“Well, people told me it was, shall we say, trending,” Harrelson said when asked about his polarizing “SNL” monologue. “No, I don’t look at that shit. I feel like, ‘I said it on “SNL.”‘ I don’t need to go further with it… other than to say — well, no, I won’t. Never mind. That’s enough.… But it don’t change my life one bit. Not one bit, if the mainstream media wants to have a go at you, right? My life is still wonderful.”

“I threw the script away,” Harrelson added. “I mean, who was going to believe that crazy idea? Being forced to do drugs? I do that voluntarily all day.”

Harrelson was making a commentary on COVID vaccine mandates, a topic he more bluntly railed against during a New York Times piece published shortly before his “SNL” episode. The actor criticized Hollywood for still enforcing COVID safety protocols on film sets.

“What’s absurd about the Covid protocols?” The New York Times asked Harrelson.

“The fact that they’re still going on!” the actor responded. “I don’t think that anybody should have the right to demand that you’re forced to do the testing, forced to wear the mask and forced to get vaccinated three years on. I’m just like, let’s be done with this nonsense. It’s not fair to the crews. I don’t have to wear the mask. Why should they? Why should they have to be vaccinated? How’s that not up to the individual? I shouldn’t be talking about this [expletive].”

“It makes me angry for the crew,” Harrelson continued. “The anarchist part of me, I don’t feel that we should have forced testing, forced masking and forced vaccination. That’s not a free country. Really I’m talking about the crew. Because I can get out of wearing a mask. I can test less. I’m not in the same position they’re in, but it’s wrong. It’s three years. Stop.”

Harrelson’s comments also led to divisive response on social media, but he told Esquire magazine he mostly stays away from the internet. “I don’t read the internet. It’s like when reviews come out for movies. I don’t look,” Harrelson said. “Well, I did one time. I was in this play in San Francisco with Sean Penn in 2000. At one point, I was stretching in the place that I was renting there and there was an LA Times, and it had a picture of me and Sean on stage. I’d only been hearing, ‘Oh my God, the critics just love you! You’re going to be so psyched!’ Well, it just so happened that the paper was open to the review, and I started reading it. Oh, it just went after me. It fucked me up for at least two, three performances. It’s a poison pill.”