Jerry Seinfeld doesn't really know the specifics of what "Guardians of the Galaxy" director James Gunn tweeted about a decade ago to get fired by Disney earlier this summer, but the iconic comedian firmly believes if the tweets were meant as jokes they should be taken as such.
"I didn't read the jokes, but if they're jokes, it doesn't matter," he told The New York Times in an interview published Wednesday.
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View Story"I guess Roseanne Barr thought she was being funny, but it wasn't funny -- and if it's offensive and not funny, then it's not a joke," he added. "But any comedian that doesn't understand that dynamic, you're finished anyway."
Seinfeld added that he's never apologized for telling a joke and never will.
"Jokes are not real. People assume that when you say something that you believe it. It's purely comedic invention," he said. "You know, I do this whole bit about Pop-Tarts and how much I love them. I don't love Pop-Tarts. It's just funny. It's funny to say it, so I say it."
Gunn was fired from directing and producing the third "Guardians" movie on July 20 after it was brought to Disney's attention he made very crass jokes about rape and pedophilia on Twitter between 2008 and 2011. Gunn argued they were simply provocative jokes and he has matured significantly as a person since then.
"The offensive attitudes and statements discovered on James' Twitter feed are indefensible and inconsistent with our studio's values, and we have severed our business relationship with him," said Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn at the time.
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View StorySeinfeld said in the new interview that he's not fond of cracking jokes on Twitter because there's no payoff.
"I don't hear the laugh. Why waste my time? It's a horrible performing interface. I can't think of a worse one," the host of "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" said. "I always think about people that write books. What a horrible feeling it must be to have poured your soul into a book over a number of years and somebody comes up to you and goes, 'I loved your book,' and they walk away, and you have no idea what worked and what didn't. That to me is hell. That's my definition of hell."
Meanwhile, "Guardians" star Chris Pratt also commented in the Gunn situation again for the first time since the cast released a joint statement in support of the director possibly returning.
"All I know is we put a lot of time, thought and effort in the statement we released about it," the actor told The Associated Press in a new interview. "I think we all want that statement to be essentially what we have to say about it, and we were pretty clear and honest about how we feel."
"It's not an easy time. We all love James and he's a good friend of ours, but we also really love playing the Guardians of the Galaxy," he added. "It's a complicated situation for everybody."