“Today was one of those days when a name trends on Twitter and people were sent into a frenzy,” The Daily Show host Trevor Noah said Tuesday night. As he explained to his guest, 83-year-old Oscar winner Morgan Freeman, “People think one of two things has happened: the person has died or the person wishes that they had died.”
Freeman, who experienced the latter a few years back when he faced his own #MeToo allegations, trended this week for a third reason. He lent his face and words to a new PSA urging all Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“I’m not a doctor, but I trust science. And I’m told that, for some reason, people trust me,” the actor says in the short video. “So here I am to say I trust science and I got the vaccine. If you trust me, you’ll get the vaccine.”
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He was even more pointed in his interview with Noah, saying that rather than having a death wish he only wishes that “those people who are refusing to take these doggone shots would change their minds and realize that this is one of those things we really have to do.”
“I really don’t understand, to tell you the truth, anyone who has some issues with the idea of being vaccinated against this scourge,” he continued. “The facts are in. We know that all of those dead people are dead and they didn’t get hit by trucks or anything, it was this pandemic.”
So with that in mind, Freeman said he would “recommend highly, go get the freaking shots!” If they choose not to, he added, “I will have to avoid you and I will.”
Later, Morgan addressed some of the specific reluctance within the Black community due to a history that includes the Tuskegee experiments. “That’s horse-puckey!” he said, cracking Noah up. “I don’t believe that. That’s ridiculous. This is a whole new world, a whole new society, a whole new group of people and this thing here is for real. It’s not something somebody made up as a test to see how we’ll react to it.”
And to anyone who has criticized him for taking a stand on the issue of vaccines, Morgan said, “I’m just trying to keep my peace, stay above the ground. You do what you gotta do and I’ll do what I gotta do.”
“Get the shot,” he repeated. If for no other reason, he added, “Help protect me.”
