The daytime talk show host played peacemaker between the comedian and The Academy Friday, giving Hart a full hour to promote his new movie, The Upside, and defend his decision to step down from hosting the 2019 Oscars. Speaking without interruption for nearly six minutes, Hart told her it was "unreal" to be invited to host the award show live on ABC Feb. 24.
"There's a lot of goals that I have on my vision board. There's so many things I want to do I check off as they get done, and Oscars was up there. Oscars was one of the highest of highs, simply because there hasn't been a lot of African Americans that have been able to do it; I would have been the fourth. So, to get the moment, celebrate the moment—'Oh, my God! I can't believe it's happen!'—and then the next morning after a day full of congratulations and celebrations, I'm hit with an onslaught on social media of my past coming back up again. Literally, the next morning!
Not even a full 24 hours to glow in the glory of 'Kevin Hart Is Hosting This Year's Oscars,'" the comic complained.
"Because [when] we feed into that stuff, you only add more fuel to the fire. 'I'm going to leave it alone.' Another day goes by, the fuel is now growing. This fire is angry. It's all over the place. Now, the headlines are starting to change. The headlines are 'Kevin Hart Refuses to Apologize for Homophobic Tweets From the Past.' The word 'Again' was left out. Everybody took those headlines and started to run with it," the comedian continued. "So now, the slander on my name is all homophobia. Now, I'm a little upset. I'm a little upset because I know who I am."
"I know I don't have a homophobic bone in my body. I know that I've addressed it. I know that I've apologized. I know that within my apologies I've taken 10 years to put my apology to work. I've yet to go back to that version of the immature version of the comedian that once was. I've moved on. I'm a grown man. I'm cultured. I'm manufactured. I'm a guy that understands now," Hart said. "I looked at life through a different lens, and because of that, I live it a different way."
"So now, I'm kind of upset because these 10 years are just being ignored. They're being brushed past. Nobody is saying, 'Guys, this is 10 years.' No headlines are saying, '10 Years Ago, He Apologized.' Nobody's finding the apologies. Nobody is finding the footage from where I had to address it. I had to address it when I did Get Hard promo with Will Ferrell because of my joke that I had about my son; I had to address those tweets in 2012 in a very, very heavy junket where I was asked questions and asked questions about homophobia based on those tweets; and I had to address it and apologize and say I understand what those words do and how they hurt," the actor told DeGeneres. "I understand why people would be upset, which is why I made the choice to not use them anymore. I don't joke like that anymore because that was wrong." He was "just looking for laughs," he added, "and I was stupid. I don't do that anymore."
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