Matt Smith reacted with disbelief this week upon learning that Keanu Reeves had chosen to watch Morbius, the 2022 superhero film Smith co-starred in, during a flight.
The moment surfaced on Brittany Broski’s Royal Court podcast, where Broski told Smith that Reeves had been spotted streaming the Sony-Marvel picture in the air. Smith’s reaction was immediate and unfiltered: he told her to knock it off, stunned that one of the biggest stars in movies would pick that particular title from an in-flight menu.
Asked what he himself would watch on a plane, he made clear it would not be Morbius, joking that Reeves must have exhausted every other option in the airline’s library before landing on his film. He floated the theory that Reeves had to be sedated to get through it, guessing at a sedative before quickly softening the jab into affection, insisting he holds nothing but admiration for the actor.
That admiration ran deep throughout the exchange. Smith described Reeves as the kind of star people dream of having as a guardian angel and singled out his run of films from Point Break onward as a personal favorite stretch of 1990s cinema. Broski matched his enthusiasm, calling Reeves simply “the movie star.”
Morbius has become something of a punching bag since its release, despite pulling in roughly $167 million worldwide against a reported $75 million budget. Critics panned it, and audiences gave it a lukewarm grade, but the film found unlikely staying power online, where it turned into a running joke treated with far more cultural weight than its box office ever earned.
Smith played Milo, the childhood friend of Jared Leto’s title character, and has long taken the film’s reputation in stride. He told Rolling Stone U.K. that the movie got an unfair shake but that he wasn’t going to dwell on it, framing the experience as low-stakes compared to real problems.
The clip of Smith’s reaction spread quickly on social media, with fans praising his willingness to poke fun at his own work rather than defend it.
