Dublin youth station Spin 1038 scored a major coup over its media rivals by getting an exclusive interview with Hollywood movie star on its ‘Fully Charged with Graham and Nathan’ breakfast show. The interview was broadcast in full this morning on as he spoke about his time spent in Ireland where he has been living in Dalkey since the Covid-19 lockdown.
Spin 1038 breakfast hosts Graham O’Toole and Nathan O’Reilly recorded an interview on Zoom with Damon where he spoke about his daughter’s positive Covid-19 diagnosis, the picture taken on the Vico with the SuperValu bag, Leo Varadkar returning to the frontline and how Bono told him over Facetime that a local station wanted to track him down.
On how the interview came about…
Damon said: “It’s kind of my fault, I heard you guys on the radio like a month ago… I was in the car with my kids and I heard you guys talking about all this stuff, you guys gave the number to call in and I was trying to memorise the number… finally my wife said to me yesterday, have you called that radio show? You’re such an idiot, just look up their number.”
Bono also played a part: “He (Bono) said to me last week ‘you know there’s a local radio station that’s looking for you and so that was the final impetus for me, I was like I really got to track those guys down. I mean if he’s heard about it.” As part of the plight to find Damon, O’Reilly joined a Dalkey Facebook group but was kicked out shortly afterwards.
Since lockdown, Matt Damon has been living at Eddie Irvine’s house in Dalkey
Damon had been told about the story by locals: “I know, I heard this story, laughed so hard and that’s when I realised how great this place was and how protective everybody here is. You joined the group for one day before they found you out and booted you out, which is great!”
He explained how the he ended up in Ireland at this time: “Time is so weird in this whole pandemic; it was before the lockdown. I’m in the middle of a movie… we shot the first half in France and we were moving to Ireland, and right when we arrived in Ireland the movie was shut down… so that would have been early March, I guess, like two months ago.”
On his eldest daughter, who is college in New York since lockdown, testing positive for Covid-19, Damon said she had Covid really early on along with her roommates. “She got through it fine so I shouldn’t say our whole family is together, of our four kids we’ve got the three younger ones and our oldest one, we’ll reunite with her at the end of the month.
“But everybody’s OK. Obviously for Lucie’s (Damon’s wife) mom and my mom it’s scary for that generation. I think we’ve all got the message now, everybody’s doing the isolation and the social distancing and hand washing, everything we can to mitigate this. We’re going to go back to Los Angeles and she’s (his daughter) going to come out so we’ll all be together and figure out what the heck we’re going to do. It’s such an odd limbo that we’re all in.”
LIVING IN DALKEY
“This is one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been,” Damon said… “I’ve got my kids, and we have teachers with us because we were planning on missing school for about eight weeks, so we’ve got what nobody else has which is actual live human beings teaching our kids, the schools are all shut down back home and all the kids are doing remote learning.
“So we feel guilty, we’ve got this kind of incredible set up in this place, it’s just absolutely gorgeous. Even in the lockdown, they’re like you’ve gotta stay within two kilometres of your house, I mean two kilometres of here there’s trees and forests and woods and oceans, I can’t think of any place else you’d rather want to be in a two kilometre radius of,” he added.
On Leo Varadkar working on the frontline, Damon said: “You’ve got a president who just goes to the hospital and starts working, I mean what a bad ass, it’s just on another level”
SUPERVALU BAG
Asked about the SuperValu bag he had with him at Hawk’s Cliff: “Oh actually, that bag I think we just had the towels, I was with the kids, we were taking a dip in the water there and so we had towels to dry off with so I think we just grabbed one of our SuperValu bags and stuffed it with stuff because we didn’t show up with beach bags, so we were just improvising.”
How long does he plan to stay in Dublin? “Look, we’re staying,” Damon replied. “We were supposed to leave last week because the movie was meant to be done by now but we’re staying ‘til the end of the kids’ school year just because it’s so peaceful here and everybody’s handling it so well. You walk down the street, everybody’s minding all the guidelines.”
Will he return? “I’m coming back anyway, whenever the world right itself and we’re allowed go back to work, we still have this movie to make so. I’ve got eight weeks of shooting to look forward to so I have at least a few more months here. Who knows what the world is going to look like? This would not be a bad place to wind up though, we’re really loving it.”
WATCH FULL INTERVIEW HERE: SPIN1038 MATT DAMON WORLD EXCLUSIVE
