Kevin Hart Says He’ll Never Host the Oscars: “Kill the Idea of It”

Five years after his Oscar hosting dreams imploded, Kevin Hart is declaring any future as emcee of Hollywood’s biggest night dead. “Kill the idea of it,” the comic said when asked about the possibility on Thursday’s episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “There is no upside at this point” to hosting, he added.

Hart explained his refusal further in a recent interview with Sky News. “Those gigs aren’t good gigs for comics,” he stated plainly. “It’s no shot to the Oscars, no shot to the Globes or anything else. Those just aren’t comedy-friendly environments anymore. I think they got it right one year where it was like just a bunch of personalities acting as the hosts, and that’s a nice thing,” Hart added, in possible reference to the 2022 Academy Awards, which were hosted by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes. “It’s a collaborative thing. Different people get to be responsible for act one, act two, act three. But you know, the days of it being a room for a comic— those days are done.”

Hart, who has previously hosted the BET Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards and the MTV Movie Awards, went on to praise the stand-up comedians who have “cracked the code” on hosting such events: “the Chris Rocks of the world, the Billy Crystals of the world, the girls we’ve had, like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ricky Gervais,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that understand that, if you’re not an industry comic, meaning a comic that has the relationships of all, then those rooms are very cold. So, me doing it is, of course, at an advantage because I know the room and [am] familiar with so many. But for others, it’s not the same.”

Hart’s words were inspired in part by Jo Koy’s disastrous turn as first-time Golden Globes host, which led some to wonder if we should scrap the telecast’s hosts altogether. “It’s an industry room where the expectation is one of consequence. Everybody’s on edge about ‘what are you going to say about me,’ so it’s not one that’s attached to immediate laughter,” he told Andy Cohen, joining the likes of fellow comic Steve Martin in supporting Koy. “If I’m Jo, I don’t let it get to me. Let it slide off of your back.”

Hart was announced to host the 2019 Oscars but stepped down from the gig only days later after some of his old homophobic jokes and tweets resurfaced. Hart did not immediately apologize for the jokes. “I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscars….this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists,” he tweeted in December 2018. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.”

The Oscars went hostless the year of Hart’s controversial departure. Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, has been tapped to host the 2024 Oscars, his fourth time in a role that doesn’t hold the same shine for Hart. “It’s not the gig that it was of old,” he told Sky News. “It’s too much pressure on the idea of a comic and what’s jokes and not jokes. So, it’s tough.”