Hey, everybody! Guess who just did an interview with Men’s Health. Mark Wahlberg! Whooo! Tell me all about it, Marky Mark!
On being ok with movies his wife chooses for date night: “As long as it isn’t a Sarah Jessica Parker movie.”
On crying during movies: “The last time I really cried a lot? During The Help. I cried about six or seven times. It was the wife’s choice, but it was a great movie.”
On being scheduled to be on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center: “If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”
On masturbation: “I don’t get down with jerking off, dude. Look. I don’t believe in everything that the church says. I try to do the right thing. I lead a clean and pure life. I’m a married guy. I have a beautiful wife. Sex is not the most important thing to me, being horny all the time, spanking the — I mean, it’s not against the law. You can do whatever you want. And it’s not like, ‘I shouldn’t do it because of my faith. I’m just not really that into it that much anyway.”
Mark! What’s your problem with masturbation, buddy?! It’s a perfectly natural, perfectly healthy thing to … wait. What did you say about September 11th?
Ok, I get that you’re supposed to be this big action hero, but that’s in movies. That’s not real life. In real life, you don’t mention a national tragedy in which lots of people died in terms of “dude, I totally would have saved the day on that one.” How do those words come out of your mouth like that without your brain realizing how insanely wrong they are? That would be kind of like saying “Oh yeah, the Holocaust? Whatever. If I was there, things would have gone different, I’ll tell you that much. I’d have been all ‘not on my watch, Nazis!'” And no, Mark, that’s not ok to say either.
To drive this important point home just a little more, here’s a statement from Deena Burnett-Bailey, the widow of one of the passengers on Flight 93:
“Does Mark Wahlberg have a pilot’s license? Then I think hindsight is 20/20 and it’s insignificant to say what you would have done if you weren’t there. The plan for Flight 93 was foiled by heroes. For him to speculate that his presence on board could have stopped everything is silly and disrespectful. Sounds like someone is grandstanding.”
It seems like ol’ Marky Mark has been properly chastised though, because he did offer up this little apology:
“To suggest I would have done anything differently than the passengers on that plane was irresponsible,” the Contraband star told PEOPLE. “I deeply apologize to the families of the victims that my answer came off as insensitive. It was certainly not my intention.”
Please, Mark, for the sake of good people all around you: the next time you think about saying something that will offend potentially millions of people, just don’t instead, all right?