Mel Gibson walked out from behind a curtain at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Saturday, Aug. 30, to applause.
The 70-year-old attended the Fan Expo Canada for a retrospective Q&A about his career, moderated by Liam Crowley. An American Sign Language interpreter stood near the front of the stage, doing her job.
Gibson stopped behind her. And for anybody keeping score on this particular actor, whose past has a habit of resurfacing, what came next didn’t land as a surprise so much as a confirmation.
He turned to face the crowd and launched into a burst of rapid, exaggerated hand gestures.
Then he shook Crowley’s hand and took his seat. The whole thing lasted a couple of seconds. Video of it circulated on X within hours, and by Monday it had become a viral story.
Gibson apologized that day in a statement issued to multiple outlets.
“Sometimes when you get pushed out on a stage in a spotlight your mind is all over the place, and sometimes spontaneous thoughtless idiocy is displayed,” he said, per Page Six. “There was no intended maliciousness attached, and I certainly apologize to anyone who was upset by it.”
The apology didn’t settle much, though. If anything, it split the room further.
“Its a joke to make fun of Deaf people?” asked one person on X, while another kept it to three words: “wow that’s despicable.”
Another user landed somewhere in between: “Yeah, Mel was stupid — do better. We got no hate — won’t cancel him out. Still a good actor + director.”
One X user wasn’t shocked at all. “Now people are disappointed in him?” she wrote. “He’s a terrible person. I’m not surprised by anything he does anymore.”
The sharpest response came from the community actually on the receiving end. “Always disappointing to see my language mocked,” one ASL user wrote in a post that has since been deleted. “We work hard to get our language recognized and be taken seriously.”
There’s also an unflattering comparison making the rounds, because it happened at the same convention. Video surfaced on X of Reacher star Alan Ritchson walking over to shake the ASL interpreter’s hand after his own Q&A wrapped. Same event, same job — just a complete opposite instinct.
But it seems the harsh response has come with good reason.
In 2006, Gibson was pulled over on suspicion of driving under the influence and launched into an antisemitic tirade against the arresting officer, a scandal that severely impacted his Hollywood career. In 2010, audio recordings surfaced of him directing racist and abusive language at his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva. He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery in 2011, a domestic-violence conviction that resulted in the loss of his gun rights.
And in October 2024, he called then-Vice President Kamala Harris a candidate with “the IQ of a fence post,” per Vanity Fair. Those remarks got him labeled a racist and prompted a fresh look at everything above. What’s changed since then is his political standing.
Gibson became one of Donald Trump’s most visible Hollywood allies. In fact, in January 2025, Trump named him a “special ambassador” to Hollywood alongside Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, tasked with making a “troubled” industry bigger and stronger.
Two months later, that relationship produced a scandal of its own. Elizabeth Oyer, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, stated she was fired after refusing to recommend restoring Gibson’s gun rights. She told The New York Times that a senior official explained that Gibson had “a personal relationship with President Trump” and that this should serve as sufficient basis for her recommendation.
Attorney General Pam Bondi approved the restoration anyway that April, for Gibson and nine others.
Despite the ongoing controversy, Gibson’s career momentum remains unaffected as he pushes forward with The Resurrection of the Christ, his highly anticipated two-part follow-up to The Passion of the Christ, slated for release in 2027 and 2028.
