Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam: ‘I’m a Black Lesbian’

Terry Gilliam has weighed in on the debate over whether Monty Python’s comedy is too white, male, and elitist.

“I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian.”

The American-born Python was speaking at the Karlovy Vary film festival in the Czech Republic at a screening of his movie The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Gilliam was responding to remarks by the BBC’s Head of Comedy that Monty Python were insufficiently “diverse” to “reflect the modern world”.

This drew an irritated response from fellow Python John Cleese:

BBC's Head of Comedy puts Monty Python's lack of originality down to a surfeit of education and racist bias

Unfair ! We were remarkably diverse FOR OUR TIME

We had three grammar-school boys, one a poof, and Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And NO slave-owners

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 20, 2018

Now the ‘Yank’ member of the team has joined the fray.

According to the Guardian:

“It made me cry: the idea that … no longer six white Oxbridge men can make a comedy show. Now we need one of this, one of that, everybody represented… this is bullshit. I no longer want to be a white male, I don’t want to be blamed for everything wrong in the world: I tell the world now I’m a black lesbian… My name is Loretta and I’m a BLT, a black lesbian in transition.”

and

He added: “[Allen’s] statement made me so angry, all of us so angry. Comedy is not assembled, it’s not like putting together a boy band where you put together one of this, one of that everyone is represented.”