Chris O'Dowd has labelled the heavily-ridiculed celebrity cover of John Lennon's Imagine, which was released online at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, a form of "creative diarrhoea".

The 40-year-old actor starred in the video alongside his Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig, and several other A-listers, including Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo.

The Instagram video, which was recorded in an attempt to lift spirits amid the coronavirus pandemic, was widely criticised for being "cringeworthy" and "out of touch".

Social media users took to the platform, pointing out that it would have been more helpful for the well-known faces to donate money for much-needed ventilators and PPE.

Speaking on the latest episode of Louis Theroux's podcast Grounded, O’Dowd said he understands why there was a negative reaction to the revamped track.

"In terms of my interpretation of it, I think the backlash was justified," he said.

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The Moone Boy star revealed how his part "took five minutes" to do and said he "presumed it was for kids".

"I'll do anything Kristen [Wiig] asks me to do, so of course we just did it," he explained. "It took five minutes, didn't think about it. I presumed it was for kids."

"We were in that first wave of creative diarrhoea that seemed to encase the entire world," he added.

In April, Dornan defended his participation in Gadot's Imagine video, saying that the actress was just trying to "lift people's spirits".