Did BBC interview a self-confessed crisis actor called Henry Dyne? Fact Check

Rumours on social media claim that a man being treated in hospital for COVID-19 named Henry Dyne was actually a “crisis actor” who was merely posing as a COVID patient for a BBC interview. Such rumours point to Dyne’s Instagram account as evidence since his own account identified him as a “crisis actor”.

FALSE

An example of the claim on social media is below.

We are being played…

The “crisis actor” trope is a type of conspiracy theory that claims the government (or shadowy forces operating within a government) are secretly employing specially trained actors to play certain roles for the purpose of media interviews in order to make certain “false flag” incidents appear genuine.

Such theories gained traction online several years back during the aftermath of several mass shootings in the United States, where conspiracy theorists claimed that the families of mass shooting victims, as well as first responders, were actually actors playing a role, and such mass shootings never really occurred.

Recently prolific conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of InfoWars in the US was successfully sued in court by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school mass shooting for making such claims.

More recently, such “crisis actor” claims have branched out from conspiracies about mass shootings and have also entangled themselves in the plethora of existing conspiracies related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, the above rumour, which states that such actors are playing the role of COVID-19 patients.

Sponsored Content. Continued below...

This particular message claims that a man named Henry Dyne is actually such a crisis actor, and even identifies as such on his Instagram account. So what is going on?

Back in July 2021, the BBC interviewed Dyne from his hospital bed after he contracted COVID-19 which resulted in him receiving hospital treatment. During the BBC interview he urged others to get the vaccine, claiming he did not to do because of “laziness”.

Immediately after it aired in July, conspiracy theorists jumped on the interview, accusing Dyne of being a “crisis actor” (Dyne was far from the only person interviewed by media to face such accusations). Back in July, the “evidence” of Dyne being a crisis actor seemed to solely rely on the faintest of contentions – he allegedly worked for a company that had been providing infrastructure for the UK’s vaccination program.

Dyne subsequently recovered from COVID-19 and – as is often the case – soon heard about the Internet conspiracy theorists accusing him of being a secret crisis actor. However Dyne apparently took the accusations in good humour, in July changing his Instagram “bio” section (that appears at the top of an Instagram account) to “1x Academy Award nominated crisis actor Henry Dyne”. See image below.

Now while we don’t doubt that all of our regular readers will know not to take that as anything except some good humoured sarcasm, it seems conspiracy theorists have opted to interpret that as a literal self-confession.

Sponsored Content. Continued below…

In December 2021, the BBC repeated a segment of Dyne’s interview in a yearly roundup of its coverage, which has resulted in a new wave of these nonsensical crisis actor rumours blowing up once again (fueled perhaps in part that many viewers did not realise that the interview was actually a repeat from earlier in the year) only this time such theorists have been using Dyne’s Instagram biography to “prove” their accusations.

Dyne has since change his Instagram account again (as well as, justifiably, making it private) and it now reads –

Does this mean I can have a blue tick now?
This bio is sarcasm you conspiracy nutters (always has been)

The claim that crisis actors exist and are secretly employed by governments to play certain roles is perhaps only beaten in utter absurdity by the notion that such actors would intentionally admit to such ‘super-duper’ secret covert roles on their own social media accounts.

The “evidence” that Dyne is a “crisis actor” appears to rely purely on where he works and that he previously jokingly claimed he was a crisis actor on his Instagram account after being accused of such. Back in the real world, this isn’t evidence and we rank such asinine claims as false.