DJs Get Interview of a Lifetime: a Locked-Down Matt Damon

'I feel like I'm about to throw up,' Dublin's Nathan O'Reilly told Damon, quarantined in small Irish town
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted May 14, 2020 8:00 AM CDT

Talk about an at-work win. Per the BBC, Dublin DJs Nathan O'Reilly and Graham O'Toole nabbed none other than Matt Damon for a Zoom interview after finding out the 49-year-old star was quarantining with his family in the coastal town of Dalkey. For six weeks, O'Reilly had been campaigning on the air for Damon to call in to their Fully Charged radio show on SPIN 1038; the New York Times notes the actor had been in Ireland with his wife and three youngest daughters to shoot the Ridley Scott movie The Last Duel when production was shut down due to the virus. And this week, O'Reilly's dream became reality. "I honestly feel like I'm about to throw up," he told Damon, who said he'd heard the DJ's plea himself while driving. He also said he got word of the request via FaceTime from another famous Dalkey resident, U2 frontman Bono.

"He said to me last week, 'You know there's a local radio station that's looking for you,'" Damon said. He spoke with the DJs about the similarities between what's going on now and 2011's Contagion, which he co-starred in. "Ten years ago we made a movie just by talking to experts and asking them, well, how would this look and how [would it] go down," he said. "The whole thing is tragic and sad." The star revealed his oldest daughter, Alexia, a college student who'd remained in New York, had the coronavirus but "got through it fine." Damon, who called living in Dalkey "like a fairy tale," also offered praise for the country's prime minister, Leo Varadkar, who recently reregistered as a doctor to assist COVID-19 patients. "You've got a president who just goes to the hospital and starts working," Damon said. "I mean, what a badass. It's just on another level." (Hear the full interview here.)

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