Ricky Gervais Addresses Alleged Transphobic Tweets

Ricky Gervais is in the news yet again. Obviously he would be as we are just around the corner of Golden Globes 2020 which will be hosted by Gervais for a record fifth time. Always known to offend a section of people with his jokes, the actor was also in focus recently for facing backlash over his transphobic tweets which he termed are jokes.

Now, he has finally opened up on the whole saga. "Jarvis Dupont is a spoof Twitter account, and the joke is that he's so woke that he's actually gone full circle and does terrible things. And his latest [bit] is, 'I'm trans now.' And he gets all that wrong. And I responded by playing along with him, saying, 'Oh, you're so much better than biological women because they've had a lifetime to get used to it,'" Gervais told The Hollywood Reporter in a cover interview released on Thursday.

"Now, people saw my tweet and they thought he's a real trans person, but I'm taking the piss out of Jarvis Dupont, who is actually a woman in real life. And this is the problem," he continued. "You can say, 'Listen, I was joking. It's a joke.' But that's not always enough for people. They go, 'Well, why were you joking?' Also, add to that the nature of Twitter — it's so curt, there's no nuance, it's there forever out of context."

Gervais told the outlet that he make it a "personal rule" not to laugh at something that a person "can't help." "Deep down, I want people to know I'm not a racist or a homophobe or a sexist," he said.

"People like the idea of freedom of speech until they hear something they don't like," he later said. "So there's still pressure, but that doesn't mean I'm going to water it down or back down and not say what I want. It's just another form of what we've been through many, many times — it used to be called P.C. I think those things start off with very good intention and then they're mugged. It's a good thing to not be racist and sexist and homophobic. But it's not a good thing to not be allowed to make jokes about those things, because you can tell a joke about race without being racist."