There’s no doubt that Meryl Streep is one of the greatest living actors, with her long career of stellar performances and stack of awards to back it up. However, in all of her greatness, it’s only natural that she would not know the slang term used to label those considered the “Greatest Of All Time” a.k.a. G.O.A.T., stemming from the sports community and only popularized online in the last few years.
However, her younger co-stars on the set of Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up did not think to bridge this generational gap while calling her the G.O.A.T. on set numerous times. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Jennifer Lawrence explains that Streep genuinely thought her co-stars were regularly calling her a goat, referring to the barn animal.
“We offhandedly call Meryl the G.O.A.T.,” Lawrence tells Colbert. “And we were doing a photoshoot and I said something like G.O.A.T. and Meryl kind of said, ‘That’s right. Just tell the old goat where to go.’ I was like, ‘Meryl, you know that G.O.A.T. means greatest of all time, right?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, no!’”
She adds, “I was like, ‘We haven’t just been calling you goat this whole time.’”
Lawrence was not the only one to give Streep this esteemed title on set. In another interview on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, co-star Jonah Hill shared a similar story about Streep’s confusion around the term G.O.A.T.
“We’re doing a press conference and she’s like, ‘You know, Jonah is so comfortable with me, he’s been calling me a goat all week.’ And I’m like, what the fuck?’” Hill tells Fallon. [Meryl] was telling Jennifer about this—and she’s so cool, she wasn’t even offended by it! She was just like, ‘I guess he like loves me and is calling me a goat.’
“[Streep] was like, ‘Hey, thanks for calling me the G.O.A.T. I thought you were calling me a goat this whole time,” he adds.