Following his last apology for past comedy routines, actor/comedian Eddie Murphy has now expressed embarrassment for previously making anti-gay jokes that he says now make him cringe.
Speaking with CBS, Murphy described the embarrassment he often feels when revisiting his past material.
“Some of it, I cringe when I watch it,” Murphy said, as reported by Fox News. “I’m like, oh my God, I can’t believe I said that.”
One particular clip that Murphy took issue was a segment from his 1983 comedy special “Delirious,” in which he joked about having “nightmares about gay people.” Though Murphy has no regrets regarding his life, he now sees how those jokes would not land well in today’s environment.
“I get a joke every now and then that’s cringe-y,” Murphy said. “But that’s not to say I don’t appreciate it. I still appreciate it. I’m looking at it within the context of the times. I’m going, OK, I’m a kid saying that.”
As reported by The Daily Wire’s Ashe Schow, Murphy expressed regret during a recent interview with The New York Times for past jokes he now believes were “ignorant.” Here’s how the Times reported it:
“I went through all that stuff, so this is not scary,” he said about controversies over jokes. He pointed that he had been picketed and had also apologized for material about AIDS that he now calls “ignorant” before adding, on the subject of anxiety by comics today: “All this stuff they are talking about: ‘Hey, welcome to the club.’”
Recently, actor/comedian Kevin Hart reflected upon his being booted from hosting the Oscars after members of the LGBTQ community resurfaced several offensive tweets and jokes he made at their expense years earlier. Hart now believes he acted immaturely in response to the backlash.
“What I thought was going to blow over ended up becoming a bigger mess than I expected,” Hart says in the Netflix documentary “Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up.”
Looking back, Hart now feels that he “missed an opportunity.”
“I missed an opportunity to say simply that I don’t condone any type of violence in any way, shape, or form to anyone for being who they are,” Hart now says. “I f***ed up. … Instead, I said, ‘I addressed it.’ I said, ‘I apologized.’ I said, ‘I talked about this already.’ I was just immature. You’re not Superman. You’re not invincible. You don’t know everything. Your way is not always the right way. Sometimes it’s very valuable to stop for a second and assess. I know the things that I could’ve done better. I have no problem in saying I was wrong.”
Prior to the release of “Joker,” director Todd Philips said that he quit making comedies because he feared the backlash that might erupt if a joke were to offend someone.
“Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” Phillips told Vanity Fair. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore — I’ll tell you why, because all the f***ing funny guys are like, ‘F*** this s***, because I don’t want to offend you.’”
“It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter,” the director continued. “You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’”