Jim Carrey stood up for fellow comedian Kathy Griffin and her attempt at a visual “joke” about a beheaded Donald Trump, saying that it’s their “job to cross the line at all times.”
Griffin was hit with an onslaught of criticism and was cut from her long-running annual New Year’s Eve co-hosting gig on CNN after she posted a photo earlier this week on Twitter in which she held up a prop that depicted the president’s severed head.
“I think it is the job of a comedian to cross the line at all times — because that line is not real,” Carrey said in an “Entertainment Tonight” interview Wednesday at the Los Angeles premiere of his new Showtime series, “I’m Dying Up Here.”
“If you step out into that spotlight and you’re doing the crazy things that [Trump] is doing, we’re the last line of defense. And, really, the comedians are the last voice of truth in this whole thing.”
Carrey then skirted his own line and recounted a dream about playing golf with Trump and standing next to him with a golf club in his hand. “I was considering my options when I suddenly woke up,” said Carrey. “It was one of those dreams where you just want to get back to sleep so you can finish it, you know?”
Comedian Dan Aykroyd told “ET” that he believes Griffin went too far with the “terrorist-style beheading.”
“The world is throwing hate at Donald Trump,” Aykroyd said. “That’s just going to go into the generator of Donald Trump’s personality ... and it could be thrown right back out in a terrible ball of hate. Let him absorb some love and good energy and then, maybe out of that, it will be filtered to come to where the world wants him to be in a more rational, centered state.”
Griffin removed the tweet with the photo — taken by Tyler Shields — and apologized late Tuesday after she was roundly blasted by both Trump supporters and foes. The president himself tweeted that she “should be ashamed of herself.” Trump said his son Barron was “having a particularly hard time with it.”
“I sincerely apologize,” Griffin said. “I crossed the line. I moved the line, then I crossed it. I went way too far. The image is too disturbing. I understand how it offends people. It wasn’t funny .... I beg for your forgiveness ... I made a mistake and I was wrong.”
The Secret Service, responding to a suggestion Tuesday on its Twitter site to investigate Griffin and the Trump image, answered: “On it!” It indicated it was investigating the image as a possible threat.
Few have spoken up for Griffin, though debate is heated on the Twitter accounts of both the president and Griffin.