Ricky Gervais will not be attending the 2021 Oscar Awards, but the comedian still can’t help but comment on the hostless ceremony. Gervais took to Twitter to joke about how he “wasn’t invited” to the big show and wondered if maybe it was because of “something I said.” He added a clip of his monologue from the 2020 Golden Globes, which led to quite a bit of controversy, indicating that this may be why he never got an invite to this year’s Academy Award show.
Gervais has never hosted the Oscars, but he did host the Golden Globes a total of five times between 2010 and 2020. His final outing he left it all on the stage, as it were, and made quick time of offending just about every celebrity in the room. During the show, Gervais joked about everything from actress Felicity Huffman’s imprisonment over the college admissions scandal to the poorly received Cats film.
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It’s The Oscars tonight! I wasn’t invited. Was it something I said? 😂 pic.twitter.com/P87Uau4D9u
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) April 25, 2021
Before wrapping up his opening monologue, Gervais handed down a sort-of challenge to the winners, saying, “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use the platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world.” He then added, “Most of you spend less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your award, thank your agent, and your god, and get the f— off.”
He later explained that his stance on this is less about his own personal views and more about how Hollywood is seen by film and TV fans around the world. “I have nothing against the most famous people in the world using their privileged, global platform to tell the world what they believe. I even agree with most of it,” he tweeted in February 2020. “I just tried to warn them that when they lecture every day, hard-working people, it has the opposite effect. Peace.”
While Gervais may not be welcome to many industry awards shows lately, he is still busy with a lot of successful projects. In 2020 he lent his voice to the Netflix animated film The Willoughbys, which has been praise by critics and fans alike. He has also been hard at work on his new series, After Life, a dark-comedy that he created and stars in, also for Netflix.
