Chet Hanks's Winnipeg Speaking Engagement Went About as Well as You Would Expect

"If you don't want your children to be exposed to profanity, just take them somewhere else right now, respectfully"

Photo (Hanks): @chethanx (Instagram)

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Sep 14, 2022

In pre-pandemic times, it used to be that a Hanks brother might drop in on an Exclaim! staffer in Western Canada to watch True Detective and pet their cat. Nowadays, Chet Hanks drops in on Winnipeg to claim that doing 100 burpees a day is a key to "self-mastery."

Video has emerged of Hanks in the Manitoba capital last Saturday (September 10) — despite his earlier anti-vax stance — where he was slated to speak at Recovery Day Winnipeg, an event aiming to "build awareness, challenge societal stigma, and celebrate the role that recovery plays in improving life" which returned to an in-person format for the first time since its inaugural 2019 edition. 

Per Recovery Day Winnipeg's website, Hanks was the event's headline speaker in a lineup that also included Canada's Drag Race alumni Juice Boxx, Boa, Kendall Gender and Kaos, and American actor Tony Denison.

An event bio for Hanks points to the success of his HanxFit Self-Mastery Program, launched in January, and how it has led him to mentor "hundreds of people all across the world, training them to become the best versions of themselves through fitness, nutrition, and mindset coaching." It adds that Hanks "knows first-hand that none of this success would be possible without sobriety and that recovery is non-negotiable in living up to one's greatest potential." 

To his credit, both the fake patois and "White Boy Summer" idealism appear to have been shelved for his speech, but it's difficult to see how Hanks was anywhere near the best version of himself upon watching the event footage.

A TikTok posted by user @saveja shows Hanks at one point pacing the stage, asking the crowd, "Any of you guys got a problem with the word God?" Hanks tells the onlookers that "If you've got a problem with the word God" — which, in his mind could mean "Grace Order Direction," per his Instagram bio — they should "get the fuck over [themselves]. And I mean that with love, brother."

The video then jumps ahead to find Hanks asking, "You want to drink fuckin' knockoff RC Cola, or real motherfuckin' Coke?" After another jump cut, @saveja identifies a parent approaching the stage to ask him to clean up his language. Hanks appears to laugh off the parent's request and tells them and their children to leave before jeering, "Watch your fuckin' mouth. Come on up here, buddy. I don't think you can."
@saveja Dont know why Chet Hanks was approved to speak a Recovery Day Winnipeg… but this was a mess #chethanks @chethanksofficial #whiteboysummer #tomhanks #addictionrecovery #recoveryispossible ♬ original sound - Sav
The TikTok video claims that family and child-oriented programming organized by Recovery Day Winnipeg was "about 50 metres" from where Hanks was speaking. "See? I'm used to this shit, you guys," he continues. "Pardon my language for the children, but I speak from the heart and I speak bluntly. If you don't want your children to be exposed to profanity, just take them somewhere else right now, respectfully."

Continuing to explain himself at his own peril, Hanks adds, "If you guys are looking at me right now, and you're thinking, 'Huh, he probably thinks he's so much fucking better than me, fuck this guy,' like that kook that was up here a few seconds ago, I don't care today. I don't care ... it is what it is."

Eventually, Hanks got to the material he was ostensibly booked to speak about, captured in a second supercut by @saveja. By this point, the crowd in front of the stage has dissipated entirely as he speaks about "the perilous, treacherous destiny that I was creating for myself, every day."

"I'll do anything to just not feel like this," Hanks appears to recall of his emotional state. "So I did one thing that I knew always made me feel just a little good about myself, which was bust down on the ground, and knock out 100 burpees."

Hanks goes on to share how he "never stopped" the daily burpee regimen — even ahead of taking the stage in Winnipeg, "because it elevates my state of mind" — before telling the Recovery Day crowd about his experience in rehab (at a "Motel 6-looking building out in the desert where all I did was do burpees, read, journal and walk laps around the place") and his desire to lead a similarly simple life upon completing the program.

His talk then pivots into something of an advert for the HanxFit program, complete with all the usual "rise 'n' grind" bootstrapping buzzwords and phrases that come naturally to the children of comfortably wealthy parents. "It's a seven-figure business," Hanks shares at one point. "I've realized my purpose, which is to simply be the best version of myself and live as an example. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see it every day."

Exclaim! has reached out to Recovery Day Winnipeg for comment. Earlier this year, the actor was seen speaking with a Trinidadian accent in Atlanta's third season.
@saveja Heres some long cuts of different parts of Chet's talk. I edited everything it order of how it was presented.. (except for clip 1 which is taken from a random part of my 20 minutes of video). #chethanks #whiteboysummer #winnipeg #recoveryday @ethankleinh3 ♬ original sound - Sav

Latest Coverage