Snoop Dogg has addressed criticism following a comment deemed ‘homophobic’ during a podcast discussion.
The situation arose when the 53-year-old artist took his grandson to see the movie Lightyear, a spinoff of the Toy Story series. The Pixar film features a character with two mothers in a same-sex relationship.
In a conversation on the It’s Giving podcast, Snoop described feeling ‘scared to go to the movies’ after his grandson questioned the relationship portrayed on screen.
He recounted: “They’re putting it everywhere […] They’re like, ‘She had a baby – with another woman’. Well, my grandson, in the middle of the movie is like, ‘Papa Snoop? How she have a baby with a woman? She’s a woman!'”
He expressed his discontent saying, “I didn’t come in for this sh*t. I just came to watch the goddamn movie.” Snoop further explained his hesitance about going to the movies, adding: “Y’all throwing me in the middle of sh*t that I don’t have an answer for.”
When the podcast clip surfaced on Reddit, it sparked accusations of homophobia against him.
One commenter described the remarks as ‘blatantly [sic] homophobic of Snoop’, while another noted, “It’s only hard to explain if you’re homophobic and trying to hide the existence of gay people to your children.”
In response to the backlash, the 16-time Grammy nominee addressed the issue on social media.
After Hollywood Unlocked shared a video of TS Madison discussing the controversy on Instagram, Snoop commented, explaining that he was ‘caught off guard’ and reached out to the LGBTQ+ community to ‘teach me how to learn.’
He said: “I was just caught off guard and had no answer for my grandsons. All my gay friends [know] what’s up, they been calling me with love. My bad for not knowing the answers for a 6 yr old. Teach me how to learn. I’m not perfect.”
Screenwriter Lauren Gunderson, who worked on Lightyear, defended the film’s inclusion of a same-sex relationship.
“I’m proud of it. To infinity. Love is love,” she shared on Instagram. “I was proud to see a happy queer couple (even for a few seconds) onscreen. I know they got a lot of sh*t for this inclusion, but stuff like this matters because beautiful love like this exists.”
If you’re impacted by these issues and need to talk to someone confidentially, you can reach out to the LGBT national hotline at 888-843-4564, available Monday to Friday from 4pm-12am ET and on Saturdays from 12pm-5pm ET.