Woody Harrelson faces criticism for sharing COVID-19 conspiracy on SNL

Actor Woody Harrelson is coming under fire for sharing a coronavirus vaccine conspiracy during this weekend’s episode of “Saturday Night Live.”

Harrelson, 61, who hosted the show, made the statement during his opening monologue. It was his fifth time on stage as an SNL host.

He began to share a story with the audience about the “craziest script” that he had ever read before the COVID-19 pandemic, but got distracted by mentioning a lot of other details — like smoking weed and what kind of tree he was sitting under.

“So, the movie goes like this,” Harrelson finally said. “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”

He continued, “I threw the script away. I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day long.”

The Post reached out to reps for Harrelson and NBC’s Saturday Night Live.

After his monologue, many viewers took to social media to blast him for the “joke.”

“I just read Woody Harrelson’s monologue,” one person tweeted. “I guess I’m not a good sport, anymore because I don’t find anti-vax jokes funny while we lost a good chunk of America due to stupid people spreading it to others.”

Another agreed, writing, “Re Woody Harrelson and #SNL, whenever anyone spews anti-vax stupidity, I always think of the countless videos of traumatized/crying doctors, nurses and hospital workers who were climbing over bodies in Covid’s early days. So yeah, f– Woody Harrelson.”

Someone else joked on Twitter, “It looks like Woody Harrelson announced his retirement last night.”

However, others praised him for the rant, like Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, who re-tweeted Harrelson’s monolouge.

He wrote in response to the post, “So based. Nice work @nbcsnl!”

Singer Five Times August tweeted in his defense, typing, “Woody Harrelson just told the entire country on live TV exactly what happened over the last three years and people are still like ‘Yea right! Never gonna happen! Anti-vax conspiracy theory garbage!!’”

This isn’t the first time that Harrelson has spoken out about his thoughts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, he shared a conspiracy theory that linked 5G networks to the pandemic in an Instagram post that has been deleted.

The former “Cheers” star posted a report “about the negative effects of 5G,” admitting at the time that he hadn’t “fully vetted” it but found it “interesting.”