Ellen DeGeneres’ attempts to play peacemaker between The Academy and Kevin Hart has engendered a social media backlash.
Hart, who stood down as Oscars host after the resurfacing of past homophobic tweets, taped an interview with DeGeneres on Thursday that was originally due to air on Monday, but the producers of Ellen deemed it newsworthy enough to shift it to Friday with clips released on Thursday night.
In the clips, Hart says he is “evaluating” reprising his role as the 2019 Oscars host after DeGeneres called the Academy to vouch for him. “I called them, I said, ‘Kevin’s on, I have no idea if he wants to come back and host, but what are your thoughts?’ And they were like, ‘Oh my God, we want him to host! We feel like that maybe he misunderstood or it was handled wrong. Maybe we said the wrong thing but we want him to host. Whatever we can do we would be thrilled. And he should host the Oscars.'”
DeGeneres went on to defend Hart against what The Upside star felt was a malicious social media campaign to derail his career and urged him to rethink his decision on stepping down as Oscars host. “As a gay person. I am sensitive to all of that. You’ve already expressed that it’s not being educated on the subject, not realizing how dangerous those words are, not realizing how many kids are killed for being gay or beaten up every day,” said DeGeneres.
She added: “You have grown, you have apologized, you are apologizing again right now. You’ve done it. Don’t let those people win — host the Oscars.”
The interview clips proved divisive on Twitter, with some feeling that DeGeneres was giving Hart a pass for his homophobic comments.
Check out some of the backlash to Kevin Hart’s interview on Ellen.
I feel like if you’re not homophobic anymore, you shouldn’t mind apologizing for your past homophobia again and again and again. I don’t want to hear a hostile retelling of how we didn’t hear your meager apology the first time.
— Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) January 4, 2019
Ellen giving homophobes the ability to say “but Ellen said it’s okay” is a massive fucking betrayal.
I don’t care how many sitcoms you lost in the 90s.
— Happy Houlidays (@RyanHoulihan) January 4, 2019
(1) First, the people who brought up Kevin Hart’s past tweets — like me — were not, as Ellen characterized, “haters.” The host of the Oscars had made anti-gay jokes, and LGBT people who love the Oscars were legitimately startled to see just how harsh his words were. It wasn’t a…
— Adam B. Vary (@adambvary) January 4, 2019
Ellen’s show is basically the embodiment of respectability politics, so using it as a platform to absolve Kevin Hart on our behalf sounds pretty much on brand. Her sitcom allowed her to do something radical, which she suffered for, & she’s been running away from that ever since.
— Laurence “Laura Dern” Barber (@bortlb) January 4, 2019
The only thing @KevinHart4real proved by going on Ellen was that he is a terrible actor with zero genuine remorse who didn’t have the decency to address his ignorance. No, they weren’t “haters” who came after you. It was the LGBTQI+ community because we’re sick to shit of it.
— Harry Cook (@HarryCook) January 4, 2019
This article originally appeared in THR.com.