Flashback: Matt Damon Signs 'Team America' Photos of His Puppet and the Backstory of the Viral Sarah Silverman Song

Every once in a while someone references an old interview I did and I genuinely have no memory of the things that were said. It always happens at the most random of times. Though I suspect the massive success of “The Odyssey” has upped searches of Matt Damon, and several people have reminded me about this interview from 14 years ago for the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. It was a career discussion and at the time I referred to Damon as one of the last old-school movie stars - something I stand by and think holds true today. He’s a great actor, doesn’t take himself too seriously, and seems like a cool guy.

We talked about that sense of humor, beginning with his surprise appearance in Sarah Silverman’s music video “I’m Fucking Matt Damon.” As everyone knows, Damon has an ongoing fake feud with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who was dating Silverman at the time. So Silverman surprised Kimmel with this announcement video that she’d been hooking up with his nemesis. I asked him about shooting it - they had virtually no time (less than 3 hours I think) which is shocking when you look at it - that choreography alone is astounding! The reason he was limited on time is kind of amusing - he had to be at a parent-teacher conference for his 7-year-old daughter… It was only on the drive over that he realized what he had done and people would actually see this: “I can’t do this anymore - I have a kid in school, I’m going to have to face the teachers.” (He genuinely had no idea it would take off the way it did and figured it would “disappear into the ether.” How wrong he was.) Fortunately, it turns out everyone loved it - including the teachers.

His video then inspired Kimmel to respond with his own song - and of course the obvious person to go to was Damon’s best buddy Ben Affleck. And “I’m Fucking ben Affleck” was born, something Damon knew nothing about until he called his friend in the midst of shooting it. The Affleck video was loaded with cameos - Cameron Diaz, Harrison Ford, Josh Groban - even Affleck was impressed by the scale.

While on the topic of laughing at yourself, I had to ask him about being parodied as a puppet in “Team America: World Police.” A few celebrities “appeared” in the film as puppets - George Clooney, Sean Penn - but Damon was particularly memorable because all he could say was his own name, in a long, drawn-out way. Turns out Damon not only thought it was hilarious, but he even signs photos of that puppet - at the time, he was signing more of those than any other project.

You can check out the full conversation and many other great ones at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s YouTube Channel here.