Jerry Seinfeld Apologizes For Bee Movie’s Weird, Sexual Undertones

It only took roughly 14 years, but it seems comedian, actor, and adamant Kesha avoider, Jerry Seinfeld has finally taken accountability for the biggest faux pas of his career – no, not the fact that he dated a 17-year-old girl in his late 30's, but the weird, erm, stinging sexual undertones of his 2007 animated classic and inadvertent florist/Apidae love story –  Bee Movie.

“I apologize for what seems to be a certain uncomfortable subtle sexual aspect of The Bee Movie, which really was not intentional,” Seinfeld told host Jimmy Fallon during an appearance on The Tonight Show last Friday. “But after it came out, I realized, ‘This is really not appropriate for children,’ he continued, discussing an epiphany he really should have come to circa 1998.  "Because the bee seems to have a thing for the girl. We don’t really want to pursue that as an idea in children’s entertainment.”

Despite the comedian's apology, it seems the film's creative team has evidently long remained divided on whether or not their DreamWorks offering truly toed, er, stinger-ed the line, IndieWire noted. Throughout the years since Bee Movie's release, director Steve Hickner has maintained that despite fans noting the movie's weird sexual undertones, the film most definitely did not put the bee in bee-stiality. “It was never going to be sexual or anything like that,” Hickner told The New Statesman during an interview commemorating flick's 10-year anniversary back in 2017. “It was purely this friendship… maybe in Barry’s mind he thought… but it was never going to be that.”

Bee Movie's co-writer, Spike Feresten, backed up this assertion, adding in the same article that the question of Barry B. Benson and Vanessa Bloom's purported romance was a black and whi-- sorry, yellow issue. “They would just be Barry and Vanessa, and we would write this dialogue for Barry and Vanessa, and read it over and have to remind ourselves, well, this is a tiny bee saying this, and the tiny bee is fighting with her boyfriend, so let’s dial it back to friend, and make it less romantic, because it’s getting weird," he explained. 

Top Image: DreamWorks

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