{"id":635471,"date":"2026-06-12T20:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/635471\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T20:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:32:14","slug":"wanda-sykes-is-very-glad-to-have-turned-down-the-kevin-hart-roast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/635471\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanda Sykes is very glad to have turned down the Kevin Hart roast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wanda Sykes has never been shy about calling out comedy that punches down<\/a>, even if it\u2019s one of her friends who\u2019s doing the punching. It\u2019s no surprise, then, that she\u2019s very glad that she rejected Kevin Hart\u2019s invitation to appear in his Netflix roast last month, which was full of \u201clazy writing,\u201d as Sykes opined on Vulture\u2018s Good One podcast<\/a> this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cKevin called me before it was announced, and I said, No,\u201d says Sykes on the pod. \u201cHe said, \u2018Come on Wanda! It\u2019d be good! It\u2019d be good for your special, you\u2019ve got a special coming out.\u2019 I was like Kevin, you know I love you man\u2026 But he goes \u2018I know, I know it\u2019s not your thing. You would just come in, do your thing, and get outta there.\u2019 But they were like, \u2018No, you have to sit on the day,\u2019 so I was like, Oh, hell no. Hell no. No way in the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve consumed enough to go, Thank God I went to the Sparks game instead,\u201d says Sykes of what the roast turned out to be, which was full of tired, racist material. \u201cIt\u2019s just lazy, just lazy, lazy writing. But I thought the same thing with the [Tom] Brady roast, too. Seems like the roasts, they\u2019re just\u2026 recycled sexist, racist, gay jokes. Like, come on.\u201d Still, Sykes goes on to praise Chelsea Handler<\/a>, Sheryl Underwood, and Na\u2019im Lynn\u2019s performances in the show.<\/p>\n

Sykes addresses a few other hot-button comedy world issues during the interview. On Dave Chappelle<\/a>, she maintains that she still loves him, though she doesn\u2019t agree with all of his material. \u201cHe has the right to say whatever he wants to say, but I also have the right to tell him how I feel about it. But it\u2019s out of love. The guy\u2014he is so funny. He\u2019s funny, he\u2019s smart, I mean\u2026 I just know there\u2019s so much more. There\u2019s so much more there,\u201d she says. She calls his 2016 SNL appearance<\/a>, when he hosted the show after Donald Trump was elected the first time and asked people to give him a chance, a \u201cpivotal moment.\u201d (Chappelle has since disavowed<\/a> that statement.) Sykes says, \u201cI was like, uh-oh, I don\u2019t like where this is going.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wanda Sykes has never been shy about calling out comedy that punches down, even if it\u2019s one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-635471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}