Tony Hinchcliffe Says His Podcast Is ‘Eating ‘Saturday Night Live’s Lunch’

Maybe you haven’t caught comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Kill Tony podcast yet, but live broadcasts of his improvised talent show sold out Madison Square Garden this month — twice. 

The show, tangentially part of the Joe Rogan-verse and usually recorded at Rogan’s Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, features Hinchcliffe, co-host Brian Redban and a collection of guest comedians serving as a judging panel for stand-up comics willing to trade exposure for potentially blistering critiques. Comics sometimes bomb, but the ones that kill can go on to bigger and better things (like appearing with Hinchcliffe at Madison Square Garden). 

“I feel like I haven’t even begun to come down yet,” Hinchcliffe told Pollstar after the MSG run. “It makes me feel more human getting a call from Andrew Dice Clay, saying, ‘That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been having trouble sleeping because of the adrenaline.’ He was the first (comic) to ever sell out Madison Square Garden. And here we are, however many decades later, and he’s losing sleep over it.”

Hinchcliffe’s star has been on the rise thanks to his incendiary set at the Tom Brady roast, arguably enjoying the biggest career boost of any comic not named Nikki Glaser. Say this for Hinchcliffe — he pulled no punches on that Netflix stage, letting loose with the kinds of racially and sexually charged punchlines that Bill Maher insists will get you canceled. 

The edgy set shouldn’t be surprising. Hinchcliffe has set off those kinds of fireworks before, getting dropped by his agency WME and even removed from appearances with Rogan in 2021 after racially charged jokes aimed at Asian-American comic Peng Dang. Among other things, Hinchcliffe called Dang a “filthy little fucking ch**k.”

Hinchcliffe told Variety earlier this summer that he’s never made amends with Dang, standing by his number one rule of comedy: Never apologize. “I knew that what I had done was not wrong. It wasn’t even the worst thing I did that week,” he maintained. “My stance is that comedians should never apologize for a joke, should never stop working if everyone comes after them and should never slow down.”

The comic’s career seems to be in full recovery as the Kill Tony podcast picks up steam. The show, Hinchcliffe told Pollstar, is “just absolutely eating Saturday Night Live’s lunch. Shane Gillis doing his Donald Trump, Adam Ray as Joe Biden, Dr. Phil and many more — they could have had that. These are the new stars, the backbone of modern-day comedy, and having worked with these guys forever, and finally putting them in positions to be seen in their finest light, doing their funniest stuff, watching them break character because they’re cracking each other up, is just priceless. 

“It’s not written out, it’s not rehearsed. Everything is improvised, and that’s the secret sauce of Kill Tony.”