Comedy Central has produced 22 celebrity roasts, which used to air on an almost annual basis up until the year before the pandemic. Among the big names who were subjects or honorees were Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Star Trek star William Shatner, rapper Flavor Flav, and our current president/TV personality, Donald Trump. Known for their anything-goes approach to insulting people, Comedy Central’s take on the concept was a far cry from the tamer Dean Martin roasts of the 1970s and 1980s, which made the shows controversial. For the most part, we got to see the best and worst of what was recorded for those broadcasts, even if someone bombed horribly.
One exception to the rule is the 2002 roast of Chevy Chase. According to several sources, was something you would’ve only had the chance to see in edited form once (in the pre-YouTube days, anyhow). Anthony Jeselnik, who worked on a few of the later Comedy Central roasts, recently said that the show was such a “fiasco” that the network actually threw it away—meaning they don’t even have a copy of it themselves. Comedian/podcast pioneer Marc Maron, one of the roasters that evening, previously told Howard Stern that Chase didn’t want to be there, and it’s not hard to understand why. Anyone who’s made it through the entire broadcast will surely agree with Slate’s assessment at the time that it was the “meanest” roast yet.
Chase seemed comfortable enough when people like comedian/musician Paul Shaffer and former SNL writer Al Franken roasted him, but his demeanor changed noticeably when comedians he didn’t know started taking their shots. Maron, for one, apparently overheard Chase make a remark off-screen that he was being roasted by nobodies and fired back by saying, “At least, you know, I’m a nobody at the beginning of my career.” There were also a number of cracks about Chase not being funny and his past drug use, including Greg Giraldo’s joke that the Caddyshack star was “living proof that you could actually snort the funniness right out of yourself.”
Additionally, Giraldo pointed out the lack of other famous people on the dais, suggesting that an “O.J. roast would have drawn more star power.” The reason for the poor turnout was addressed by Rachel Sterling in a Threads post from a couple of months ago. Sterling was involved with the show behind the scenes, and as she tells it, “The team at Comedy Central had trouble finding people to participate because everyone that knew [Chase] hated him too much.” On top of that, Sterling said, “During his ten-minute rebuttal, he insulted the entire room, calling us losers and idiots. During the edit, we struggled to find one [minute] of content that we could air.”
The final cut of Chase’s expletive-laden speech clocked in at just a minute and a half and ended on an awkward note. In a 2023 interview with Maron on his WTF podcast, Chase called the show “awful” and said that he didn’t think the other roasters liked him. Although it was scheduled for rebroadcast afterward, it’s believed to have aired only once. You can check out the infamous roast in all its edited glory below.
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