Ricky Gervais Regrets Telling This Golden Globe Joke, But The Joke’s Target Wasn’t Offended

Over his years hosting the Golden Globes, Ricky Gervais has targeted everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Caitlyn Jenner. But there’s one joke that he regrets telling. “The first [presenter] is an actor, producer, writer, and director whose movies have grossed over $3.5 billion at the box office,” Gervais said in 2011 while introducing Tom Hanks. “The other is Tim Allen.” Gervais recently told the Hollywood Reporter that he thinks the Home Improvement star “took it wrong,” and that even though “there’s no malice and I can justify it comedically and everyone laughed, I didn’t want Tim Allen to think, ‘Oh, that was written for me. Why me’ Well, because you were standing next to Tom Hanks.”

When asked about the (toothless) dig, not-Tom Hanks, a.k.a. Tim Allen, replied that he wasn’t offended, but he was confused. “Perhaps I didn’t get it… I wasn’t the only one,” he told Page Six. “Tom and I even said [at the time], ‘I didn’t really get it. It’s like he didn’t finish the joke. It just went flat.’ Later that night he said, ‘It didn’t go so well.’ He kind of apologized.” (He also thought Gervais was “pretty sharp” at this year’s ceremony.)

There’s certainly nothing else about Allen that Gervais could have made fun of instead.