Arts & Entertainment
Kevin Hart steps aside as 2019 Oscar host after protests
In the age of #MeToo, a controversial host is toast
Kevin Hart. (Photo Facebook)
UPDATE: Comedian and actor Kevin Hart says he has stepped down from hosting the 2019 Oscars following a controversy over homophobic tweets and comments from his stand up act from as far back as 2009.
Hart said he does not wish to be a distraction and that he is “sorry he had hurt people” after calls for the Academy to drop him went viral.
Hart had said hosting the Oscars was “a goal on my list for a long time.”
On Thursday, Hart initially responded to outcry over his being named by the Academy as host of the ceremony with a video posted on Instagram, in which he said, “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.”
This was followed later on Thursday evening with another video, in which the comedian told followers the Academy had called him and offered him an ultimatum: apologize for the tweets or step down as host. He refused to apologize, saying he had “addressed this several times. This is not the first time this has come up. I’ve addressed it. I’ve spoken on it.”
Finally, late in the day, Hart announced via Twitter that he had chosen to step down “because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists.”
“I sincerely apologise to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words of the past,” he said.
I’m sorry that I hurt people.. I am evolving and want to continue to do so. My goal is to bring people together not tear us apart. Much love & appreciation to the Academy. I hope we can meet again.
— Kevin Hart (@KevinHart4real) December 7, 2018
As its much-criticized (and now recanted) decision to add a “Best Popular Film” category to its awards roster earlier this year clearly revealed, the Oscars are desperate to increase their ever-declining ratings.
Has the Academy Award lost its way? That question is increasingly being asked.
For the broadcast of the Academy Awards’ 90th annual ceremony in 2018, viewership was about 26.5 million people – around 20% lower than the previous year, it was the first time the figure had dropped below 30 million and the lowest number since Nielsen started tracking Oscar ratings in 1974.
The Hart fiasco was born of a reckless effort to boost its relevance and regain audience.
At first glance, it seemed like the perfect solution to their problem. Hart is immensely popular, performing to sell-out crowds in huge venues like the 69,000-seat Lincoln Financial Field in his hometown of Philadelphia. He topped Forbes’ 2016 list of the highest-paid comedians, and he’s proven his appeal to movie crowds with box-office hits, like this year’s “Night School” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”
His films have grossed $3.5 billion worldwide, and his social media presence (35 million followers on Twitter, 65 million on Instagram) is impressive. The chance to see what he does as an Oscar host obviously had the potential to draw a lot of viewers that wouldn’t normally tune in.
In addition, Hart had been vocal about his desire to host the Oscars for several years now.
It’s a job that has proven thankless for many celebrities who have done it in the past – from Chevy Chase to David Letterman to Seth McFarlane, the ceremony has been fronted by a long list of popular comedians who were deemed to have failed spectacularly, and there’s an even longer list of personalities who have been asked and turned it down (as detailed in a recent piece by the Hollywood Reporter).
But Hart had actively been after the gig since at least 2015, when the Los Angeles Times reported him as saying, “If I can start the campaign now and get them into it, I’m all for it. I would just jump at the opportunity.”
Lastly, as only the fourth African-American person ever to host the ceremony (following Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and four-time host Whoopi Goldberg), Hart would potentially have helped to smooth over the lingering criticism stemming from the #OscarsSoWhite controversy of two years ago, when the lack of diversity among the Academy’s award nominations – and onstage at its ceremony – underscored the inadequate representation of non-whites within the content produced by the Hollywood film industry. In a year when most of the apparent front-runners seem, yet again, to be white, having a black host might be a way to stave off any resurgence of backlash.
Unfortunately, this solution failed to take into account the messaging it sent on another front.
The Academy – in typically tone-deaf fashion – may have chosen a host who checks off several important boxes for image-conscious Hollywood, but in doing so it ignored Hart’s problematic history of homophobia.
And as you can see from the Instagram post above, Hart is now positioning himself as a victim of PC culture run amok.
It’s not all that different from the notorious comedy routine for his 2010 TV special, “Seriously Funny,” Hart joked that as a parent, “one of my biggest fears is my son growing up and being gay.” After quickly adding that he had “nothing against gay people,” he went on to say that “as a heterosexual male, if I can prevent my son from being gay, I will.” He went on to joke that every kid has a “gay moment… but when it happens, you gotta nip it in the bud.”
In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Hart confessed that he “wouldn’t tell the joke today.” His reasons, however, had nothing to do with the obvious anti-gay bias involved; instead, he deflected by saying, “the times weren’t as sensitive as they are now. I think we love to make big deals out of things that aren’t necessarily big deals, because we can. These things become public spectacles. So why set yourself up for failure?”
He also responded in an interview with Parade, by saying, “I had one gay joke in my career and it was about my son at a birthday party, and it was before things got as PC as they are now.”
In other words, his only remorse was over how it affected his image.
Blaming the current #MeToo movement for creating this atmosphere is not a show of remorse. Neither is saying it’s something he’s sorry about while he keeps doing it.
Apparently, that remorse has not been strong enough to keep him from making more homophobic comments. His Twitter feed has been laced with them throughout his career – things like “Yo if my son comes home & try’s 2 play with my daughter’s doll house I’m going 2 break it over his head % say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay.’”
In one particularly offensive tweet, he called out another Twitter user by saying their profile picture looked “like a gay billboard for AIDS.”
He has repeatedly used phrases like “no homo” and “no homo gay,” and lambasted his critics by calling them such names as “f*g boy,” “gay face,” “fat faced f*g,” and “man bitch.”
According to an article published by Queerty just this morning, Hart had been deleting many of these posts – most of which had already been re-Tweeted in protest by thousands of Twitter users after news broke of his Oscar gig.
There’s also the matter of his treatment of ex-wife Torrei Hart, to whom he admitted being physically abusive in his 2017 memoir, “I Can’t Make This Up.” He also confessed in a radio interview last year to having cheated on his current wife, Eniko Parrish, just a few months earlier – while she was pregnant.
With LGBTQ-focused films like “Boy Erased” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” predicted to be in the running, as well as “A Star Is Born,” which features gay icon Lady Gaga, this year’s Oscars are shaping up to have a strong queer presence. With this in mind, placing Hart in the center of the proceedings – when his long track record of homophobic remarks was already well-documented and should have been taken into account by the Academy before offering him the job – was always a bad idea.
Whether or not the comedian really believes the homophobic viewpoints he has projected in his comedy – which, for the record, he has repeatedly insisted he does not – his selection as host sent a mixed message from the Academy to its membership and to its millions of avid followers, many of whom are either LGBTQ or allies.
It’s not the first time the organization has faced this issue. In 2011, Brett Ratner was forced to resign as producer of that year’s Oscar ceremony due to his record of homophobic slurs.
As for the Hart debacle, the Academy has yet to issue a statement.
Photos
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The Wanda Alston Foundation held a “Cheers to Out Sports!” event at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center on Monday, Nov. 17. The event was held by the LGBTQ homeless youth services organization to honor local LGBTQ sports leagues for their philanthropic support.
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Theater
Gay, straight men bond over finances, single fatherhood in Mosaic show
‘A Case for the Existence of God’ set in rural Idaho
‘A Case for the Existence of God’
Through Dec. 7
Mosaic Theater Company at Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H St,, N.E.
Tickets: $42- $56 (discounts available)
Mosaictheater.org
With each new work, Samuel D. Hunter has become more interested in “big ideas thriving in small containers.” Increasingly, he likes to write plays with very few characters and simple sets.
His 2022 two-person play, “A Case for the Existence of God,” (now running at Mosaic Theater Company) is one of these minimal pieces. “Audiences might come in expecting a theological debate set in the Vatican, but instead it’s two guys sitting in a cubicle discussing terms on a bank loan,” says Hunter (who goes by Sam).
Like many of his plays, this award-winning work unfolds in rural Idaho, where Hunter was raised. Two men, one gay, the other straight (here played by local out actors Jaysen Wright and Lee Osorio, respectively), bond over financial insecurity and the joys and challenges of single fatherhood.
His newest success is similarly reduced. Touted as Hunter’s long-awaited Broadway debut, “Little Bear Ridge Road” features Laurie Metcalf as Sarah and Micah Stock as Ethan, Sarah’s estranged gay nephew who returns to Idaho from Seattle to settle his late father’s estate. At 90 minutes, the play’s cast is small and the setting consists only of a reclining couch in a dark void.
“I was very content to be making theater off-Broadway. It’s where most of my favorite plays live.” However, Hunter, 44, does admit to feeling validated: “Over the years there’s been this notion that my plays are too small or too Idaho for Broadway. I feel that’s misguided, so now with my play at the Booth Theatre, my favorite Broadway house, it kind of proves that.”
With “smaller” plays not necessarily the rage on Broadway, he’s pleased that he made it there without compromising the kind of plays he likes to write.
Hunter first spoke with The Blade in 2011 when his “A Bright Day in Boise” made its area premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. At the time, he was still described as an up-and-coming playwright though he’d already nabbed an Obie for this dark comedy about seeking Rapture in an Idaho Hobby Lobby.
In 2015, his “The Whale,” played at Rep Stage starring out actor Michael Russotto as Charlie, a morbidly obese gay English teacher struggling with depression. Hunter wrote the screenplay for the subsequent 2022 film which garnered an Oscar for actor Brendan Frazier.
The year leading up to the Academy Awards ceremony was filled with travel, press, and festivals. It was a heady time. Because of the success of the film there are a lot of non-English language productions of “The Whale” taking place all over the world.
“I don’t see them all,” says Hunter. “When I was invited to Rio de Janeiro to see the Portuguese language premiere, I went. That wasn’t a hard thing to say yes to.”
And then, in the middle of the film hoopla, says Hunter, director Joe Mantello and Laurie (Metcalf) approached him about writing a play for them to do at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago before it moved to Broadway. He’d never met either of them, and they gave me carte blanche.
Early in his career, Hunter didn’t write gay characters, but after meeting his husband in grad school at the University of Iowa that changed, he began to explore that part of his life in his plays, including splashes of himself in his queer characters without making it autobiographical.
He says, “Whether it’s myself or other people, I’ve never wholesale lifted a character or story from real life and plopped it in a play. I need to breathing room to figure out characters on their own terms. It wouldn’t be fair to ask an actor to play me.”
His queer characters made his plays more artistically successful, adds Hunter. “I started putting something of myself on the line. For whatever reason, and it was probably internalized homophobia, I had been holding back.”
Though his work is personal, once he hands it over for production, it quickly becomes collaborative, which is the reason he prefers plays compared to other forms of writing.
“There’s a certain amount of detachment. I become just another member of the team that’s servicing the story. There’s a joy in that.”
Hunter is married to influential dramaturg John Baker. They live in New York City with their little girl, and two dogs. As a dad, Hunter believes despite what’s happening in the world, it’s your job to be hopeful.
“Hope is the harder choice to make. I do it not only for my daughter but because cynicism masquerades as intelligence which I find lazy. Having hope is the better way to live.”
Books
New book highlights long history of LGBTQ oppression
‘Queer Enlightenments’ a reminder that inequality is nothing new
‘Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers’
By Anthony Delaney
c.2025, Atlantic Monthly Press
$30/352 pages
It had to start somewhere.
The discrimination, the persecution, the inequality, it had a launching point. Can you put your finger on that date? Was it DADT, the 1950s scare, the Kinsey report? Certainly not Stonewall, or the Marriage Act, so where did it come from? In “Queer Enlightenments: A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers” by Anthony Delaney, the story of queer oppression goes back so much farther.
The first recorded instance of the word “homosexual” arrived loudly in the spring of 1868: Hungarian journalist Károly Mária Kerthbeny wrote a letter to German activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs referring to “same-sex-attracted men” with that new term. Many people believe that this was the “invention” of homosexuality, but Delaney begs to differ.
“Queer histories run much deeper than this…” he says.
Take, for instance, the delightfully named Mrs. Clap, who ran a “House” in London in which men often met other men for “marriage.” On a February night in 1726, Mrs. Clap’s House was raided and 40 men were taken to jail, where they were put in filthy, dank confines until the courts could get to them. One of the men was ultimately hanged for the crime of sodomy. Mrs. Clap was pilloried, and then disappeared from history.
William Pulteney had a duel with John, Lord Hervey, over insults flung at the latter man. The truth: Hervey was, in fact, openly a “sodomite.” He and his companion, Ste Fox had even set up a home together.
Adopting your lover was common in 18th century London, in order to make him a legal heir. In about 1769, rumors spread that the lovely female spy, the Chevalier d’Éon, was actually Charles d’Éon de Beaumont, a man who had been dressing in feminine attire for much longer than his espionage career. Anne Lister’s masculine demeanor often left her an “outcast.” And as George Wilson brought his bride to North American in 1821, he confessed to loving men, thus becoming North America’s first official “female husband.”
Sometimes, history can be quite dry. So can author Anthony Delaney’s wit. Together, though, they work well inside “Queer Enlightenments.”
Undoubtedly, you well know that inequality and persecution aren’t new things – which Delaney underscores here – and queer ancestors faced them head-on, just as people do today. The twist, in this often-chilling narrative, is that punishments levied on 18th- and 19th-century queer folk was harsher and Delaney doesn’t soften those accounts for readers. Read this book, and you’re platform-side at a hanging, in jail with an ally, at a duel with a complicated basis, embedded in a King’s court, and on a ship with a man whose new wife generously ignored his secret. Most of these tales are set in Great Britain and Europe, but North America features some, and Delaney wraps up thing nicely for today’s relevance.
While there’s some amusing side-eyeing in this book, “Queer Enlightenments” is a bit on the heavy side, so give yourself time with it. Pick it up, though, and you’ll love it til the end.
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