“I knew they would be lazy, because they do that for a living,” Handler said of Gillis’ and Hinchcliffe’s jokes about her. (Gillis called her a Zionist and referenced her meeting Jeffrey Epstein in 2010.) Handler went on to say that ahead of the roast, some of Gillis’ ex-girlfriends had DM’d her and shared information about him. When pressed, Handler said, “It’s just everything we know: That they’re racist, that they’re bigots, that they’re sexist, that they think that they’re invincible, that they’ve been cancelled for being… you know, Shane got fired from SNL, but then was on SNL years later… So what happened between those two events? So he believes—this is per one of his exes—that he’s invincible. It’s like, ‘Doesn’t matter. I can say anything I want.'” Handler went on to say that a lot of white comics perform racist material to try to court the “Roganites and that Austin group.”
“It was ick. It was gross,” Handler said of the material at the roast. “I don’t find those jokes to be funny. Jokes about lynching Black people or… lynching is not a joke. That’s worse than rape. You’re not joking about rape, are you? Are you saying, ‘I’m gonna go rape you?’ You know you can’t do that, but you can say lynching? I find that to be… I don’t know. People are like ‘it’s a roast, you can go for it.’ I’m like, you can go for it without being gross. I find that to be gross, I found them making fun of Sheryl Underwood’s dead husband who committed suicide… if she says she’s fine with that, she’s fine with that. I wasn’t fine with that. I thought that was disgusting, too.” Per Variety, Underwood has since appeared on Gillis’ podcast and said again that she was fine with the jokes.
“But there was so much disgustingness that I knew it was going to be such a gross vibe that I would be able to elevate it, no problem,” continued Handler. “I was like alright, well, I’ll pick it up because they’re going to try to bring it down. And Kevin didn’t deserve that. He deserved, like, an elevated roast.”
Handler’s criticism comes after SNL‘s Michael Che called out some of the racist humor at the roast last week. In a statement to Variety, Gillis said, “This is a big moment for Chelsea. I am glad she’s capitalizing. Good for her. We’re all rooting for her. Anyway, come see me July 17th at the football stadium in Philly.”
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