Actor claims he delayed getting COVID-19 vaccine because science began to ‘sound like a religion’

Acclaimed English actor Mark Rylance declared during an interview that the increasingly dogmatic nature of politics amid the COVID-19 pandemic made him more skeptical toward getting the vaccine.

The Sunday Times released an interview with the actor on Saturday, where he expressed his skepticism and unorthodox views on a variety of topics, including dogmatic support of established medical science. The Sunday Times special correspondent Josh Glancy interviewed the actor and noted that an upcoming play he co-wrote and stars in will be "Dr Semmelweis," which portrays the life of a "brilliant 19th-century Hungarian doctor who is driven mad by the Viennese medical establishment’s refusal to listen to him."

"Semmelweis became convinced that germs were spread by dirty hands and argued that regular hand-washing could drastically reduce the incidence of so-called childbed fever, saving the lives of thousands of mothers," Glancy summarized. "He was right but sadly ignored, decades before Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister were lauded for the same conclusions."

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After recounting some of Rylance’s more esoteric beliefs, one of which involved a mystical method as a source of healing, Glancy wrote that this play "acts as a warning not to take the overweening scientific establishment at its word, particularly since the pandemic."

"Science started to sound like a religion," Rylance told the interviewer. "And really science is no different than religion, just an attempt by men to describe reality." Glancy noted that Rylance heard rhetorical "alarm bells" he was told he must take the vaccine. "I was not convinced I needed it. I took a very distilled garlic solution every morning, and vitamin C, and I sailed through Jerusalem." Rylance gave in and got the vaccine, however, in order to visit his father in America.

Glancy noted the parallels with Rylance’s personality and his recent famous stage role of Rooster Byron in "Jerusalem," a play centered on a rebellious anti-hero with a band of misfits in the English countryside, in a story many view as a humorous ode to concepts of "Englishness" itself.

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"I felt the audiences were more hungry for it this time," he says, comparing last year’s run of the show to the run in 2009. "Because the state and corporate control of our lives has become so much stronger. People were desperate for a new place where there was irreverence and a little danger. There was a deeper grief in the audience about what kind of nation we have become."

Glancy noted that Rylance has other anti-establishment opinions as well, such as laying "much of the blame for the war in Ukraine on Nato for ‘moving in on the Russians’ and says we’ve never taken Russia’s wartime sacrifices seriously enough."

The stage actor recalled the tens of millions of Russians who died fighting Nazi Germany during World War 2, arguing the country has never been properly thanked for doing so.

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"Look how vulnerable your Jewish people are having lost six million — the Russians lost 26 to 40 million people killing fascism in Europe. We didn’t do it. The Americans didn’t do it. We stood back until the Russians had really knocked the s--- out of them. And yet all my life, have we ever celebrated and thanked the Russians for dealing with fascism? No, we’ve just glorified ourselves," he said. "Of course the people will fall for a dictator like Putin and believe his narrative . . . because of the way we’ve behaved."