Gary Oldman defends Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin, blasts 'f—ing hypocrites'

Gary Oldman defends Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin, blasts 'f—ing hypocrites'
(Image credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

If you have to stop and tell the person interviewing you to "edit and cut half of what I've said, because it's going to make me sound like a bigot," you should probably expect a backlash when the words are finally printed.

To promote his latest movie, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, actor Gary Oldman was interviewed for the July/August issue of Playboy. He took a trip down memory lane, the New York Daily News reports, to discuss Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic rant during his 2006 DUI arrest and Alec Baldwin's 2013 altercation with a paparazzo that ended with the use of a homophobic slur.

"We're all f---ing hypocrites," Oldman said. "That's what I think about it. The policeman who arrested him has never used the word n----r or that f---ing Jew? I'm being brutally honest here. It's the hypocrisy of it that drives me crazy." Later, he added: "So they persecute. Mel Gibson is in a town that's run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he's actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him and doesn't need to feed him anymore because he's got enough dough."

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As for Baldwin, he said he didn't blame him for "calling someone a f-g in the street while he's pissed off coming out of his building because they won't leave him alone." It was about here Oldman realized that at some point he should have said "this is off the record," and asked the interviewer to sanitize his words. "I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn't share, but it's not like I'm a fascist or a racist," he said. "There's nothing like that in my history." You can read the rest of his wildly non-PC opinions when the new issue of Playboy comes out Friday.

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Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.