A defiant Ricky Gervais said his jokes about sick and dying children will remain in his Dec. 25 Netflix special, “Armageddon” — despite fan outrage and an online petition over his offensive and “ableist language.”
“In the actual skit, I say, ‘I’ve been doing a lot of video messages recently for terminally ill children. Only if they request it. I don’t burst into hospitals and go, ‘Wake up, baldy,’” he told BBC Radio 5 Live in an interview on Wednesday.
“I’m even saying I don’t do that,” he said. “Literally saying in the joke I don’t do that.”
In “Armageddon,” premiering Christmas Day, Gervais refers to making videos for the Make-A-Wish foundation, which grants wishes to terminally ill children, during the pandemic — and says his first reaction to the kids is “Why didn’t you wish to get better? What, you f – – king retarded as well?”
“I didn’t do that either,” he tells the live audience. “These are all jokes, all right? … I don’t burst into hospitals and go ‘Wake up baldy. Look at me twerking on TikTok.’”
Gervais also took to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday about the controversy. “In this show, I talk about sex, death, paedophila (sic), race, religion, disability, free speech, global warming, the holocaust, and Elton John. If you don’t approve of jokes about any of these things, then please don’t watch. You won’t enjoy it and you’ll get upset,” he wrote.
An online petition through change.org, organized by Sess Cova, whose daughter has cancer, calls for Netflix to remove the offending lines from “Armageddon” before its premiere.
“Ricky Gervais’s jokes were not only distasteful but also heartless,” Sessa writes in the petition. “They are a slap in the face to not only the children battling these serious illnesses but also their parents and families who stand by them through this difficult journey. His words have offended an entire community – those dealing with childhood cancer.”
“This is why we demand that Netflix remove this offensive skit from its platform immediately. We believe that comedy should never come at the expense of someone else’s pain or suffering — especially when it involves innocent children battling life-threatening illnesses.”
“Good luck. That’s what I say to them,” Gervais noted about the online petition. “Good luck. I’ll even retweet it.”
Gervais told BBC Radio 5 Live that people don’t analyze the joke, which is why they’re offended.
“They feel something — that’s what the offense is,” he said. “It’s a feeling. That’s why ‘I’m offended’ is quite meaningless, because what’s your argument? What do you want me to change?”
“You’ve said you don’t like it. That’s fair enough.”
The UK disability charity Scope also demanded that Netflix remove the skit from the Gervais special.
“We wish we were surprised by reports that Ricky Gervais has used ableist slurs in his new Netflix special,” Scope said in a statement. “Language like this has consequences and we’re just not accepting the explanation that Gervais uses to try and justify this language.”
“He argues that he wouldn’t use this language in ‘real-life’. But his stand-up routine doesn’t exist in a parallel universe. The stage is real. Netflix is real. The people this kind of language impacts are real.”
This is not the first time that Gervais has been in hot water for his jokes and commentary.
In his 2022 Netflix special, “SuperNature,” he mocked cancel culture with jokes about transgender people, Hitler and AIDS, according to The Daily Mail.”
“I don’t know what people are demanding. What are they asking from me?” Gervais said in the BBC Radio 5 Live interview. “To stop making jokes they don’t like?
“People are offended. They’re allowed to hate it,” he said. “They’re allowed to not come to the show, but “it’s not going to stop me from doing what I love.”
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