got more ability than most actors that are walking around.
And if I could just behave myself, there's a lot of young up-and-coming directors that aren't afraid of how I used to be perceived.
When you see, Mickey, when you see someone like Tom Cruise, you know, grossing a billion dollars with Top Gun Maverick, the sequel, 35 years or so after the first one, what do you think of that?
That doesn't mean shit to me.
The guy's been doing the same effing part for 35 years.
I got no respect for that.
I don't give it.
No, that's real.
Yeah, really, brother.
I don't care about money and power.
I care about when I watch Al Pacino work and Chris Walken and De Niro's early work and Richard Harris's work and Ray Winstone's work.
Those are the kind of, that's the kind of actor I want to be, like Monty Cliff and, you know, Brando back in the day and a lot of guys that just tried to stretch as actors and be the...
You don't think Tom Cruise is a good actor?
I think he's irrelevant in my world.
Fascinating.
Mickey, hold it there.
Putin and Cancel Culture 00:06:33
We're going to take a short break and we'll be back after the break to talk to you about, I want to talk about cancel culture and about Vladimir Putin And Johnny Depp.
Welcome back with Mickey Raw.
Mickey, I want to ask you about cancel culture.
What do you make of this weird phenomenon that we now all have to operate under?
About what?
Cancel culture.
I don't have any opinion on all that.
What do you think when you see people being canceled for having an opinion?
That happens all the time.
It's nothing new.
But do you think he's right?
I would have to be given a specific case.
Well, I'll give you one.
So Macy Gray, the singer, came on my show last week and said what her definition of a woman was.
And she got so much abuse for her honest opinion that she had to go on the Today Show in America and effectively back down on her opinion, which I thought was ridiculous.
There's an example of the kind of mob mentality.
I don't think anybody should have to apologize for what their personal opinion is on any matter, unless their personal opinion is very narrow-minded and is going to hurt other people.
You said some interesting stuff about Vladimir Putin after you met him in 2014.
He wore a t-shirt with his picture on it.
Yeah, okay, that was 2014.
No, no, that's what I said, yeah.
So I wanted to ask you whether you were...
No, I just want to make that clear.
I went over there in 2014 and it was some sort of event where some entertainers from the States came over and he was dancing with Sharon Stone and he actually was singing a song on a piano.
And then he invited me specifically to go to his hometown in St. Petersburg to visit a home that took care of little tiny children that had kind of incurable cancer.
And that was really heartbreaking to go to.
And I was talking to all these little kids.
I remember I gave a rosary of mine to one of the little girls and I looked over at Vladimir and I could see somebody that was genuinely concerned about where we were and someone who was empathetic and he was there for a sincere Reason.
How do you square that, Mickey, with the guy we see now illegally invading Ukraine and bombing little children to pieces every single day?
That's the thing that blows my mind because it's like it's like two brother countries and it's like, I don't understand what he wants and it's like not only combatants are getting killed, but old people are getting killed, young people are getting killed, schools are getting targeted, hospitals are getting targeted, you know, and all that not right.
You know, I saw a guy, an image of a man who was looking at a hole in a ditch and he was looking for and I put myself in his position.
He was looking for his brother.
And that kind of struck home in me and bothered me a lot and made me think he's doing really terrible bad things.
And I wish some kind of little bell would ring in his head or his heart and he'd wake up and just stop all this.
And then I saw a picture of a man, an old man. laying shot on a bicycle and an old woman shot on a bicycle.
But the image that bothered me the most was I saw this old man holding a little gray kitten.
And the old man survived his house being bombed and he lost five family members and the only thing he had kind of hard for me to talk about.
The only thing he had was this little gray kitty.
And I looked at that image and I said, how can I have anything to worry about?
Losing a movie, somebody saying bad about me, or I'm having a bad day.
And I'm looking at this old guy holding a little kitty that crawled out from the rubble.
And that's all he had.
And he lost five family members.
And ever since that day.
Horrendous.
Ever since that day, I've said prayers for that man and for the two old people I saw on the street.
Mickey, I'm going to have to end the interview, but what I want to do, if it's okay with you, I want to carry it on.
All I want to say is that.
We'll carry on, Mickey, after we come off air, and I'll record it for later in the week, okay?
All right.
Okay.
Thanks for watching, unsuccessful.
Let's finish this interview with Mickey.
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