Jim Carrey is Under Fire for Joking With an Interviewer That She's the Only Item on His Bucket List
Source - Another day, another strange Jim Carrey interview.
The legendary comedian Carrey is out and about promoting his newest film Sonic the Hedgehog, and amidst all the long press junkets, sometimes you hit a little bit of an awkward moment. Carrey sat down with interviewer Charlotte Long for the outlet Heat World, and when she asked him what's left to do in his career, his answer was a little too flirty.
"I know your film Sonic has a bucket list, and I was wondering after all you've done in your career and your life, is there anything still left on your bucket list?" she asked the actor.
"Just you," he quickly replied to a very shocked Long. "That's it. It's all done now."
She took a beat to recover from the moment and then added, "I don't know what to say to that." The always charming Carrey told her to "just own it."
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I'll confess that when I first saw this headline and the text of the interview, my initial reaction was that Jim Carrey stepped it in. And that this was going to put him squarely in Cancel Culture's crosshairs and create all sorts of widespread outrage until he's forced to give an apology. Which then won't be accepted and he'll have to lay low for a while and hope it all blows over. You know, the normal state of public discourse in 2020.
That is, until I found the actual interview. I've cued it up to the 1:36 mark, where he actual says the thing, but feel free to watch the whole video if you've got four minutes.
Hearing it in context, it just sounds like a guy who gets paid to make people laugh throwing out a one-liner he hopes makes the entertainment reporter asking the questions laugh. To crack a joke so that he can promote his goofy movie about an elusive video game hedgehog. And the way he said, "Just you. It's all done now," when you hear the tone in his voice, came across a lot more like he was saying this was his career pinnacle than, "I'm going to chloroform you in the back of my windowless van and you'll be waking up at the bottom of a well in my basement."
She didn't seem terribly offended. She laughed. He went on to give a candid, sincere answer about how he once wrote a $10 million check to his future self for services that would someday be rendered and made good on that promise, so he has everything he needs. I like to think I probably wouldn't have make that Bucket List joke because I'm blessed with self-awareness that is practically to superpower levels. And I try to stay hyper aware of how people are laying in the weeds to attack every syllable you utter. But then I'm not Jim Carrey and I haven't given a thousand interviews about my dozens of films. And even if you think the joke didn't land, the parts before and after were genuinely heartfelt and kind of touching, really.
But that didn't stop the internet outrage machine from firing on all cylinders.
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But there's life in this Brave New World in which we live. Where even giving a friendly, lightweight, banter-filled interview for a kids movie about a talking CGI rodent can't make you impervious to social justice bullets. It's a world of our own creation and we're stuck in it.
Full disclosure, I was as big a fan as anyone of Jim Carrey, going back to his "In Living Color" days. He's a genius. And if the Academy Awards had any respect for comedy he'd own a handful of Oscars. But still I don't doubt fame has made him a little bonkers and I'd be shocked if he hasn't gone through all sorts of therapy. But there's a galaxy-sized difference between being a bit nutty and being a misogynistic pig who creeps on a female reporter in the middle of an on-camera interview. And if you're going to be one of those people who wants him slammed for what sounds like an innocent joke, you're going to make it really hard for any of us to find the actual creeping, misogynistic pigs.