Saturday night's Kevin Hart roast came out swinging. The early consensus around Barstool HQ was that this thing was cooking from the jump — Jeff Ross doing Jeff Ross things, Cheryl Underwood stealing a chunk of the night, and Hart sitting in the hot seat taking it on the chin. By every standard measure, Netflix delivered the goods.
The room verdict on Ross as the night kicked into gear.
Jeff Ross is one of the greatest roasters of all time. Every joke is hilarious. You almost feel bad for Kevin Hart
But by Sunday morning, Portnoy had logged on with a gripe that has been quietly bugging comedy nerds for a while now. His issue isn't with the roast itself — it's with the credit being handed out. When a celebrity or an athlete flies in, stands at a podium, and reads jokes off a teleprompter that a room full of professional writers cooked up, that shouldn't get filed under "roasting." That's a read-through, not a set.
Portnoy lays out the core complaint on video.
He clarified the take pretty quickly, because the internet being the internet, people ran with it. Portnoy isn't saying comedians can't use writers — he's saying if the person on stage actually sat in the room and contributed, that's the gig. The line he's drawing is at the people who parachute in, hit their marks, and collect roaster credit on the way out.
The clarification on where the line actually is.
And I said if the comedian sits in a room with the writers and contributes i have no problem. Thats what I do. But it shouldnt count as roasting somebody if. you just fly in and read a teleprompter
And he's not even trying to dunk on the deliveries. Portnoy's follow-up basically conceded that a lot of these celebs are great actors with sharp timing — that's a real skill, and the laughs they got were earned in the moment. He just wants the credit pointed at the right thing: call them good performers, not call them comedians. It's a fair distinction, and one that probably explains why stand-ups have been grumbling about the celebrity-roast era for years.
Portnoy splits the credit between delivery and writing.
Correct. They should be complimented for being good actors and having a great delivery but not for being comedians or being funny. I’m just saying for the people who had no part of writing the jokes
Whether you agree or not, it's a real conversation about what the roast format even is in 2026. Netflix has turned these into event television, and the format works because everybody's in on it. But the next time a non-comedian crushes a roast set, just remember somebody in a writers room ate cold pizza for two weeks to make that happen.