How Willie Nelson ruined Woody Harrelson’s sobriety: “Welcome home, son”
Woody Harrelson is one of the few Hollywood enigmas who genuinely comes across as too cool for school, occasionally dipping into the industry to lend his name to a bizarre independent project such as Triangle of Sadness or Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and then promptly going on to star in a studio project and completely steal the scene, with the likes of Haymitch in The Hunger Games and Tallahassee in Zomebieland.
He occupies a similar territory to Jeff Goldblum as someone so wonderfully unconventional that they elevate any project they’re in, with a number of bizarre experiences in the industry that brighten any story they share. And one of the stranger stories that the actor has shared, was the time he came out of sobriety to smoke a joint with Willie Nelson.
Willie Nelson, of course, is one of the many iconic country singers to come from Nashville, known for his jazz-infused style and famous tracks such as ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ and ‘On The Road Again’ that defined a new era of the outlaw country genre. And despite his clean-cut appearance, his long-time friend Woody Harrelson recently spoke about some of their shared vices.
Harrelson has famously been a huge advocate for the legalisation of marijuana; however, in 2017, he announced that he was going to quit smoking weed after “30 years of partying too hard”. Nevertheless, this is a hard habit to break if you’re hanging around the likes of Nelson and other people that are experts in letting their hard down.
Harrelson explained how his retirement from smoking had been sabotaged by Nelson as they were on a trip in Hawaii, with the actor saying, “He’d keep offering it to me, and I’d say, ‘Willie, you know I don’t smoke anymore.’ He’d always act like it was the first time he’d heard it”.
The two were playing poker, and the singer pulled out a special batch called ‘Willies Reserve’, with Harrelson saying, “That’s not fair because the only way I’m going to taste the Willie’s Reserve is if I smoke it”. And so, after winning a huge hand, he caved. “I take a big draw on it, and Willie says, ‘Welcome home, son”.
Despite his insistence on giving up, I imagine that no-one could be more convincing than Nelson, especially if you were in a celebratory mood. The actor as always been avid advocate for the medical effects of the drug, with the actor famously being arrested in 1996 for planting some hemp seeds in Kentucky to challenge the state law that didn’t distinguish between hemp and maruijana. He was then imprisoned for cultivating the drug but was released the next day, later making a semi-documentary about the protest titled Hempsters: Plant the Seed.
Harrelson has always been a mischievous figure in Hollywood, preferring to stay out of the limelight unless it’s for something truly unexpected. The actor is set to star in the upcoming thriller Last Breath alongside Simu Liu and Finn Cole, telling the true story of a deep-sea diver who is tasked with rescuing his crew.
