Jennifer Lawrence has been working incredibly hard over the past few months, promoting The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and American Hustle while still filming the third and fourth Hunger Games films.
But in the midst of praising her industriousness, Lawrence’s American Hustle director, David O. Russell, made an unfortunate joke, alluding to one of American Hustle‘s fellow Oscar hopefuls, 12 Years a Slave.
“I’ll tell you what it is about that girl — Talk about 12 years of slavery, that’s what the franchise is,” Russell told the New York Daily News at the Australian Academy’s AACTA Awards last Friday in Los Angeles. “And I’m going to get in so much trouble for saying that.”
PHOTOS: The Making of ‘American Hustle’
Indeed, he’s now aware of the trouble he’s caused, apologizing for his “poor attempt at humor.”
“Clearly I used a stupid analogy in a poor attempt at humor,” Russell said in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “I realized it the minute I said it, and I am truly sorry.”
American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave are both frontrunners for the Oscar nominations, set to be announced on Thursday morning. At Sunday night’s Golden Globes, Hustle won best motion picture, comedy or musical, while 12 Years a Slave won best motion picture, drama. Lawrence also won a Golden Globe for best supporting actress for her work as Rosalyn Rosenfeld in Hustle, effusively praising Russell, who also directed her Oscar-winning performance in Silver Linings Playbook, in her speech.
