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Piers Morgan was seemingly not entirely comfortable during his recent interview with Russell Brand, which went viral due to the comedian struggling to find a Bible passage.
“Never had a guest be so inappropriately tactile during an interview, which surprised me given the allegations against him,” Morgan, 61, replied to a fan via X on Monday, April 27.
The fan initially pointed out that Brand’s “touching was extremely condescending” throughout the Piers Morgan Uncensored interview, to which Morgan himself admitted the experience was “a bit weird, yes.”
Us Weekly has reached out to Brand’s spokesperson for comment.
During the Friday, April 25, episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, the host asked Brand, 50, to recite a Bible passage that was meaningful to him.
Brand agreed to share a passage that he read before a recent court hearing in the U.K., where he is facing charges of rape, sexual assault and indecent assault based on allegations from four different women between 1999 and 2005. (Brand has denied any wrongdoing in the case. He did recently admit on The Megyn Kelly Show that he slept “with a 16-year-old when I was 30,” which was legal in the U.K. due to the age of consent being 16.)
Brand claimed to produce the same Bible he’d brought with him to court to read a passage from Isaiah but could not find it. Morgan watched in complete silence as Brand searched for around 90 seconds, unable to locate the verse.
“The verse that I was looking at that day was …. Not this … I can’t actually find the verse that I had that day,” Brand finally admitted. “But this is good enough. This is from Isiah 12.”
The clip quickly went viral, prompting Brand to try to explain himself to his fans via X on Sunday, April 26.
“I’m still looking for that passage actually from my dire… from Piers Morgan. Wait for it… wait for it. Look, it was marked all along,” Brand told his followers. “I was looking for it. I thought, ‘I should find the actual right passage — the exact one I was looking at when I was sat in the dark in the court.”
He then read a passage from Isaiah 43:18-19, saying, “‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.’ See, I am doing a new thing! ‘Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’”
Brand asked his followers whether they felt whatever they “personally face will align and combine with something universal.”
“That our whole culture is a bit like a wasteland?” he continued. “I mean, the political scene — both globally and domestically, wherever you are, but also, you know, globally. And sort of personally… this isn’t a great time in the world. It’s like the Roaring ‘20s but again the Roaring ‘20s was between the wars.”
Brand added, “And maybe from a macro perspective or a holy perspective the world has always been caught in such tension and indeed that is exactly what this book and the prophecies of Isaiah posit — that it’s not some localized thing.”
Meanwhile, Morgan reacted to the viral nature of the clip by sharing an awkward photo of Brand seemingly saying a blessing over him before the interview — including putting his hand on the host’s shoulder.
“I knew my Russell Brand interview would be an interesting experience when he insisted on saying a prayer for both of us before we started,” he quipped via X on Friday, adding on Monday, “The pre-show prayer was almost as excruciating as the extended Bible-rustling…”
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