Liam Neeson Did Not Enjoy Being Objectified on "The View"

On February 15, Liam Neeson made an appearance on The View to promote his new movie Marlowe, but he didn’t get to talk about it very much. Instead, most of his segment was devoted to Joy Behar’s long-standing crush on him. There was lots of teasing from Behar’s co-hosts about her affection for the actor, as well as an awkward bit in which the women on the panel made him add a few extra hearts to the belated Valentine’s Day cards he gave them. There was even a supercut of all the times over the years that Behar has mentioned Neeson on the show, including a clip in which she says she’d like to have her ashes sprinkled over him when she dies.

Neeson did his best to play along and laugh it off while he was on air — this is live TV, after all. “You received the checks, right?” he quipped after the Behar supercut finished rolling. Still, you could tell he was over the whole thing when, after Behar quoted his Taken line “I will find you and I will kill you” for a second time, he replied, “Oh Joy, stop it. Get a life.” But now Neeson has addressed the awkward appearance in a new interview with Rolling Stone, admitting that he actually felt “uncomfortable” during the segment.

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“I was in the dressing room drinking a cup of tea, turned the TV up, and I thought, oh, this will be great,” he told the publication. “They’re talking about gun violence in America, and I agree that it’s an American problem. I go onstage and join the ladies during the break, and I was congratulating them on this discussion. And then our segment starts and it’s just all this BS with Joy [Behar] and Liam Neeson and having a crush, and I’ve known Whoopi for years and Joy a little bit, but I just wasn’t impressed. I’m uncomfortable in those situations, you know?”

Neeson did note that he “had a little chat afterward” with Sunny Hostin off-air, calling it an “intelligent conversation.”

“But then the segment’s all about this — oof —thirteen, fourteen-year-old crush. It’s just a bit embarrassing,” he said.

There’d be a lot more people (rightfully) up in arms about this if the tables were turned and an all-male panel spent an entire interview talking about how hot a critically actress is instead of focusing on her work. But maybe as a rule of thumb we should steer clear of commenting on people’s physical appearances in general, regardless of gender.

You can watch Neeson’s View appearance below, if you must.