It’s an ironic dicH๏τomy. But it’s what makes Jeff Ross the best at what he does.
Ross, dubbed “The Roastmaster General,” has seen his comedy career soar to new heights after hosting “The Roast of Tom Brady” on Netflix in May, which garnered 13.8 million views in just its first week after release. Ross subsequently had his own Netflix show, dubbed “Torching 2024: A Roast of the Year,” released last December.
He’s become known for his ruthless roasts. But they all stem from a positive origin.
“The secret sauce is that you have to love them,” Ross told The Post in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview as he takes over Super Bowl 2025 week with multiple shows in New Orleans. “We only roast the ones we love. If I don’t mention you, if I ignore you, that’s the insult. That’s the ultimate, that means I don’t like you.
“But if I take the time to think about you, your life, your career, even your appearance, it’s because I love you. I only roast the ones I love, and that’s really what it is for me. It comes out of respect. It doesn’t come out of animosity. I want everyone to leave the show quoting all the jokes.”
Ross made national headlines during the Brady roast when he joked “Tom became a Patriot, moved up to New England, and on the first day of training camp, that scrawny rookie famously walked into the owner Robert Kraft’s office and said ‘I’m the best decision your organization has ever made. Would you like a mᴀssage?’”
Brady then got out of his seat, and while smiling, said “don’t say that s–t again.”
It’s just one example of what makes Ross the “Roastmaster General.”
“It’s like medicine,” Ross said. “Laughter is the best medicine. Nobody wants their medicine watered down. They want their medicine potent, they want it to really lift them up, like a sH๏τ in the arm. I think it is healing. I do think everyone laughing at the same stuff is very healing. And that’s what everyone wants.”
When Ross first started in the industry, roast comedy was niche. Currently, it’s one of the most popular forms of comedy.
What changed?
“I just think roasting, when I first started doing it, was a boy’s club,” Ross said. “It was private, there were no cameras at the Friars Club. Now, it’s a live, three-hour Netflix spectacular. I think something about it, people like seeing comics be ruthless and speak truth to power. There weren’t any roasts for five years before Tom Brady had the guts to go ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ He wanted to bring roasts back. That’s why he did it. He wanted to push back on people pretending to be offended by everything. I gotta give him a lot of credit. He took the hits for three hours on live TV so the rest of the world could forget our problems for a few hours.”
That increasing influence certainly isn’t lost on Ross.
He cherishes it.
“That’s the great part of show business,” Ross said. “You just never know how it’s gonna be received, where it’s gonna go. Being a comic is like having a backstage pᴀss to the universe. We’re going to the Super Bowl. Went to the Grammys. People want to be around funny people. For some reason, it’s like a superpower. And I don’t take it for granted. I really, really feel very lucky in that way.”
