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.
Theater
Rorschach stages ‘Dragon Play’ in unlikely, raw space
Out sound designer Madeline ‘Mo’ Oslejsek notes ‘sound is my bag’
‘Dragon Play’
Through May 17
Rorschach Theatre
The Stacks @ Buzzard Point
101 V St., S.W.
$50 ($35 for students and seniors)
Rorschachtheatre.org
Celebrated for its site-specific, immersive productions, Rorschach Theatre puts on plays all over town. The unlikely spots have included greenhouses, church vestibules, closed retail spaces (including a vacant downtown big and tall men’s store) and historic locales like Rock Creek Cemetery’s Adams Memorial.
For its current offering “Dragon Play” (through May 17), a tale of love and longing, Rorschach is using a raw space in The Stacks at Buzzard Point, a new mixed-use neighborhood situated where the Anacostia and Potomac rivers meet.
Out sound designer Madeline ‘Mo’ Oslejsek considers all sites – whether traditional theatrical spaces or not – specific, particularly in terms of sound. She says, “Part of my practice is if you’re creating a soundscape for a theatrical production you’re also working with sound that already exists with the space.”
For instance, The Stacks space comes with its own unique qualities. It’s a large cement room that has a different reverberation, an echo.
“Some sounds (a car, dog bark) are planted or they might just happen. What starts as a live sound might be heard again as something recorded.”
Whip smart with a ready laugh, Oslejsek never set out to be a sound designer. She was going to direct. And now, the 2025 Helen Hayes Award nominee for Outstanding Sound Design (“Astro Boy and the God of Comics” at Flying V,) says, “Sound is my bag. Sometimes it seems that I’m the only one in the room thinking about it.”
As an undergrad studying theater at Ohio Wesleyan University, she was first exposed to sound design, but it didn’t make a big impression.
In grad school at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, she was interested in direction. But when students were offered a choice of three more specific tracks to choose from (performance, composition, and scenography, which includes sound design), Oslejsek was swayed.
“An introduction to scenography by the department head radically changed the course of my life,” she says.
What struck her most about sound was the subjectivity: “The core of my practice is that sound has no meaning until it’s experienced. All sound is noise. It’s just a pitch, active, or vocalization. It becomes real when you hear it and apply meaning to it. That’s very exciting to me.”
Today, Oslejsek and partner Caitlin Hooper, an actor and intimacy choreographer, are based in Baltimore but work primarily in D.C.
“It feels good to be in a place where art and queerness in art are celebrated. It’s not like that everywhere, and making that kind of work down the street from this White House where that’s not the vibe, is real resistance. That feels really meaningful.”
Also important to Oslejsek (who identifies alternately as queer and lesbian) is “queer as a practice,” a concept suggesting that a queer identity or practice does not seek to replace other identities but to encompass and bridge them.
“I’m queer because I like women, but the work is more about making room for what everyone in the room hears,” she says. “Never do I want to come into a space thinking I have all the answers. That’s no fun.”
As its title might suggest, Jenny Connell Davis’ play directed by Rorschach’s Randy Baker is filled with magic. “Dragon Play,” blurs the past and present; one world bleeds into the next; and, of course, there are dragons. At 80 minutes with no intermission, the play moves in and out of different timelines; increasingly things start to overlap.
And it’s also about the magic of relationships – all kinds. There’s a line where the dragon girl asks a Texas boy what he dreams about and he replies “you, always you.”
Oslejsek, 30, is touched by those words: “In my little gay heart, I cried. It makes me think of my partner. This play is about the idea of people who strike a match in your heart that never really goes away.”
In creating a layered soundscape, she brings her own brand of magic to the production. Her big goal was “not to play with how we think a dragon might sound, but rather with how does the world sound to a dragon.”
Sometimes sound design takes the lead, but in some productions, sound is purposely subtle or secondary, she says. Either way, sound can be monumental in shaping theater.
Friday, April 17
Center Aging Monthly Luncheon With Yoga will be at 12 p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. Email Mac at [email protected] if you require ASL interpreter assistance, have any dietary restrictions, or questions about this event.
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Social in the City” at 7 p.m. at Hotel Zena. This is a chance to relax, make new friends, and enjoy happy hour specials at this classic retro venue. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Trans and Genderqueer Game Night will be at 7:00p.m. at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. This is a relaxing, laid-back evening of games and fun. All are welcome and there’ll be card and board games on hand. Feel free to bring your own games to share. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Saturday, April 18
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Brunch” at 11 a.m. at Freddie’s Beach Bar & Restaurant. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
The DC Center for the LGBT Community will host “Sunday Supper on Saturday” at 2 p.m. It’s more than just an event; it’s an opportunity to step away from the busyness of life and invest in something meaningful, and enjoy delicious food, genuine laughter, and conversations that spark connection and inspiration. For more details, visit the Center’s website.
Sunday, April 19
Go Gay DC will host “LGBTQ+ Community Lunch” at 11 a.m. at Federico Ristorante Italiano. This fun weekly event brings the DMV area LGBTQ+ community, including allies, together for delicious food and conversation. Attendance is free and more details are available on Eventbrite.
Monday, April 20
“Center Aging: Monday Coffee Klatch” will be at 10 a.m. on Zoom. This is a social hour for older LGBTQ+ adults. Guests are encouraged to bring a beverage of choice. For more information, contact Adam ([email protected]).
Tuesday, April 21
Center Bi+ Roundtable will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is an opportunity for people to gather in order to discuss issues related to bisexuality or as Bi individuals in a private setting.Visit Facebook or Meetup for more information.
Senior Self Defense Class with Avi Rome will be at 12:30 p.m. This inclusive and beginner-friendly class, led by Instructor Avi Rome, offers a light warm-up, stretching, and instruction in basic techniques, patterns, and striking padded targets. Each session is designed to be adaptable for all ability and mobility levels, creating a welcoming space for everyone to build strength, confidence, and community through martial arts. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Wednesday, April 22
Job Club will be at 6 p.m. on Zoom upon request. This is a weekly job support program to help job entrants and seekers, including the long-term unemployed, improve self-confidence, motivation, resilience and productivity for effective job searches and networking — allowing participants to move away from being merely “applicants” toward being “candidates.” For more information, email [email protected] or visit thedccenter.org/careers.
Asexual and Aromantic Group will meet at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This is a space where people who are questioning this aspect of their identity or those who identify as asexual and/or aromantic can come together, share stories and experiences, and discuss various topics. For more details, email [email protected].
Thursday, April 23
The DC Center’s Fresh Produce Program will be held all day at the DC Center for the LGBT Community. People will be informed on Wednesday at 5:00 pm if they are picked to receive a produce box. No proof of residency or income is required. For more information, email [email protected] or call 202-682-2245.
Virtual Yoga Class will be at 7 p.m. on Zoom. This free weekly class is a combination of yoga, breath work and meditation that allows LGBTQ+ community members to continue their healing journey with somatic and mindfulness practices. For more details, visit the DC Center’s website.
Out & About
Team DC’s annual gala set for this weekend
LGBTQ sports organization to hold annual ‘Night of Champions’
Team DC will host “Night of Champions Gala” on Saturday, April 18 at 6 p.m. at the Georgetown Marriott.
This will be an evening of celebration and inspiration as Team DC honors remarkable individuals and supports the next generation of LGBTQ student-athletes.
There will be opportunities to support Team DC through auctions. The Silent Auction items will offer an array of unique goods and experiences. Additionally, Team DC will feature an exclusive selection of live auction items for those looking to make a significant impact.
This year, Team DC will recognize six outstanding awardees who have made significant contributions to the LGBTQ community and sports:
- Trailblazer Award – Adam Peck, District Wrestling
- Most Valuable Person Award – Sean Bartel (posthumously)
- Champion Award – Dan Martin
- Clark Ray Horizon Award – Manuel Montelongo, aka Mari Con Carne
- Bernard Jude Delia Award – Dr. Sara Varghai
- Platinum All Star Award – Centaur Motorcycle Club
To purchase tickets, visit Team DC’s website.
Rorschach stages ‘Dragon Play’ in unlikely, raw space
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