Celebrity Roasts: When the Jokes Hit Too Close to Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uatTNQ_AccU
Title: The Comedy Roast: When the Jokes Hit Too Close to Home
When you show up for a celebrity roast — either as the roaster or the roastee — you know what you’re in for, right? If your feelings are easily hurt, it’s probably best to stay home. Yet a number of big comedy names came out with egos bruised, including a bunch known for delivering brutal insults themselves. Look, if you’re going to dish it out, you have to be able to take it.
Jonah Hill and Sarah Silverman
Even though James Franco was the subject of the night’s roast, Sarah Silverman and Jonah Hill took off the gloves and went after each other.
Here’s Sarah on Jonah: "Right before the show started, Seth Rogen rolled a gigantic fatty… because that was the only way we could get Jonah Hill onto the stage. Jonah actually gained 50 pounds for his role in the new Martin Scorsese film because the producers wanted the character to be a Jonah Hill type."
Ouch! But then, it was Jonah’s turn: "Everyone’s like, ‘She’s hot for a comic.’ But I don’t agree. She’s not just hot for a comic. She’s hot for someone her age. Seriously, Sarah, you were my favorite comic as a kid. Sarah is a role model for every little girl out there. I mean, every little girl dreams about being a 58-year-old single, stand-up comedian with no romantic prospects on the horizon. They all dream of it, but Sarah did it."
Silverman, known for her sharp wit, was surprised to find her own feelings scraped. “I had no idea that there were going to be jokes about me being old. I was just kinda like ‘What!?’” Silverman defends Hill, however. “I mean, I was brutal. That’s what a roast is. And (Jonah) said something so beautiful when we were on the couch. ‘Everything that I was terrified that people might say about me in life was just said to me on television, and I lived through it.’”
Ann Coulter
Rob Lowe’s roast sure felt like it was Ann Coulter’s. “Ann Coulter has written 11 books — 12 if you count ‘Mein Kampf,” quipped Nikki Glaser. Still not over the line enough? How about Jimmy Carr: “It’s not too late to change, Ann. You could kill yourself.”
After the show, Coulter claimed she didn’t know she would be the subject of jokes — and that Comedy Central was editing the show to make her look bad. “She said that before the show even aired,” says Jeff Ross. “So we queued up her unedited, raw appearance and let her know that if she kept saying we were messing with her, we were going to release it. We made her look better than it was.” Was she taken by surprise? Comedy Central’s Kent Alterman noted, “We didn’t prevent her from watching any roasts.”
Natasha Leggero
Leggero might have been the first roaster to stop roasting in anticipation of hurt feelings. “Nobody wants to go up there and have men say that your pubic hair has spiderwebs or whatever,” says Leggero. “I was offered the roast a third time and I had just had a baby and I was like, you know what? I don’t think I’m mentally prepared for jokes about how my kid would have Down syndrome because I’m such an old hag. You kind of play through the worst-case scenario.”
Nikki Glaser
There aren’t many roasters crueler than Glaser (see Ann Coulter above), but she was crushed by NBA star Blake Griffin, to whom she’d already pledged her affections. “Larry Bird is here,” poked Griffin. “I mean, Nikki Glaser is here … You know, the only difference between Larry Bird and Nikki Glaser is that Larry Bird could actually pass as 33.”
“It really was insulting, and hurt my feelings,” Glaser told Howard Stern. “He sits back down after calling me ugly, and I’m like, I have to sit next to this guy for three hours now … This is awkward. I just declared my love. He’s like, ‘Wouldn’t touch you.’”
Bob Saget
The late Bob Saget loved dirty jokes … Except when they involved the Olsen twins. Unfortunately for Saget, that’s just where comics went during his 2008 roast: Jeff Ross: Is it true you used to give Mary-Kate acting lessons? He’d tell her, “Act like this never happened.” She’d be like, “You got it, dude.” John Stamos: What a tough gig America’s Funniest Home Videos must have been, huh? His entire job consisted of saying “Take a look at this, which is what he used to say to Mary Kate in her dressing room.
“Anybody who talks about my TV kids – that upsets me the most,” Saget said. “I am very protective. I love them very, very much.”
Chevy Chase
When Chase arrived at his 2002 roast, he was shocked to see that none of his comedy pals had bothered to show up. The comics who were there, most unknown to Chase, ripped him a new one. Jimmy Kimmel called the affair “spectacularly disastrous. Chevy was very, very, very upset afterward.”
When it was finally time for Chase to take the podium, he looked directly into the camera and admitted: "That hurt."
Celebrity roasts can be brutal, but they also show the vulnerability and humanity behind the jokes. It’s a reminder that even the toughest comedians have feelings too.