Out of all the people that Comedy Central has ever roasted – and we’re talking about everyone from Joan Rivers to Pamela Anderson to William Shatner to Charlie Sheen, James Franco and Donald Trump – Justin Bieber could be the juiciest subject of all. With his egg-throwing, sizzurp-slurping, Lamborghini-racing and urinating in a mop bucket, the young pop superstar’s antics make for a veritable minefield of comedic fodder.
That’s a lot of material to throw at someone who just turned 21 years old, not to mention his Canadian citizenship, his tabloid-y love life and the insane devotion of his millions of fans worldwide.
Bieber’s Roast, taped before a live audience at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City on March 14, may be the most politically incorrect one yet – and the most outrightly hysterical.
Wearing a suit and tie and descending from the studio rafters on angel wings, an allusion to his fans’ image of him going back to when he broke out as a singing sensation on YouTube at the age of 12, Bieber looked like a nervous young man going to court as he faced the panel of his tormentors. They were people he personally chose to be there, expanding the parameters of the normal Comedy Central roasting crew.
We’re talking Martha Stewart, Shaquille O’Neal, Ludacris and Snoop Dogg, none of whom are especially known for their comedy chops, but you would be surprised at the laughs they generated.
And then there was roaster regular/extraordinaire Jeffrey Ross, because there can’t be a Comedy Central roast without him, along with Pete Davidson, one of “Saturday Night Live’s” new cast members– who made quite a splash–plus comedians Natasha Leggero, Chris D’Elia and Hannibal Buress, the guy who brought down Bill Cosby by making jokes about his alleged drugging and sexually assaulting a number of women.
Add to this mix roast master Kevin Hart, and the results were incendiary. With his new film “Get Hard” about to premiere, there was also a surprise guest—co-star Will Ferrell, in the guise of Ron Burgundy. Cue the standing ovation from the raucous crowd, where there was not an empty seat in the house.
Sure, there were the requisite penis and vagina jokes, with O’Neal and Stewart as their main targets. But there were also extremely questionable fast and furious gags about Paul Walker and 9/11, not to mention a massive dose of racial humor and countless n-words being thrown around the stage.
“We’re here to give this boy an ass-whipping his parents should’ve done. Justin Bieber lives for the sound of screaming girls – and pedestrians on his windshield,” Hart said about the teen idol. “Justin wants to be black so bad that he bought himself a case of sickle cell anemia. He thinks he’s gangster, but gangsters don’t get in fights with Orlando Bloom and gangsters don’t throw eggs.”
Davidson weighed in about Hart with this: “It’s an honor to be at a roast hosted by Shaq’s dick. Kevin, I love you as black Annie.” As is traditional, he then went on to trash some of his fellow roasters. “If I was 38, I’d be excited to see that Ludacris is here. You’re the biggest rapper of 2001. Martha, congratulations on being a house mother at the University of Oklahoma. There are two black billionaires, Dr. Dre and the guy who sells Snoop his weed.” And he directed this barb at Bieber– “Justin insisted that Robitussin sponsor the afterparty.”
Leggero also ragged on O’Neal. “Shaq’s dick is so big that he has to use Dropbox to send a dick pic,” to which O’Neal, predictably, retorted, “I haven’t seen this disappointing of a lineup since the Lakers.” Of Bieber, he said, “He’s worth $200 million—or four packs of Kools in jail.”
Speaking of jail, Stewart, who infamously did some time for insider stock trading, gave Bieber some advice for when he may inevitably end up there. “The first thing you’ll need is a shank. Then, if you want a player in the board room and a freak in the bedroom, someone you can smoke a joint with and have a three-way, call me,” she said.
Regarding Bieber’s notorious trip to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, in which he wrote in the guestbook that [had she not died at the hands of the Nazis] she would’ve hopefully been a Belieber, Buress had this to say: “If Anne Frank had heard your music, she would have Ubered to Auschwitz.”
After making a highly tasteless joke about Paul Walker’s fatal car crash, Buress name-dropped other dead entertainers and concluded with this admonition to Bieber, “You’ll never end up like Kurt Cobain or Amy Winehouse (long pause)– respected.”
(The “Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber” premieres on Monday, March 30 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT.)
