Prolific Emmy-winning comic Wanda Sykes, known for her tell-it-like-it-is style, recently revealed she ruffled some feathers in the scene — having turned down an appearance on Netflix‘s The Roast of Kevin Hart and getting unprompted feedback after a joke she told about Bill Maher at the 2026 Golden Globes.
During a recent appearance on Vulture‘s Good One podcast, tied to the release of her seventh standup special, Legacy, also on Netflix, Sykes noted Hart asked her to attend early on but she declined.
“Kevin called me before it was announced, and I said, ‘No!’ And he said, ‘Come on, Wanda. Come on. It’ll be good. It’ll be good for your special,'” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Kevin, you know I love you man, but…’ He goes, ‘I know, I know it’s not your thing.'”
When asked if she watched enough of the three-hour-long event to judge whether that was the correct decision, Sykes quipped, “Thank God I went to the [Los Angeles] Sparks game instead.” Responding to a question about how “it went so wrong,” the Monster-in-Law star answered: “Just lazy writing. But I thought the same thing with the [Tom] Brady Roast, too. Seems like the roasts, they’re just recycled sexist, racist, gay jokes. Like, come on.”
Last month, stars across comedy, film and music came together at the Kia Forum to participate, with appearances from and jabs thrown by the likes of Usher, Katt Williams, Teyana Taylor, The Rock and many others. The event was hosted by Shane Gillis and featured divisive manosphere comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who made jokes about lynching and slavery, respectively. Both were called out with incisive lobs during the event itself by comics like Chelsea Handler, Sheryl Underwood and Pete Davidson.
Elsewhere on the podcast, Sykes was asked if the notoriously outspoken Maher had anything to say about her joke, in which she quipped: “You give us so much. But I would love a little less. Just try less.” The wisecrack clearly landed with the audience, though the cameras picked up the late-night host’s face dropping.
Sykes said Maher approached her immediately following the fete, while she was waiting for her car. “And he was like, ‘What was that about?’” she remembered. “And I was like, ‘It’s a joke, Bill.’ He’s like, ‘Well, I mean, it wasn’t even a joke.’ I said, ‘Oh no, I heard laughing. It was clearly a joke.’“
““He’s like, ‘But I don’t… I don’t… but, I mean, like, what, I mean, but still… I mean, it’s not even a joke. It was just like…’ I said, ‘See? You’re doing exactly what we said in the joke. We need less of this. You epitomize the joke. Less of this!’ He didn’t care for it,” she said.
Sykes added that Maher told her he was fielding texts from people who weren’t fans of the bit and thought it was “stupid,” prompting her to hit back: “Well, I got a lot of texts telling me how great it was and how they don’t like you, and it was really funny.”
She concluded, “I guess that’s the problem. You’re watching Fox News, and I’m over here on MSNBC. And then he asked me to be on his podcast. I was like, ‘Absolutely not!’”
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