Liam Neeson Calls #MeToo Movement a ‘Witch Hunt’

On Thursday Liam Neeson appeared to be coming out on the side of the anti-sexual harassment “#MeToo” and “Time’s Up” movements when he argued in an interview over the importance of equal pay.

“There’s a lot of discussion about it, and a lot of healthy and necessary discussion about it because the disparity sometimes is f—ing disgraceful,” Neeson told the Associated Press when discussing the gender wage gap in Hollywood.

But all the public good will The Commuter actor seemed to vanish on Friday, when in an interview on The Late Late Show Neeson described the #MeToo movement as a “witch hunt.”

“There is a bit of a witch hunt happening too,” Neeson said. There is some famous people being suddenly accused of touching some girl’s knee or something and suddenly they’re being dropped from their program or something.”

Neeson specifically mentioned Garrison Keillor, the former radio host of the NPR program A Prairie Home Companion, who was fired from his position back in November for accusations of “inappropriate acts.” Neeson believed Keillor’s actions didn’t fit the punishment.

“I was reading recently about him (Keillor),” Neeson said. “He was listening to a sad story from a female friend of his. And at the end of this he put his hand to her back… And she had a blouse on and it was her bare back, I don’t know what the blouse was like, and he immediately took his hand away and apologised. She said ‘don’t worry about it, forget about it’. They went their separate ways, but he emailed her because he was concerned. Apparently, he has a thing about physical touching anyway. And she said ‘forget about it, don’t worry about it.’ Months later he gets a call from a lawyer, or his radio station does in Minnesota Public Radio, saying he inappropriately touched this lady, and he was dropped like that.”

Neeson was then asked about the other end of the spectrum with people like Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Dustin Hoffman. He said he was “on the fence” regarding the last one.

“When you’re doing a play and you’re with your family, other actors, technicians, you do silly things. You do silly things. It becomes superstitious, if you don’t do it every night you think it’s going to jinx the show. I think Dustin Hoffman was, I’m not saying I’ve done similar things like what he did, apparently he touched another girl’s breast and stuff.”

Despite his comments, Neeson did say he believed the movement and having conversations about sexual harassment in the workplace is healthy for society.