Michelle Wolf Releases Her Own Roast of 2024 After Netflix Nixed Her Political Jokes

Netflix didn’t want Michelle Wolf to make any potentially controversial political jokes on Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year, a show in which Tim Dillon pretended to be an undead Brian Thompson and told the audience that the late UnitedHealthcare CEO is working remotely from hell.

Given her success at both roast humor and political comedy, it makes absolutely zero sense that the decision-makers at Netflix Comedy tried to book Wolf on their 42-minute topical mini-roast, but told her that any jokes about politics would be a deal-breaker. Seriously, in an election year filled with drop-outs and attempted assassinations, Netflix instructed the former Daily Show star and White House Correspondents’ Dinner host to joke about the past year without touching politics, despite the fact that Torching 2024 featured both a Trump impersonator and Adam Ray doing his Joe Biden impression while throwing out paper pardons onto the audience.

While Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year was anything but apolitical, Netflix didn’t want the only comedian in their intended lineup who has made a career out of opinionated topical comedy to do what she did best. That said, they couldn’t stop Wolf from posting all her best punchlines online:

Given what astoundingly cleared the Netflix censors for Torching 2024, there’s no way that the streamer sent the same instructions to all its comics that it gave to Wolf. This begs the question of why Wolf was singled out, and the obvious, cynical answer is that, looking at the rest of the lineup, a group that included Tim Dillon, Mark Normand, Sam Morril and, of course, Jeff Ross, this was a comedy event intended to fall on the Joe Rogan side of the comedy culture war rather than the Hannah Gadsby one, and Netflix couldn’t risk an unapologetically left-leaning comedian ruining the metrics. 

Unfortunately for Netflix, whatever philosophy went into planning Torching 2024 led to a special that was a way too short, topical but not pointed and a repetitive exercise in meeting but not exceeding expectations. Outside of Dillon’s completely unleashed and unbelievably uncensored performance, Torching 2024 lacked any sort of point-of-view that would have made it memorable, as Netflix instead opted to have Ross make obvious jokes like, “Look! Our bartender is P. Diddy! Give me a baby oil on the rocks!”

Ultimately, I don’t think Wolf’s appearance on Torching 2024 would have made the special unwatchable by Netflix’s desired audience, nor would her act have been any more controversial than Dillon’s routine or Hannah Berner's Blake Lively diss. In Wolf’s own words, her only agenda is to create unity in a time of division. Said Wolf of the state of our country at the conclusion of 2024, “Our real problem isn’t our differences in opinion. We’re not each other’s nemesis. We’re all just people trying to figure out how everyone’s clothes stayed so white at the Diddy parties! I can’t wear white and drink coffee, let alone have it poured into my butthole!”