The director of Yung Lean's viral "Storm" video says AI made his work look "lame."
Francis Specker/CBS via Getty Images
The director behind Yung Lean's "Storm" video said AI copies made him consider quitting filmmaking.
Romain Gavras said AI imitations of "Storm" on social media made his work look "lame."
The original video, released in April, has amassed more than 40 million views on YouTube.
The director behind Swedish rapper Yung Lean's viral "Storm" video says AI almost drove him from filmmaking.
In an interview with Vulture published on Tuesday, Romain Gavras said he was disheartened by the wave of AI-generated copies of the music video.
Gavras directed the video for "Gener8ion," an audiovisual project he runs with French producer Surkin.
The video, which has amassed over 40 million views since its release in April, follows Lean as a bully at a boarding school before the boys he has been tormenting break into an elaborate dance sequence around him during a class photo.
In September, social media users began using AI to remake the dance scene from "Storm," swapping Lean and the schoolboys for a wide range of new characters, including animals and celebrities.
"My daughter sent me the first one I saw," Gavras said. "She was like, 'Look, this dog is doing it.'"
It was funny for a while, he said, but the novelty soon wore off as the copies seemed to spread everywhere.
"It made me sad for all the people who put in so much work on our video," Gavras said. "A trend like this can make even good work look lame. Part of me wanted to quit filmmaking, move back to Greece, and become an olive farmer."
Gavras said he wasn't trying to make any commentary on AI, but when people started calling "Storm" the kind of video AI couldn't pull off, he found himself drawn into the debate.
"The tech people were like, 'Oh yeah? AI could never?' Then they started replicating it. So we were forced into this conversation. It's a nightmare," Gavras said.
He added that he has turned down a few AI companies that have approached him about licensing the video.
"There's an economic model coming that we didn't want to be a part of," he said.
However, even as AI-made versions of his work proliferate online, Gavras said the technology can imitate elements of the video but has yet to create anything with the same originality or human spark.
"They're missing the swagger of Yung Lean. He looks like a dangerous baby. There's something in the imperfection of humanity, and the interior life of someone who dances or even someone who just smokes a cigarette, that's not quite there yet," he said.
Last month, Lean and the dancers performed the choreography at the MTV Video Music Awards. A video of the performance has since racked up nearly 14 million views.
Gavras is not the only filmmaker who has weighed in on the impact of AI on creative work. Other major Hollywood directors have raised similar concerns: Guillermo del Toro has said AI could rob future filmmakers of the chance to learn their craft, while Tim Burton has said it strips away the humanity behind art.
Yarros is working on the fourth installment in the series, and she recently released a collection of short stories set in the "Empyrean" universe called "Threshing Day." However, it will still be a while before book four is ready for readers.
In the meantime, though, we're getting closer to a series adaptation of "Fourth Wing," which officially found its lead actors.
'Fourth Wing' is becoming a TV show
In October 2023, Deadline announced that Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society were developing "Fourth Wing" into a TV series. Yarros is an executive producer for the show.
Outlier Society produced Jordan's "Creed III" and is developing a slate of other series and films in addition to "Fourth Wing."
Deadline also reported in October 2023 that Amazon MGM Studios had acquired the rights to the entire "Empyrean" series. In her January 2025 Variety interview, Yarros said she had shared the "five-book arc" for the "Empyrean" series with Amazon.
"Fourth Wing" by Rebecca Yarros.
Red Tower Publishing
"They have the five-book arc, which went a little awry in Book 3 just because the positioning, but they already know that," she told Variety. "But they have the five-book arc and the general big points of what happens in between each book, but they don't have the specifics between Book 4 and Book 5, because I'm getting ready to go to my crazy plotting board and plot out every single event that happens in each book, so that I make sure that I'm within my two books there."
A new showrunner
In July 2024, Outlier Society announced it had hired Moira Walley-Beckett, who worked on shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Anne with an E," as the showrunner for the series. In a January 2025 interview with Variety, Yarros said Walley-Beckett was "great" and "phenomenal," but in July 2025, Walley-Beckett exited the project.
Variety reported in September 2025 that Meredith Averill was taking over as showrunner. Averill was previously the showrunner of the Netflix series "Locke & Key" and a producer on shows like "The Good Wife" and "The Haunting of Hill House."
Meredith Averill is set to be the showrunner for the "Fourth Wing" series.
Jemal Countess/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Amazon declined to comment on this piece when contacted by Business Insider, but Yarros shared a screenshot of a Deadline article about the showrunner announcement on her Instagram when it dropped.
"Welcome to the team, Meredith Averill! Guys, I love everything this wonderful woman has worked on and I'm so excited to have her joining us," Yarros said in her caption.
'Fourth Wing' is in the works
In January 2026, Jordan assured fans the "Fourth Wing" show was on its way in an interview with Deadline.
"We are making sure that this is going to be an exciting show that delivers on all of the things the fans want and some of the things that they won't be expecting either," Jordan said.
He also told the outlet that he's aware of how much fans of "Fourth Wing" care about the series.
"But trust me, I know how beloved this franchise IP is," he said. "It's early stages, but I feel how much people care about this one. It's not lost on us."
And on May 11, 2026, Jordan announced the show had been ordered to series for Prime Video at the Amazon Upfront, an annual event where Amazon offers a sneak peek at its coming content.
Rebecca Yarros, Lisa Joy, Meredith Averill, and Michael B. Jordan onstage at the Amazon Upfront in May 2026.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Amazon
Yarros and Averill joined Jordan onstage at the event, as did Lisa Joy, an executive producer on the show who will direct the first episode. Joy has previously worked on shows like HBO's "Westworld" and Prime Video's "Fallout."
Meredith Averill, Michael B. Jordan, Rebecca Yarros, and Lisa Joy at the Amazon Upfront in May 2026.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Amazon
Yarros posted about the event on her Instagram story, sharing a photo of herself, Jordan, Averill, and Joy, writing, "What an absolutely wild night! So grateful for this team!"
Meet Violet and Xaden
The Amazon Upfront seemed to build momentum for the show, as it was announced in October that the Prime Video series had cast its Violet Sorrengail and her enemy turned lover Xaden Riorson. Deadline first reported the casting on October 15, 2026, though the streamer didn't confirm that news until October 21.
Esther McGregor will play Violet. McGregor, the 24-year-old daughter of Ewan McGregor, appeared in "Babygirl" and "We Were Liars," another Amazon adaptation.
Esther McGregor in New York City in May 2026.
TheStewartofNY/GC Images/Getty Images
Meanwhile, 30-year-old Emilio Sakraya has been cast as Xaden. The German actor is known for projects like "Rheingold" and the popular Netflix series "Warrior Nun." Both actors are relative newcomers, though, with their "Fourth Wing" casting marking a big step in their careers.
McGregor reshared Amazon's post about her casting to her Instagram story, writing, "So beyond excited. Honored. Thrilled."
Sakraya also shared the post to his Instagram story, but he captioned it with a quote from "Iron Flame," the second book in Yarros' series, in a fun nod to the text: "My house. My chair. My Woman."
Emilio Sakraya in November 2025 in New York City.
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
In a statement shared by Amazon, Yarros said, "I'm so grateful to our producing and casting team for conducting a thorough, worldwide search to find Violet and Xaden. It will be incredibly exciting to see these talented actors, Esther and Emilio, bring our beloved characters to life on screen."
Yarros said at a London event in August 2024 that she intentionally never shared any hopes for which actors may be cast in the show.
"I will never say who my perfect fan cast is because the cast is so diverse, and I want to open that up to more diversity," she said. "And I feel like the second I say who I think this character is, that's who everyone will accept. That's only who they will accept."
"I kinda hope they find, like, an up-and-coming generation," she added. "But I would never put my fan cast in your heads."
At the same event, she clarified that she wouldn't be involved in the casting process, but that she had shared one hard-line casting request with Amazon and Outlier Society.
"They know how staunch I am against whitewashing Xaden," she said. "I think that's the biggest thing."
Xaden is described as having "warm tawny skin" in "Fourth Wing" and "tawny-brown" skin in both "Iron Flame" and "Onyx Storm." Sakraya was born in Germany to a Serbian father and a Moroccan mother, according to an interview with German Films Quarterly.
Amazon did not provide any additional details on casting or when filming for the series may begin.
Yarros talked about the series' pilot while on a book tour for 'Onyx Storm'
Although details about the series are limited, Yarros made a few comments about the show while promoting "Onyx Storm."
Speaking at an engagement on January 24, 2025, in New York, Yarros told fans she had read the pilot for the "Fourth Wing" show — and loved it.
"I read the latest version of the pilot last week," she said. "It's really nerve-racking when you read something like that because you're really — you're trusting someone else with your baby, right? And you're trusting someone else to say, like, 'Hey, this is important in your work, and this isn't,' and you kinda get your guard up."
Rebecca Yarros in April 2025.
Amanda Edwards/Getty Images
"But guys, I, like, kicked my feet the whole time," she said. "You're gonna love it."
Yarros also praised Walley-Beckett at the event, calling her a "brilliant writer" and saying she maintained the book's integrity in the pilot. It's unclear how the pilot may have changed since Walley-Beckett's exit from the project.
John Goodman is getting candid about what led him to lose weight.
During a recent interview with The New Yorker, the 74-year-old actor discussed his struggles with his weight and alcoholism, saying that he got sober in his 50s, but was trying to manage his weight before quitting.
"I’d lose sixty pounds in a summer, gain it all back. Seventy pounds, eighty pounds. And that got tiring," he said. "I took steps so I wouldn’t have to do that anymore. I was almost four hundred pounds. I was eating alcoholically after I stopped drinking."
He shared that to improve his health, he "had an operation on my stomach," but said he also became "anemic and lost a layer of fat under my skin."
When discussing his experience with alcoholism, the "Roseanne" star shared his struggles began in 1978 when his girlfriend at the time "put me on waivers, so my nights were free for the first time in five years."
He recalled going out to multiple bars until drinking became a "habit," noting, "I started gaining weight at an alarming rate." He pinpointed one bar in particular, Café Central, noting he "turned it into home—and got very used to drinking" in his pursuit to find "friends" and "people to hang around and laugh with."
"There’s a saying in the rooms: I got sick and tired of being sick and tired," he said about his decision to get sober. "The thing about instant gratification is you don’t really care what’s going to happen right after it—which always led to bigger hangovers or me getting the shakes, and having to drink to get rid of the shakes, and that vicious cycle. I was in a position, when I quit, where I had to be hospitalized one way or the other."
Goodman went on to say that he grew "tired of it" and wanted it to stop. He recalled "realizing how selfish it made me," noting he "had a lot of catching up to do" in terms of maturity, as he "was delaying my maturation by drinking."
"I was overlooking real life," he said. "And it was great to see there was a life where I didn’t have to use anything to enjoy it."
The "The Big Lebowski" actor has spoken about his weight loss journey in the past, telling The Rolling Stone in 2023 that he began incorporating boxing and daily walks into his routine.
He shared at the time that his routine included "just an hour, hour and a half of hitting the mitts, hitting the bags, learning footwork."
"I dug it. Yeah. Nobody’s going to get hurt, but it’s just hitting the mitts and trying to learn," he told the outlet. "I never got good enough where I would trust myself to spar because once I get whacked in the face, I don’t know if I wouldn’t lose it."
Goodman rose to fame playing the Conner family patriarch, Dan Conner, for nine seasons during the original run of "Roseanne." He later reprised the role in the 2018 reboot, and again in the spin-off show, "The Conners."
Natasha Lyonne sparked debate over her political views after appearing to express a preference for President Donald Trump over Vice President JD Vance.
The "Russian Doll" actress reacted to a video showing a protester interrupting Vance and calling for the release of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Lyonne criticized Vance and said she preferred Trump to the vice president.
"Sketchy mofo - prefer trump - this s--- is even scarier - don’t really know how we arrived at this aesthetic as baseline normal, but c’est la dominoes, etc. Octavia Butler was a soothsayer. Grimey times," Lyonne wrote in response to the video.
The 47-year-old actress' remark that she would "prefer Trump" prompted questions about her political views, with some social media users interpreting the comment as support for Trump and others suggesting she was simply expressing a preference for him over Vance.
Lyonne fueled further speculation Tuesday when she reposted a message from Trump thanking Elon Musk for pledging to donate SpaceX stock to millions of American children through Trump Accounts. She added four emojis — a rocket, a saluting face, a sun and a smiling face with sunglasses — without offering a written explanation.
"Natasha Lyonne going full MAGA is depressing as hell," one user wrote.
Another commenter mocked the backlash, posting: "Natasha Lyonne drops four emojis on a Trump post and the left is already planning her cancellation. Tolerance at its finest."
One person said, "Everyone prefers Trump - we all voted for him." Meanwhile, another added, "Why is this controversial? Do you say people supporting Dems is controversial?"
The posts drew conflicting interpretations from social media users, with some questioning Lyonne's apparent preference for Trump and others cautioning against assuming her political views solely from her posts.
One user wrote, "'Prefer Trump'? Why? ..."
Others questioned why the post was being interpreted as support for the president.
"How … are y'all reading this like she actually likes trump."
Another commenter defended Lyonne, writing, "Can people on this app be normal for like five minutes … this is crazy, I feel like I’m going insane. Is everyone okay?"
Decker's latest family beach photo has fans noticing a striking family resemblance.
The 38-year-old country singer shared a series of photos from a Florida getaway with her husband, former NFL star Eric Decker, and their four children. But it was the family's matching athletic physiques that quickly caught followers' attention.
In one photo, Jessie posed in a patterned string bikini alongside her shirtless husband and their children on a white-sand beach beneath a bright blue sky.
Eric, wearing red swim trunks and sunglasses, held their youngest son, Denver, while their three older children, Vivianne, Eric Jr. and Forrest, gathered around them.
"Fall Break🍁🌊🏰☀️," Jessie captioned the joint Instagram post with her husband.
The family snapshot quickly drew a wave of playful comments from followers who couldn't help noticing the Deckers' defined abs.
"The entire family literally has washboard abs what the heck 😂🙌❤️," one person wrote.
Jessie and Eric also posed for a few photos of their own during the beach getaway.
Jessie also shared a playful shot of herself wrapping her arms around Eric as they posed near the water.
The former NFL wide receiver wore bright red swim trunks while Jessie smiled in her patterned bikini and sunglasses.
Another image captured the couple sharing a kiss while sitting together on the beach at sunset.
The family also visited a Disney theme park, where Jessie and Eric posed for a photo with their four children.
Jessie wore a black athletic outfit with Minnie Mouse ears, while Eric kept things casual in a gray T-shirt and baseball cap.
The family getaway comes as Jessie promotes her latest cookbook, "The Secret Sauce," which she co-wrote with her mother and sister.
Earlier this month, the country singer spoke exclusively with Fox News Digital about the family traditions she prioritizes despite their busy schedules.
"Something that I'll always protect is sitting down at the dinner table all together and eating and just talking about our day," Jessie told Fox News Digital.
Jessie also revealed that she won over her husband with her cooking shortly after they began dating.
Eric also helped promote Jessie's latest cookbook, "The Secret Sauce," by posing in nude-colored underwear and making playful food jokes in an Instagram video. The former NFL star has done similar promotions for her previous cookbooks.
When Gibney was approached with the idea to do a documentary on the Tesla and SpaceX CEO in 2022, his plan was straightforward: Tell the story of how Musk used his businesses to become one of the most powerful figures in the world.
But when he was ready to deliver a two-hour feature film on Musk two years later, HBO issued him a directive a filmmaker rarely hears: Make it longer.
It was 2024, and the breadth of Musk's influence had expanded into the political sphere. With Gibney's subject helping President Donald Trump campaign for a second term, then later spearheading the second Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, Gibney's story had expanded. His documentary would need to, too.
Elon Musk.
Finn Gomez/Getty Images
The result is "Musk," an incisive, nearly four-hour documentary that chronicles the personal, professional, and political life of the richest man in the world. From his controversial acquisition of Twitter, which he renamed X; to his relationships with the mothers of his children; to the accidents tied to Tesla's self-driving feature, Gibney's film is a comprehensive look at the scope of Musk's power and influence in the 21st century.
Gibney even found a clever workaround for featuring Musk in the doc after he declined to be interviewed. Playing on Musk's belief that we are all living in a simulation, the director used AI to craft an avatar of Musk, who speaks in quotes amalgamated from his past interviews.
Of course, a man as powerful and outspoken as Musk has already voiced his displeasure with someone else controlling his narrative. After the movie's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, Musk threatened to sue Gibney's production company for defamation. Musk has also bashed the movie on X, stating: "Gibney just assembled a hit list of people who either have an axe to grind or don't even know me (but still have an axe to grind). He has ZERO integrity. Horrible human."
Hearing from angry subjects is nothing new for Gibney, who was the subject of the Church of Scientiology's full-page newspaper ads decrying his work over 10 years ago tied to the premiere of his documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief."
"With Elon Musk — and he's not unique in this, but he specializes in it — he begins tweeting horrible things about people and the next thing you know, this army of followers and bots starts to gin up the rage matrix," Gibney told Business Insider.
Not that he's rattled yet. With decades of documentaries speaking truth to power under his belt, Gibney has developed thick skin and some top-secret harassment survival strategies.
"Let's just say I've taken some precautions," he said.
For the latest interview in Business Insider's Director's Chair series, Gibney talks about creating an AI Musk, being followed by Scientologists, and his nerve-racking experience in a self-driving Tesla.
On creating an AI Musk avatar and making the movie longer
Business Insider: You thought you had finished this movie in 2024. Was it daunting to go back down the Elon Musk rabbit hole when HBO asked you to?
Alex Gibney: Yeah, it was daunting. We had to renegotiate the budget and all sorts of other stuff. But I got why HBO wanted that. And when Musk hitched his wagon to Trump, it was clear: This is big.
I started out making a film about 21st century power, which in this case involved economic power but also tech power. Now, add to that political power, and suddenly it's a really big story.
Was AI Musk in the original movie?
The idea of it was. We had put in a placeholder for it, but we were also anticipating that maybe we might get an interview with him at some point.
It was kind of an epiphany to do it this way. It came out of past experience: What's the workaround for somebody who won't or can't talk to you? In "Client 9" and "Zero Days," we came up with workarounds that fit those stories. The key here was to find a workaround that would fit this story. That's how we ultimately came up with the idea of the avatar.
Did it unlock anything in you regarding using AI tools in your work in the future?
I think it will depend on the project. AI has become a kind of suitcase term for everything from Siri to AGI. In this instance, this was a human effort using AI tools, which revolved mostly around sync; in other words, making the lips and the body sort of move with the voice. But there was also designing the room, what he was going to wear, the gamer chair.
The further we pushed it and the more interested we got in AI with the company we used, Makemake A.I., this idea of memes and looking at his own image, that's where we came up with certain scenes where you see the back of his head and he's watching himself. Those were things that we improvised on.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk attending the start of the production at Tesla's "Gigafactory" on March 22, 2022 in Berlin.
PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
On the qualities Musk and Elizabeth Holmes share and Tesla's image
I couldn't help but think about your Elizabeth Holmes doc, "The Inventor," when watching "Musk." The "fake it 'til you make it" ethos that's baked into Silicon Valley, has that been fascinating to observe? Both Holmes and Musk are founders who are amazing salespeople hoping that what they bet on takes off.
I think there is a similarity with Elizabeth Holmes. What was rattling around in my head through this was confidence. Musk, like Holmes, was able, through force of confidence, to convince people of things that they knew not to be true. That became a superpower.
The big difference between Tesla and SpaceX and Elizabeth Holmes is that those are real products. The Tesla S is a great car. These reusable rockets are extraordinary, and we show the magnificence of that in the film.
Not to take anything away from him or those companies, but there's also the bullshit factor. The idea of going to Mars and the promises. And you can see how they repeat themselves and get bigger and bigger. Oh, yeah, full self-driving! I'm sorry, Tesla's self-driving option is still a level two system, and over 60 people have died.
(Editor's note: Tesla has maintained that its Autopilot feature requires constant driver attention, and that its vehicles issue prompts warning the driver to stay alert and hold the steering wheel.)
The things you highlight about Musk's involvement in DOGE and suggesting he influenced the election are shocking, but the things you highlight about Tesla got me the most. The battery swapping, the self-driving car feature. Were you shocked by how much smoke and mirrors there are at Tesla?
Yes. It was something that I didn't know when I started. And as you mentioned, fake it 'til you make it. They just faked it. Mostly, it was in order to raise the stock. The economic fundamentals of the company never warranted a high stock price, but if you can convince people that the CEO is a genius and also that it's not really a car company — it's a tech company, so some super inventions are coming down the road — you can persuade people to gin up the stock.
(Editor's note: Musk and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)
On almost hitting a child while using the self-driving feature on a Cybertruck
You rode a self-driving car yourself; you did it with a Cybertruck for the movie.
I did. There was a cut where we included a four-minute sequence of me in the Cybertruck. I went to the San Francisco Tesla showroom and wanted to drive a Cybertruck, and they showed me how to turn on the self-driving feature. I pressed "Go," and off I went to the other side of the city. It was like a 20-minute ride there and back.
What's interesting is for most of the trip it was kind of astoundingly good. But then there were moments when it was astoundingly bad, sometimes in ways that were played to safety. Like, I was trying to merge onto a very busy thoroughfare, and cars kept coming, and if it were me as the driver, I would nudge out there, but full self-driving couldn't figure that out, so I sat there for 10 minutes. Other instances, it couldn't decide what to do at critical moments and almost hit a pedestrian.
It came uncomfortably close to a child. The child kind of came from the side out of a parked car. It's not something you would anticipate, but it was really scary.
Why didn't you put that in the movie?
Ultimately, the legal case that we spotlight in the movie was a far more powerful deep dive. There were mortal consequences. A woman died. And the deep dive into the evidence itself was so much more powerful. If I had only done a film about Tesla, I probably would have included it.
Elon Musk.
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
On the movie's fate on HBO and the consequences of checking power
The greatest irony in all of this is this movie could have been out a year or so ago, but HBO asked you to make it longer. Now Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have merged, so HBO is now under David Ellison, who once considered bringing on Musk as an equity investor in Paramount. Are you concerned HBO will not air "Musk"?
I was concerned until recently. I'm always on the alert. But I've been told that they will air it and that even David Ellison very well knows about it and promises he will air it.
You have worked with HBO forever.
Yeah, I love them.
So if they are telling you it is going to happen, you believe them.
But what you learn is, shit happens. [Laughs.] Executives change. Circumstances change, and the next thing you know, it's not what you thought. But, for now, we are making very specific plans about when it's going to come out, which is likely in January.
Because of where the industry is going — fewer networks and distribution options, and the options available are mostly run by conglomerates often looking for political cooperation — for the kind of stories you tell, are you looking for alternative distribution avenues in the future with your company, Jigsaw?
We have a skunkworks inside Jigsaw to try to solve some of these distribution problems.
In this new environment, films that people desperately want to see are being held back from audiences. The platforms tell you people don't want to see them, but that's just not true. HBO is the exception, but what a lot of the platforms are doing is investing in predictable, least objectionable programming. A lot of the platforms want it to be like the cereal aisles at the grocery market: they are all the same cereal, but different variations between Rice Krispies and Froot Loops. They can predictably get people invested in that mixture of salt and sugar that keeps them coming back for more without providing anything that is nutritious.
So the avenue is theatrical, like it was a decade-plus ago. "Musk" is out in theaters through Bleecker Street, and that's powerful because it's a lot harder to put the genie back in the bottle when it's already out there.
Checking power sometimes comes with blowback. You have experienced everything from Julian Assange leaking the script to "We Steal Secrets" before that movie came out to Scientologists following you around after you made "Going Clear." Do these things wear on you, or do they fuel you?
I mean, given the fact that I haven't stopped, it seems to be fueling me. That said, it doesn't mean I don't need to take precautions. But I'm still motivated by the idea of people with enormous power abusing it at our expense; that seems to be a spur for me.
When it comes to Elon Musk, he's the richest and arguably the most powerful person in the world, so it can have these devastating consequences. Ashley St. Clair has security because the X platform has a way of directing vitriol at people. And Elon can say it's just free speech, but he knows very well that by doing what he does and by the platform tweaking its algorithm for replies and rage addiction, he knows that his statements are going to be amplified in a really horrible way that may result in harm to an individual.
(Editor's note: Musk, who has called himself a "free speech absolutist," described X's policy in 2022 as "freedom of speech, not freedom of reach," saying the company would limit the reach of negative posts but not delete them. Musk did not respond to a request for comment about his X posts and the company's algorithm.)
Is your experience with Musk's followers different from what you experienced with Scientology?
Scientology is a little different, but people did come up to me in dark parking lots in a way that was discomforting. But what some ex-Scientologists told me was, "What they are doing is they aren't going to put a rattlesnake in their mailbox; they are trying to get inside your head. So once you understand that, just don't let them inside your head." That turned out to be very wise advice.
Scientology was tough, and when my film on Assange came out, the vitriol on Twitter was extreme, and I wasn't prepared for that. What I've come to learn is you have to know your enemy.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
A litany of left-wing Hollywood celebrities are out making a last-minute push to turn Congress blue as the 2026 election cycle comes down to its last days.
Zach Bryan is getting candid about his relationship with alcohol, revealing that he once drank as many as 15 beers a day and was intoxicated when he wrote nearly every hit song of his career.
The country star, 30, opened up about his sobriety during a conversation with Matthew McConaughey that was released alongside his latest EP, "Young Manhood and Other Donatable Organs."
Bryan detailed how his drinking eventually led to severe panic attacks that left him fearing he was going to die.
"When I got in the throes of drinking f---ing 15 beers in a day and I kept going with that cycle, I started getting these really, really severe panic attacks where my whole body went numb, and I thought I was going to have a stroke and die," he told McConaughey.
"I’d curl up for days at a time, and I went to a doctor. And, like I said, I still didn’t believe it. I told the doctor, ‘Man, I’m just hungover. I’m fine.’ And the doctor was like, ‘No, man. You have a really severe thing going on here.’"
"[My doctor] said, ‘I think you have a pretty bad panic disorder. And if you quit drinking, that might help you a little bit.’ So I tried it, and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah.’"
Before giving up alcohol, Bryan said he relied on drinking to manage his stage fright.
"So I used to get on stage. Here’s my routine. I used to think this was the perfect routine. No show could ever go bad if I did this: work out, shower, play my guitar, listen to Bon Iver, drink four beers," he recalled.
"It eased my pain. All the stage fright I had was gone after I drank three or four beers, and I’m like, ‘I can do it.’ Then I would drink after the show, too."
Bryan said he would wake up the next day facing another performance and repeat the same cycle.
"I’d wake up the next day with another show, and I’d think, ‘Well, to get rid of this panic in me, to get rid of this stage fright, there’s one choice. Let’s do what we’ve always done,’" he said. "I’d drink two or three more beers. And I thought I was never going to get out of that. I thought that cycle was forever."
The singer-songwriter said his managers had questioned whether he had tried performing without alcohol, but he viewed drinking as part of his routine.
"They would always be like, ‘Hey, have you tried not drinking before a show?’ Like, I can’t. It’s my routine. It’s my lucky socks," Bryan said.
"For a long time, I danced with that. Years, I danced with that. And it worked, you know. I was playing a good show. I was paying my bills. I was doing everything. I employed 100 or 200 people. I was like, ‘This is fine.’"
Bryan said performing sober is more intimidating at first, but ultimately more rewarding.
"I will say now that I’ve quit drinking, stages are more scary," he admitted. "But once I get on stage, it’s a lot more enjoyable. So much better. It feels like flying. It’s more fun. It’s the best feeling in the world."
Bryan said the realization that he was responsible for his own struggles came after years of denial.
"I used to be so terrified of that," he said of performing sober. "And that denial is what got me there. That denial is what brought me to those panic attacks. I was the issue the whole time."
The Grammy winner also said he had convinced himself that alcohol was essential to his songwriting process.
"Every hit I ever had, I was pretty much drunk when I made it," Bryan said. "And so I had the issue of thinking I was never going to have a good song again if I wasn’t under the influence."
He described the belief as a "real curse" that made him feel as though he had to repeat the same rituals in order to create music.
"This is the first project I’ve ever done, this ‘Young Manhood’ thing, that I didn’t drink a lick," he said. "I wrote every word sober and I sang every word sober. And I’ll say it took that to prove to me that I could do it."
Bryan admitted that he once dismissed sobriety and didn't recognize that his own drinking had become a problem.
"I always thought sobriety was a joke because it’s people who couldn’t control themselves celebrating not being able to control themselves," Bryan said. "When I was drinking a lot, I always thought, ‘Why can’t you control yourself?’ I never realized I had a problem."
The singer said his perspective changed during a solo 30-day motorcycle trip across the country.
Bryan said he spent much of the trip stopping at bars and drinking himself to sleep. When he reached a Pilot truck stop outside Seattle, he bought a 40-ounce Budweiser and sat on a curb beside his motorcycle.
"I’ll never forget this as long as I live," he said. "I went into this Pilot and I grabbed a 40 [ounce bottle of] Budweiser, and I’m sitting on the curb with my motorcycle in front of me, and I’m drinking it. And I’m thinking, ‘What the hell was all that worth? Why did I do any of that? I feel emptier than when I left.’"
Bryan said he realized he had spent the previous 30 days chasing a "big romantic movie moment," only to find himself alone in a parking lot.
"I’ve got nowhere to go home to, no one to call," he recalled thinking. "That’s when I said, ‘Man, why am I drinking right now? What am I celebrating?’"
"It changed me a lot, that parking lot," he said. "That was the moment I realized, when I went and got that 40, I was like, ‘Man, it’s f---ing 3. You’ve got an issue. Why do you want to drink a 40 right now in the Seattle Pilot parking lot?’"
Bryan previously announced in November 2025 that he had been sober for two months, writing that he had used alcohol to cope with a "perpetual discontent" and a "consistent black hole" inside him.
During his conversation with McConaughey, Bryan said sobriety has helped him feel more creative, energized and content.
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