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Watch: Hugh Grant can’t believe how mean his Twitter mentions are

Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.

On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel defended his title as the only late night host whose recurring viral segment does not involve theatrical singing and/or lip-syncing by unveiling the 10th installment of his “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” series.

If nothing else, the segment can be counted on to firmly establish which celebrities are familiar with the seething cesspool of hatred that is Twitter and which are blissfully ignorant.

For instance, Hugh Grant is enormously flummoxed after reading the comparatively mild tweet, “Watching Hugh Grant and his stutteringly pathetic ‘charm’ is about as appealing to me as closing my scrotum in a DVD case.”

As mean tweets go, that one doesn’t involve any threats to Grant’s person, and all the words are spelled correctly, but still Grant is shocked that anyone could be so cruel. “Are these real,” he asks, “or do you make them up to be especially nasty?” Looks like someone never reads his mentions.

Margot Robbie, on the other hand, is clearly well-acquainted with Twitter’s ugliest corners. So when she’s asked to read the tweet, “‘Tongue punch in the fart box’ is a neglected phrase. Use it today! Example: Margot Robbie deserves a tongue punch in the fart box,” she doesn’t bat an eye. Instead, she reads it with the polite disinterest of a woman who has hundreds of obscene hate tweets spewed at her every day.

But most unfazed is Wanda Sykes. Confronted with the tweet that reads, “Oh how I loathe Nickelback… Ps f—k you Wanda Sykes,” she turns to the camera and demands, “What’s wrong with Nickelback?”

Many things, Wanda Sykes, but there’s definitely nothing wrong with you.