Werner Herzog, speaking at the Venice Film Festival, rejected suggestions that his famously monomaniacal characters could be seen as role models for the neurodiversity movement, saying he dislikes terms like "neurodivergence" and finds them akin to political correctness. His comments came while promoting his new film Bucking Fastard, his first non-documentary feature in 17 years, which stars real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara as conjoined-in-spirit siblings who share every preoccupation and speak in unison.

The film, loosely based on real-life York twins Freda and Greta Chaplin whom Herzog met in the 1980s, follows the sisters as they fall for a washed-up neighbour played by Orlando Bloom before embarking on an eccentric scheme to dig a tunnel from County Sligo to the Orkneys. Herzog noted the characters mark a departure from his earlier outsider figures because they are "vengeful" arsonists rather than simply sympathetic misfits, though he insisted his refusal to frame them in clinical terms such as autism or ADHD reflects his broader resistance to fashionable psychiatric labelling. He also described declining an offer to source a fox cub for filming from a dealer who would not explain how it was obtained, and reflected on his continued popularity among teenage audiences online.