Jerry Seinfeld Apologizes for Bee Film’s ‘Sexual Undertones’ in Graduation Speech

Jerry Seinfeld has some apologies to supply, almost twenty years after the discharge of Bee Film.

On Sunday, Could 12, the Seinfeld alum, 70, gave a graduation tackle to the graduating seniors at Duke College in Durham, North Carolina — the place his son Julian at present attends and his daughter Sascha beforehand graduated from.

Throughout his speech, the comic took time to replicate on his 2007 animated movie Bee Film — particularly one controversial ingredient of the storyline.

“I made a cartoon film about bees you could have watched as a toddler,” Seinfeld mentioned in a video captured by an attendee and shared on TikTok.

“If any of you felt barely uncomfortable concerning the sexual undertones within the relationship between Barry B. Benson and Vanessa, the florist who saves his life, I want to apologize for that now,” he continued, incomes laughs from the group. “I’ll not have calibrated that completely.”

Followers of the DreamWorks youngsters’ film have beforehand made long-running jokes concerning the romantic rigidity between Seinfeld’s character within the movie, Barry (a bee), and Renée Zellweger’s character, Vanessa (a human). Again in October 2021, Seinfeld addressed the identical difficulty throughout an look on The Tonight Present, apologizing as soon as once more for the innuendo.

“I apologize for what appears to be a sure uncomfortable delicate sexual side of the Bee Film,” he mentioned on the time. “[It] actually was not intentional, however after it got here out, I spotted that is actually not applicable for youngsters. As a result of the bee appears to have a factor for the lady, and we don’t actually wish to pursue that as an thought in youngsters’s leisure.”

Seinfeld’s graduation speech at Duke additionally drew public consideration when anti-war protesters walked out of the ceremony and booed from the viewers when the TV star took the rostrum, in line with NBC Information and CBS Information.

Seinfeld has been making a slew of public appearances in current weeks in assist of his latest film, Unfrosted, which marks his feature-film directorial debut. Talking with PEOPLE on the premiere of the film on April 30, Seinfeld opened up about taking up the function of director for the primary time in his profession.

“You do not wish to take into consideration that it is a actually huge, necessary job. Like, the pilot by no means desires to come back on the PA system and go, ‘I’ll try to get this aircraft within the air.’ It’s important to be assured,” he mentioned.

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Seinfeld beforehand instructed PEOPLE that he has “been obsessive about Pop-Tarts my complete life,” which is what impressed him to tackle the film.

“My buddy Spike Feresten, who was a author on my present and remains to be a superb buddy of mine, thought we should always make a film out of the story, the actual story, which we did,” he defined.

Unfrosted — which incorporates a star-studded forged together with Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant and extra — is about in 1963 Battle Creek, Mich., when “Kellogg’s and Put up, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that can change the face of breakfast endlessly,” in line with a synopsis.