Marlon and Shawn Wayans have weighed in on Tony Hinchcliffe’s George Floyd joke at the Kevin Hart Roast.
While speaking to Hollywood Unlocked, Marlon and Shawn expressed their support for the style of comedy that Hinchcliffe was going for—even if it didn’t land.
“You’re supposed to take it there,” Shawn said in the clip below, prompting Marlon to follow up with his similar perspective.
“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 said. “That laugh doesn’t hit, and that meter falls fast in your face.”
Shawn followed up, calling the joke bombing a “consequence” for not being funny.
“It just wasn’t funny enough, and in this case it’s too sensitive, and he didn’t find the right joke,” Marlon added. “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.”
Hinchliffe has been facing a serious amount of backlash for mentioning Floyd during his turn to speak at Hart’s roast.
“The Black community is so proud of you,” he said. “Right now, George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard he can’t breathe.”
While Hinchcliffe has been silent amid his backlash, many people have made it clear they don’t like what he said. A petition for Netflix to donate proceeds of the roast to the Floyd Family Center for Social Equity has received more than 10,000 signatures.
Floyd’s brother, Terrence, said during an appearance on The Breakfast Club that Hart should have stopped the joke, similar to how Will Smith stopped Chris Rock from joking about Jada Pinkett Smith at the 2022 Academy Awards.
Meanwhile, Hart himself posted a video on Instagram praising Hinchcliffe’s set at the roast, saying that the comedian was “relentless as he always is, but funny” and “understood the assignment.”
