A year after he stepped down from hosting the Oscars amid backlash over past anti-gay jokes and tweets, Kevin Hart has admitted he mishandled the situation.
He addressed the controversy in his new Netflix docuseries “Kevin Hart: Don’t F?k This Up.”
When social media sleuths dug up his tweets dating back to 2010, the actor and comedian initially refused to apologize and responded to critics by calling them “trolls.”
In December 2018, the Night School star posted a video on Instagram about the situation as he sat shirtless bed. He described the situation as “beyond crazy,” and said he shouldn’t have to apologize for things he said in the past, because “people evolve.”
After the Academy urged him to apologize, he posted a second video saying, “I passed on the apology.”
In the Netflix series, Hart’s publicist told him the scandal was affecting everyone at his production company.
“He needs to just shut up and put his head down for the next few weeks,” the publicist said. “What he needs to remember is he’s feeding 50-60 people. When he takes a shi–er, everybody takes a shi–er and that’s a big issue now.”
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Hart was shown going on a promotional tour for his film The Upside and reporters bombarded him with questions about the old tweets. Each time he responded, “No comment.”
During an interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, he tried to clear things up but seemingly made the situation worse. An appearance on Good Morning America didn’t help when he responded to questions about the controversy by saying, “I’m over it.”
In the the final episode of the docuseries, Hart reflected on the situation.
“What I thought was going to blow over ended up becoming a bigger mess than I expected,” he said. “Everybody is telling me my approach is wrong… There’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen but there’s only one person in the hot water.”
As the controversy exploded, he called a Sunday staff meeting to try and reassure his employees. A gay executive at the company said people were constantly asking her if she’s going to quit her job and stop working for Hart. Other employees chimed in, saying the controversy should have been handled differently.
Hart finally admitted he should have listened to others.
“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,” he explained.
“I f–ked up,” he added.
“My approach to dealing with it because of the assumption that I had was just wrong,” he went on to say. “It was just immature… I have no problem with saying I was wrong.”
