Jamie Lee Curtis was left in tears while discussing “man of faith” Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination and was noticeably moved by his deep “connection to God” — but the actress mixed up his last name.
“I’m going to bring something up with you just because it’s front of mind. Charlie Crist was killed two days ago,” Curtis, 66, said on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast on Monday.
The comedian corrected her that it’s “Kirk, not Crist,” to which the “Halloween” star replied, “I just call him Crist, I think, because of Christ, because of his deep belief.”
Acknowledging that she had nothing politically in common with Kirk and “disagreed with him on almost every point,” Curtis was fighting back tears when she spoke of his spirituality.
“I believe he was a man of faith, and I hope in that moment when he died that he felt connected to his faith,” the “Freaky Friday” actress said.
“Even though I find what his ideas were abhorrent to me, I still believe he’s a father and a husband and a man of faith, and I hope whatever ‘connection to God’ means, that he felt it.”
Curtis noted that society is constantly “bombarded” with imagery, making it unclear what the long-term impact might be of repeatedly watching traumatic events — including videos of the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the footage of Charlie Kirk’s “execution” being viewed “over and over and over again.”
“That kind of—I don’t ever want to see this footage of this man being shot,” she said while choking up.
The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” actress added that she is “associated” with an American tragedy witnessed by many on television, since she was born five years to the day of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
“I’m associated with this awful day of someone being assassinated on television,” she said.
“We are numb to them, but they are in there. We don’t know, we don’t know enough psychologically about what that does. What does that do? Is that the case why we’re all feeling this lack of humanity—because we are just saturated with these images?”
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed on Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University as part of his “American Comeback Tour,” launching a multi-day manhunt that ended with the arrest of alleged assassin Tyler Robinson on Friday.
Turning Point USA — the conservative nonprofit organization founded by Kirk in 2012 — paid tribute to the father of three as someone who deeply loved Christ, noting that “above all, he wished to be remembered for his faith.”
President Trump was the first to publicly announce Kirk’s death and also said he would posthumously award his close ally the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest honor.
Robinson, a 22-year-old from St. George, Utah, has since refused to cooperate with the FBI as it investigates Kirk’s murder following his arrest.
