Jamie Lee Curtis clarifies “mistranslation” in Charlie Kirk condolence statement following backlash

Jamie Lee Curtis seemed to pull back from her earlier words of sympathy for Charlie Kirk after the reaction from her liberal followers turned sharply critical. The actress had originally been commended for a heartfelt statement after the Turning Point USA co-founder’s assassination last month. In it, she expressed hope that Kirk “felt connected to his faith” in his final moments, a comment many interpreted as gentle, given her vocal advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights and her role as the mother of a transgender child.

But speaking in her new Variety cover feature for the Power of Women issue, Curtis explained that her message had been distorted in translation.

“An excerpt of it [my comments] mistranslated what I was saying as I wished him well — like I was talking about him in a very positive way, which I wasn't; I was simply talking about his faith in God. And so it was a mistranslation, which is a pun, but not,” she explained.

Jamie Lee Curtis then shifted the conversation to something larger, the impossibility, in her view, of being both compassionate and complex in a digital culture that demands absolutes.

“In the binary world today, you cannot hold two ideas at the same time: I cannot be Jewish and totally believe in Israel's right to exist and at the same time reject the destruction of Gaza. You can't say that, because you get vilified for having a mind that says, 'I can hold both those thoughts. I can be contradictory in that way,” she explained.

For Jamie Lee Curtis, it wasn’t just about correcting a headline. It was about reclaiming the right to speak, and to mean more than one thing at once.

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Jamie Lee Curtis stands by authenticity amid fallout over Charlie Kirk remarks:

Jamie Lee Curtis also pushed back against the idea that she needed to watch her words simply because she was a public figure. In her Variety cover story, the actress said:

“I don't have to be careful. If I was careful, I wouldn't have told you any of what I just told you. I would have just said, 'Hi, welcome. I baked you banana bread. Here's my dog. Here's my house, blah, blah, blah. What do you want to know?' I can't not be who I am in the moment I am.”

Her comments followed an emotional moment last month, when she addressed the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk during an appearance on WTF with Marc Maron. Kirk was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on September 10. “I'm going to bring something up with you just because it's front of mind,” Jamie Lee Curtis told Maron.

“I disagreed with him on almost every point I ever heard him say, but I believe he was a man of faith, and I hope in that moment when he died, that he felt connected with his faith,” she shared.

Jamie Lee Curtis, who has long identified as a Democrat, grew tearful as she continued:

“Even though I find what he, his ideas were abhorrent to me. I still believe he's a father and a husband and a man of faith. And I hope whatever connection to God means that he felt it.”

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Jamie Lee Curtis speaks on compassion, controversy, and the haunting footage of Charlie Kirk’s death:

Charlie Kirk had been on the first stop of his American Comeback Tour when he was shot and killed. The suspected shooter, 22-year-old Tyler James Robinson, was later surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service by his own father. Kirk’s death left behind his wife, Erika Kirk, and their two young children.

In her conversation with Variety, Jamie Lee Curtis reflected not just on the killing itself but on what came after, the spread of the footage online, and how easily people consume such horror without pause.

“I know there is video of his assassination. I know people who've seen it,” she said.

She compared it to one of history’s most haunting recordings.

“The Zapruder film is the only visual document that moves, that shares that horror of what happened [to President John F. Kennedy in 1963]. But here we have now these images.”

Her tone turned somber as she considered the cost of that desensitization.

“And we are inured to them and we are numb to them, but they are in there. We don't know enough psychologically about what that does. What does that do? That kind of — I don't ever want to see this footage of this man being shot.”

Jamie Lee Curtis's remarks captured a rare moment of vulnerability, one that blurred the line between personal empathy and cultural reckoning. In the end, Curtis’s words weren’t just about one moment or one man. They reflected a broader discomfort with how quickly empathy turns into controversy, and how easily tragedy becomes spectacle.