Stand-up comedian Jeff Ross is counting the days until he can get his revenge on Kevin Hart for his “vicious” performance at 2024’s Netflix roast of Tom Brady.
“My own attitude towards it—I don’t want to ruin any surprises, and there’s going to be some great surprises on this one—but it’s revenge,“ Ross, 60, told Obsessed: The Podcast of this weekend’s big event.
“The engine of this Kevin Hart roast will be that he’s a comic at the top of the game and he wants his friends, people from his life, people he knows well, to roast him,” the Roastmaster General said. “This is going to be a comic’s roast.”
Ever since last year’s The Roast of Tom Brady, for which Hart, 46, served as the roastmaster, comedians have been itching for their chance to get back at him.
“He was really mean. He was really mean last time, to me, to Tom. I was there, I talked Tom into it, and then Kevin was so freaking vicious,” Ross said.
“I was like, ‘There’s no more protecting Tom on this,’” Ross recalled, having watched Hart’s roast from the backstage monitors.
In his roast, Hart dug into the retired NFL star’s divorce from model Giselle Bündchen, jabbed at his strained relationship with Patriots coach Bill Belichick, and outright said “f--- you” to the former quarterback no fewer than seven times.
Brady, 48, has since expressed his regret at taking on the roasts and stated that he “wouldn’t do that again.”
“I didn’t like the way they affected my kids,” he said of some of the jokes on a podcast following the roast. “I wouldn’t do that again because of the way that it affected, actually, the people that I care about the most in the world.”
Hart, who claimed that he is the first proper comedian to be roasted in a show that has previously targeted celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Donald Trump, and Alec Baldwin, has acknowledged Brady’s discontent.
“Moving forward, if they’re roasting someone and there’s something crazy that they don’t want, then it’s just a conversation beforehand, and people just go around it,” he said in response to the quarterback’s complaints.
Even though the comedian has welcomed the opportunity to be on the receiving end of a Netflix roast, he may regret his decision come Sunday. His own life is rife with roast topics.
In 2017, Hart admitted to cheating on his then-pregnant wife while on a drug-fueled Las Vegas trip. The footage of the affair was then used in an attempted multimillion-dollar extortion against Hart years later, leading to him issue a public apology.
Just two years after the incident, Hart stepped down as the host of the 91st Oscars when a series of his homophobic tweets resurfaced. All of these events could be fair game once Hart takes the stage.
“So now, Kevin has agreed to be roasted,” Ross, who even has “Born to Roast” tattooed on his arm, said. “And I’m like, ‘OK. The swords are out. This is gonna be no holds barred.’”
Ross dodged the question of whether Brady, or other former targets of Hart’s wrath, would return to get their revenge in person
“Well,” Ross said, pausing. “There’ll be some surprises.”
The Roast of Kevin Hart will stream live on Netflix on Sunday, May 10 at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT).
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