Matt Damon 'Fell Into a Depression' While Making This Notorious Flop

Even Matt Damon can admit some of his movies aren't great.

In an interview on Jake’s Takes to promote his upcoming role in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the star opened up about falling into a “depression” whilst making an unnamed movie which he knew was “a losing effort” mid-way through production.

“Sometimes you find yourself in a movie that you know, perhaps, might not be what you had hoped it would be, and you’re still making it,” Damon admitted. “And I remember halfway through production and you’ve still got months to go and you’ve taken your family somewhere...and you’ve inconvenienced them.

“I remember my wife pulling me up because I fell into a depression about like, ‘What have I done?’ She just said, ‘We’re here now,’” the actor recalled.

Damon tactfully avoided naming the film which caused him so much distress, but not-so-much digging reveals it to be 2016’s The Great Wall. The monster movie, helmed by visionary Chinese director Zhang Yimou, tossed Damon and some embarrassingly shoddy digital effects into a limp narrative which critics panned as a “white savior” fantasy.

The Great Wall, which also starred Pedro Pascal, failed to connect with audiences. It grossed less than $50 million in the United States and barely made a profit overseas.

In a 2021 interview with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast, Damon talked at length about The Great Wall. “I was like, this is exactly how disasters happen,” he told Maron of the production. “It doesn’t cohere. It doesn’t work as a movie.”

During the interview, the Jason Bourne star tells Maron a version of something he would later say on Jake’s Takes. “I came to consider that the definition of a professional actor. Knowing you’re in a turkey and going, ‘Okay, I’ve got four more months [left here]. It’s the up at dawn siege on Hamburger Hill. I am definitely going to die here, but I’m doing it.’”

Processing the memory, Damon concluded to Maron: “That’s as shitty as you can feel creatively, I think. I hope to never have that feeling again.”

The actor reported that his then-15-year-old daughter was particularly merciless in her assessment of the film. “Whenever she talks about the movie, she calls it The Wall,” Damon recounted to Maron. “And I’m like, come on, it’s called The Great Wall. And she’s like, ‘Dad, there’s nothing great about that movie.’ She’s one of the funniest people I know.”

Ultimately, Damon says the experience, along with Barrosso, taught him what it means to be a committed thespian.

“What being a professional actor means is you go and you do the 15-hour day and give it absolutely everything, even in what you know is going to be a losing effort," he said on Jake's Takes. "And if you can do that with the best possible attitude, then you’re a pro, and she really helped me with that.”

Damon isn't the only Oppenheimer cast member to speak out this week about their regret of past roles. In an interview with The New York Times Magazine, Robert Downey Jr. admitted that he is "happy" to be done with Marvel movies. "I regained my connection with a more purist approach to making movies,” Downey Jr. told interviewer David Marchese.

Oppenheimer arrives in theaters on July 21.