Chelsea Handler at Netflix's Kevin Hart roast. Kevin Winter/Getty Images After calling out comics Shane Gillis and Tony Hinchcliffe for some of their jokes at Kevin Hart’s Netflix roast, Chelsea Handler is now facing her own backlash for clutching her pearls over the offensive humor.
On Wednesday, during an appearance on Deon Cole’s Funny Knowing You podcast, Handler called Gillis’ lynching joke (“Kevin is so short, you’d have to lynch him from a bonsai tree”) “worse than rape.” The comic, who has been known for getting personal with her comedy targets throughout her career, also told Cole that she’d received messages on social media about Gillis and Hinchcliffe from their alleged former partners.
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When asked what they told her, Handler said, “It’s just everything we know, that they’re racist, that they’re bigots, they’re sexist.”
And wasn’t just these few gags, apparently. Handler said she did not enjoy any of the two men’s jokes during the roast in honor of Hart, with whom she has been friends for years.
“It was ick. It was gross,” Handler said.
On Wednesday, Gillis shared a statement with The Hollywood Reporter in response to Handler’s comments, telegraphing that he believes she is virtue-signaling over the jokes to generate publicity. “This is a big moment for Chelsea. I am glad she’s capitalizing. Good for her. We’re all rooting for her. Anyway, come see me July 17 at the football stadium in Philly.”
In a New York Post opinion piece published Thursday, columnist Kirsten Fleming was less subtle in her response to Handler, taking her to task over her comments about Gillis and Hinchcliffe and accusing her of attempting to become “the new white savior, who speaks for all Black people,” then psychoanalyzing her words and behavior to conclude Handler was “jealous” and “felt upstaged.” “The abrasive abortion enthusiast has deputized herself the head of the Joke Police. How rich that is,” Fleming wrote in a withering critique of the comedian, adding that her “schtick about being a liberated, motherless alcoholic loose lady is getting old.”
Comedian Steve Byrne also reacted to Handler’s critique, calling it “rich coming from her.”
In a lengthy post on X, Byrne recalled seeing Handler, whom he’d yet to meet, in the audience while he was performing at a showcase. He mentioned her and she yelled out, he writes, “You’re doing a great little Asian job.”
He adds, “I personally know Shane & Tony aren’t racist. In fact, I don’t think Chelsea is racist. Sure, she’s got a long history of promiscuity, an affinity for day drinking, publicly stated she’s prescribed a healthy dose of anti depressants, rumored to be awful to work for or with, has a punch card to a plastic surgeon, accused of punching down in her comedy, never been married or had kids & lives alone in her 50s, had dinner with Jeffrey Epstein but c’mon gang, she’s not racist.”
Handler also spoke with Cole during this week’s taping about a joke Hinchcliffe made referencing the death by suicide of The Talk co-host Sheryl Underwood’s husband. “Her husband committed suicide three years into the marriage. I’ve been sitting next to her for two hours, and I have to ask, how did he last that long?” said Hinchcliffe, who gained national attention in 2024 for his joke about Puerto Rico being a “floating island of garbage” at a pre-election event for President Trump at Madison Square Garden.
Handler said she found that humor “gross” and that despite Underwood clarifying she was OK with the joke about her personal life, it was still not what Handler considers fair game. “You know, she’s fine with that. If she says she’s fine with that, she’s fine with that. I wasn’t fine with that,” Handler told Cole.
Underwood, who received raves for her own performance at the roast, spoke out on the topic this week in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, saying that she agrees with Handler.
“I think people should be upset — like the George Floyd jokes, the bonsai tree joke, things like that,” Underwood told the outlet of Gillis and Hinchcliffe. “I want to get to know what is in your brain that makes you think that this is OK?”
Netflix’s roast of Hart follows its popular and equally controversial Roast of Tom Brady, which made headlines for weeks as backlash and counter-backlash ensued after the famed quarterback responded to the dark jokes in the days following the event.
The series is a descendant of Comedy Central’s airings of the notorious New York Friars Club roasts, which for decades delivered some very dark and incredibly funny jokes that are not for the easily offended.
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