Aurora Starchild
Comedian Ricky Gervais apparently has a bit of an axe to grind with Tom Hanks and some say with James Corden as well. Gervais denies having any real beef with Corden although their history is interesting…. As for Tom Hanks, on the other hand, Gervais’ spit seems to be smoking and his roasts are, well, cranking. This is all thanks to the 2020 Golden Globes, which no one can seem to forget.
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Ricky Gervais is known for some pretty racy albeit almost necessary jokes. He’s a co-writer, co-creator, and actor in The Office. He has his infamous Ricky Gervais Show, he’s been a part of dozens of movies and TV shows. Gervais has also been the recipient of 2 Primetime Emmy Awards, 3 Golden Globe Awards, and 7 BAFTA Awards.
He’s left the audience of the Golden Globes in stitches on multiple occasions after hosting the award ceremony five times. Notably, in 2020, Gervais made some crude but timely jokes about Epstein and other sexual predators. However, the topics were touchy and not everyone thought his roasts were funny.
Comedic success often comes with a price. Comedians of Gervais’ caliber are often known for pissing off a lot of people. Gervais is no exception.
Everyone’s been talking about Gervais’ supposed feud with Tom Hanks recently, so let’s get to the bottom of this. Gervais brought up ‘2020 Golden Globe Tom Hanks’ while on Christian O’Connell’s Stuff of Legends podcast in November 2020. He referred to Hanks as a meme, which surely didn’t sit well with the actor.
Referring to the Award ceremony, Gervais dishes, “The big meme was Tom Hanks going: ‘Why is he saying that?’ And people are going, ‘Oh, look, he’s on his high horse.’ But when Leonardo DiCaprio laughed, people loved him for it. I could say a lot worse things about them, but I don’t want it to get really nasty and for no reason.”
Gervais continues, “I think people who laugh at a joke, they get a round of applause because people go, ‘Oh that’s good, they can take it,’ we don’t want people to be above it.”
It’s true. Gervais roasts DiCaprio for his dating habits, yet the object of the joke is seen heartily laughing in the audience.
Tom Hanks, on the other hand, was sour faced the entire time. You can see Hanks sitting in front of Keith Urban here when the video reaches 00:01:24.
Gervais basically tells O’Connell that it comes down to humility.
“We even let people be privileged as long as they say, ‘I know I’m privileged, but I’m nothing really,’ we don’t like people to go, ‘Oh I deserve it, how dare you talk to me like that’… And we sense that, if we really think these people start believing their own hype, we want to bring them down a peg or two.”
Gervais honestly seems totally okay with poking fun at Tom Hanks, who won two Golden Globe Awards that year.
As for James Corden, that’s a different story. Corden and Gervais appear to have an on/off love/hate thing going on. They’ve been known to tear each other down, ripping at each other’s joke styles and talent levels. Yet, they’ve also both claimed that it was all in jest and good fun.
Corden has defended Gervais in the past, telling The Mirror, “People should keep their hands off him… If I only managed to do half of what he has done I will consider myself a success.”
Similarly, after Gervais roasted Corden at the 2020 Golden Globes, he denied having anything against anyone he makes jokes about. He told The Sun that “There is no feud between myself and James nor has there ever been.”
The jibe that Gervais is referring to is, “The world got to see James Corden as a fat p****. He was also in the movie Cats, but no one saw that.”
Gervais elaborates that “The Cats joke that I told at the Golden Globes is obviously a pun on his role in the film, and James’ impression of me in his sketch show was also friendly teasing, and I took no offense to that.”
So, there you have it. One feud is more of a frenemy thing. The other is, well, an ongoing poke that might keep prodding.
