In a long and candid Playboy interview, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes star Gary Oldman proved himself a master of the controversial soundbite: from hating on the Golden Globes (“It’s 90 nobodies having a wankâ€) and analyzing how his net worth compares to that of his Harry Potter co-stars (“Daniel Radcliffe, now he’s got fuck-you moneyâ€) to speculating about whether Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death could have been prevented (“I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but maybe he looked in the mirror and always saw that very pale sort of fat kidâ€). But the most inflammatory remarks occurred when the interviewer asked what Oldman thought about the Mel Gibson saga, which segued into a colorful tirade on the hypocrisy of liberal Hollywood and the failings of political correctness. As he puts it, “I just think political correctness is crap. That’s what I think about it. I think it’s like, take a fucking joke. Get over it.â€
He continued:
OLDMAN: … I don’t know about Mel. He got drunk and said a few things, but we’ve all said those things. We’re all fucking hypocrites. That’s what I think about it. The policeman who arrested him has never used the word n—-r or that fucking Jew? I’m being brutally honest here. It’s the hypocrisy of it that drives me crazy. Or maybe I should strike that and say “the N word†and “the F word,†though there are two F words now.
PLAYBOY: The three-letter one?
OLDMAN: Alec calling someone an F-A-G in the street while he’s pissed off coming out of his building because they won’t leave him alone. I don’t blame him. So they persecute. Mel Gibson is in a town that’s run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him — and doesn’t need to feed him anymore because he’s got enough dough. He’s like an outcast, a leper, you know? But some Jewish guy in his office somewhere hasn’t turned and said, “That fucking kraut†or “Fuck those Germans,†whatever it is? We all hide and try to be so politically correct. That’s what gets me. It’s just the sheer hypocrisy of everyone, that we all stand on this thing going, “Isn’t that shocking?â€
And Oldman’s master class in Movie Promotion 101 didn’t stop there. After acknowledging that he had gone too far, joking that the interviewer would “have to edit and cut half of what I’ve said, because it’s going to make me sound like a bigot,†Oldman went on to expound on one of his other pet peeves: the tendency of certain left-leaning individuals to “hide behind comedy and satire to say things we can’t ordinarily say.â€
OLDMAN: Well, if I called Nancy Pelosi a cunt — and I’ll go one better, a fucking useless cunt — I can’t really say that. But Bill Maher and Jon Stewart can, and nobody’s going to stop them from working because of it. Bill Maher could call someone a fag and get away with it. He said to Seth MacFarlane this year, “I thought you were going to do the Oscars again. Instead they got a lesbian.†He can say something like that. Is that more or less offensive than Alec Baldwin saying to someone in the street, “You fag� I don’t get it.
PLAYBOY: You see it as a double standard.
OLDMAN: It’s our culture now, absolutely. At the Oscars, if you didn’t vote for 12 Years a Slave you were a racist. You have to be very careful about what you say. I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn’t share, but it’s not like I’m a fascist or a racist. There’s nothing like that in my history.
If you still want to hear what Oldman thinks about Hillary Clinton, helicopter parenting, and society’s moral decay, you can read the rest over at Playboy.