The Roast of Kevin Hart aired live on Netflix Sunday night from the Kia Forum in Inglewood, and by Monday morning the conversation had nothing to do with the punchlines that landed. It had everything to do with one that should never have made it on stage. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, host of the Kill Tony podcast and a regular fixture in the Joe Rogan adjacent comedy ecosystem, used his set to deliver a joke about the death of George Floyd. The room went quiet. Kevin Hart did not.
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“The Black community is so proud of you,” Hinchcliffe said to Hart. “Right now George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard he can’t breathe.” Cameras caught Kevin laughing along with the line, and that visual is what the internet has been replaying ever since.
George Floyd’s family is not laughing. Travis Cains, spokesman for The Gianna and George Floyd Foundation, told TMZ that Kevin condoning Tony’s joke is “sad for the culture.” The family said Kevin should have pulled Tony aside before the show and told him to stay off the topic entirely, and they pointed out that Floyd’s 12 year old daughter Gianna is being bullied at school in part because of the way her father’s death has been turned into a recurring punchline. The foundation said they are working to rebuild their community and that this kind of performance does the opposite.
The joke also was not an accident. Hinchcliffe pulled the same move at the 2024 Roast of Tom Brady, where he joked that Rob Gronkowski looked like the final boss in “George Floyd the video game.” He referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” at a Donald Trump rally at Madison Square Garden in October 2024. He has built a career on slurs aimed at Asian, Latino, and Black people without ever offering a meaningful apology. Anyone who books him knows exactly what they are getting.That makes Kevin Hart the second question in the room. As the subject of the roast, his name was attached to who got the mic. He laughed at the Floyd joke in real time. He sat through Shane Gillis’s hosting set, which trafficked in racial material that several Black writers covering the night described as edging toward an open race war. He hugged Katt Williams to end their decade long beef in the same night he gave Tony Hinchcliffe a platform. The optics are not subtle. The accountability conversation is not going away.
Sheryl Underwood was the one who flipped the energy. In her own set she turned and faced Hinchcliffe and Gillis directly, warned Gillis about flirting with the n word on a live mic, and earned a standing ovation for the takedown. Pete Davidson also worked the room against Hinchcliffe, calling him out as a closeted bigot in not so many words. The Black women on that stage, including Underwood, Lizzo, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor, took the heaviest body and identity based jokes of the night. None of them walked out. They handled the room.
The bigger picture is the one Black media has to be willing to say out loud. Tony Hinchcliffe was not invited to The Roast of Kevin Hart by accident. He was invited because his presence guarantees a viral moment, and his viral moments are almost always built on the bodies of Black, Brown, and Asian people. Netflix knew. The producers knew. Kevin knew. The Floyd family is saying that knowing is the problem.
Actor and comedian Lil Rel also slammed Hinchcliffe, saying the joke about Floyd “made no sense,” calling the moment “disgusting.”
The hurt goes beyond the stage, as the constant jokes have real world consequences for Floyd’s family. Hinchcliffe also faced criticism for mocking Sheryl Underwood’s late husband during the same set, proving that for some, the anything goes format of a roast is being used as a shield for genuine cruelty.
For the Floyd family, the message is simple, the tragedy of a man’s life isn’t a prop for a laugh.
The world does not accommodate to anyone’s feelings. Don’t like it? Don’t watch it. You are crazy if you think you’re getting an apology from Tony H. Lame article