Comedian Sheryl Underwood sat down with the Flagrant podcast to address the controversy surrounding Tony Hinchcliffe‘s racially charged jokes at the Netflix roast of Kevin Hart, talking about what happened behind the scenes and why she refuses to apologize for her participation.
Underwood revealed that she actually met Hinchcliffe at the pre-roast brunch and the two spoke directly about what he was planning to say about her.
“Tony Hinchcliffe walks up to me,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’m coming. Your husband’s suicide and you’re being r*ped.’ And I said, ‘It better be funny. If it ain’t funny, I’m going to get your a*s.'”
Rather than treating the interaction as a confrontation, Underwood chose to size up the comedian and his intentions.
“I’m getting to know him,” she said. “I’m getting to feel him that he’s not all the way this dude.”
When the backlash erupted online, critics pointed fingers at the comics who sat there and laughed. Underwood pushed back on that framing, noting that every joke had to be cleared before it made it to the stage.
“Somebody had to clear that joke,” she said. “So if you cleared the joke, then that’s the type of humor we going with, whether it was funny or not funny.”
Host Andrew schulz then drew a clear line between roast comedy and standup, comparing the outrage to people seeing a UFC match on their phone at breakfast without the context of what they are watching.
“It is a roast. People got to understand a roast is different than a standup act,” she said.
When jokes from the show were amplified across social media and pushed into people’s feeds without that context, the reaction was predictably fierce.
Some critics went further, accusing Underwood of selling out the Black community by taking part in a Netflix production that allowed such material to air. She rejected that entirely.
“I believe I did the job where I also defended the culture and defended American humor,” she said.
For Underwood, showing up and delivering a strong set was itself an act of representation, not a betrayal of it.
As a Black Republican who has faced her own cancellation attempts over the years, including being listed on GLAAD’s website as a homophobe over a Comedy View joke, Underwood sees the discourse around the roast as part of a bigger pattern.
“I’m not going to get all these interviews right and I’m going to come to my thoughts,” she said, suggesting the controversy opened more doors than it closed.
What she wants audiences to understand most is that Hinchcliffe, despite his reputation, is not the cartoon figure some have made him out to be.
“People make up their minds without really understanding who somebody is,” Schulz said.
Underwood agreed with the comment, saying, “He’s a great villain.”
