Eric Idle Weighs in on John Cleese’s Post-‘Life of Brian’ Transphobia

While the surviving members of Monty Python will likely never reunite, at least they keep throwing shade at each other online. And that can be pretty entertaining too.

The latest online slight came after a fan recently asked Eric Idle about Monty Python’s Life of Brian, specifically the allegedly controversial scene in which the People’s Front of Judea debate their member’s right to be accepted by society as a woman named Loretta. 

Some fans have interpreted this scene as an anti-trans statement, including Elon Musk. This interpretation was seemingly backed up by John Cleese, who bravely proclaimed that he wouldn’t cut the scene from his (supposedly) upcoming stage adaptation of Life of Brian — even though nobody ever asked him to.

It turned out that he himself had sensed that the scene might not play well with contemporary audiences, so he asked his cast for feedback, and then flipped out when they simply answered the question he had put to them. “So here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people,” Cleese tweeted at the time.

This also reinforces Cleese’s theory that wokeness is killing comedy, and audiences are more sensitive than ever before, which is especially ridiculous when brought up in the context of Life of Brian, a movie that was literally banned in multiple countries when it was released. 

All of this is extra dumb because, while the scene is no doubt clumsy and insulting by modern standards, as some people have pointed out, it did illustrate that Loretta’s friends were ultimately supportive of her. 

A fan recently asked Idle about which Python wrote this particular scene, and he recalled that it was Cleese and Graham Chapman.

Another fan, who clearly saw the scene as more sympathetic than mocking, suggested that it’s “funny” that Cleese wrote a “supportive sketch about a trans woman” now that he’s “highly transphobic against trans women.” Idle agreed with the criticism, but noted that the word he would choose isn't “funny,” but rather, “ironic.”

In addition to the manufactured Life of Brian controversy, Cleese famously fired off a number of transphobic social media posts while defending his support of J.K. Rowling in 2020. But Idle clearly doesn’t share Cleese’s backwards viewpoint. And though he didn’t write the Life of Brian scene in question, he was the one acting in it, and has subsequently claimed that he tried to portray Loretta as “sincerely” as he could, pointing out that the storyline is “very (germane) at this particular moment in time.”

In any case, it’s nice to see Idle dunking on Cleese for well-founded reasons, and not just because of the Pythons’ money management.