'Hobbit' Star Makes Truly Awful Joke About 'Rape, or Whatever'

During a publicity interview for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the film’s star Martin Freeman was asked a fun, fluffy question about what sort of Middle Earth race he’d be most DTF. And he answered with a pretty fucked up joke about elf rape. Goddamn it, Bilbo. I didn’t think this kind of talk was tolerated in the Shire.

The quality of the video isn’t top notch (and in order to see the English translation, you’ll have to watch on YouTube with subtitles turned on), so here’s a quick and dirty summary of what happened.

A voiceover (in Danish) asks several members of the cast the same question (“Let’s hear if they’d rather pick a dwarf, a hobbit, or an elf for a date”), and when it came time for Freeman to answer, he said,

Elf, definitely. Because look at them; they’re beautiful. Men or women.

Fair enough. But then:

Interviewer: And the height difference doesn’t matter?
Freeman: Not at all. I’ve got a ladder. It’s fine. And I’ve got drugs. I could just make them — y’know. Slip them something in their goblet. Some will get offended by that now. Cause they’ll call it [air quotes, eye roll] “RAPE” or whatever. But, um, you know. For me, it’s a helping hand. Maybe I should stop talking.

I hate to be the joke police but for the fuck of shit is that a bad rape joke. Rape jokes are like the triple axels of comedy — a person who has trained for years (like Louis CK or Sarah Silverman) can pull them off if they’re perfectly executed. But a guy like Bilbo Baggins over here glides out all bedazzled in sequins and overconfident in his skills and end up with a skate through his forehead. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that Martin Freeman has shown his whole ass in an interview, and judging by the sarcastic air quotes around RAAAPE, it won’t be the last. Who knew hobbits suffered from Short Man Syndrome?