Netflix’s Tom Brady Roast Really Shouldn’t Have Been Live
Tom Brady may be the greatest of all time, but his roast wasn’t. The thing is, it maybe could have been.
Netflix is all about eventizing these days, and probably the easiest way to do that — outside of sports rights — is live programming. Sunday’s “The Greatest Roast of All Time: Tom Brady,” had plenty of sports and too much live-ness for its own good.
More from IndieWire
The roast began at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, and proceeded to run, non-stop, for more than three hours. Never have commercials on Netflix been more needed. Or a video editor.
What was the point of doing this live? The danger, sure, but roasts are dangerous by their very nature. Live makes it an even thinner tightrope, we get that, but at what expense? The answer: enjoyment.
The Tom Brady roast was an OK three-hour and four-minute roast. It could have been a great prerecorded 90-120 minute event, just like those classic Comedy Central roasts. Of course, those roasts also ran longer, but were edited down to a digestible length — and they included commercial breaks. A good editor here would have been worth whatever it is Netflix paid Tom Brady to endure brutal jokes about his divorce from Gisele Bündchen, his relationship (or lack thereof, as the jokes went) with his children, and even a few well-placed Bridget Moynihan jokes. Well, there is probably no good place for them if you’re Bridget Moynihan.
Tom got it bad, and often he looked uncomfortable taking it. An editor could have made Tommy appear to be a better sport up there, picking and choosing reaction shots. The first thing to go would have probably been Brady’s reaction to a Jeff Ross joke about New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. Brady approached the dais and said in Ross’s ear, “Don’t say that shit again.” Well, he attempted to say it in Ross’s ear. Apparently the TB12 Method does not include whispering — or accounting for a hot microphone.
The Brady roast was part of the 2024 Netflix Is a Joke Festival. It was not the only live component: Katt Williams’ “Woke Folk” special went live on Saturday night, and John Mulaney’s “Everybody’s in LA” is also happening live, here and there, throughout the fest.
Netflix’s first-ever attempt at live was a Chris Rock standup-comedy special. Rock flubbed one line, which was edited out for replays, but otherwise it went off without a hitch. (At the time of this writing, the replay of the Brady roast is the same as the live feed.)
Netflix’s next attempt at live was a disastrous “Love Is Blind” reunion show. Then there was the silly live golf event and a less silly tennis match, and this summer, Jake Paul will fight Mike Tyson in an actual professional boxing match. In 2025, WWE’s flagship program “Monday Night Raw” is leaving USA Network (and Peacock) for Netflix. Presumably it will remain live.
It is no longer a flex for the streaming leader to live-stream. But when it does, Netflix needs a host who can move things along. Kevin Hart was the master of this ceremony, but it was no master class in hosting. Hart was almost certainly selected just so Netflix can have someone more famous than Jeff Ross run the show. We get that. The “Roastmaster General” was there, and he had a strong set in support, but Ross would have stayed on task better than Hart.
Hart had a few jokes about Brady and his fellow panelists up front; beyond that he awkwardly laughed through transitions from roaster to roaster, complimented other comics (that’s nice, but not a roast), and repeatedly told them that he could roast them back just as harshly — just not today. In his words, it wasn’t the time or the place. (It was literally both the time and the place.) In reality, he didn’t have the jokes. What he did have was a crutch: “Fuck you, Tom Brady.” Hart returned to that well far too often, and it dried up within the first hour.
Here’s the thing: Hart is a great hype man, he’s affable, and a show of this length needs a high energy level. He’s terrific at being the butt of a joke and allowing others to shine. He is also excellent at projecting his voice and playing much bigger than he is (not really a height joke — he got plenty of those last night) to an arena. The Forum, now branded by Kia, has a capacity of 17,505. But with production needs taking up significant space, Netflix says it was sold out with 9,100 people in attendance. That’s still a lot.
But Hart is also a comedian not particularly known for his writing, and he’s way too busy to spend much time writing for a silly roast. (“Borderlands” in theaters August 9th!) This is a lethal combination at a roast, where anything (vs. anyone) goes. That’s doubly bad when you consider the emcee has way more time at the dais than anyone else — especially when there are 19 (19!) other people (including Brady, who was more game in his rebuttal than in the hot seat) waiting for their turn at the microphone. That is way, way too many roasters when you don’t plan on trimming the fat in post, or even breaking them up with Charmin ads.
Let’s go through the field: Ben Affleck was a great surprise, but he was terrible on the mic. Like Hart, he’s just too busy and famous for this; unlike Hart, he’s not a comic. An unprepared Ben Affleck toward the end of a three-plus-hour roast with some of the finest comedians on the planet? No chance. Affleck tried a meta schtick about the toxicity of the internet — a one-note set that simultaneously dragged on and probably went over a lot of heads. Those who caught the quip were at best amused for a moment, and then bored by its redundancy.
After a chorus of boos, Kim Kardashian actually did quite well. Even better, she was brief. Here’s where we should point out that the majority of the roasters did not write their own stuff — or at least not a lot of it. That’s fine and it is common practice, especially when there are only a handful of comedians on the dais. And God Bless those writers — otherwise we would have had a night full of Rob Gronkowski ad libs. It still felt like we did.
Coach Bill Belichick delivered some good lines with a predictably poor delivery; forget editing out flubs, Belichick’s act needed ADR. Kraft was more sweet than funny, but he’s a kind old man who deserves a few minutes. Julian Edelman was pretty great; Gronk was terrible, as was Randy Moss. Drew Bledsoe was good, but could have sacrificed some stage time; Peyton Manning was fine, probably, but by the time he surprised Brady this battle was well into overtime.
Midway through the program, UFC promoter Dana White got one minute, for some reason. Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy was fun in theory, but the “Anchorman” character (and the genuinely nice Ferrell) were just not right for the tone of the show. Burgundy got far more than one minute, though he didn’t need it. We didn’t either. The joke was mostly just that he was there, in this decade. (The other joke was that he thought “there” was New York City; it was Inglewood.)
The “2 Bears,” Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer, were disappointingly bad. These guys are comedians — they should have known what they were getting into, and that if they didn’t have strong enough stuff, to bow out. Or they should have been bowed out in post-production.
Unlike the Brady roast, we’ve saved the best for last (and hopefully we haven’t gone on too long). Nikki Glaser has been the best roaster on the planet since Anthony Jeselnik’s jersey was retired, and she proved her dominance again on Sunday. The next-best roasters were Andrew Schulz (we were surprised too) and Tony Hinchliffe of “Kill Tony,” in some order. Sam Jay was very good for maybe 60 percent of her time — an amateur with iMovie could have made her a star.
Best of IndieWire
The 13 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in May, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal'
The Best Father and Son Films: 'The Tree of Life,' 'The Lion King,' and More
The 10 Best Teen Rebellion Films: 'Pump Up the Volume,' 'Heathers,' and More
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
