Andrew Garfield has sparked a fresh wave of online discussions about grief and emotions after a video of him opening up to Sesame Street‘s Elmo went viral, drawing millions of views and an outpouring of support.
A clip shared on X last Friday, showing Garfield chatting with the beloved Muppet, triggered a flood of responses from social media users who found themselves relating to Garfield’s experience of loss.
Garfield’s mother, Lynn, passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2019, just before he began filming his 2021 movie Tick, Tick… Boom! The actor had previously shared how working on the film helped him process his grief.
In the heartwarming scene, Garfield sat on a stoop next to Elmo, having a candid conversation about his journey through mourning. He opened up to the furry red Muppet about his late mother.
“Elmo’s going around Sesame Street checking in on everybody,” Elmo told a smiling Garfield. “So, Elmo wants to know how Andrew’s doing?”
With gentle encouragement from Elmo, Garfield revealed his thoughts about his mom.
“She passed away not too long ago, and you know, I just miss her. Miss her a lot,” Garfield said, his voice thick with emotion.
When Elmo expressed sympathy, Garfield reassured him that there’s no need for apologies. He explained that “it’s actually kind of OK to miss somebody,” even if it brings feelings of sadness.
“That sadness is kind of a gift. It’s kind of a lovely thing to feel, in a way, because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them,” Garfield shared, adding: “When I miss my mom, I remember all of the cuddles I used to get from her, all of the hugs I used to get from her.”
Many viewers commented that the clip appeared around the anniversary of their own parent’s passing. Others expressed gratitude to Garfield and Elmo for normalizing these emotions and explaining them in a child-friendly way.
Garfield concluded by saying he can both miss and celebrate his mother simultaneously. Elmo nodded in agreement and thanked Garfield for sharing, saying, “You know what, Elmo is gonna think about and celebrate your mommy, too.”
This heartwarming response stood in contrast to Elmo’s earlier experience on X. In January, the Muppet’s innocent wellness check – “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” – unexpectedly unearthed a deluge of online despair, with users sharing their “existential dread,” mental burnout, and general disenchantment with daily life.
The Garfield-Elmo interaction, however, seems to have struck a more positive chord, offering a touching moment of shared humanity in the often chaotic world of social media.
The somber responses to Elmo’s earlier check-in prompted Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, to conduct a nationwide mental health survey, published in August. Now, it seems the internet is once again opening up to the lovable Muppet.
This heartfelt clip aired on the same day Garfield appeared on Amelia Dimoldenberg‘s popular Chicken Shop Date show, a much-anticipated collaboration that had already set social media abuzz.
Garfield’s upcoming film We Live in Time, a romantic comedy co-starring Florence Pugh, tells the story of a man falling for a restaurant owner diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer. The couple must face this reality as they navigate their relationship.
Just a week before his chat with Elmo, Garfield openly discussed grief on The New York Times‘ Modern Love podcast. While reading Chris Huntington’s essay “Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss,” Garfield paused to wipe away tears.
This led to a raw conversation with host Anna Martin. Garfield shared, “I’m sad” – about fleeting relationships, losing his mother, the thought of losing his father, and the idea of not having his own children.
“But the sadness is longing. It’s true longing, and there’s no shame in it,” Garfield said on the podcast. “And I can feel myself right now putting the modern conditioning taboo on this very, very pure feeling I’m having and expressing with you. And I find that sad.”
He expressed frustration with cultural norms that discourage such vulnerability, noting that an “impulse that is not mine” was telling him to “pull yourself together” even as he spoke.
“And I think it’s so easy now to feel hopeless in this current state of the world. Being alive right now, it can feel quite hopeless. And we can feel quite numb, we can feel quite disconnected and isolated,” Garfield said. “But I don’t know. I feel like the feeling, the longing lives in all of us: the longing to connect, the longing to love, the longing to risk.”
Garfield’s candid discussions about grief and emotions seem to resonate deeply with fans, offering a relatable perspective on dealing with loss and the importance of embracing our feelings, even the difficult ones.
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