Was The Controversial ‘Duck Dynasty’ Interview With GQ Magazine A Set-Up?


The controversial interview with Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson with GQ last December led to a passionate cultural divide and almost led to the cancellation of one of America’s most beloved TV shows. In his new book and a recent interview, Jase Robertson reveals that the way the infamous interview actually happened was a little bit different than the way the GQ journalist portrayed. From the way Jase explains it, the whole thing sounds much more like a set-up.

Right off the bat, the very first question of the interview made a mockery out of the family’s deeply held values.

In a recent interview with CNS News, Jase Robertson spoke of the interviewer’s hostility from the very beginning. “The first statement of the whole process was, he looked at me and said, ‘Do you actually expect people to believe that you waited until you got married before you had sex?’ That was the first statement out of his mouth.”

It is apparent that the Duck Dynasty star did indeed expect people to believe that he and his wife Missy waited.

Indeed, part of the appeal of Duck Dynasty is the Robertson family’s unashamed stand for the Biblical principles they believe in. They have been quite transparent about their own flaws and past mistakes, even long before the duck call business led to the Robertsons being a household name. They have been quick to point out the need of humanity for a Savior.

Their religious faith and values should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched them. In fact, a number of the Duck Dynasty stars regularly preach and share the Gospel at churches and other events. The Inquisitr recently reported that Jase Robertson spoke at the Family Worship Center in late June in Lakeland, Florida. He drove onto the stage in an Argo Amphibious ATV to preach and share his stories.

Yet, when Drew Magary of GQ came to conduct the interview, Jase says that he showed no respect for their beliefs. “He was using four-letter words, a lot of F-bombs; he was making fun of some of the things we hold true.”

The meeting didn’t take place in a studio or some neutral territory. It was in Phil Robertson’s home. The hostility that greeted the Duck Dynasty stars in their own family home took them aback. They didn’t expect for someone to come into their own home and treat them so rudely. That is just not the way things are done in the South.

Up until that point, any interviews that the Dynasty cast had been involved with had been gracious and respectful. There was a very different tone about this one, right from the start:

“What I came to realize there is, because we had done so many interviews before and I’d never sensed any kind of animosity toward our faith in God and belief, but this guy, he knew who we were, he was in my dad’s home. And, you know, in the South, when you come into somebody’s house, you show a certain amount of respect. And it occurred to me that he knew we were people of faith.”

Magary’s behavior, though unexpected and rude, might have been extrapolated from the expletive-filled narrative in GQ. In fact, his attitude was so deplorable that eventually every member of the Robertson family walked out, except the senior member of the dynasty, Phil. Jase Robertson recounts the unpleasant episode in his new book, Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family and Fowl.

According to The Blaze, Magary was disrespecting the family and their faith, and was asking questions that were “hypothetical, argumentative, and controversial.” The questions he asked were all about controversial subjects, as if he were baiting them into saying things that could be used against them. However, Jase refuses to go so far as to accuse Magary of deliberately asking questions to hurt the Duck Dynasty show or the family:

“No, I don’t want to get into the mind, but the questions were only about controversial things. He asked about, he looked at my dad and said, ‘What do you think of homosexuality?’ Which my dad didn’t really answer but, you know. And so it went from there. You see what I mean?”

After the initial mocking question, Jase says that he was pretty surprised:

“Well, I kind of looked around at the publicist and I thought, ‘Is this the interview?’ I mean, because this was just the way it came across.”

The antagonizing only got worse from there, with no attempt to find common ground — only rude baiting in an apparent attempt to try to get sound bites. “So, as it went on, I realized that it felt more like an attack because our family has a prayer at the end of the show,” recounts Jase. “That’s what I felt like was a spiritual war.”

As the whole Duck Dynasty family walked out of the interview, Jase Robertson says that he encouraged his father to do the same and put a stop to the interview, but Phil refused. “My dad thought he wanted to take a stand in his house, and I don’t blame him.”

“I think it was just a plan to get some, some of that [which] caused us some trouble.”

Magary certainly succeeded on that front. Because of comments that he printed, there was a furor from the LGBT community. As a result, the Duck Dynasty patriarch was suspended from the show on December 18, 2013, until a public outcry from the free speech and religious freedom crowds led to his reinstatement on December 28.

What Magary left out of his biased interview was the rest of what Phil Robertson said. According to the Gospel Herald, “Phil proceeded to share the Good News of Christ with Magary — that Jesus came to erase our sin by paying our debt Himself on the cross so that all who receive Him will be reconciled to God and have everlasting, joyful life.”

After quoting the verse about homosexuals and idolaters and adulterers, Phil told Magary, “The Apostle Paul then said that ‘That’s what some of you were’ — I was in that camp. That list of sins covered me in my past life… We’ve all been there.”

Even though it seems pretty apparent that the interview for GQ was about getting somebody from Duck Dynasty to say something that could be used against them, Jase Robertson is quick to show mercy and grace from the family: “But, you know, we don’t hold anything against him.”

That attitude has paid off. The Duck Dynasty clan’s unashamed faith has propelled them to the number one spot as the most highly-rated reality show in cable history, with an average of over 10 million viewers per week. And at “the end of every episode, the family gathers around the dinner table and says a prayer of thanksgiving to God.”

What do you think? Was the whole GQ interview debacle a set-up designed to ignite public fury against the popular Duck Dynasty family? Or just coincidence?

[images via Movie Guide, NY Post, WEIS, CelebDailyNews, and Patheos]

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