Colin Farrell got emotional as he discussed the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles while speaking to guest-host Wanda Sykes on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
The actor spoke to Sykes about his new show “The North Water”, as well as filming “Batman” in London, U.K., before talk turned to the effects of the pandemic.
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“The homelessness here. It’s pretty tough to see,” Farrell, who has previously worked with an organization called Homeless World Cup Foundation, started to tear up.
“It’s pretty tough to see. I don’t get it. Am I doing anything about it right now? No. I’d like to think about doing something about it. I don’t understand how so many people can be on the street.
“I say that knowing full well how fortunate I am,” he added.
“I live in a nice house, I have a very safe existence. But I don’t get it, I don’t get it.”
In a June 2020 report, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said there were 66,436 people in Los Angeles County experiencing homelessness. That number is thought to have risen dramatically during the pandemic.
During the interview, Farrell recalled how he had been filming “The Batman” in London when the pandemic broke out.
“I was in London starting that when the s*** started to hit the fan and I was very glib about it at the beginning,” he shares. Farrell is stepping into the role of the comic book villain Oswald “The Penguin” Cobblepot in the latest big-screen incarnation of the Caped Crusader. “I was like, Everyone needs to chill, it’s just the flu, and I mean, what the f*** do I know?”
“But I went there and was all, ehhh it’s nothing, and then the border starts to be closed and I think I got out on the third last plane to come back here,” he says. The actor says when he arrived back in Los Angeles in March, it was “Armageddon”.
“It was very strange, I went to my local Gelson’s to stock up on groceries because I knew we were going into quarantine,” he recalls, sharing an encounter with someone he knew who “looked like he was going into surgery” with a mask, hat, and gloves on. “Then me and my boy locked down, what a year it’s been.”
See more in the clip above.
