After bravely bearing the cruel slings and arrows of the woke scolds that launched a cancel campaign against him for old jokes that offended some members of the LGBT community, Kevin Hart has now apologized for how he handled the situation, which culminated in him stepping down as host of the Academy Awards in 2019.
Though Hart recently expressed regret for being immature at the time in the Netflix documentary “Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up,” he doubled-down on that sentiment in an interview with Men’s Health.
“With the whole Oscars thing, there was a big gap between what I thought the problem was versus what the problem really was,” Hart told the magazine. “I got 10 years where I made sure not to joke or play in the way that I did back then because it was a problem. I don’t care if you’re gay or not gay. I’m a people person. I’m going to love you regardless.”
Hart, however, feels that he should have become an ally to the LGBT community by speaking up about violence.
“It wasn’t until close friends like Wanda Sykes, Lee Daniels, and Ellen talked to me and explained what they didn’t hear me say that I understood. Then I was like, ‘Oh, s*** — I did f*** up.’”
Kevin Hart had been slated to host the 2019 Oscars but stepped down within 48 hours of accepting the gig after the Academy demanded he apologize for his past jokes.
“I’m not going to continue to go back and tap into the days of old when I moved on, and I’m in a completely different space in my life,” Hart said in a video on Instagram at the time. “I’m going to be me; I’m going to stand my ground.”
Hours later, Hart stepped down from his dream of hosting the Oscars and apologized to the LGBTQ community for his “insensitive words.”
“I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscars … this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists,” he wrote on Twitter. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.”
The Netflix documentary explored how the comedian disregarded the advice of his publicists and other members of his team at the time, leading him to eventually conclude that he was acting “immature.”
“What I thought was going to blow over ended up becoming a bigger mess than I expected,” Hart says in the documentary.
“You need to learn how to stop and think,” Hart’s publicist tells a team member in the documentary. “He’s not used to being the person that’s not loved and cherished. He needs to just shut up and put his head down for the next few weeks. … What he needs to remember is he’s feeding 50-60 people. When he takes a sh***er, everybody takes a sh***er and that’s a big issue now.”
Nine days after his stepping down, Hart then told members of his staff at an emergency meeting that he had no desire to keep addressing the controversy, fearing he would be “making it okay to go backward.” 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.”