**UPDATE WITH QUOTE**
There has been a bit of a fracas over the past couple of days involving Irish film critic and journalist Paul Byrne and actress, Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Winstead took to her twitter account to tweet movie website, Movies.ie, saying a supposed "interview" with her never actually took place and Byrne made the entire thing up. The interview was taken down by the time I heard the story, but it apparently was fairly straight forward stuff - nothing provocative or like. Winstead tweeted, "hey, @movies_ie - was my fabricated "interview" by Paul Byrne meant to be a joke? Wow." Movies.ie did not respond but removed the piece, while Winstead's husband, Riley Stearns then tweeted, "Awesome. Now @Herald_ie is running Paul Byrne's fake interview with @M_E_Winstead." The actress is not letting it go, just yesterday responding to Krank.ie's request for a comment from The Herald's assistant editor, Ian Mallon, saying, "@ianmallon @Nerin_ not evening herald, just Paul Byrne. He never interviewed me about this film, and I certainly never said those things." This after Mallon said he was on holidays, but that The Herald did not "fabricate" interviews. The "interview" took place for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which the actress stars in opposite Benjamin Walker.
Stearns previously likened Byrne to Stephen Glass, saying "After reading a few more "interviews" by @movies_ie's Paul Byrne I'm pretty sure he's the Stephen Glass of the movie blogger world." Ouch!
Vincent Donnelly of Movies.ie has mailed me with the following comment on the situation.
"I would never knowingly publish a fraud interview, almost all of the interviews on Movies.ie are setup in house and conducted by Irish journalists, we have very strong access to actors and directors, and I have always made sure that any interview set up through Movies.ie was recorded either on video or audio.
The article in question was a profile piece sent independently by Paul Byrne to ourselves and to the Herald. Paul is a freelance journalist who works for many Irish publications, as you know he usually has access to a lot of A-List talent and usually has recordings to back this up, so I've never had any reason to doubt him in the past.
As soon as I heard that there were issues with his article I removed it. I am currently reviewing the situation and will be changing how we accept submissions from freelance journalists so that an incident like this can't happen again. "
