Over the weekend, Jonah Hill was caught on video telling a photographer who’d spent blocks trailing him, “Suck my dick, you faggot”—a rejoinder that reminded all, especially in the wake of Alec Baldwin, of the importance of not doing that, even if you are being relentlessly harassed by paparazzi parasites making fun of your shorts. But unlike Baldwin’s response to his similar incident—and generally unlike most other mea culpas made by celebrities caught using offensive language on tape—Hill’s resulting apologies have been swift, personal, and sincerely abashed.
Mere hours after TMZ posted the tape, Hill appeared on Howard Stern’s show, where he opened right up about it, and essentially said that no one was more disappointed in Jonah Hill than Jonah Hill.
I’m upset, because, from the day I was born—and publicly—I’ve been a gay rights activist… Just to give it some context, not excusing what I said in any way, this person had been following me around all day, had been saying hurtful things about my family, really hurtful things about me personally, and I played into exactly what he wanted and lost my cool. And in that moment, I said a disgusting word that does not at all reflect how I feel about any group of people.
I grew up with gay family members. I’m leaving here to go spend the day with one of my closest coworkers, a best friend who is gay who’s getting married who I’m going to stand at his wedding. I am not at all defending my choice of words, but I am happy to be the poster boy for thinking about what you say and how those words, even if you don’t intend them and how they mean, they are rooted in hate. And that’s bullshit and I shouldn’t have said that.