Actor John Cleese announced Monday that he will host a new show all about cancel culture on the UK’s Channel 4.
“John Cleese: Cancel Me” will cover all aspects of cancel culture. The documentary series aims to find out “why a new ‘woke’ generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can’t be said.”
Cleese will interview various individuals who have been “canceled” for past statements, as well as the activists who led campaigns against them. (RELATED: NBC Is ‘Standing By’ For A Reboot Of ‘The Office’)
“I’m delighted to have a chance to find out, on camera, about all the aspects of so-called political correctness,” said Cleese in a statement. “There’s so much I really don’t understand, like: how the impeccable idea of ‘Let’s all be kind to people’ has been developed in some cases ad absurdum.”
Channel 4’s head of factual, Danny Horan, provided the impetus behind the decision to develop the series. “We’re doing that because we felt we needed to address [cancel culture] somehow and he’s got very strong views on that,” Horan told a panel at the Edinburgh TV Festival. “I think there’s a lot of things to address in that series that he is very keen to understand what happened and why it’s happened.”
British comedy troupe Monty Python, (L-R) Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, and Terry Jones pose for a photograph at the back door to the London Palladium in central London. AFP PHOTO/JUSTIN TALLIS (Photo credit should read JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Cleese, who rose to fame as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, became a victim of cancel culture in 2020, when UKTV removed an episode of his show “Fawlty Towers” for using “racial slurs.” He also (facetiously) apologized for Monty Python sketches that made fun of white English people.