Amy Schumer Says She Received Death Threats After Kirsten Dunst Bit

Amy Schumer revealed that after her hosting stint at the 2022 Academy Awards, she received some intense backlash that she wasn’t expecting from fans of a certain actress. That was Kirsten Dunst, who was nominated along with her husband Jesse Plemons for her performance in The Power Of The Dog.

Schumer’s pre-scripted bit involved her mistaking Dunst for a seat filler, which are people hired by awards shows to sit in celebrity seats when they go for bathroom breaks or to hit up the offscreen bar so the crowd of the show never looks anemic. In the scene, Schumer pulls Dunst aside in order to take her seat and speak momentarily to a perplexed Plemons.

While this joke wasn’t exactly a killer, some viewers online seemed deeply offended by its premise. Maybe Dunst’s fans were so convinced by Plemons’ performance that they thought the couple was really blindsided by this planned bit, or that Schumer genuinely didn’t recognize the actress.

Schumer talked about the unexpected backlash on The Howard Stern Show, confirming once again she, Dunst and Plemons “worked that out together,” before the show, and then revealed afterward “I got death threats.” She even claimed that they escalated to the point where the LAPD reached out to her.

“I’m like ‘Oh I think you have the wrong number, this is Amy not Will [Smith]? You are getting death threats?’ Okay, not that I want Will to get death threats, but the misogyny is unbelievable,” Schumer said, in reference to the now-infamous Will Smith and Chris Rock slap.

You can watch the full interview here.