Jeff Ross says the only real tension at Netflix’s live roast of Kevin Hart came when Katt Williams showed up and started going in on Hart. The comic said the mood flipped fast after that, and that the rest of the night at the three-hour broadcast became a celebration.
Ross appeared at the second installment in Netflix’s series of GOAT roasts, hosted by Shane Gillis, and said he saw enough to know when the room changed. “The only real tension I felt was when Katt Williams appeared out of nowhere and started going in on Kevin,” Ross said, adding that Hart “looked a little tense” until he asked for the hatchet to be buried. “Kevin asked for the hatchet to be buried, and immediately the tension turned into celebration,” Ross said.
The roast mattered because it pulled together a crowd of comedy and celebrity firepower, with Tom Brady, Dwayne Johnson, Katt Williams and others there to roast Hart. Ross also wore a replica of Eddie Murphy’s red leather outfit from Delirious, a nod that fit the night’s anything-goes tone. He later said Hart’s wife, Eniko, was in on it and “a great sport,” a detail that helped explain why the event could play rough and still end in a party.
Ross said he and Hart did not actually talk until Williams came out on television, and he described the roast as a three-hour broadcast that even he nearly missed in part. During Hart’s speech, Ross said he went to the bathroom and told the room, “All right, I’m going to pee.” He said he apologized to Hart at the after-party for missing part of the show and later summed up the night bluntly: “I really did him dirty, and I did apologize at the after party.”
That apology matters because Ross had spent the week carrying a joke he ultimately dropped: “Kevin, your dad sold crack, and you literally sell everything except crack.” Ross said he had been planning to say, “Your dad was a street hustler and addicted to crack cocaine,” followed by, “So I guess being dependent on the Rock runs in the family,” a line aimed at Hart’s comedy, tequila and chain of vegan fast food restaurants. Instead, he left it out, and the roast stayed where the best roasts usually do — hard enough to sting, but with Hart and the room willing to laugh at the edge.
By Ross’s account, that is the part that still defines the night: not the celebrity list, not the outfit, and not the bathroom break, but the moment Katt Williams walked in and changed the temperature. The rest was noise, and by the end, Hart had turned it into his own show.
