It’s a weird thing to admit, but I think about Kevin Hart a lot. It’s not really a choice. His name seems to pop up in my inbox at least once a week, almost always in a news item about some project of his that’s been picked up by a network or studio. And every one of those headlines feels a little bit like a slap in the face.
Most recently, Hart appeared on the latest episode of Jada Pinkett Smith’s Facebook Watch chat show, Red Table Talk. Smith’s husband Will, took over hosting duties for the special Father’s Day edition, and he and Hart had a candid one-on-one conversation about fame and fatherhood. Most notably, they discussed how Hart’s own public scandals have impacted his relationship with his children. He opened up about cheating on his wife, Eniko Parrish, and also revisited the scandal that lead to his stepping down as host of the 2019 Oscars. Which is the reason why the 41-year-old comedian is, regrettably, such a frequent squatter in my head.
To recap: after it was announced, in December 2018, that Hart would host the following year’s Academy Awards ceremony, critics pointed out his well-documented history of homophobic tweets and jokes stretching back to at least 2009. In one particularly upsetting tweet which has since been deleted, Hart “joked” about bludgeoning his young son with a dollhouse should he ever show interest in playing with it.
Though he ultimately chose not to host the Oscars, Hart was surprisingly defiant in the face of the backlash. He initially refused to apologize for jokes he’d made in the past, insisting that he’d already done so. Hart quickly backtracked and issued a couple perfunctory apologies to the LGBTQ community on Twitter and on his SiriusXM radio show.
Through it all, though, it was hard not to recognize a note of resentment in Hart’s public statements. He consistently resisted discussing the situation, insisting that he had “evolved” since making the offensive jokes and that there was nothing more to say about the matter. He even seemed to imply that the problem was not with him, but with the LGBTQ+ community.
“Stop looking for reasons to be negative…Stop searching for reasons to be angry,” he wrote in a defiant Instgram post. On his radio show he addressed the LGBTQ public directly: “If you don’t want to accept people for their change, then where are you trying to get to the equal part?”
Saying “I’m sorry” is not entirely the same thing as understanding and accepting that you’ve done something wrong. Similarly, insisting that you’ve changed is one thing; proving it by your actions is another. At no point did Hart have an honest, public conversation reckoning with why he or his audience may have thought homophobic violence visited upon hypothetical children was funny, or with the impact his jokes may have had on queer people. At no point did he acknowledge the ways that growing up with the perceived threat of such violence, with the specter of parental abandonment, with the perception that you are less worthy of love than everyone else affects queer people. Maybe he had those conversations privately. But judging from his comments on Red Table Talk, I’m not convinced.
In his conversation with Smith, Hart continued to frame the scandal in terms of how it affected him. “When the whole thing started to happen with the LGBTQ+ community and the misconception of me, what I was and what I am and what I feel, my daughter was so upset because she couldn’t process how people could think this about her father,” he said.
To me, those are the words of a man who somehow does not seem to understand the gap between one’s private views and what one chooses to put out into the world. It seems to me that Hart is still unwilling to reflect on jokes he made, that he still cannot seem to accept that things he chose to say not only contributed to a culture of homophobia and transphobia and heterosexism, but also shaped the way people see him. No, it’s the LGBTQ+ community’s problem. It’s our misconception of him.
Kevin Hart wanted to move on from this particular scandal back in late 2018. Two and a half years later, I would love to move on as well. I would love for Hart to say something that makes me believe that he understands what he did wrong and truly feels remorse. That or I would just like to never think about him again. But Hollywood won’t let me. I’m sure any day now Netflix will announce that they’re turning his latest film, Fatherhood, into a series.
