Willem Dafoe erinnert sich, dass er durch die letzte Versuchung Christi gegeneinander „schockiert“ gewesen war: „Es wurde eine antisemitische Sache“

>Dafoe said he was „shocked“ by the controversy that the film generated as a result of its explicit content (per The Hollywood Reporter). „Jesus rejects his job and lives as a normal man,“ the actor said of the film, which depicts Christ contemplating rejecting his messianic duties to pursue a mortal life with Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey). „He has children, he has sex. That was too scandalous for people, so even without seeing the movie, there were huge protests against it.“

>The Poor Things star said that the backlash to the movie then „morphed into a very strange thing about Jews in Hollywood“ at a certain point. „It became an antisemitic thing, and it snowballed,“ he said. „And the perception is that it was the Catholic Church. It really wasn’t the Catholic Church. It was the fundamental right in America that started this, and then it spread to various places.“

>“I was shocked, because in an age of super-violent movies and porn and all kinds of movies, this is a movie that was trying to address itself to the nature of faith,“ he said. „It was a drag, because it was a movie that I was very invested in, in my mind.“