Joan Collins Goes off About ‘Cancel Culture’

Joan Collins has plenty of tea to spill as she promotes her new memoir, My Unapologetic Diaries. In a new interview this weekend, Collins said she has had enough of “cancel culture” and said people cannot speak their minds without fear of being “canceled.” She also isn’t interested in hearing any more about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle but would like to see more Piers Morgan, who was fired from Good Morning Britain over his comments about Markle.

“He’s more interesting than any of them,” the former Dynasty star, 88, told The Sunday Times, via Yahoo! Entertainment. “People can’t say what they think, because they’ll get canceled. Dredging up tweets from 15 years ago, about what somebody might have said when they were 14, I think that’s sick.” Although Morgan was “canceled” over his Markle comments, he recently signed a global deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and News Corp. He will even host a tv series that will stream in the U.K. and U.S. in 2022.

Dame Collins said “cancel culture” is one reason why she doesn’t use social media. “I don’t want to engage in any way, shape, or form with these morons,” she said. As for Harry and Markle, she believes they have “had enough oxygen in the press.” She also is not happy about the reevaluation of the late Prime Minister Winston Churchill due to his racist views and other controversies. Collins “hates the way they are disavowing Churchill, who saved us, saved us from the Nazis,” she told the Sunday Times. “I was too young at the time to realize, but they were on our doorstep. If it hadn’t been for Churchill we would all be walking around with swastikas.”

Collins also railed against “cancel culture” in an interview with The Daily Mail for her new book. “The thing is you can’t say anything these days without being canceled. What am I allowed to say?” she asked while pointing to flowers on her table. “Am I allowed to say, ‘These orchids are fake’? Because they are. Well, forget it! I’m not kowtowing to cancel culture. Can’t say this, can’t say that. I’m like my father [the late theatrical agent Joe Collins] in that regard. Non-diplomatic. I think it’s a Gemini thing. I quite admired the Duke of Edinburgh, saying things he thought even if they offended.”

Elsewhere in her interview with The Sunday Times, Collins did have good things to say about someone: her husband of almost 20 years, producer Percy Gibson. He is “absolutely, without a doubt” the best of her five husbands, she said. She was also thankful to be married to someone so much younger than her. “He’s the best, I can’t imagine life without him,” she said. “He’s the rock that holds our family together. Thank God I married somebody 30 years younger than me. I couldn’t bear to be married to someone my own age.” My Unapologetic Diaries will be released on Oct. 14.