If the goal was to generate maximum attention, the Tom Brady roast has been a success.
After the three-hour (two hours too long) live event on Sunday night, plenty of people have reacted to the content and the people who delivered it.
One of the big questions relates to the topics that weren’t included. Brady shut down jokes from Jeff Ross about Patriots owner Robert Kraft and the massage incident from five years ago. Appearing Monday on Howard Stern’s show, Nikki Glaser said she believes Brady’s reaction was real — and that she was surprised Ross made the joke, because Brady views Kraft as a “dad figure.”
She said that, after the event, Ross was concerned that he went too far with the joke.
“We have consciences about these things,” Glaser said. "[Brady] had to do it performatively for Robert, I’m sure. But I’m sure it’s not an issue that Jeff is gonna hear about today or anything like that.”
Glaser also confirmed that kids were off limits during the supposedly no-holds-barred event.
“We all collectively just decided not to involve his kids too much in anything, because they didn’t ask for that,” Glaser said. “So any kind of reference to anything with that, we left off the table. So I couldn’t say, you know, ‘Tom, hopefully we make out at the after party. You can pretend I’m your son.’ . . . I even was thinking about making a joke referencing the massage parlor thing, and then even when it was floated that he might be there I was like, I couldn’t possibly do that with that man in the room. Like, I just feel like he’s so powerful and such like a grandpa.”
Spouses, specifically ex-spouses, were not immune. According to People.com, Brady’s ex wasn’t happy with the content of the roast when it turned to her former marriage to Brady.
Per the report, Gisele Bundchen is “deeply disappointed by the disrespectful portrayal of her family on Sunday evening’s roast show. . . . As always, her priority is to support her children who were affected by the irresponsible content that was broadcasted.”
Shayanna Jenkins, the fiance of Aaron Hernandez, also did not like the jokes about Hernandez’s murder(s) and eventual suicide. Said Jenkins to TMZ.com: “It’s sad that I’m trying to raise my children in such a cruel world.”
The reaction to the Hernandez jokes was, from some, “It’s a roast. Cry more.” But, clearly, some things were omitted, in deference both to Brady and to Kraft.
So, basically, don’t defend the jokes about the Hernandez murder(s) and suicide by saying, “Boom roasted” if the assembled comedians consciously and deliberately opted to tiptoe through the two lips and/or the Orchids of Asia.