“Stranger Things” star Brett Gelman admits that the online vitriol he has received for his support of Israel and Jewish people is frightening.
“Am I scared? Absolutely,” he told The Post in a recent interview. “I think I’d be insane not to be scared.”
Gelman, 47, added that he is “taking all the necessary precautions” he can, but he refuses to cower.
“I also just think that we need to face our fear and not follow our fear in this situation,” he opined.
“Because a lot of these people are cowards. A lot of these people are just loudmouths in their basements and they need to be spoken out against. We must face off against them. There needs to be counter-protestors against these protestors.”
The “Fleabag” alum is currently promoting a collection of short stories entitled “The Terrifying Realm of the Possible: Nearly True Stories,” which is not strictly autobiographical but definitely inspired by his childhood and anxieties.
“It revolves around five characters, a child, a teenager, an adult, an older woman and a person in the afterlife,” he explained. “And they’re all asking the big questions. It really deals with all of these characters very much existing in their heads. And they’re all incredibly neurotic. It’s definitely a purge of neurosis and self-hatred for me … It has a lot of autobiographical moments.”
Unfortunately, the book’s launch has not been without controversy.
Book Soup in California canceled a March 27 appearance by Gelman, citing security concerns that “became a safety risk we were not willing to take.” The store has hosted many controversial authors over the years but said the cancellation was warranted because of the “current charged environment.”
Gelman said that he’s not “deluded” and knew he’d be criticized but “didn’t know it would be this horrific.
“I didn’t know that people would be, like, flat out denying footage that Hamas shot themselves that have zero care for for the hostages, for Jewish pain. There continues to be this erasure [of] this dismissing of Jewish trauma and Israeli trauma.”
Before Oct. 7, the “Lyle Lyle Crocodile” actor had been vocal about his Jewish identity and had even coined the term “Jaddy” — a sexually attractive older man wearing ’70s and ’90s street fashion — to describe himself.
“I think both of those are very Jewish forms of dress. But really it’s projecting a positive semitic masculine style,” he told The Post in a 2022 interview.
“There’s something incredibly attractive about our people and sexual about our people that I want to push that is not gross or ugly. And that’s really important to me.”
Gelman also had a word of warning for American Jews.
“It’s very hard to accept, you know, because of our assimilation, instinctual response that we have in this country and the rest of the diaspora,” he shared. “I keep talking to a lot of Jews who want to have their cake and eat it, too.
“They want everybody to change their minds and stop this, but they still want to be liked. And what Jews really have to realize is we’re not liked. We’re never going to be liked. Yeah. You know, but if they don’t like us, at least they can respect us.”
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