Paul Dano is glad he didn’t have to bother defending himself against Quentin Tarantino’s scathing attack on him last month.
The There Will Be Blood star finally broke his silence on Wednesday, telling Variety that the support he received in the aftermath “was really nice,” adding, “I was also incredibly grateful that the world spoke up for me, so I didn’t have to.”
Dano was the target of a surprisingly nasty rant against from Tarantino last month on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, in which he’d called the actor “such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy,” “the weakest male actor in SAG,” and “the limpest d--- in the world.”
Tarantino’s primary issue with the actor was what he deemed a subpar performance opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in 2007’s There Will Be Blood‚ though he still declared the film one of the best of the 21st century.
Dano, 41, spoke to Variety ahead of the 20th anniversary screening of Little Miss Sunshine, in which Toni Collette, 53, played his mother.
Colette interjected when Dano was asked for his reaction to Tarantino, asking, “Are we really going there? F--- that guy! He must’ve been high… it was just confusing. Who does that?”
Her fierce defense of Dano echoes the general consensus in Hollywood following Tarantino’s comments, with actors Alec Baldwin, Ben Stiller, George Clooney, Ethan Hawke, and more all jumping in to contradict the unfair characterization.
“Paul Dano is f---ing brilliant,” Stiller wrote on X. Added Baldwin in a video posted to Instagram, “I just want to say I love Paul Dano. And if you don’t love Paul Dano, shh.”
Matthew Lillard, 55, was another actor Tarantino said he “didn’t care for” during his rant, in which he also named Owen Wilson. Lillard told Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday that the aftermath of the comments “was like living through your own wake.”
“Nobody has to like me,” Lillard remarked. “Nobody has to like any actor out there, obviously. It’s personal preference. I am not everyone’s first choice, that is obvious, but to then have that kind of reaction was beautiful.”
The actor said he received “all those R.I.P. emails or tweets and Instagram posts and TikToks, all of the things we see after somebody passes,” after Tarantino’s remarks went viral. “The reality is I just got to live through all of it firsthand—alive and kicking! I can’t imagine a more lovely reaction to what happened.”
The Scream and Five Nights at Freddy’s actor was more emotional during his initial response last month. “It hurts your feelings. It f---ing sucks,” he said at a fan convention at the time.
“You wouldn’t say that to Tom Cruise. You wouldn’t say that to somebody who’s a top-line actor in Hollywood,” he added. “I’m very popular in this room. I’m not very popular in Hollywood. Two totally different microcosms, right? And so, you know, it’s humbling, and it hurts.”
