Ewan McGregor snubs Good Morning Britain interview following Piers Morgan row

Ewan McGregor has refused to appear as booked on breakfast news show Good Morning Britain after realising it was co-hosted by Piers Morgan. The actor, who is currently promoting the long-awaited Trainspotting sequel, T2, had been due to appear on Tuesday morning, 24 January, but dropped out at the last minute in protest at Morgan’s comments about the women’s marches which took place around the world on Saturday.

The actor tweeted:

Morgan hit back by accusing McGregor of narrow-mindedness and ideas above his station.

On the show, Morgan added: “Sorry that Ewan McGregor’s not here. He couldn’t bear the thought of being on the sofa with me because he doesn’t agree with me about the women’s march.

“I have to agree with what an actor thinks about a particular issue because they’re actors. And as we know actors’ views are more important than anybody else’s.”

In an article in the Daily Mail on Monday, Morgan – who has proudly trumpeted his friendship with the new US president – took aim at what he saw as “the more repellent side of feminism: the vile, crude, man-hating, violent, nasty side”.

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The likes of Madonna and Ashley Judd who spearheaded protests, wrote Morgan, “whipped [the crowd] into a man-hating frenzy”. “Ladies, I love you,” he concluded. “But if you let the nasty women win, you lose.”

Over the weekend, McGregor tweeted his support for the protesters, saying he was “so proud to see this extraordinary power”.

Later on Tuesday, Morgan hit back at the actor in another article in the Daily Mail, accusing him of unprofessionalism and cowardice in not appearing on the programme regardless of their divergent political views.

In the piece, Morgan called McGregor “a narrow-minded, stupendously self-aggrandising, anti-democratic little twerp” and said his stance on the women’s march was hypocritical given his support of director Roman Polanski, who fled America after serving only a portion of his jail sentence for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl.

McGregor’s self-righteousness, said Morgan, echoed “Meryl Streep’s extraordinarily pompous and elitist anti-Trump speech at the recent Golden Globes”.

The actor has yet to respond. T2 Trainspotting, a followup to Danny Boyle’s classic 21 years on, has received broadly positive reviews and opens around the country on Friday.