Matt Damon has suggested that some people who’ve been cancelled would have preferred prison to the public shunning.
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The Oscar-winner was asked about “cancel culture” during a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast to promote his new Netflix film The Rip alongside co-star Ben Affleck.
Host Rogan, who routinely speaks out against “cancel culture”, asked D amon for his perspective on the matter, and said that cancellation means that one perceived misstep is “exaggerated to the fullest extent” and a person is subsequently “cast out of civilisation for life”.
“In perpetuity,” Damon agreed, per Variety. “Because I bet some of those people would have preferred to go to jail for 18 months or whatever, and then come out and say, ‘I paid my debt. Like, we’re done. Like, can we be done?’ The thing about that getting kind of excoriated, publicly like that, it just never ends.
“And it’s the first thing that… you know, it just will follow you to the grave.”
Ben Affleck & Matt Damon talk cancel culture on Joe Rogan
“I bet some of those ppl would have preferred to go 2 jail..then come out & say no I paid my debt..we’re done..it just never ends” -Damon
“We have dark instincts sometimes to isolate ppl” -Affleck pic.twitter.com/Aj9He5XTiJ
— yeet (@Awk20000) January 17, 2026
Damon’s brushed up against “cancel culture” back in 2021, after an interview he gave to The Sunday Times drew significant backlash after he admitted he had only stopped using the F-slur “months ago” because his daughter wrote him a “treatise” on “how that word is dangerous.”
He later gave a statement to Variety clarifying that he had never used the word in his “personal life” and did not “use slurs of any kind.”
“During a recent interview, I recalled a discussion I had with my daughter where I attempted to contextualize for her the progress that has been made – though by no means completed – since I was growing up in Boston and, as a child, heard the word ‘f*g’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to,” Damon said at the time.
“I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003; she in turn expressed incredulity that there could ever have been a time where that word was used unthinkingly.
“To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice.”
Damon continued, “I have never called anyone ‘f****t’ in my personal life and this conversation with my daughter was not a personal awakening. I do not use slurs of any kind. I have learned that eradicating prejudice requires active movement toward justice rather than finding passive comfort in imagining myself ‘one of the good guys’.
“And given that open hostility against the LGBTQ+ community is still not uncommon, I understand why my statement led many to assume the worst. To be as clear as I can be, I stand with the LGBTQ+ community.”
Notably, his career was not materially impacted by the incident, and he went on to star in films including Air and Oppenheimer, and is next set to lead Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
In other Matt Damon news, James Cameron has denied the actor’s previous claim that he was offered the lead role in 2009’s Avatar.
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