Netflix is defending its executives after comedian Mark Normand claimed they “admitted” that Muslims are “dangerous people.”
Normand, whose second stand-up special with the streamer, None Too Pleased, was released last week, made the claim on his Tuesdays With Stories podcast.
The comedian said he was asked to “take out the Muslim joke” from the special after he posted a clip of it on social media.
“I got a big joke about Muslims,” he said. “And I go, ‘Oh, why?’ And they go, ‘Well, last time a comic did a Muslim joke, we got bomb threats. We got death threats. They said they were going to kill us. They ruin the whole studio, blow the place up to smithereens. So, we’d like to not use the Muslim joke.’”
A Netflix source told The Hollywood Reporter that the anecdote “is an embellishment,” and that they had advised Normand “that we’re a global company and to be careful with the clips and jokes he used to promote the special on his own social channels.”
But Normand didn’t stop there. “I was like, ‘OK, OK. I don’t love it, but okay. I will take it off on one condition… I want you to admit on this call that they are dangerous people.’” He added, “They admitted it.”
Netflix strongly denied Normand’s account, which the source told THR is “not true, not correct, completely false.” The source also said that the call in question was between Netflix and Normand’s reps, and therefore, the exchange could not have even happened.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Normand’s representative for comment.
The comedian, whose last Netflix special, Soup to Nuts, was released in 2023, claimed there was even more to the conversation, describing a buildup to the big admission. “I was like, ‘You gotta admit it, or I’m posting it,’” Normand claimed, describing blubbering “like a horse” from the other end of the conversation. “They go, ‘Well, we’re not going to do that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why not?’ They go, ‘Well, that’s offensive.’ And I go, ‘That’s what the call is. You’re calling about this, and I just need you to say it out loud.’”
“That’s a microcosm of the whole thing of, you can say, ‘Hey, I love this group,’ but then you don’t live near them. We’re all talk. We’re all signaling. We’re all virtuous, but you don’t actually act that way,” he added, “So, that’s what I was getting at.”
Normand regularly jokes about sensitive topics, including trans people and the disabled. He joked in one stand-up clip still up on his Instagram profile from August, “We got any Muslims here? Hopefully, only one of us bombs.”
