All the Most Brutal Burns From Netflix’s Epic Tom Brady Roast

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — There’s locker-room talk, and then there’s what the entire global Netflix subscriber base may have witnessed Sunday night.

Seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady allowed his former teammates, coach, owner, his longest on-field rival, a couple of celebrities and a pack of truly unleashed comedians go off on him in the largest-attended, longest-ever and most likely most-watched live broadcast of a comedy roast from the Kia Forum for the Netflix is A Joke Fest. The old Friars Club roasts in New York City may have gone longer and featured as much raunch back in the day, but none of those events were ever live streamed globally to a potential audience in the mega millions.

Kevin Hart set the tone and the bar below the belt from the get-go as the roast’s host, saying this about the Forum’s previous sports dynasty owners of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers. “They called this place Showtime because Jerry Buss used to show everybody his dick in this building,” Hart joked. “A lot of nasty shit has happened in this building … I wish I had a blacklight right now, I’d turn that bitch on now so y’all can see all the cum stains you sitting on in these nasty-ass seats.” He then cackled, adding: “Hahaha! That’s right. You better get comfortable being uncomfortable, baby!”

Everyone who followed Hart piled on Brady and each other. Athletes and comedians alike mocked the retired QB over his divorce from Gisele Bündchen, insinuated gay jokes about his on-field relationship with receiver Julian Edelman and off-field one with nutritionist Alex Guerrero, made light of the suicide of former teammate and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez, made fun of Brady for making and losing money off his relationship with cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. There also were countless jokes referencing the so-called Spygate and Deflategate scandals that plagued the Patriots during Brady’s tenure leading the team—several of which prompted loud cheers from a live L.A. audience packed with jersey-wearing Pats fans.

Before Hart even brought up the first roaster, he turned to Brady, cackling: “What an idiot! Why would you do this? What an idiot!”

Among the comedians, roast veteran Nikki Glaser scored the most points from the podium, even earning a standing ovation from the Forum audience. Among the athletes, Edelman brought the most heat in his time to shine, while Brady’s favorite target on the field in Rob Gronkowski proved he could be the biggest butt of the jokes throughout the evening.

Here’s a rundown of the metaphorical end-zone dances and penalty flags thrown during the three-hour spectacle.

HOUR ONE

Jeff Ross may call himself the “Roastmaster General,” but Brady almost served him a dishonorable discharge only 26 minutes into the event, standing up to get in Ross’s ear and bark, “Don’t say that shit again!” after Ross jokingly suggested that Brady introduced himself to Robert Kraft in 2000 by offering him a massage—a reference to the Pats owner’s biggest public scandal.

At the 40-minute mark, Glaser scored multiple times by slinging zingers at the expense of Brady, Hart, and Gronk. Among the two biggest laugh lines, she first told Brady: “You have seven rings. Well, eight now that Gisele gave hers back. I’m sorry, Tom. Tom, the only thing dumber than you saying yes to this roast was when you said, hey babe, you should try jiu-jitsu. I think — that’s gotta suck. Dude.” But then she followed up with this line that had everyone howling: “Tom also lost $30 million in crypto. Tom, how did you fall for that? I mean, even Gronk was like: ‘Me know that not real money.’”

HOUR TWO

In a moment the Netflix audience didn’t see but everyone in the Forum saw on their own big screens, a joke by comedian Sam Jay took a wildly unexpected turn when she attempted to take down fellow comedian Bert Kreischer, calling him “a disgrace to the legacy of fat funny superstars” such as John Belushi and Chris Farley and declaring: “If you were actually talented, you would have overdosed in a hotel room a long time ago.” When Jay claimed Kreischer doesn’t even do drugs, Kreischer pulled out a small baggie and pointed to his nose, prompting an eruption in the arena. Jay would get a standing ovation from her fellow comedians a few minutes later with a joke at Drew Bledsoe’s expense for losing his job to Brady due to an injury in 2001.

“The only ring you have is the one Tom won for you,” Jay told Bledsoe. “So your Super Bowl ring is just like my strap-on. Just because you wear it doesn’t make it real.”

Toward the halfway point, Will Ferrell made a surprise appearance as his Anchorman character Ron Burgundy, but he failed to get the mostly Patriots crowd in the arena to join him in chanting “Eli Manning made Tom Brady his bitch!” But he shrugged it off, claiming: “Actually, as disjointed as that was, that felt good.”

He then introduced former Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who called Ferrell’s Burgundy “the only member of the media I respect” and slagged Apple TV+ for its series on them, The Dynasty, referring to it as “The Roast of Bill Belichick on the 10-part Apple TV series.” But Belichick’s most successful topical joke came by knocking Brady for his part-ownership in the English football squad, Birmingham City, which just got relegated down to the third tier league over the weekend. “Not so easy running a team, is it Tom?” Belichick beamed.

Despite Pats owner Robert Kraft getting himself involved in his alma mater Columbia University’s response to ongoing campus protests, the only joke even referencing the current situation in the Middle East came from Edelman, who directed this joke at Ross near the 1-hour, 46-minute mark: “Fun fact: Jeff and I are both Jewish. The difference is I’m the kind of Jew that people look and go, ‘Oh, he’s Jewish?’ And Jeff’s the kind of Jew that makes you want to join Hamas.”

But it was all of the homosexual innuendos that prompted Hart to pause before moving the show along, admonishing the former NFL players. “This is live on Netflix! Like millions of people watching!” Hart declared. “Two white boys. Your dick, my dick, my balls, your balls, what the fuck is happening? It’s live television! No, Julian, no! Tom, you’re supposed to tackle him.”

Things only got more awkward when Hart introduced comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who introduced UFC founder Dana White sitting next to him at one of the tables, who promptly stood and took the mike to say: “It pisses me off. I flew all the way out here and you guys give me 60 seconds? My name is Dana. Is that not trans enough for you liberal fucks?” After a lack of response, White replied: “No?” then delivered multiple jokes implying Brady was gay.

Hinchcliffe got things back on track by walking up to the dais and singling people out as he walked, scoring big laughs. To Jay, Hinchliffe said: “Sam Jay everybody, killed. An obese African-American lesbian. So by having her, Netflix checked off a lot of boxes. She’s a black lesbo, which means she doesn’t eat pussy, she aw hell (g)naws on it.” And to Kreischer, he said: “Bert Kreischer is a king. He looks like if the Tiger King the Liver King only ate Burger King and had a liver that looked like if Martin Luther King got beat up by Rodney King.” And then he closed by turning to Kim Kardashian, who earlier almost got booed out of the building, by giving her this advice: “Close your legs. You’ve got more public beef than Kendrick and Drake.”

HOUR THREE

When it was finally Gronkowski’s turn at the podium, he had trouble reading the prompter and went off script, patting himself on the back for it after one of his many sexually profane jokes by announcing: “I’m creative. You guys all think I’m a dumb piece of fucking shit, but…well, I really am. I really am. Fucking, I run into people for a living. Obviously I’m fucking dumb.”

Gronk almost fumbled a planned bit to get Brady and Belichick to drink a shot with him, then made a mess of things by spiking his shot glass on the floor afterward.

Hart would get Belichick drinking again a few minutes later, doing shots with his newly-former boss Kraft as a peace offering. But not before Kraft issued a declaration across the globe to try to make up for his decision back in 2005 to give one of his own Super Bowl rings to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “In case Vladimir Putin, you’re watching, give me my fucking ring back, will ya!?” Kraft said.

Famous Boston sports fan and movie star Ben Affleck devoted too many minutes to attacking a random online fan who’d once typed disparaging words about Brady, and later wished he could avoid his own bad press conferences much like Belichick by simply saying “on to Cincinnati.” But Affleck’s time onstage could best be summed up by his initial dismissal of the whole idea of roasting: “This settles it. You won’t find me volunteering for the Ben Affleck Roast. Or as I like to call it, Thursday.”

After a surprise appearance from Peyton Manning, the guest of honor took center stage and was as cocky in his suit as he used to be guiding fourth-quarter comebacks in his Pats uniform.

To the NFL, Brady bragged that the league spent $20 million investigating whether he had a role in deflating footballs in 2015. “You coulda just given me the 20 million and I woulda just told you I fucking did it!” Brady said, prompting a standing O from his former teammates. He also thanked Kardashian for agreeing to participate, although he drew a shady stare from her when he threw her under the bus with a line about Kanye West: “I know Kim was terrified to be here tonight. Not because of this but because her kids are home with their dad.”

He also teased Manning for forever living “in my shadow,” told Manning’s younger brother, Eli, and the New York Giants to eff off, and torched Belichick with this bit: “Everybody asks me which ring is my favorite. I used to say the next one. But now that I’m retired, my favorite ring is the camera that caught Coach Belichick slinking out of that poor girl’s house at 6 a.m. a few months ago… Hey! You still got it! Respect, baby.”

But perhaps the biggest collective head-shaker resounded throughout the arena when Brady delivered the most memorable 9/11 joke since the late Gilbert Gottfried tried one during Comedy Central’s Friar’s Club Roast of Hugh Hefner in 2001. To wit, Brady said of himself and his football legacy: “The word hero comes to mind. But I struggle with that word, because like the rest of America I’ll always remember where I was that fateful day in September of 2001 when tragically, those two Jets slammed into Drew Bledsoe.”

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