Ricky Gervais has come out swinging against celebrity cancel culture, saying that when people on the internet “try to get someone fired” it’s “not cool”.
The actor, who is currently working on the third season of his Netflix series After Life, has been vocal on the topic of cancel culture, even suggesting that his hit series The Office may have been very different today thanks to “cancel culture”.
“If it is choosing not to watch a comedian because you don’t like them, that’s everyone’s right,” Gervais told MetroUK in regards to social media users going to extreme lengths when they don’t agree with a celebrity’s opinion.
“But when people are trying to get someone fired because they don’t like their opinion about something that’s nothing to do with their job, that’s what I call cancel culture and that’s not cool.
“You turning off your own TV isn’t censorship. You trying to get other people to turn off their TV, because you don’t like something they’re watching, that’s different,” Ricky continued.
“Everyone’s allowed to call you an arsehole, everyone’s allowed to stop watching your stuff, everyone’s allowed to burn your DVDs, but you shouldn’t have to go to court for saying a joke that someone didn’t like. And that’s what we get dangerously close to. If you don’t agree to someone’s right to say something you don’t agree with, you don’t agree with freedom of speech.”
The comedian then referred to a tweet he posted earlier this year “about freedom of speech, quoting Winston Churchill”.
“Someone came back with, ‘You know he was a white supremacist?’ And I wrote back, ‘Not in that tweet he isn’t’. It’s like if someone did something once that’s wrong, everything they did was wrong. You are allowed to have things in common with bad people as long it’s not the bad things.”
“I’m a vegetarian and I love dogs, like Hitler. But the only thing I have in common with Hitler are the good bits!”
