Amy Schumer says she received death threats over Kirsten Dunst joke at Oscars

Amy Schumer has revealed that she received death threats after making a joke with Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons at the Oscars.

The comedian was one of three hosts at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, sharing emcee duties with Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes.

At one point during the show on 27 March, Schumer ventured into the audience and jokingly assumed that Dunst was a “seat filler” – or a non-famous person inhabiting the seat of a famous person – and asked her to step aside while she spoke to Dunst’s husband Plemons. Both Dunst and Plemons were nominated for Oscars during the ceremony, for their performances in The Power of the Dog.

Though the joke was pre-planned with Dunst and Plemons, some viewers believed that Schumer was being genuinely disrespectful to Dunst.

In a new interview with Howard Stern, the comic confirmed that the moment was pre-arranged and shared the negative feedback she’s received since.

“I did a bit with Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons. That was completely orchestrated beforehand,” she said on Stern’s SiriusXM show on Wednesday (13 April).

“The joke was that I was pretending I thought she was a seat filler. And we all worked that out together. I got death threats.”

When asked by the host to clarify if she was serious about the death threats, she said yes and that they were so extreme in nature that the Secret Service reached out to her.

“I was like, ‘I think you have the wrong number. It’s Amy, not Will [Smith].’”

Referring to the King Richard actor’s altercation with Chris Rock during the ceremony, Schumer was incredulous about the reaction and continued: “Not that I want Will Smith to get death threats, but the misogyny is unbelievable.”

As well as Dunst, Leonardo DiCaprio was the subject of one of Schumer’s jokes on the night, as she mocked his relationship with younger girlfriend Camila Morrone.

However, she says she made sure to brief all her subjects on her comedic plans ahead of time to spare their feelings.

“To be honest,” said Schumer, “I actually did reach out to people I was going to joke about before, to make sure it was okay with them because I’ve been burned too many times. I didn’t want the camera to cut to somebody looking sad.”