• Michael Che was originally booked for the Kevin Hart Netflix roast but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with SNL
• After the show aired, Che posted on Instagram criticizing the difference between how Black and white comedians roast
• He shared a photo of five white joke writers hired by host Shane Gillis, questioning the creative choices behind the special
• The roast drew controversy for jokes about slavery, George Floyd, and crack cocaine made by Gillis, Tony Hinchcliffe, and others
• The telecast actually had 17 credited writers, several of whom are Black — Che’s post only spotlighted Gillis’s personal team

Michael Che was supposed to be on that dais. The Saturday Night Live star was originally booked to perform at Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart, which streamed live on May 6 from the Kia Forum in Los Angeles — but he pulled out before the show due to scheduling conflicts with SNL, according to two sources involved in the production. He wasn’t alone, either. The lineup apparently went through significant reshuffling in the lead-up, with several last-minute additions and dropouts along the way.

But Che didn’t just quietly bow out. Days after the special aired, he took to Instagram to make his feelings about the show very clear.

“White guys and Black people joke different,” he wrote. “Black guy roast like, ‘look at this n– – shoes!’ White roasts are like, ‘Slavery, math, slain teens, sex crimes, slurs, family secrets.’ White guys don’t give a fuck about they shoes.”

It didn’t take much reading between the lines to figure out what he was referring to. Host Shane Gillis made jokes about Hart’s height that invoked slavery and lynching — the lynching quip, Gillis admitted, required “three weeks of deliberation.” Tony Hinchcliffe went further, delivering a George Floyd joke that drew immediate backlash online. Jeff Ross, Dwayne Johnson, Gillis, and others mocked Hart’s late father’s addiction to crack cocaine. Pete Davidson and Hinchcliffe both landed jokes that referenced — without saying — the N-word. And multiple comics, including Katt Williams, cracked jokes about Hart once attending a Diddy party.

“Nothing was off limits,” Ross told Variety the day after the live telecast.

Che’s Real Target: The Writers Room

The Instagram posts didn’t stop at the jokes themselves. In a second slide, Che went after the people writing them.

“Let’s do a roast celebrating the career of the most successful Black comic in the last 10 years,” he wrote. “I love that! Who should we get to write it?” The next image: a photo of five joke writers hired by Gillis — Nick Mullen, J.P. McDade, Mike Lawrence, Dan St. Germain, and Zac Amico. All five are white.

“C’monnnnnnnnn… that’s not funny?” Che added.

McDade seemed to take it in stride, resharing Che’s post — but only the photo, not the caption. “Don’t swipe,” he wrote.

It’s worth putting Che’s call-out in context, though. The full roast had 17 credited writers, and several of them are Black. The five men Che highlighted were specifically part of Gillis’s personal writing team, not the entire production. Other performers, like Chelsea Handler, brought their own writers — Handler even posted a photo with hers and tagged them by name. Comedian Madison Sinclair, who performed in the special, shared some of her favorite unused roast jokes after the fact.

Sinclair’s set also became notable for a different reason: she compared Hinchcliffe to Melania Trump — a line that referenced his appearance at Donald Trump’s 2024 Madison Square Garden campaign rally. That joke made it into the live broadcast but was quietly removed from the version now streaming on Netflix.

Meanwhile, Hart himself didn’t sit quietly in the hot seat. During his response set, he addressed host Shane Gillis directly and took a shot at the long-running Hulk Hogan racism controversy — a moment that stood out in a night full of charged material.

The special also featured Tom Brady, Pete Davidson, Regina Hall, Usher, Sheryl Underwood, Draymond Green, and a surprise appearance from Dwayne Johnson, who traded barbs with several people on stage. The whole thing was a follow-up to Netflix’s first roast in 2024, which put Brady in the hot seat with Hart hosting — that special earned an Emmy nomination for live variety special.

As for what comes next in the franchise, executive producer Jeff Ross is already thinking big. “A pop star or a rock star would be great. A rapper would be great,” he teased, floating names like Drake and Stevie Wonder. Interestingly, the Hart roast spot was itself a second choice — Paul McCartney was approached first and turned it down. “To me, that would be a fantasy roast,” Ross said. “Paul McCartney doesn’t need anything, but a Paul McCartney roast would be good for the world.” Will Smith’s name was also reportedly thrown around at one point.

Netflix and Che’s management had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication. But Che’s posts are still up — and the conversation they started isn’t going anywhere.

The post Michael Che Quit Kevin Hart Roast, Then Called Out Its White Writers appeared first on Cream.

• Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart streamed live on May 10 from the Kia Forum in Los Angeles
• Chelsea Handler went after MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe and host Shane Gillis in standout exchanges
• Handler slammed comedians who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, calling out Pete Davidson and Jeff Ross by name
• The Rock, Tom Brady, Draymond Green, Regina Hall, and Pete Davidson all appeared at the nearly three-hour event
• Hinchcliffe fired back at Handler during his set, calling her a “cold frigid b—h”

Chelsea Handler showed up to Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart on Sunday night with a list — and nobody on it was safe.

The nearly three-hour live event, held at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles and hosted by Shane Gillis, featured roasters including Handler, Pete Davidson, Jeff Ross, Tony Hinchcliffe, Draymond Green, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Kevin Hart, 46, sat and took it all. But the moments that are going to be talked about the longest weren’t really about Hart at all.

Handler vs. Hinchcliffe — and the Riyadh Callout

Handler, 51, opened her set by going straight at the comedians in the room who performed at the Riyadh Comedy Festival — an event widely criticized over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record. Human Rights Watch released a formal statement condemning the comedians’ participation, citing the country’s record of censorship and ongoing abuses.

“Now that your favorite leader is making the draft mandatory,” Handler said, “I assume that all of you will be signing up to go fight the war in Iran. Or do you tough-talking p—ies only go to the Middle East for comedy festivals?”

Davidson, Ross, and Hart himself were among the prominent U.S. comedians who performed at Riyadh in 2025 — all of them sitting in the room as she said it.

Then she turned her attention to Tony Hinchcliffe.

“Tony is what happens when women don’t have safe access to abortion care,” she said, raising an eyebrow. She followed it up: “Tony, quick question: if you’re here tonight, who’s keeping Joe Rogan’s balls warm in their mouth?”

Rogan, 58, and Hinchcliffe have been close for years — Hinchcliffe co-hosts the Kill Tony podcast alongside Brian Redban, and the two have appeared on each other’s shows repeatedly. Handler’s shot landed hard.

Hinchcliffe fired back during his own portion of the night, calling Handler a “cold frigid b—h.” He also noted that he had turned down a $1 million offer to perform at the Riyadh festival himself.

Hinchcliffe is no stranger to this kind of heat. He became a political flashpoint after his appearance at Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, where he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and made a sexual slur against Latino immigrants. The backlash came from both sides — Trump himself said he had “no idea” who Hinchcliffe was. Despite all of it, Hinchcliffe landed a Netflix deal in the months that followed.

In May 2025, he explained his reasoning for taking the rally gig to Bill Maher: “When I was going in to do that rally, the goal, it wasn’t just to swing a few thousand votes hopefully… It was also to f—ing have the president go, ‘That was cool. Thanks, man.'”

Handler and Gillis Go at It

The other exchange that’s going to follow this roast around for a while happened between Handler and host Shane Gillis — and it got personal fast.

Gillis introduced Handler with a volley of provocative lines. “Chelsea is a Zionist. Not saying that’s a good or bad thing. Speaking of dead kids, she’s a big fan of abortions. Chelsea’s been scraped more times than the grill at Benihana,” he told the audience.

He then escalated: “Speaking of tossing tiny shrimp into a child’s mouth, Chelsea Handler went to dinner at Jeffrey Epstein’s house in 2010. Look it up, there’s articles. It wasn’t like a big party, there were like seven people there. It was like Prince Andrew and Woody Allen were there.”

Handler, who is Jewish, didn’t flinch. She came back swinging at Gillis’s own history: “Shane, just so you know, Judaism and Zionism are two different things. Just like how Chinatown and Koreatown are two different things, but your favorite slur works in both places.”

The reference was pointed. Gillis was fired by NBC less than a week after being announced as an SNL cast member in 2019, after old podcast clips surfaced of him using anti-Asian slurs. He’s since hosted SNL twice, returning in 2024 and again after that — but Handler made sure the room remembered.

The Rest of the Roast

In between the political fireworks, Hart took his lumps from everyone on that stage.

Jeff Ross, the self-styled “Roastmaster General,” walked out dressed in Eddie Murphy’s iconic red leather suit from Delirious and wasted no time: “Tonight, I’m dressed like your idol, Eddie Murphy. Because he’s not coming. Your idol doesn’t give a [damn] about you.” He also shared something genuinely moving — Hart’s joke at the Tom Brady roast two years ago, where he said Ross looked “sicker and sicker,” actually pushed Ross to get his first colonoscopy. Doctors found a Stage 3 tumor in his colon. “So thank you, little buddy, for saving my life,” Ross said.

Handler took credit for Hart’s entire career. “I was one of the first people to give Kevin a platform for his comedy with a weekly spot on ‘Chelsea Lately,'” she said. “I had no idea we would be subjected to three ‘Jumanji’ movies and two ‘Ride Along’ movies. I’m here to apologize.”

Pete Davidson compared Hart to Draymond Green’s Funko Pop. Regina Hall claimed Hart’s late mother, Nancy Hart, still communicates with her from beyond — and delivered messages from her to everyone on the stage, ending with: “She said, ‘I love you, Kevin Hart. Have fun on your big night. And now I have to get back to Michael Clarke Duncan.'”

Tom Brady made a surprise cameo — two years after Hart torched him at his own Netflix roast — then wisely left before things got truly unhinged.

And then The Rock showed up, introduced by Venus and Serena Williams. “The ‘Franchise Viagra’ is in the house,” Johnson announced. “Now this roast can go hard all night long.” He told Hart he loved him so much he’d gotten a tattoo of him on his crotch. “It’s life-sized too,” he added — and offered to show it to Hart’s wife Eniko, who was sitting in the audience. “I’m kidding. She’s already seen it.”

Hart sat through nearly three hours of it. The man earned whatever Netflix is paying him.

The post Chelsea Handler Roasts MAGA, Shane Gillis at Kevin Hart Netflix Special appeared first on Cream.

• The Roast of Kevin Hart streams live tonight on Netflix at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT from the Kia Forum in Los Angeles
• Shane Gillis is hosting, with the full celebrity lineup kept tightly under wraps
• The event caps Netflix Is a Joke Fest 2026, a week-long comedy festival running May 4–10
• The special follows the massive success of the 2024 Roast of Tom Brady, which drew 26 million views and earned an Emmy nomination
• “Roastmaster General” Jeff Ross has teased that “revenge” will be the theme of the night

Kevin Hart has spent years behind the mic, roasting everyone from Tom Brady to Justin Bieber with zero mercy. Tonight, the tables turn. The Roast of Kevin Hart goes live on Netflix at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT, streaming from the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Los Angeles — and by all accounts, the people he’s burned over the years are ready to collect.

Shane Gillis, the boundary-pushing stand-up comic, is hosting the night. Netflix’s own Tudum has described Gillis as someone who is “no stranger to walking the tightrope between brutal and hilarious,” promising the whole thing will be “a full-blown cultural moment” packed with “hard-hitting jokes.” That’s the official line. Unofficially? Jeff Ross — the self-proclaimed Roastmaster General — has already teased that the theme of the evening is revenge. Which, given Hart’s track record, makes a lot of sense.

Hart has made it clear he’s not nervous. On social media, he challenged his fellow comedians to “bring the heat.” But the man has also been the one doing the burning for a very long time — including a memorable turn hosting the 2024 Roast of Tom Brady and an appearance at Comedy Central’s 2015 Roast of Justin Bieber. The comedians showing up tonight have receipts.

What to Expect — and What Netflix Isn’t Telling You

The full roster of roasters hasn’t been officially announced, and Netflix is keeping it that way. The only confirmed names are Hart himself and Gillis. But if the Brady roast is any template — which featured Nikki Glaser, Chelsea Handler, Kim Kardashian, Ben Affleck, and Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy — expect a serious lineup of A-listers and comedians ready to go for blood.

The Brady special is the blueprint for what tonight could become. It spent three weeks in Netflix’s Global Top 10, racked up more than 26 million views as of March 2026, earned an Emmy nomination, and turned Nikki Glaser from a rising comic into a genuine household name overnight. Netflix clearly knows what it has with this format.

Plan for roughly three hours — the Brady roast ran that long too, putting the end time around 11 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT. And since this is a live stream, there’s an added element of unpredictability that no amount of pre-show planning can fully contain.

The roast serves as the closing night event for Netflix Is a Joke Fest 2026, the streamer’s week-long comedy festival produced in partnership with Live Nation, which has run across Los Angeles from May 4 through tonight. Hundreds of stand-up performances, podcast recordings, and comedy events have led up to this moment. Hart is the main event.

It’s also worth knowing that Hart comes into tonight fresh off his comedy competition series Funny AF with Kevin Hart, where he put rising stand-ups from New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago through their paces — including a segment where contestants had to roast NFL legend Marshawn Lynch. All eight episodes are streaming on Netflix now. Consider it the appetizer.

How to Watch and What It’ll Cost You

The Roast of Kevin Hart is exclusively on Netflix — no cable option, no free stream. A subscription is required, and the streamer currently offers three tiers: Standard with ads at $8.99/month, Standard (no ads) at $19.99/month, and Premium (no ads) at $26.99/month. Netflix does not offer a free trial, so if you’re not already subscribed, tonight’s the night to pick a plan.

If you’re jumping in late or need to step away, Netflix has you covered — viewers can rewind, pause, and jump back to live during the broadcast. If you start late, you’ll have the option to play from the beginning. After the live event wraps, it’ll also be available on demand.

Whatever happens tonight — whoever walks out, whatever gets said, whatever moments become the clips everyone’s sharing by midnight — Kevin Hart asked for this. He literally challenged people to come for him. After years of being the one holding the mic, he’s about to find out exactly how good his friends are at payback.

The post The Roast of Kevin Hart: How to Watch Tonight appeared first on Cream.