The comedian and actor admits he got it wrong and has apologised unreservedly for causing offence to a show runner at a read through of a Mrs Brown’s Boys script
Brendan O’Carroll admits he was disgusted with himself after making a racist joke through a recent run-through of a script on the set of Mrs Brown’s Boys.
The comedian found himself at the centre of controversy earlier this year when rehearsals for the sitcoms annual Christmas specials were paused after he implied a “clumsy racial joke” and a staff member raised it with BBC bosses.
Shedding light on the situation and what happened, Brendan admitted he got it wrong and understands why the joke caused offence.
He said: “I like to poke fun at particularly people who marginalise other people. When Mrs Brown found out her son was gay, I showed how she didn’t understand it. She now knows her son is gay and accepts it, but she doesn’t know what gay is.
“I wanted to poke fun at intergenerational racism, and how Mrs Brown doesn’t get racism. She doesn’t know what racism is. [The joke] was kinda like, ‘Eenie meenie minie mo catch a -,’ and then Kathy interrupts and says, ‘Mammy you can’t say that’. We went on with the rest of the read through.
“The next day we went into rehearsals and got a note from the director about the runner who was at the read through. The read throughs are about finding out what you can and can’t say, there’s always a BBC executive there. Everyone laughed and at the end of it we clapped. Then I found out he had been offended. So I immediately sent him an email apologising, I don’t want to offend anybody, I don’t want to be that guy.”
When asked if he could see why what he said was offensive, Brendan told Patrick Kielty on the Late Late Show: “Yeah, that’s why I apologised. I completely get it.
“If Mrs Brown is going to say blowjob, Kathy would stop her. I know the audience would finish [the sentence] in their head. That’s what happened here, I expected them to finish it their head but I expected it to be they realised, ‘Oh, she doesn’t get it’.
“It backfired, it landed on its arse, I landed on my arse. You have Ukraine, Gaza, the American election and I ended up on the frontpage of the English papers for a week. I obviously deserved it.”
Brendan accepted he got it wrong. He said it’s hard for comedians to make a joke that doesn’t offend somebody, but they should accept when something is not okay to say.
He continued: “Oh Jesus, yeah. That’s what you do. You’re a comedian, you try something on the edge, it doesn’t work, you don’t do it.
“I was disgusted with myself that I offended him, absolutely disgusted. I apologised to him and if he’s watching now, I apologise to you again. I got it wrong, move on.”
