James Cameron slams Amy Poehler’s joke about Kathryn Bigelow marriage

He’ll never let go.

More than a decade later, James Cameron is calling out Amy Poehler for a joke at the 2013 Golden Globes about his former marriage to Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow.

“Amy Poehler’s remark was an ignorant dig, at an event which is supposed to be a celebration of cinema and filmmakers, not a roast,” the “Avatar: Fire and Ash” director said in a recent interview with The New York Times.

The joke in question came during Poehler’s opening monologue with fellow host Tina Fey at the 2013 awards ceremony, where Bigelow’s movie “Zero Dark Thirty” was nominated for several awards. The film, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was the subject of controversy at the time for its depiction of the effectiveness of torture.

“I haven’t really been following the controversy over ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ but when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron,” Poehler quipped on stage.

Cameron and Bigelow were married from 1989 to 1991. Poehler’s joke received one of the biggest reactions of the monologue, earning a mixture of laughs and groans. “Zero Dark Thirty” star Jessica Chastain was seen looking stunned and putting her hand over her mouth.

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“I’m pretty thick-skinned, and happy to be the butt of a good-natured joke, but that went too far,” Cameron told The New York Times. “The fact that people found it funny shows exactly what they think of me, even though they have no idea who I am or how I work.”

The Golden Globes earned a reputation in the 2010s for roast-style humor and edgy punchlines about the nominees, especially after a string of hosting stints by comedian Ricky Gervais. Poehler and Fey hosted the awards show three consecutive times from 2013 to 2015, and they returned in 2021.

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Cameron isn’t the first person to take issue with one of the jokes at the 2013 Golden Globes.

That was the same ceremony where Fey and Poehler also cracked a joke about Taylor Swift‘s dating life, with Fey telling the singer to “stay away from Michael J. Fox’s son,” adding that “she needs some me-time to learn about herself.” Swift later slammed the joke in a Vanity Fair cover story.

“You know, Katie Couric is one of my favorite people,” Swift told the magazine. “Because she said to me she had heard a quote that she loved, that said, ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.'”

Fey responded at the time by telling Entertainment Tonight, “If anyone was going to get mad at us, I thought it would be James Cameron. I did not see that one coming. It was a joke, and it was a lighthearted joke. And it’s a shame that she didn’t take it in the crazy-aunt spirit in which it was intended.”