Video: The most painful interview of 2016

To cleanse the palate. It took 355 days to find a winner, but it was worth the wait.

Most reaction to this on social media is anti-Lewis but there’s a second school of thought emerging that I’d describe as anti-anti-Lewis. It’s not all his fault that this interview went so badly, these people claim. The interviewer’s questions are lame, of the “Do you have a fond memory you’d like to share?” variety. Virtually nothing is asked that required any research beforehand. Can’t fault a 90-year-old for not wanting to answer questions he’s answered literally thousands of times in the past 60 years. In fact, the feature that inspired this interview seems to lend itself to lame Q&A: It’s part of THR’s “Creative Until You Die” series, in which celebrities aged 90 or over are asked generic stuff about their careers. Clearly the hope here was that Lewis would say some blandly endearing nonsense about the magic of Hollywood and wax nostalgic about Dean-o, etc. It wasn’t really supposed to be an “interview,” properly understood. It was a “look at these cuddly wizened legends, still plugging away!” feelgood gimmick. Instead THR got this.

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All of which is fine, but even allowing for the lameness of the questions, Lewis seems awfully curt. (He’s infamous for being, shall we say, “difficult.”) Note the mocking laughter after one answer towards the end of the clip. If he didn’t want to do the interview, he could have canceled or made it really entertaining by berating the guy. Instead he went with the Marshawn Lynch approach. You can kick ’em out, Jerry. You won’t get fined.

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