Taylor Kitsch’s Philippines comments land him in hot water
The people of the Philippines are not big fans of Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch.
The "John Carter" star has landed in hot water with the Southeast Asian country after an anecdote about an airport delay, which he shared on "Late Show With David Letterman" last week. According to a Philippines customs employee, Kitsch's story is untrue.
On the "Late Show," the 29-year-old described flying from Japan to the Philippines to start work on Oliver Stone's "Savages." According to Kitsch, he was stopped at customs for not having any pages left to stamp in his passport.
"You know it's gonna be good when that guy's calling you over," Kitsch said.
Kitsch claimed that in customs "everyone was smoking" and, despite having a work visa, he was told he was being sent back to Japan because his passport had no more pages to stamp.
"He didn't believe I was an actor," Kitsch said of the customs official. "So, I'm literally pitching myself to this guy."
Though the actor had to work hard to impress the authorities (who seemed to want his iPhone more than anything else), they eventually let him in after watching the "John Carter" trailer on his phone.
"'John Carter' got me through customs," Kitsch concluded.
The problem with Kitsch's tale? The "Friday Night Lights" actor was never actually in the Philippines.
Philippines Customs chief Ruffy Biazon wrote on his blog (everyone has one!) Friday that there are no records showing Kitsch visited the country nor do his officers stamp passports.
It turns out Kitsch was, in fact, flying to Indonesia's West Nusa Tenggara province. Oops.
Unfortunately, the film is not going to get him out of this mess. Philippine authorities have requested an apology from the actor for wrongly implicating their airport personnel.
"We believe that Taylor Kitsch made an erroneous statement which demeaned our country and an apology would be a proper decent response," a presidential spokesman has said.
Hey, to his credit, Kitsch did admit the 15-hour time difference in the east "messes with you."
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