Michael Che took aim at Netflix’s The Roast of Kevin Hart after the special aired, posting Instagram slides that questioned why a tribute to Kevin Hart had a majority white writers’ room. Che’s posts landed after viewers began picking apart jokes that pushed into George Floyd, slavery, lynching and suicide.
In one slide, Che wrote, “Let’s do a roast celebrating the career of the most successful black comic in the last 10 years,” followed by, “I love that! Who should we get to write it?” He then posted a photo naming Nick Mullen, J.P. McDade, Mike Lawrence, Dan St. Germain and Zac Amico, all five of whom were white, before adding, “Cmonnnnnnnn..thats not funny?”
The roast featured 17 writers in all, and some were Black, including Harry Ratchford, Chris Spencer and Joey Wells. Still, Che’s post pointed the conversation toward the makeup of the room itself, not just the jokes that came out of it. That matters because the special was framed as an honor for Hart, a comic whose mainstream success has been built over the last 10 years and whose profile reaches far beyond stand-up into film, TV and live events.
The backlash was sharpened by one line from Tony Hinchcliffe, who said, “The Black community is so proud of you… right now George Floyd is looking up at us all, laughing so hard he can't breathe,” a reference that drew immediate criticism. Tamika Mallory condemned the joke on Instagram, writing, “There is literally NOTHING funny about how George Floyd was murdered. Allowing that white man or any other man to stand up there and disrespect Us, while laughing, is disgusting.”
Che was supposed to be part of the roast but bowed out because of scheduling conflicts, leaving him on the outside looking in when the special went live. That makes his Instagram remarks more pointed: they were not a defense of the format itself, but a public challenge to who was trusted to write jokes for a Black star at the center of a high-profile Netflix event.
The unanswered question now is the one Che put in plain sight without spelling it out as policy: why was a roast built to celebrate Kevin Hart assembled with so many white writers in the first place? For a special meant to provoke, that is the criticism likely to outlast the jokes.
