You can be taken back there in an instant." "You think you're an adult and you're past such things and it turns out you're not. And for all these reasons, he found himself bullied at school. He loved musical theatre and his best friend was a girl, Danica, whom he met aged seven and went on to marry. Russell's parents founded a national organisation called Christian Youth Theatre, and he spent his childhood as "the tin man, Mr Toad, Peter Pan". 'Jason Russell … white saviour complex…military intervention … dubious finances … blond … yadda yadda yadda!' And suddenly it was, wham, and I was right back in junior high." "And it was only then that I realised what was happening, when I opened up my laptop and the first article I read was all these terrible things. We've got to work out what to do about the negative press.' "My head was spinning with all this stuff we needed to do in the future. And in my head, I wanted to reconcile them and I just couldn't."įor a week, he did interview after interview and it was only when he was in the office of a crisis management agency in New York, days in, he says, that he first realised the true force of the backlash. "And on the other, there were people saying, 'These people think they're white saviours trying to save Africa', and 'the money goes to corrupt places', and 'there is a special place in hell for you'. "On the one hand, there was Bono saying Jason Russell deserves an Oscar, and Oprah wants to fill stadiums for me, and Ryan Seacrest wants me on American Idol," he says. He is still on "mood-stabilising" medication. It was nearly two months before he went home to his family. His doctors never agreed on a definitive diagnosis but he was sectioned in a psychiatric hospital suffering from what may have been a schizophrenic manic episode brought on by post-traumatic stress.
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Ten days later, he ripped his clothes off his back, ran out naked into the street near his San Diego home, slammed his hands repeatedly on to the pavement, battered himself against parked cars, and screamed obscenities until he was eventually led away by police. On Facebook, 11 million people clicked on "share". More than a million people left a comment about it on Youtube. Every news website in the world carried a story on him. It took a day to hit a million views six days to reach 100 million.Įvery news outlet on the planet, it seemed, wanted an interview with him. Russell directed and starred in the film, and within hours it was on its way to becoming what was then the most viral video of all time. And then, on 5 March, he released Kony2012, a 30-minute film that explained why the world needed to catch and bring to justice Joseph Kony, a central African warlord, who, over the previous 26 years, had abducted 30,000 children and turned them into soldiers and sex slaves.