Shane Gillis Tried To Cope With Backlash To Kevin Hart Roast

Comedian Shane Gillis appeared on Matt & Shane’s Secret Clips to break down his experience hosting the Kevin Hart Roast, including the jokes that landed him in headlines and the media response that followed.

One of the more talked-about moments involved a joke about Sheryl Underwood’s late husband, who had ended his own life. Gillis revealed he actually called Underwood before the roast to feel it out.

“I felt like I was like, ‘This is a serious thing to make fun of somebody and I don’t know her well enough to be like…’ So, I called her,” he said. The call went better than expected. “I was like, ‘Hey, Sheryl, I got to ask you about this joke.’ She’s like, ‘You going to make fun of my husband for jumping off a building?’ I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s it.'”

Gillis told her he had no problem pulling the joke.

He said, “I have no problem not doing it. It’s probably going to make me look bad, so I’m definitely okay with not doing it. The next day I go into a meeting and I’m like, I don’t think I should do that joke. Left the meeting with four more jokes about it. I was like, it’s my entire set now.”

He tested the material across multiple cities before the show. “I did it in Nashville, Charlotte, Austin, and Boston. All four cities were like, ‘You got to do it.’ It’s unanimous,” he said. He also ran it at Chappelle’s in front of exactly the crowd most likely to object. “It was exactly who would be upset by it and they liked it.”

On the media response, co-host Matt McCusker was direct about where he thinks the criticism comes from. He said, “It’s just the media, dude. It’s like the media. The media is eye nasty. Commentators are eye nasty. Podcasters can be eye nasty at the weaker moments. We’re in an eye nasty ecosystem.”

He also pushed back on the general tone of media coverage beyond just the roast. He stated, “I like read the news now and it’s like every everything I read is like America’s over. We’re… No one will ever get a job ever again. And it’s just like, dude, why are you guys doing this to everybody? Don’t do that. That’s not nice.”