Adam Carolla Slams Chelsea Handler in Post-Roast Pile-On

Adam Carolla cursed out Chelsea Handler on his podcast this week, joining a growing list of comedians publicly attacking her over a row that began at Netflix’s May 10 broadcast of “The Roast of Kevin Hart.” Carolla, the 62-year-old podcaster and former “Man Show” co-host, called Handler “a piece of s***” on “The Adam Carolla Show,” defended Shane Gillis and Tony Hinchcliffe by name, and mocked Handler for citing her own white-blond hair while accusing the two comics of racism.

The fight is now in its third week. Three separate comedians have lined up against Handler since the roast aired, and the spat has bled into the Los Angeles mayoral primary, where Carolla used the same broadcast to attack Handler’s framing of Republican candidate Spencer Pratt.

The Podcast Outburst

Carolla devoted a chunk of his Tuesday episode to Handler’s claim, made on Deon Cole’s “Funny Knowing You” podcast on May 20, that Gillis and Hinchcliffe are “racist,” “bigots,” and “sexist.” He did not soften the rebuttal.

Chelsea Handler is such a piece of s***. No one cares what you find to be funny. It’s a Kevin Hart roast. The audience was laughing their ass off, so they find it to be funny.

Carolla said that on his Tuesday episode, then pushed the point further. “We’re not there so Her Highness can be pleased by jokes,” he added. “It’s not your roast. It’s Kevin Hart’s.” He then pivoted to Handler’s physical appearance, the kind of move that lands as either schoolyard or to-the-point depending on which side of the comedy aisle a listener reads it from.

“First, stop saying ‘white white white.’ You’re a blond. You’re the whitest of them all, and you’re skating by on your blond hair,” Carolla said. “Just shut up, tell the jokes or don’t.”

The episode aired on Tuesday, May 26. The same day, TMZ separately captured Carolla taking shots at Handler at a Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony where he teased fellow former “Man Show” host Jimmy Kimmel. Two venues, the same target, inside 24 hours.

Inside the Kia Forum Roast

Netflix’s live broadcast of “The Roast of Kevin Hart” aired on Sunday, May 10, from the Kia Forum in Los Angeles as part of Netflix Is a Joke Fest. Gillis hosted. The lineup included Handler, Lizzo, Pete Davidson, Draymond Green, Hinchcliffe, Sheryl Underwood, Katt Williams, and Jeff Ross.

Three pieces of material drew the bulk of Handler’s later criticism:

• Gillis on Kevin Hart’s height: “Kevin’s so short, you’d have to lynch him from a bonsai tree.”
• Hinchcliffe on George Floyd: “The Black community is so proud of you. Right now, George Floyd is looking up at us all laughing so hard he can’t breathe.”
• Hinchcliffe’s lines aimed at Handler: punchlines she said reduced her to “a whore or [her] age” and called “lazy” writing.

The first two lines landed in front of the Forum crowd, and the room laughed. Both also surfaced on X within hours, and that is where the row began. Handler, who had performed at the same show, raised her objections ten days later in the Cole podcast appearance.

She said the messaging she had received about Gillis and Hinchcliffe, from people she described as their alleged former partners, told her the two were racist and sexist. She also disputed the quality of Hinchcliffe’s writing, calling it “lazy.” What turned this into a news story was the condemnation, not the jokes themselves.

Three Comedians Lining Up Against Handler

Within a week of the Cole podcast, Gillis, Hinchcliffe, and Carolla had each gone public. None apologised. Each chose a different register.

Gillis kept it brief. “This is a big moment for Chelsea. I am glad she’s capitalizing. Good for her. We’re all rooting for her. Anyway, come see me July 17th at the football stadium in Philly,” his statement read. The 38-year-old comic, who lost a “Saturday Night Live” slot in 2019 over old podcast clips, now headlines arenas and stadiums.

Hinchcliffe was less measured. On “Kill Tony” Monday night, he disputed media accounts that Handler had bested him at the roast, calling the press coverage unreal and saying the teleprompter failure during his set gave him room to remind Handler “what she looks like and where her life is.” Complex reported he called her a vulgar slur on the same episode. Days earlier, on “Funny Knowing You,” Handler had described him as racist and sexist.

Carolla closed the trio with the loudest set of remarks, and the only one that pulled in a current political race. He took the row out of the comedy world and put it inside the Los Angeles election cycle.

The Spencer Pratt Detour

On the same podcast episode where he cursed Handler out, Carolla took aim at her recent comments about Spencer Pratt, the reality TV personality challenging Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 Los Angeles mayoral primary. Handler, per Carolla, leaned on Pratt’s identity rather than his platform when criticising the candidate.

“He’s white. He’s male. He’s heterosexual. Who’s the racist here?” Carolla asked.

Pratt’s official mayoral campaign, a registered Republican running a nominally nonpartisan race, has raised more than $500,000 since he announced his bid on January 7. Polling reported by Newsweek and Deadline puts him among the top two challengers heading into the June 2 vote, alongside progressive Nithya Raman, per Ballotpedia’s race tracker for the Los Angeles mayoral contest. His platform calls for boosting Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD, the city’s primary law-enforcement agency) funding and pulling back homelessness spending, positions Carolla has championed for years on air.

The detour matters because Carolla is now waging the fight inside an active election, not just on his podcast. Handler is one of the loudest entertainer voices for the Democratic side in Los Angeles. Carolla, whose recent attacks on the Oscar winner “One Battle After Another” followed a similar pattern, has positioned himself as the counter-voice, and he is using the Handler row to make Pratt’s case for him. The stalled Palisades fire rebuild Carolla flagged in February sits inside the same critique of Bass.

Comedy’s Post-Woke Reset, in Motion

The roast row sits inside a longer shift in stand-up. Netflix paid up for the live broadcast. The Forum was sold out. The audience inside the building responded to the contested material with sustained laughter. None of those data points fit the framing Handler offered on Cole’s podcast, which is why the comedians she named have refused to fold.

The Audience Has Already Voted

Netflix Is a Joke Fest filled the Forum’s roughly 17,500 seats for the May 10 broadcast. The roast streamed live and stayed on demand. Within 24 hours, clips of both the Gillis and Hinchcliffe sets ranked among the most-shared comedy content on X, with the lynching joke and the Floyd joke driving the traffic. Netflix has not pulled either segment from the on-demand cut.

Gillis sold out his summer Philadelphia stadium date inside an hour when tickets went on sale in April. Hinchcliffe’s “Kill Tony” tour has expanded into NBA arenas. Both have outpaced the network late-night hosts who routinely take swipes at them, and both keep their material in front of the same fanbase that filled the Forum.

Where Handler Sits in the Stack

Handler last hosted a network late-night show in 2014 and pivoted to Netflix specials, then to the political podcast circuit. Her current vehicle is a stand-up tour and a Spotify-distributed talk show. She remains one of Netflix’s most-booked comics for awards-season programming, even as other Netflix titles built around the same comedy framework have drawn fatigue-driven reviews.

The reckoning is that the part of the audience Handler relied on for two decades has thinned. The part Gillis and Hinchcliffe sell to has grown. Carolla, who built his audience on terrestrial radio and migrated to podcasting before Joe Rogan made the format mainstream, is reading the same room when he sides openly with the roast hosts.

None of this means Handler is finished as a working comic. She still tours sold-out clubs and her Netflix specials still get green-lit. What it does mean is the framework she defended on Cole’s podcast no longer commands the room it once did. Three comedians said as much in three different venues over four days, and the audience that bought tickets to the Forum agreed in real time.

The next data point arrives June 2, when Los Angeles voters file into primary booths and Pratt’s name appears on the ballot Carolla has been quietly campaigning for. The fight that started at the Forum is now booked across podcasts, politics, and the comedy calendar through the summer.