As they say in “Chicago,” he had it coming, which seems to be Christine Baranski’s general attitude toward tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The film and theater star, who, of course, appeared in the Oscar-winning 2002 movie musical, is finally explaining her much-discussed run-in with the Tesla CEO at the Met Gala earlier this year.
A photo of Baranski appearing to give Musk a death stare at the star-studded event quickly went viral, which delighted the Emmy winner so much that her own daughter framed the pic and presented it as a gift.
Now, the “Gilded Age” actor is finally revealing what was actually going through her mind when she crossed paths with Musk, admitting that she has “no memory of turning back and glaring at him.”
“But I was actually dissing him as I was waiting in line to go to dinner,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “I was with someone who was at my table, and I noticed Elon Musk and I went, ‘Oh my God, it’s Elon Musk.’ I basically said [to my friend], ‘I don’t know how you feel about him, but why is he spending billions of dollars in space when he could be cleaning up the planet?’ I’m an environmentalist.”
“I must have at some point turned back and looked, but I did not pose for that picture,” she added.
Baranski said she holds a “low opinion” of billionaires, a sentiment that found its way into her series “The Good Fight,” which begins its sixth and final season on Paramount+ in September.
The critically acclaimed legal drama, which frequently incorporates real-life issues into its storylines, actually features an in-series figure akin to Musk named Neil Gross, a morally corrupt founder of a Google-esque search engine.
“We have our own Elon Musk in ‘The Good Fight.’ Neil Gross is in the second-to-last episode,” Baranski said, referring to a character played by actor John Benjamin Hickey. “And I get to bash the billionaires a bit. I’ve added a few lines [to the script], and I actually will include Elon Musk in the final episode.”
Besides luminaries from the theater community, Musk has courted his fair share of critics over some controversial activities as of late ― be it abruptly backing out of his deal to purchase Twitter, secretly fathering children with one of his company’s executives, or his father doing the same with own stepdaughter.