Ricky Gervais Defends Queen Elizabeth After Childhood Nazi Salute Controversy

Ricky Gervais is defending the Queen after Britain’s The Sun published stills from a 1933 home video showing the future monarch imitating the Nazi salute.

The British comedian took to Twitter to put the photos into perspective, noting Queen Elizabeth II was a child in the footage (which shows the then-6-year-old being taught Hitler’s salute by her uncle, Edward VIII) and is more than eight decades old.

“If the Queen does another Nazi Salute let me know about it. Until then…she was 7 and it didn’t even have it’s [sic] eventual context. Not news,” he Tweeted on Saturday.

The Emmy winner, a noted atheist, joked, “Now I’m terrified someone is going to dig up a photo of me praying when I was 7.”

The “Derek” star also Tweeted a photo of himself as a child, joking that he actually resembled the German dictator at a young age.

“Never mind The Queen, I actually looked like a tiny Hitler when I was 7,” he captioned the pic.

In its article titled “Their Royal Heilnesses,” The Sun defended its decision to publish the stills, stating, “while there is clearly no suggestion that the Queen or Queen Mother were ever Nazi sympathisers, Edward’s links with Hitler and fascism are very well documented.”

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson told CNN, “It is disappointing that film, shot eight decades ago and apparently from HM’s personal family archive, has been obtained and exploited in this manner.”

A royal source told the network the Queen was “around 6 years old” at the time of the video, adding, “This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary news reels. No one at that time had any sense how it would evolve. To imply anything else is misleading and dishonest… [the Queen] was entirely innocent of attaching any meaning to these gestures.”

— Erin O’Sullivan