‘Contagion’ author talks Kamala Harris connection to Matt Damon’s position

Matt Damon‘s character within the pandemic thriller Contagion has a reputation that ought to sound acquainted to viewers in 2024 — and that familiarity is not a complete coincidence.

Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns defined how he named Mitch Emhoff, the Minnesota father performed by the Good Will Looking actor on an episode of the Hollywood Gold podcast. “This is a bizarre Emhoff story: the rationale the Emhoffs are named that’s…” he stated. “For some time after I directed commercials, the girl who was my govt producer was named Kerstin Emhoff.”

Kerstin Emhoff went on to govt produce a wide selection of function movies, together with documentaries like Manhunt: The Seek for Bin Laden and horror motion pictures like The Monster. Her greatest claim-to-fame, although, comes from one key relationship from her previous. “She was married to a man named Doug Emhoff,” Burns stated. “They received divorced and, as we now know, Doug Emhoff is married to Kamala Harris, which is only a weird coincidence.”

Kerstin Emhoff was married to Doug Emhoff, who beforehand labored as an leisure lawyer, from 1992 to 2008. After her ex-husband remarried in 2014, the producer supported Harris’ marketing campaign for the vice presidency in 2020, finally attending her inauguration in January 2021. This yr, she’s frequently supported Harris’ bid for the presidency and fawned over her children Ella and Cole on the marketing campaign path.

Harris mentioned her coparenting relationship with the producer in an Elle essay in 2019. “Kerstin and I hit it off ourselves and are expensive mates,” she wrote. “She and I turned a duo of cheerleaders within the bleachers at Ella’s swim meets and basketball video games, usually to Ella’s embarrassment. We typically joke that our fashionable household is nearly slightly too practical.”

Elsewhere within the Hollywood Gold episode, Burns mirrored on the discomfort he felt after viewers made unusual feedback about Contagion‘s prescience within the wake of Covid-19. “It received very uncomfortable for me on social media for some time, as a result of, , individuals began writing to me, accusing me of being Nostradamus or working for the CIA,” he stated. “And at one level, it received actually disturbing, so I left.”

What puzzled Burns much more was the media framing him as an authority on public well being, regardless of being a screenwriter and never a scientist. “The opposite half, which was most likely much more uncomfortable, is each occasionally, I might get a cellphone name from CNN or MSNBC, and folks would ask if I might come on and discuss concerning the film and the pandemic,” he remembered. “I might say, ‘Okay, I am going to do this, however I am not an knowledgeable. And you really want to listen to medical recommendation from a physician, not a screenwriter. Like, that is insane that you’re even asking me.'”

Burns stated media retailers weren’t enthusiastic about listening to from medical doctors. “They’d say, ‘However we have heard from medical doctors,'” he remembered. “These phase producers would go, ‘Yeah, but it surely’s simply actually thrilling for individuals to listen to from you.’ I am like, that is not — I imply, I wrote a film. I am not an oracle.” 

The screenwriter finally determined to convey a medical skilled with him to every of his Covid-inspired media appearances. “I made it type of a rule,” he stated. “I at all times introduced somebody who knew this world.”

Take heed to the complete Hollywood Gold episode above.