Add Woody Harrelson to the list of celebrities and prominent figures who have espoused doubts about the COVID-19 pandemic, the cause of the nationwide lockdowns and the subsequent rollout of vaccines. 

During his opening monologue while hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend, Harrelson described the plot of a movie script he was pitched by taking a not-so-subtle dig at Big Pharma in the process.

“So, the movie [script] goes like this: The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes. And people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over,” Harrelson said.

After the monologue aired, Harrelson quickly came under fire for comparing pharma companies to drug cartels and using what critics deemed as language critical of the COVID-19 vaccines. BuzzFeed said his monologue was filled with “COVID conspiracy jokes” while Rolling Stone stated that the actor spread “anti-vax conspiracies” while on the show.

Similarly, Timothy Caulfield, research director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, tweeted that “Normalizing #antivaxx conspiracies does real harm!”

Meanwhile, Harrelson earned the approval of Elon Musk, who tweeted “Good one” in reference to a video of his monologue that was uploaded to Twitter. Musk has long been vocal in questioning the measures taken to curb the spread of COVID-19, recently releasing the Twitter Files dedicated to addressing the alleged suppression of COVID-19 critics on the social media platform.

This is not Harrelson’s first foray into controversy regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and his thoughts regarding the pharmaceutical industry.

In a nearly two-hour long appearance on Club Random with Bill Maher in September, the Academy Award-nominated actor expressed his skepticism about the role of large pharmaceutical companies in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. He also criticized people who doubted the effectiveness of antivirals like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for treating COVID-19. 

It’s worth noting that while both drugs have been touted by some, like Joe Rogan, as treatments for COVID-19, the Food and Drug Administration has issued multiple cautions against using either antiviral for this purpose. The FDA also stated that neither are approved for traditional or emergency use for treating COVID-19 and can lead to other health ailments if used incorrectly.