“Scandal” actor Joshua Malina feels so strongly that “Braveheart” star Mel Gibson should be booted from Hollywood over his history of repeated anti-semitic remarks, that he wrote an opinion piece for the Atlantic about it.
Malina mulled how Gibson has become “such a hot ticket again,” despite multiple racist scandals. “Is it just that memories of his hate speech have faded, while Hollywood’s recollection of his box-office pull remains,” he questioned.
Gibson publicly went off the rails in 2006, when he was pulled over for drunk driving and called a female officer “sugar t–s,” before ranting about “F–king Jews . . . the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”
“Stranger Things” actress Winona Ryder recalled encountering Gibson at an industry party in 1995, where he asked her if she was an “oven dodger” and questioned if he was going to contract AIDs from her gay friend. Gibson denied the allegations as “100% untrue,” after the GQ article came out in 2010.
The same year he reportedly screamed at then girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, that how she was dressed would get her “raped by a pack of n——,” and told her she looked “like a f—king pig in heat.”
The former “Lethal Weapon” star has been tapped to direct the latest film in the franchise.
“If Gibson is welcomed back to direct the latest installment of this beloved franchise, it may be time to stop publishing think pieces about the power of ‘cancel culture,’” Malina wrote. “Because if he can continue to find big bucks and approbation in Hollywood, cancel culture simply does not exist.”
“This might feel like a smaller matter if it didn’t come at a moment when members of my tribe feel the walls closing in again. Jews were the victims in more than 50 percent of religious-based hate crimes last year,” he continued, noting high profile murders in Pittsburg and California in recent years.
“Anti-Semitism on the rise — these are the headlines that make us feel unsafe,” Malina said. “Is this really the time to glorify a man like Mel Gibson?”
He turned his criticism on Warner Bros. for hiring the “Mad Max” star to helm “Lethal Weapon 5.”
“It would be great if higher-profile executives, producers and actors would also take a stand,” Malina concluded. “Then I could believe in this cancel culture I keep reading so much about. And I could also believe that Jews do, in fact, count.”
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