Is Chris Pratt Okay?

Chris Pratt knows he’s the internet’s least favorite Chris. His fellow denizens of the Marvel Cinematic Universe may defend him with all their might, and he may book every voice acting role under the sun, but that doesn’t change the fact that Chris Evans, Hemsworth, and Pine all outrank him in Twitter’s heart. Now, during a press tour for his upcoming TV series The Terminal List, he seems to be trying to bolster his place in the Chris rankings—and it’s all getting a bit weird.

The Terminal List stars Pratt as a Navy SEAL on the hunt for information about what he suspects was a targeted attack on his platoon. Taylor Kitsch, of Friday Night Lights, plays his good pal and fellow mystery-solver, who’s a former SEAL-turned-CIA operative. It all sounds very Amazon Prime Video, and like a perfect fit for an actor fond of sporting a Gadsden flag t-shirt.

However, in a new interview with Men’s Health, Pratt denied attending the anti-LGBTQ Hillsong Church and seemingly tried to distance himself from his reputation as the right-wing Chris. “Religion has been oppressive as fuck for a long time,” he told the magazine. “I didn’t know that I would kind of become the face of religion when really I’m not a religious person.”

Still, he did say that he attends Zoe Church, whose founding pastor, the magazine points out, “executive-produced a 2017 film that equated ‘sexual brokenness’ with ‘same-sex attraction.’” He also said that he was reluctant to initially deny reports linking him with Hillsong, a church also accused of being rife with abuse, because he didn’t want to throw the organization “under the bus.” Then in a separate interview with SiriusXM’s Pop Culture Spotlight,
Pratt told a story about golfing with his pastor, which would seemingly undermine the “not a religious person” thing. (During that interview he also said that he hates being called Chris, which is one way to opt-out of those perennial Hollywood Chrises rankings.)

In Men’s Health, Pratt also addressed the recent controversy around the Instagram post in which he praised his current wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, for giving him a “healthy daughter.” Pratt’s critics pointed out that the line could be interpreted as a dig at his first wife, Anna Faris, with whom he has a son who faced health troubles due to being born prematurely. Apparently, the whole hullabaloo made Pratt pretty emotional.

“Then a bunch of articles came out and said, ‘That’s so cringeworthy. I can’t believe Chris Pratt would thank her for a healthy daughter when his first child was born prematurely. That’s such a dig at his ex-wife,’” he told Men’s Health. “And I’m like, That is fucked up. My son’s gonna read that one day. He’s nine. And it’s etched in digital stone. It really fucking bothered me, dude. I cried about it.”

To top it all off, we have Kitsch, whose body language is making this press tour look more and more like a hostage situation. When the two appeared together on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Pratt performed an uncomfortably lengthy entrance dance (a literal scene from 30 Rock) while taking Kitsch, who really did initially seem content to just sit down and start the interview, along for the ride. In another joint interview, this time with the Associated Press, Kitsch had the mien of a man watching a litter of puppies being murdered just out of frame.

No one likes to be disliked, but Pratt should try to embrace his place at the bottom of the internet’s Chris rankings. There will always be movies about Green Berets who are enlisted to go on one last, big mission—to Mars. There will always be movies about retired cops avenging the murder of their wife/daughter/dog. There will always be Jack Reachers and Jack Ryans and plenty of other Jacks, too. And as long as there are movies like that, Chris Pratt will be fine. Just let Taylor Kitsch go. He’s screaming at us with his eyes.