Netflix’s attitude toward stand-up comics has long been that of the permissive patron, inspired as much by co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ endless fanboying over the Dave Chappelles of the world as any more robust approach to free speech. So it was slightly surprising to hear that the streamer might have actually tried to put its foot down on what “truths” its beloved truth-tellers might be allowed to tell lately, allegedly telling comedian Mark Normand that he’d need to cut a joke about Muslim people from his recent special None Too Pleased, or they wouldn’t feel comfortable releasing the hour. And the reason for that implausibility actually turns out to make a lot of sense—because the whole thing was apparently a big fat lie Normand made up to draw more attention to the special.
This is per Seth Simons’ Humorism newsletter, which has been keeping tabs on Normand’s comments since he made them—amid annoyed denials from Netflix—around the special’s release back in March. At the time, Normand said that, after the streamer asked him to highlight some jokes from the special that he thought worthy of social media promotion, he got called into a meeting with Netflix representatives who told him they’d “reviewed the special” again and would “like to take out the Muslim joke.” (Simons notes that there are actually a couple of jokes about Muslim people in Normand’s special, so, y’know, dealer’s choice there.) Normand’s claim—on his podcast Tuesdays With Stories—was that he then got into a weird contest of wills with the company, where he first talked them down from cutting the joke, and then said he’d only agree to not promote the specific joke on social media if Netflix executives admitted on the call to him that Muslims “are a dangerous people.”
Which they supposedly did, because the great thing about being a fabulist is that you can make the fables as flattering to yourself as you’d like. (We all remember “The Tortoise And The Hare Who Aesop Kicked The Shit Out Of In That Big Race, Actually.”) Because this whole weird confrontation, Normand has now admitted, was a lie, something he revealed in an interview with Maury Povich this week. Povich was asking the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival performer about the conflict with the studio when Normand, who appeared genuinely confused by the question, suddenly had realization dawn before noting, “No, I fabricated that.” He suggests that Netflix did raise a concern with using one of his jokes in social copy—something sources from the company confirmed back in March—but that the rest of it, where Normand was some bold maverick forcing corporate toadies to admit they’re secretly Islamophobic, was totally made up. “I made it up, this whole story. So that, that was on me. I lied. They didn’t do anything wrong. I did.” Even Povich, a man who has witnessed a lot of extremes of human behavior over the years, seemed pretty shocked by Normand’s candor. “You admit that?” he asks incredulously. Normand: “Yep! You got an exclusive, see?”
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