The internet loves coming for Chris Pratt, and he wants to know why.
The “Guardians of the Galaxy” star is on the new cover of Men’s Health magazine, and in the issue he discusses being a frequent target of trolling and backlash on social media.
“You don’t ever wanna get caught complaining or anything. ’Cause I have so many blessings. I consider everything a blessing truly in my life,” he says. “[But] why are they coming after me?”
One big example of that backlash came last year when Pratt posted a love letter to his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger on Instagram.
“I said something like, ‘Find someone who looks at you the way my wife looks at me.’ And then I gave her some s**t in the thing and said, ‘But I love you. I’m so thankful for my wife—she gave me a beautiful, healthy daughter,'” he recalls. “And then a bunch of articles came out and said, ‘That’s so cringeworthy. I can’t believe Chris Pratt would thank her for a healthy daughter when his first child was born premature. That’s such a dig at his ex-wife.’”
He continues, “And I’m like, That is f**ked up. My son’s gonna read that one day. He’s nine. And it’s etched in digital stone. It really f**king bothered me, dude. I cried about it. I was like, I hate that these blessings in my life are—to the people close to me—a real burden.”
Pratt has also been hit with backlash over his alleged association with the controversial Hillsong church, but the actor is clearing all that up, as well.
“Religion has been oppressive as f**k for a long time. I didn’t know that I would kind of become the face of religion when really I’m not a religious person,” he says. “I think there’s a distinction between being religious—adhering to the customs created by man, oftentimes appropriating the awe reserved for who I believe is a very real God—and using it to control people, to take money from people, to abuse children, to steal land, to justify hatred. Whatever it is. The evil that’s in the heart of every single man has glommed on to the back of religion and come along for the ride.”
He adds, “I never went to Hillsong. I’ve never actually been to Hillsong. I don’t know anyone from that church.”
The 42-year-old actor also shares how his sense of humour has been a defence mechanism throughout his life, originally as a response to his “mean” and “old school” father.
“I am a sensitive person. My dad knew that when I was a youngster, and it kind of made him dislike me. Or not dislike me but act like he disliked me—’cause he probably grew up in a world where a guy like that could get eaten alive,” Pratt says. “And so he wanted to put calluses on me. Early on, I developed humour as a self-defence mechanism—I developed Andy, really. Andy on ‘Parks and Rec’ was my clown that I had honed my entire life, a guy who is affable, who’s an intelligent person playing a dumb person.”
Pratt also talks about his father-in-law Arnold Schwarzenegger: “Gift giving is absolutely one of his love languages. The most thoughtful gifts you could imagine, like quilts with all of the baby’s pictures on it. He gave us these—I don’t know what you’d call them—like statues carved out of wood. Nativity statues. They’re from Oberammergau in [Germany].”
On staying true to himself, Pratt says, “I’ve been broke-broke, dude. And I think early on in my career it was so important to me. It’s like, Don’t forget where you came from. Don’t forget who you are. And part of me is struggling with who I am maybe not being who I was.”
