Jessie Buckley responds to claims that she ‘hates cats’ after asking her husband to give up pets

Jessie Buckley has broken her silence on claims that she “hates cats”, after a previous comment that she made went viral.

The Hamnet actress has been the focus of a viral moment in recent days, after an old interview resurfaced on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused Podcast with Jessie and her co-star Paul Mescal.

In the interview, Jessie said: “My husband, when I started dating him … he had two cats. One of the cats was a pedigree model b**ch and she staged a coup against me. I’d come home and there’d just be poo on my pillow. And I was, like, ‘It’s me or the cats.’”

After receiving some negative backlash for her comments, the Oscar frontrunner has now addressed the controversy.

Speaking on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday, the 36-year-old exclaimed: “I need to clarify something for all the cat lovers of the world. I am a lover of cats.

“I woke up this morning to the world thinking that I really don’t love cats, and it’s really weighed on me all day. I felt sick!

“I want to just tell cat people that I actually auditioned to be a cat once,” Jessie revealed, referring to the 2019 Cats movie.

The award-winning actress then went on to describe the viral moment as a “misconception”.

“There’s been a misconception because of an interview that I did. They asked me if I was a dog or a cat, and honestly, I think I’m probably a quarter cat and three quarters dog,” she teased.

Jessie later recalled her audition experience for Cats, joking that she “obviously didn’t get” the role.

“I gave the worst audition of my life. Well, how would you be a cat? I was living with flatmates at the time who do proper jobs, like working for social councils and stuff like that. I came down in the morning, I was like, ‘I don’t know how to be a cat this morning.’ They’re like, ‘Well, Jessie, sometimes you just have to be a cat,’” she laughed.

“I done one audition with [Cats director] Tom Hooper and then I got called back to do a movement session with Wayne McGregor, who’s like the head choreographer of the Royal Ballet.

“He’s got this incredibly sleek, terrifyingly minimalist studio, and when you don’t know how to be a cat in the first instance, when you’ve got nothing around you… It was so hot, I was sweating, I was licking my paws, I was trying to make leaps,” she exclaimed.

“This guy is so beautiful and light, and I’m just a hoof of an Irish woman leaping across and licking her paws. Obviously, I didn’t get it,” Jessie added.

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