Bizarre, Real-Life ‘Don’t Look Up’-Style TV Interview Prompts Strong Reactions, Including One From Adam McKay

deadline.com:

“It is willful blindness and it is going to kill us.” That’s how climate activist Miranda Whelehan described the stance of presenters like those on Good Morning Britain who, this week, literally refused to face the facts about climate change she placed before them.Her interview with the show’s Richard Madeley and Ranvir Singh struck a nerve online, with many comparing the segment to the TV interview in Don’t Look Up where Jennifer Lawrence’s character says, “We’re trying to tell you that the entire planet is about to be destroyed!” and the interviewer, played by Cate Blanchett, replies, “That’s just something we do around here, keep the bad news light!”But the GMB hosts didn’t just avoid.

The interview became a three-versus-one, attack-the-messenger segment. The two hosts and another guest seemed to characterize Whelehan herself — who is part of a protest group that has been peacefully blocking oil terminals in the U.K.

as part of a campaign to get the country to ween itself off oil — as a simple-minded, inexperienced and out of touch hypocrite.The 65-year-old Madeley dismissed the much younger Whelehan’s argument not based on its merits but, he implied, because it was “quite childish.” He called protesters’ slogan, “Just Stop Oil,” simplistic or, as he said, “very playground-ish.”Whelehan replied, “The answers are actually very simple – we need to stop new oil licensing.

With the oil reserves that we have now and the oil fields that we have that are still going, that would provide us with eight years of oil.”Good Morning Britain’s idea of a counterpoint to Whelehan was to include Lowry Turner in the discussion.