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Bret Easton Ellis Thinks He Was ‘Punked’ by The New Yorker

Bret Easton Ellis, punk-ee. Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

If there’s one thing that really gets my goat, personally, it’s being “punked” by my own words, “pranked” by having the things I said reproduced verbatim, online, in full context, so that I can then be clowned and held accountable for them. Like … wow? Okay.

So, I understand what American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis meant when he told the L.A. Times this weekend that he felt he had been “punked” by the The New Yorker, which published a widely mocked Q&A with Ellis last week, in which he dodged and half-engaged with questions about his political views, and his new nonfiction essay collection, White, and in which he gave meaty, salient answers like, “Well, whatever,” and “O.K., but whatever,” and “But I don’t really care.”

As Ellis explained to the L.A. Times, he feels “uncomfortable” talking about President Trump and politics (despite having written about them in his new book) because he’s not political and has “no interest in politics.”

I feel uncomfortable about it and I know there was this big controversy last week with this New Yorker piece about me, a New Yorker interview, which was kind of a prank. I got punked, I have to admit it.

Yes, that classic, timeless prank where a prestige media outlet schedules a interview with a creator about their work, and then publishes the results of that interview — just like Ashton Kutcher used to do all the time on MTV.

Bret Easton Ellis Thinks He Was ‘Punked’ by The New Yorker