Piers Morgan apologized to tennis star Novak Djokovic during a Tuesday episode of his show for previously celebrating the athlete’s deportation from Australia for not receiving the COVID vaccine.
In March 2022, Morgan accused Djokovic of being a “Covid rule cheat” and an “immigration form liar” after he had been deported from Australia and barred from participating in the Australian Open for being unvaccinated against COVID-19. During the interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” Morgan told Djokovic that he was “censorious” against him and others who did not get fully vaccinated against the virus at the time.
“I’m gonna to start by making an apology, and it’s for this, is I was very censorious about you over the COVID scandal that you got caught up in. And in a nutshell, you got thrown out of Australia over what seemed to be on the face of it from what the media were being told and what was being reported was you trying to bend the rules of getting into playing the Australian Open without having taken the COVID vaccine,” Morgan said. “And I was, I was actually quite censorious about a lot of people at the time and I’ve since apologized to some people for being too tough on them because once it became clear that if you had the vaccine it made no difference to whether you could then transmit the virus, clearly, at that point for me, it becomes a personal choice.”
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The Serbian-born tennis star arrived in Melbourne on Jan. 4, 2022, with a medical exemption from the vaccination, which immediately sparked outrage among Australians who questioned the validity of the exemption. Border officials then canceled his visa and detained him in an immigration facility over his vaccination status and accusations about false information on his immigration form. Though Djokovic challenged his detention in court, he lost his appeals and was deported on Jan. 16, 2022, just days before the Australian Open.
The athlete had been accused of lying on his immigration arrival form after it stated that he had not traveled in the 14 days before arrival. Djokovic later acknowledged that there had been an accidental error on the form and that it was not deliberate.
Morgan also told Djokovic that he was too quick to criticize him without having all of the facts. Weeks before the Australian Open, Djokovic had tested positive for the virus and a federal judge found that immigration officials in Australia mishandled his case.
“But I was too censorious and when more information emerged about your situation, the fact you’d had COVID several weeks before you went to Australia, the fact that you hadn’t actually done anything wrong on the form-filling, the fact that in the end it became a political decision to throw you out based on likely public anger if they didn’t take action,” Morgan continued. “When I look back on that and reflect on that, I would like to say I’m sorry for the intemperate language I used against you because I didn’t know you, I took what I was reading and hearing at face value, it turned out to be more complicated and yeah, I’m sorry for over-egging the rhetorical souffle.”
Djokovic accepted Morgan’s apology and stated that they had all been through “difficult times.”
“I appreciate that very much, your honesty, thank you so much, it was difficult times and state of emergency globally, I understand we’ve been through Hell globally, all of us on this planet and the only thing I would add not to really dig deeper into this whole situation on the Covid and vaccination is that I was never a proponent of anti-vax or pro-vax, I was always freedom of choice,” Djokovic said.
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