Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were at their candid best on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show. The duo guested on the show to promote their new Netflix film, The Rip, and discuss several aspects of their film careers and personal lives. Damon and Affleck reflected on their now-iconic Good Will Hunting Oscar acceptance speech and why they dislike it.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck aren’t fans of their this acceptance speech
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck dislike their Oscar-winning speech for Good Will Hunting. The pair confessed this on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show. For those unversed, Damon and Affleck penned the film together, and it starred Robin Williams, Stellan Skarsgård, and Minnie Driver, among others.
Notably, Good Will Hunting was a critical and commercial success upon its release. Interestingly, Damon and Affleck bagged the Oscar for “Best Original Screenplay” at the Academy Awards.
Stern asked the duo, “Have you ever gone back and watched the Oscar acceptance speech when you guys won together for Good Will Hunting?” Affleck gave an exasperated expression as he heard Stern’s question. He replied, “Every time I see that thing… I just feel so… like, I thanked Boston as a city three times. Was that necessary?”
Damon added, “The funny thing about it, actually.” The Martian star continued, “The reason it’s kind of disorganized was because we never ever had a conversation between ourselves about what we would say, because honestly, each of us knew deep down that if we had that conversation and didn’t win, in 50 years we’d be at some bar in Boston going, ‘Can you f*****g believe we f*****g wrote an Oscars speech? You jacka**.’ So when we got up there, I remember I pushed Ben into the microphone. I was like, ‘I’m not doing it.’”
Affleck explained that he was unprepared to give an Oscar acceptance speech and didn’t know any better. He exclaimed, “I’m like, ‘What am I supposed to say?’ So I do, in some ways, think it would have been smart to think a little bit about what I was going to say in front of the whole world.”
Damon interjected, revealing, “We thanked a number of people multiple times.” Towards the end, Affleck revealed that it was a dream-come-true moment for the duo, who had only watched the Oscars in their apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts. The Odyssey star, on the other hand, recalled, “It was too much to metabolize. It took years for it to kind of sink in.”
