Kevin Hart made it crystal clear he will never host the Oscars and said the days of comedians taking those gigs are over because they aren’t “comedy friendly environments anymore.”
During the 44-year-old comedian’s appearance on Sky News, a reporter asked Hart about stepping down as host of the Academy Awards five years ago and if fans could ever expect to see him take on the gig again.
“No, absolutely not,” Hart said. “Let’s just throw that hope right out the window right now. Whatever level of hope you have, I want to destroy it right now. No, not at all.”
“Those gigs aren’t good gigs for comics,” he added. “It’s no shot to the Oscars, the Globes or anything. Those just aren’t comedy friendly environments anymore.”
Kevin Hart says there’s absolutely no chance he will ever host the Oscars, labelling award show gigs as “very cold” and not “comedy friendly environments”
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“The days of it being a room for a comic, those days are done,” Hart continued. “There’s a lot of people who understand it. But if you’re not an industry comic, meaning a comic who has the relationship of all, then those rooms are very cold. … It’s not the gig that it was of old.”
Hart said kudos to those who have been able to do it, mentioning people like Chris Rock and comedian Ricky Gervais, but said he thought there was too much pressure now on what is and is not considered a joke.
The “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” star had previously been picked to host the Oscars in 2019, but ended up stepping down after he was told by the Academy to apologize over past tweets and jokes from stand-up shows years earlier that had resurfaced, or he won’t be the host.
“My team calls me, ‘Oh my God, Kevin, everyone’s upset by tweets you did years ago,'” Hart said in a video on Instagram at the time. “Guys, I’m nearly 40 years old. If you don’t believe that people change, grow, evolve as they get older, I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to hold people in a position where they always have to justify the past, do you. I’m the wrong guy, man.”
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“I chose to pass on the apology,” he added in a second video. “The reason why I passed is because I’ve addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up. I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it. I’ve said where the rights and wrongs were. I’ve said who I am now versus who I was then. I’ve done it. I’m not going to continue to go back and tap into the days of old when I’ve moved on and I’m in a completely different place in my life.”
In a later tweet, Hart announced that he had stepped down from hosting so he wouldn’t be a distraction and wrote, “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.”