Hillbilly Elegy’s JD Vance actor says stars should stay out of politics

Gabriel Basso is currently starring in Netflix’s ‘The Night Agent’

Hillbilly Elegy star Gabriel Basso has argued that celebrities should “shut the f*** up” about politics.

The 30-year-old actor played JD Vance in Ron Howard’s Oscar-nominated adaptation of Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2020.

Basso is currently starring in Netflix’s The Night Agent, while Vance has since become Vice President of the United States.

Speaking on the Great Company podcast, Basso argued that actors aren’t qualified to give political advice.

“We’re saying words that we’re told to say,” he said. “We’re told how to say them. We’re told where to stand. And then we’re telling people how to vote?

“You should be quiet, you should do your job. You should… entertain people – then shut the f*** up.”

Gabriel Basso attending the LA premiere of Netflix's 'The Night Agent' in March 2023 (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Basso continued: “We’re court jesters. We’re entertaining. We’re public servants. We’re there to perform, to entertain, and then all of sudden, the jester, because he’s in the courtroom starts to be like: ‘I might want to go sit on the throne!’”

Last month, Basso called Vance “a cool guy”.

“It’s kind of weird to be included in that timeline,” Basso said of his involvement in Hillbilly Elegy, telling Variety: “They made a movie of his book and my name will always be in the description.”

He continued: “We talked a little bit. He’s a cool dude. We’re both from the Midwest. We just talked about life – about growing up in the woods.”

By contrast, the film’s director Howard said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the writer-turned-politician amid controversial comments Vance made on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile another of the film’s stars Glenn Close suggested the “change” in Vance’s personality over the last five years might have stemmed from “power”, calling it “probably the biggest aphrodisiac for a human being”.

Before Vance was a couple of steps away from the most powerful position in the world, he was a self-proclaimed “hillbilly” raised in the Appalachian mountains, living in poverty, despair and dysfunction. His journey to Yale Law School was documented in the memoir, which was published in 2017.

In the introduction to the book, he said: “I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve accomplished nothing great in my life, certainly nothing that could justify a complete stranger spending money to read about. I am not a senator, a governor, or a cabinet secretary.”

The film was described by The Independent’s critic Clarisse Loughrey as “a sickeningly irresponsible parade of death and despair”.