George Lazenby, who used to play James Bond, has apologized after being accused of saying “creepy” and “disgusting” things in an on-stage interview. The actor was in Australia as part of a tour called The Music of James Bond. People in the audience in Perth were upset by what they called “homophobic” comments and explicit stories.
Lazenby said that he was “sad to hear” that his stories had hurt people. “I never meant to say anything hurtful or homophobic, and I’m sorry if my stories, which I’ve told many times, were seen that way,” he said in a statement.
The Australian actor, 83 years old, has been taken out of all the remaining shows on the tour. Concert works, which puts on plays, said that his “language, comments, and memories” during Saturday’s show in Perth were “unfortunate and disappointing.”
I am sorry and saddened to hear that my stories in Perth on Saturday might have offended some people. It was never my intention to make hurtful or homophobic comments and I am truly sorry if my stories that I have shared many times were taken that way. I only ever wish to share pic.twitter.com/zD9jEazNm2
— George Lazenby (@lazenbyofficial) September 12, 2022
The lawyer for Concert works, Aaron Kernaghan, said, “These were his personal views, and there’s no reason for this in today’s society. They do not represent the views of Concertworks.”
The company has talked to people who were upset and apologized to the audience, the performers, and the Perth Concert Hall. In the meantime, it has “chosen to end its relationship with Mr. Lazenby” and has started “a thorough review of the matter,” Mr. Kernaghan said.
One audience member said that Lazenby spent most of the interview on Saturday “talking about his sexual conquests.” She told Perth radio station 6PR, “He was homophobic, he swore, and he wasn’t talking about his Bond movies.” “A day after the Queen died, he made fun of her,” she said.
“It was unreal. At one point, he said after the daughter of an Australian cricketer, he pulled the daughter out of a pub and put her in a car in London, which is horrible. “It wasn’t even funny or charming; it was just bad. It was weird, and it wasn’t nice… There’s no way around it: he was disgusting.”
Another person there called the interview “self-serving misogynistic stories about George Lazenby’s sexual prowess, intimate details about diarrhea, and making women into objects.” “The tension didn’t ease until a brave person in the crowd shouted, ‘Excuse me, this is offensive,'” they told The West Australian newspaper. “George was booed off stage, and music saved the day.”
On Twitter, concertgoer Joseph McCormack said that at least one person in the crowd “called out the offence that Lazenby was causing” while the show was going on.
A second person called 6PR to defend the actor said that his stories were “exaggerated” to make them funny. People were getting so woke. “[The show] was a lot of fun until people started to yell and boo.”
In a statement released this weekend, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO), which also played at the show, broke ties with the actor.
“His memories were his own thoughts that may have come from a time when this kind of behaviour was okay, but it has never been okay,” the orchestra wrote. His words were his own, and they don’t show what our society is like now. His ideas are by WASO or Perth Concert Hall, and they disagree with him.
David Templeman, Australia’s culture minister, said, “I know that the audience made its feelings about the content clear, and that’s great.” Lazenby became well-known after replacing Sean Connery in the James Bond movies in 1969.
He used to be a model and had never acted before. He only starred in one movie and said he turned down $1 million to play the same role again.
“Bond is a brute. I’ve already forgotten about him. I won’t play him ever again.” The message now is peace,” he said at the time.
