Kevin Hart Says Tony Hinchcliffe ‘Arguably Had the Best Set’ at His Netflix Roast Despite Backlash: ‘I Don’t Expect Less. I Don’t Expect More’

Kevin Hart is speaking out about Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial set at his Netflix roast.

“Yeah, the George Floyd joke, it wasn’t a tasteful joke to our culture, to our audience, but our audience that’s watching the roast, if you’re watching the roast, you get why they’re doing it. You get why the racial humor is on the table,” Hart said Tuesday on “The Breakfast Club.” “I wasn’t shocked. That’s what they do. Go look at [The Roast of] Tom Brady, like, that’s what they do. It happens every year when they do a roast.”

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As noted by Hart, Hinchcliffe’s joke about George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by police in 2020, was met with particular backlash from critics. During his set, Hinchcliffe told Hart, “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.”

When asked if he thought the “Kill Tony” host ever crossed the line, Hart said, “I don’t expect less. I don’t expect more.”

“Tony Hinchcliffe arguably had the best set or one of the best sets,” Hart explained. “Pete [Davidson] had a great set, too. Pete had a Charlie Kirk joke in it. Like, would I tell those jokes? No. But do I get why they’re being told? Yes. I’m not looking at Pete crazy. I’m not looking at Tony. That’s what I know you’re going to do. I know your style of comedy.”

Hart also made sure to emphasize that he doesn’t want any part of the discourse surrounding the controversial material at his roast.

“Whatever the dialogue is, my rebuttal is simplicity,” Hart said. “Remove me from it. I didn’t say it. If you are upset that the night went on, that’s a different conversation. It’s nothing I could do. It’s a production.”

About a week after “The Roast of Kevin Hart” aired on Netflix, roaster Chelsea Handler slammed the jokes of Hinchcliffe and host Shane Gillis as “racist” and “sexist.” She took particular issue with a joke told by Gillis, in which he said that Hart is “so short, you’d have to lynch him from a bonsai tree.” (Gillis maintained during the live broadcast that the joke took “three weeks of deliberation.”)

“It was gross. I don’t find those jokes to be funny — jokes about lynching Black people,” Handler said. “Lynching is not a joke. That’s worse than rape. You’re not joking about rape, are you? … You know you can’t do that, but you can say ‘lynching’?”