SNL’s Weekend Update host Michael Che has some thoughts about race and comedy—and he’s not joking around this time.
In new posts to Instagram, Che, who is known for his own boundary-pushing jokes on Saturday Night Live, said that there are different understandings about what it means to be brutal during a roast, depending on who’s writing the jokes.
“White guys and Black people joke different,” he wrote in the screenshot comments he posted.
“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 f--- about they shoes.”
The comments followed Netflix’s The Roast of Kevin Hart on Sunday, where comedians jabbed Hart on everything from his height to his late father’s cocaine addiction. Shane Gillis made jokes about Hart that referenced slavery and lynching. MAGA comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a punchline out of the public murder of Minnesota man George Floyd. Che did not name names in his remarks.
The comedian was originally scheduled to take part in The Roast of Kevin Hart, sources told Variety on Tuesday, but withdrew due to scheduling conflicts with SNL, before voicing his complaints online.
Che’s Instagram profile, which only displayed three posts before his comments Tuesday evening, now features two more for his thoughts on the matter. He wrote in the other post, “Let’s do a roast celebrating the career of the most successful Black comic in the last 10 years,” referencing Hart. “I love that! Who should we get to write it?”
The next slide features a photo of some of the Roast’s white writers, prefacing the third slide on which Che wrote, “C’monnnnnnnnn… that’s not funny?”
A community note on the post identifies the pictured writers as those hired to write specifically for Gillis: Nick Mullen, J.P. McDade, Mike Lawrence, Dan St. Germain, and Zac Amico.
The note also clarifies that among the 17 credited writers for the show, three were Black: Harry Ratchford, Chris Spencer, and Joey Wells.
The Daily Beast has reached out to each writer of the Kevin Hart roast for comment, as well as to representatives for Netflix and Hart.
