If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this week, you’ve probably seen the now-viral video of Morgan Freeman describing Vladimir Putin as a movie villain and calling on president Trump to make serious, concrete actions to investigate Russia’s role in influencing the 2016 presidential election. In response, Russia’s state-run media came up with whatever they could to discredit the Academy Award winner, including his long-admitted use of wacky tobaccy.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, news outlets across Russia are hounding Freeman for his participation in the Committee to Investigate Russia video. On the news program Vesti, Russian film director Yuri Grymov said, "I think, the grandpa just got drunk."
In their own attempt to explain away the March of the Penguins’ narrator’s actions, TV station Rossiya 24 brought in a panel of psychologists who “explained” that Freeman was suffering from "a Messianic complex" after portraying the president and God in a number of films.
After the “medical panel” finished their on-air diagnosis, the program’s host offered his own hypothesis, blaming Freeman’s appearance in the viral video on “excessive workload and marijuana use.”
Of course, it’s no secret that Freeman has a long, fruitful relationship with ganja, and he certainly could have been under the influence while filming the two minute bit, but we’re still gonna guess that his decision to act as spokesman has a little more to do with Paul Manafort and Mother Russia than his love for marijuana.
Another news channel said that Freeman “lost millions of Russian fans in a moment.” It’s probably nothing that another nature documentary narration won’t fix.
