Photo : Matt Winkelmeyer ( Getty Images )

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart are pals, having co-starred in comedies like Central Intelligence and Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. One can imagine, then, that his recent comments to the U.K.’s Daily Star, in which he laments “generation snowflake,” were at least partially prompted by the controversy surrounding Hart’s old, homophobic tweets and the fallout of his gig hosting the Oscars.


“So many good people fought for freedom and equality—but this generation are looking for a reason to be offended,” he told the Star, really digging deep into that Fox News rhetoric. “If you are not agreeing with them then they are offended—and that is not what so many great men and women fought for.”

He continued, “We thankfully now live in a world that has progressed over the last 30 or 40 years. People can be who they want, be with who they want, and live how they want. That can only be a good thing—but generation snowflake, or whatever you want to call them, are actually putting us backwards.”




He neglects to say how, exactly, this vague, ill-defined generation is “putting us backwards,” but we’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt by not assuming it’s in pushing back against old, outdated norms and actually holding those in power accountable for patterns of hate speech.

The Star, meanwhile, is positively giddy over his comments, lacing them with editorial about the U.K.’s “death of comedy” and the “constant moaning” of these “equality fools.”


Are we sure this wasn’t actually a Ricky Gervais interview?

Update: Johnson has now responded to the purported interview, claiming that it never happened, and that the article in question was “100 percent fabricated” on The Daily Star’s part.