Wanda Sykes has weighed in on Tony Hinchcliffe’s George Floyd joke at Kevin Hart’s roast.
At around the 20-minute mark of a her new interview with Angie Martinez, Sykes gave her thoughts about controversial jokes and the Netflix roast. “It’s got to be funny, that’s the rule for jokes,” she said before bringing up Hinchcliffe’s controversial one. “The George Floyd joke was not funny. It was such a stretch, such a reach.”
Sykes went a bit further and critiqued the entirety of the roast, saying, “It was just a lot of lazy jokes about being black, and just racist, and a lot of lazy shit. It’s a roast: be funny, do better. There’s so much you could joke on Kevin about.”
The comedy world has been in an uproar ever since Hart’s roast last month, where Hinchcliffe 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 petition for Netflix to donate proceeds from the roast to the Floyd Family Center for Social Equity went viral soon after it aired.
Comedians Marlon and Shawn Wayans came to Hinchcliffe’s defense by standing up for his right to push boundaries — but they said the problem was that his joke wasn’t funny enough.
“You’re supposed to take it there,” Shawn said during a conversation with Hollywood Unlocked. “You gotta understand, if you take it there, and you go there, and you get that ‘Ooooooh,’ you better make sure the laugh is worth the offense,” Marlon added. “That laugh doesn’t hit, and that meter falls fast in your face.”
“It just wasn’t funny enough, and in this case, it’s too sensitive, and he didn’t find the right joke,” Marlon continued. “If you find the right joke and George Floyd’s family laughs, you did the right joke. If you go there, you better come out with some laughs, and his mother better be laughing the hardest.”
Hart eventually addressed Hinchliffe’s joke on The Breakfast Club, suggesting that it didn’t bother him.
“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,” Hart said. “You get why the racial humor is on the table. I wasn't shocked. Like, that's what they do. Go look at the Tom Brady one. That's what they do. It happens every year when they do a roast. It's not new.”
