You never know what media members will ask at some of these movie junkets.
Michael B. Jordan and Kate Mara found that out real quick.
The two stars of the upcoming Fantastic Four movie were awkwardly asked about playing siblings in the film, despite the fact Jordan is black and Mara is white.
Yes, a couple of Atlanta radio station hosts actually asked them. Jordan and Mara handled it about as well as they could.
“Am I missing something?” one of the hosts initially asked.
“No,” Jordan responded.
“You’re white and you’re black. How does that happen?” he tried again.
“They could be raised as brother and sister,” Jordan explained firmly. “There’s a whole bunch of family dynamics that could be without the obvious adoption.”
From there, the questions turned to Mara’s appearance.
“You’re way, way hot,” one of the hosts said. “Why’d you cut the hair? Your hair was beautiful.”
“This is a great interview,” Mara said off-handedly before explaining that her new pixie cut was for a movie.
“What would you cut your hair for?” he asked again.
“They asked me to!” she said. “I’m an actress. I have to be a chameleon.”
But when the interview turned creepy, with one host saying, “I’m a toe guy, your toes are fine,” the interview was shut down, and Mara and Jordan were escorted out.
Later, the radio hosts released a statement to Buzzfeed attempting to explain themselves:
Look, not a huge fan of these controlled 5-7 minute interview junkets they run in the first place but I was curious about the brother and sister thing. You have a white sister and black brother wouldn’t you want to know how that happened? I did. The other Fantastic Four franchises explain the relationship so I figured with this new hipster version they’d have some different backstory.
My partner’s (Southside Steve) conversation about Kate’s hair is something that came up while Michael B. Jordan took a phone call so I think they were kind of just going back forth in a playful way,” he added. “As for him complimenting her toes and why people are upset about that…sorry…no idea. Steve likes girl’s toes. People should be appreciative when they get complimented.