The Melbourne teenager who went viral after smashing an egg on the head of an Australian lawmaker in protest of his Islamophobia spoke out in his first interview Monday, with no regrets.
Will Connolly, 17, egged Sen. Fraser Anning last week after the politician said the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings were the fault of Muslim immigrants for entering the country in the first place.
“I understand what I did was not the right thing to do,” Connolly told “The Project,” a television program on Australia’s Network 10. “However, this egg has united people and, you know, money had been raised, tens of thousands of dollars have been raised for those victims,”
After the incident, a GoFundMe page was launched to pay any of Connolly’s legal fees. It has raised nearly $80,000, all of which he vowed would be donated to those affected by the massacre, in which 50 people were killed by an alleged white supremacist.
Footage of the egging immediately took off on social media in the form of memes and even a music video edited the tune of Men at Work’s “Down Under,” as the internet mocked the senator’s assault.
“It’s blown up completely out of proportion to the point where it’s kind of embarrassing, because too much of the attention is actually brought away from the real victims suffering,” Connolly said. “We should be focusing on them.”
Retaliating against the egging, which occurred during a live TV interview, Anning was caught swinging around and hitting Connolly in the face. The senator was apprehended as a result.
The teen, who has been nicknamed “Egg Boy,” said he had the moniker even before his food-smashing brouhaha.
“I’d eat boiled eggs at lunch, and all the girls would say, ‘Get away from me. That reeks,’” he recalled, adding that he’s “officially off the eggs now.”