This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had a Hollywood career… and this little piggy went viral. I don’t know whether Chris Pratt has ever rewritten the words to the old nursery rhyme while cooing it to his young children – but after the past few days, he must surely be considering it. After all, this should have been a banner week for the actor. He’s currently fronting Disney’s latest soon-to-be-chart-topping blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, a film our critic thought was the best Marvel movie in years. The Super Mario Bros Movie, a children’s animation in which he played the lead, just passed $1bn at the box office, and won’t stop breaking records. And yet Pratt has gone viral for the least predictable of reasons: sharing (and repeatedly memeing) a foul-looking photograph of his crusty toenail.
Now, as internet scandals go, this is of course totally benign. (I’d have to defer to a medical professional whether the same can be said about his toe.) But, naturally, the Pratt haters have descended from the woodwork, latching on to this latest evidence of his incorrigible unlikability. As has been dissected before in The Independent, Pratt is a polarising figure among audiences. For some, the issue is simply his acting. For others, his political leanings. (Pratt, an ardent Christian and military advocate, is often described as right-wing, although he has stated he does not fall on “either side” of the political spectrum). You may baulk at the sight of Pratt wearing a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt. You may recoil at his somewhat unnerving ode to the beauty of hunting (in 2015, the actor spoke about his “30 or 40-gun arsenal”, and listed the animals he has killed, including elk, caribou, deer and moose). But there’s something fundamentally important about having people like Pratt in the industry. In fact, Hollywood really needs more of them.
