Ben Affleck's team has been accused of censoring a reporter while promoting "The Accountant." (Reuters)
Ben Affleck, who caused a huge scandal in 2015 when he demanded the PBS show “Finding Your Roots” censor its discovery that his ancestors owned slaves, is back at it again, reports the New York Post.
This past week, Sam Rubin, a reporter for LA’s KTLA’s morning news, accused Affleck’s team of taking the unusual step of editing and deleting segments of just-filmed TV interviews with the actor at a press junket for the new movie “The Accountant” before releasing the footage to the reporter who carried out the interview. Rubin also said Affleck’s reps rudely interrupted him when a question that they didn’t like came up.
“When I walked in to pick up my card [with the reel], studio people — who I assume were ordered by these same lame public-relations censors who interrupted my interview — they were editing someone else’s interview, one Ben had already given because he had made a joke in the interview about drug use,” Rubin said Tuesday. “They were taking out a remark he had actually made of his own free will and cutting it out of the interview because they think you might not be able to understand it. You may not get Ben’s sense of humor.”
Brooke Burns, wife of “The Accountant” director Gavin O’Connor, went on Rubin’s show Friday to deliver apology cupcakes. But the reps handling the junket were thrown under the bus.
“I spoke at length with Ben Affleck’s personal publicist [at Sunshine Sachs], who was very polite and very apologetic,” Rubin wrote on Facebook Friday. “She was not in the room when all of this went down. She, in fact, was ill that day, and had junior staffers work the junket. She assured me that had she been there, this would not have taken place, and I believe her.”
In 2015, it was discovered through leaked Sony e-mails that Affleck had asked “Finding Your Roots” producers to edit out his family past of slave ownership. Affleck released a statement at the time saying, “I was embarrassed.”
Reps for Affleck and Warner Bros., did not comment.
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