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Seth Rogen may have ruffled some expensive feathers at the Breakthrough Prize ceremony earlier this month after his joke about billionaires in the crowd backing Donald Trump was cut from the award show’s YouTube stream.
The comic reportedly made the joke while presenting a prize for physics alongside actor Edward Norton, who showed love to tech giants in the crowd — which included Google co-founder Sergey Brin, VK co-founder Yuri Milner and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — for underwriting the awards.
“And it’s amazing that others [who have been] in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science,” quipped Rogen, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The joke — one that THR described as “clearly” making Norton “uncomfortable” — appeared to target previous attendee Elon Musk, who has rallied behind the Trump administration’s cuts that have fueled deep concern among scientists.
“It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr., very fast,” Rogen continued.
Some of the award ceremony’s co-founders — Brin, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan — attended Trump’s inauguration. Milner and his wife Julia Milner are linked to the Trump family, as well.
Others at the ceremony included Trump megadonor Chamath Palihapitiya, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
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The joke — which reportedly “landed with a thud” — didn’t make the ceremony’s stream that aired a week later; it appeared to be missing in the moments before Norton remarked on the “light applause” from the crowd.
A spokesperson for the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, when asked about Rogen’s comments being cut, told THR, “This year’s ceremony lasted longer than the prior few years, and several edits were made in order to meet the originally planned run time.”
Rogen did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.
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