Mark Wahlberg has been criticized for attending the SAG Awards after a racist attack

Mark Wahlberg couldn’t escape the backlash over his appearance at the 2023 SAG Awards.

The “Boogie Nights” alum presented the “Everything Everywhere All At Once” cast award to the cast of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards on February 26. Mainly Asian and Asian-American actors were heavily favored for the award.

Wahlberg was previously convicted of assaulting two Vietnamese-American men in 1988. Wahlberg, then 16 and reportedly high on PCP, hit Thanh Lam in the head with a stick and punched Johnny Trinh in the face to steal alcohol. According to investigators, Wahlberg used racist language during the attack (via Rolling stone).

Wahlberg was accused of beating Trinh so badly that she lost the sight in one eye; however, these injuries pre-existed in the 1970s, before Trinh and Wahlberg’s feud. As an adult, he was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to two years in prison, but served only 45 days. He applied for clemency in 2014, but his application was finally rejected in 2016.

Connected

Connected

Wahlberg has not publicly commented on the SAG award being presented to Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan and the rest of the cast of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but viewers are taking issue with it the decision to have Wahlberg present. primarily.

“It must have been quite a shock for Mark Wahlberg to witness a group of Asian people beating up white people,” said journalist Jeff Yang. wrote.

Reporter Bonnie Stiernberg he tweeted“I have to say that Mark Wahlberg, who literally went to jail as a teenager for committing a hate crime against a Vietnamese man, presenting an award to the cast of ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ was certainly a good choice.

Wahlberg previously told The Associated Press in 2014 that he had “apologized many times” for his past actions ( via The New York Post).

“The first chance I had to apologize was in court when all the dust had settled and I was handcuffed and taken away and I made sure I paid my debt to society and continued to do things to make up for the mistakes. that I made,” Wahlberg said.

The ‘Gone’ actor later admitted that he regretted seeking clemency for his conviction.

“I didn’t need that, I spent 28 years righting that wrong,” Wahlberg said The packaging Following the premiere of his film Deepwater Horizon at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival, he added: “I didn’t need a piece of paper to acknowledge it. I was kind of forced to do it, I didn’t need and I didn’t want to go through that again.”

Wahlberg noted that he had met with Trinh’s wife and daughter to “apologize for these terrible actions” and concluded, “There is some good in this.”

The “Transformers” star has recently dedicated her career to “faith-based” projects and has been defended by “King Arthur” co-star Simu Liu. The “Barbie” actor deleted earlier tweets criticizing Wahlberg’s pardon for the 1988 assassination and took to Instagram to explain why he chose to work with Wahlberg decades later.

“I have deleted some tweets I made regarding the past actions of one of my partners as a gesture of professionalism and to open the door for progressive conversations and (hopefully) positive change,” Liu wrote in 2020. “Obviously, it would be pretty weird to go to work with this tweet still up. I meant what I said at that moment; I was very angry after hearing what happened. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s room to grow and work together to find an opportunity for education and something good, which I’m excited about in addition to making the film. Progressive debate leads to dialogue, and dialogue leads to action.”

Register: Stay up to date with the latest movie and TV news! Subscribe to our email newsletter here.