Kevin Hart ends bizarre day of interviews as he talks circles
IF YOU’RE a celebrity in the middle of a controversy, but you’re still contractually obligated to promote a new movie, how do you handle the TV interviews where you’ll be bombarded with questions in front of millions of viewers?
Kevin Hart — who recently dropped out as Academy Awards host after he came under fi re for past homophobic jokes and tweets but is currently promoting his movie “The Upside” — came up with a solution during his press tour on Wednesday that kicked off with ABC’s “Good Morning America” and ended with CBS’ “Late Show With Stephen Colbert”: Just talk in circles, and eventually, interviewers will give up and/or run out of time.
Hart tried the tactic fi rst on “GMA,” where he sat for a tense interview with Michael Strahan. This was a markedly different scenario than his friendly appearance last week on “The Ellen Show,” where Hart implied the controversy involved a larger conspiracy of people out to ruin him. Ellen DeGeneres told Hart to ignore the “trolls” and “haters” and revealed she had called the Academy to urge them to rehire Hart. ( This also sparked backlash, and DeGeneres was criticised for deeming Hart forgiven when many were still offended by his comments and reluctant apology.)
“You said you were sorry. But there are a lot of people who have taken an issue to the way that you’ve apologised, so what do you say to that?” Strahan said. ( Hart, who has insisted he’s apologised multiple times for his homophobic comments despite there being little record of this, initially refused to apologise but then did once he dropped out of the Oscars gig.)
“I say I’m done with it. It gets no more energy from me,” Hart said. “That’s why I said for the last time, I’m addressing this, there’s no more conversation about it. I’m over that. I’m over the moment. And I’m about today. So if it’s accepted, great. If it’s not, it’s nothing I can control.” Strahan tried to go into more depth: “You said, ‘I’m evolving.’ You’re changing. So what did you believe then that you don’t believe now? How have you evolved?”
“I have explained how I’ve evolved, which makes me say I’m over it. I’m not saying how I changed a ny mo r e .
I’m not saying what I’ve done and what the new me is. I’m not giving no more explanation of who I am. I’ve done it. I’ve done it several times,” Hart said. “I’ve tweeted it. I’ve talked about it when I went on ‘ Ellen.’ I said it on my radio show. I’m just done.” Strahan attempted a different tactic: “Do you have an understanding for the LGBTQ community, how the youth out there may feel about this?” he asked, as one of Hart’s jokes was about violently preventing his son from “gay” behaviour. “I have an understanding that I’ve addressed it and I’ve said everything that I can possibly say, so I’m over it,” Hart said flatly. The interview proceeded much like this, as Strahan tried other angles: Did Hart have a message for fathers with gay sons? Hart, in third person: “If anybody out there wants to believe that Kevin Hart is that much of a monster that he wouldn’t love somebody because of their choice in life, then all power to them.” Was he surprised by the backlash from the “Ellen” interview? Hart: “It shows me there is no ending to it. ... You’re not getting no more of my energy from it.”
“You’re dodging me,” Strahan said at one point. He asked if Hart would host the Oscars this year, to which Hart responded with an emphatic “no.” Hart followed up with an extremely long answer about how everything that happened was God’s plan, and concluded, “I don’t live life for others. I live life for me and mines. Those are the people that love me, those are the people that know my heart. You know me. You know my heart.”
“I’ve known you a long time,” Strahan said.
“You know my heart,” Hart repeated. “That’s why I’m able to swerve you the way that I am up here.”
“You didn’t swerve me,” Strahan said, sounding irritated.
“I did, I swerved you good!” Hart said, laughing, “You asked me one question and I said — woop! I went like this, you asked me another one, I said — woop!” He moved around in his seat to imitate swerving around questions.
“Kevin, you didn’t swerve. You can watch this back. You did not swerve at all,” Strahan said — although from the viewers’ perspective there was some serious swerving going on.
By the time Hart arrived on “The Late Show” show later in the day, Colbert didn’t bother recapping the controversy, perhaps assuming his audience was already familiar with the details. He noted that Hart said on “GMA” he didn’t want to talk about the Oscars anymore.
“Anything else you want to say about it?” Colbert asked.
“I don’t have anything else left to say,” Hart confi rmed.
“I’m not going to down that well-worn road. ... I know you’ve already given the answers,” Colbert said. “Is there anything about the way you’ve handled this situation over the last month that you would go back and change if you had a time machine?” “No, I wouldn’t,” Hart said. Colbert said that, as someone who has also said things that have upset people, he’s found that controversies don’t blow over until the audience is over it.
“You can continue to live to please others, or you can have a position when you know that you literally have done what you can to try to please,” Hart said. “At that moment, when you know that you’ve given your all to try to please, and it’s still not received, you have to make a decision to go ‘I’m done trying to please.’ That’s where I am at.”
“That is difficult for an entertainer, because part of the job is to please,” Colbert pointed out.
“Not really,” said Hart, and embarked on a long answer about how his job is being 100 per cent true to himself. “At some point you just have to be OK with you. I’m OK with me and all decisions that I’ve made in my life. This is the decision I’ve made to say I’m over it. I’m done. That’s it.”
“Alright. That’s it. That’s great,” Colbert said, as the audience applauded; so apparently, they were over it. They moved on to talk about Oscars memes, and then Hart wrapped things up by talking about his new movie — which, of course, was the goal all along.