A “bottom-feeding muckraker” and a “syphilitic parasite”.
That’s what actor Robert Downey jr has labelled Channel 4 News journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy after an interview that went sour earlier this month.
In a video that went viral, Downey Jnr stormed out of the chat after Guru-Murthy insisted on talking about his past drug addictions and his relationship with his father, instead of focusing solely on the Avengers movie he was promoting.
The actor initially maintained a dignified silence about the incident, but is obviously still sore about the encounter. On Wednesday, in an interview on the Howard Stern radio chat show, Downey Jnr let rip, claiming he should have walked off sooner.
“I'm one of those guys who I'm always assuming the social decorum is in play, and that we're promoting a superhero movie, a lot of kids are going to see it, and that just has nothing to do with your creepy dark agenda that I’m feeling, like, all of a sudden ashamed and obligated to accommodate your weirdo s**t,” he said.
Downey then went on to describe how he felt during the interview, clearly wishing he could have taken matters into his own hands.
'“You know what? You are weirding me out. You are a bottom-feeding muckraker. My heart was beating in my chest because this was the first interview of the day. What do you think – are you in Kumbaya land?
“What I have to do in the future is give myself permission to say, ‘That is more than likely a syphilitic parasite and I need to distance myself from this clown, otherwise I'm probably gonna put hands on this somebody and then there's a real story!’”
Guru-Murthy, on the other hand, is unrepentant. In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “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.”