Katherine Ryan hopes trans community don’t feel ‘attacked’ by jokes after Ricky Gervais controversy
Katherine Ryan has addressed the recent controversy surrounding jokes about the trans community, saying that she doesn’t believe comedians are bringing minority groups up ‘out of nowhere to bully them’.Last month, Ricky Gervais sparked controversy on his new Netflix special SuperNature, when he made several jibes about transgender people in his stand-up set, with two examples being when he said that ‘old-fashioned women’ are ‘the ones with wombs’ and he joked about transitioning to become ‘Vicky Gervais’.While The Office creator vowed on the programme that he supports trans rights, he was heavily criticised for his statements, while he also said on the special: ‘It’s mad to think joking about something means you’re anti-it.’Metro.co.uk recently caught up with Katherine ahead of the launch of her new Amazon Prime Video series Backstage with Katherine Ryan, asking her how she feels about the situation, considering other comedians such as Nish Kumar and James Acaster have spoken out against jokes centred on trans people in the past.‘James and Nish, those clips are old, so they were dug up and applied to a situation that was new,’ she said.‘I feel like certain conversations are taking place on a huge scale.
It’s at my daughter’s school and it’s all over TikTok and it’s all over the media, so comedians are going to have to have an opinion on that, and that’s not always going to be an opinion that everyone loves.’Katherine, 38, opined that in her view, ‘it’s not as though these comedians are taking a minority group that’s out of the news and just bringing them up out of nowhere to bully them’.‘I don’t think that’s happening.
