Celebrity

Diva or Self-Care Icon? Adam Driver Walkout Prompts Debate

Some say that Driver was simply practicing self-care and prioritizing his well-being when he walked out of an interview with NPR’s β€œFresh Air”; others argue he's not doing his job

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Adam Driver, who is in the middle of promoting Netflix's "Marriage Story," walked out of an interview with NPR's "Fresh Air" and in doing so, has prompted debate about self care and the ethics of journalism, NBC News reported.

Driver, who was at NPR's New York offices for the interview earlier this month, while host with Terry Gross led the conversation from "Fresh Air's" Philadelphia studio, left mid-interview after a clip was played of a scene from "Marriage Story" of the actor singing Stephen Sondheim's "Being Alive," according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the story.

In a statement to Variety, Daniel Miller, the executive producer of "Fresh Air," said the show's team didn't "really understand why he left," adding that Driver had been a "great guest" when he first appeared on the show in 2015.

"We knew from our previous interview with Adam Driver that he does not enjoy listening back to clips of his movies (that isn't unusual, a lot of actors feel that way)," Miller wrote in the statement. "So Terry invited him to take off his headphones while we played back the 20-second clip, and that our engineer in New York would cue him to put his headphones back on after the clip ended (we also did this during our 2015 interview)."

After the clip played, however, Miller said he was informed by the engineer that Driver had left the building.

When the news first broke, many were quick to call Driver a "diva" and argued that he was not effectively doing the job of promoting his work. Yet some say that Driver was simply practicing self-care and prioritizing his well-being, with many pointing out that it seemed "strange" the program didn't opt to splice-in the recording in post-production given that Driver's refusal to watch himself has been documented.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com.

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