Jeff Ross to make his Broadway debut this summer in one-man show that's far from a roast
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeff Ross, a comedian known for hosting brutal roasts of celebrities, is coming to Broadway this summer with a one-man autobiographical show that will offer fans a softer, more intimate side.
'The hard part for me is letting go of a bit of my armor — of my roastmaster persona — and letting the audience get to me so that I can then get them,' he tells The Associated Press ahead of a formal announcement Wednesday. 'I think it's healthy to change it up and surprise people.'
'Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride' will play the Nederlander Theatre starting Aug. 5 for an eight-week engagement through Sept. 29.
The show will explore Ross' close relatives, especially his grandfather on his mother's side — Ross calls him 'the hero of my childhood' — who stepped up after the comedian's parents died when he was a teenager.
'It's very autobiographical, but it's also not really about just me. It's about all of us. When I talk about my uncle or my mom, I want you to see your uncle and your mom in the stories. That's really important to me,' Ross says.
'It's very joyful. It kind of takes the stigma out of loss and sickness and lets people know that they're going to be OK no matter what happens.'
The title comes from the days when Ross was living with his grandfather in New Jersey. The younger man would take his grandfather to doctor visits or visit him in the hospital during the day and at night go into New York for open-mic nights.
'My grandfather would always give me money for the bus and a banana, and he'd say, 'Take a banana for the ride.' I reluctantly took it, and more often than not, I'd be stuck in traffic, or I'd get low blood sugar, and that banana would be a lifesaver,' says Ross.
'But it was really his way of saying, 'Be ready for anything' and also, 'I can't go with you but I'm there with you in spirit.' So it was an emotional thing, it was a practical thing. It's something that I still do.'
Ross is known as 'The Roastmaster General' for his incendiary takedowns of Justin Bieber, Rob Lowe, Alec Baldwin and Tom Brady, among many others.
The seeds for 'Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride' were planted in the mid-1990s when Ross gathered jokes and stories about his grandfather for an hourlong set. But digging up the past proved too much.
'I couldn't sustain it emotionally. It was just too much for me as a 30-year-old guy,' Ross says. 'But now, 30 years later, I can dig in and look back and add a layer of experience over it all.'
He was spurred on in large part to losing three comedic friends — Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried and Norm Macdonald — within eight months. 'That motivated me to look back at the old show from decades earlier and rewrite it completely for my current brain and my current skill set.'
Ross will be the latest comedian to come to Broadway, following John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia, Alex Edelman, Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key, Rachel Dratch, Billy Crystal and Colin Quinn. Bill Burr made his Broadway debut this year in a revival of 'Glengarry Glen Ross.'
Ross reaches back even further. His aunt took him to see Jackie Mason's 'The World According to Me!' in the 1980s, and the young comedian was floored by the comedian's captivating set.
'It was elegant, but it was also punk rock because he was being bawdy and naughty and hilarious and saying taboo things and it really, really stayed with me for a long, long time.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
38 minutes ago
- New York Post
Kerry Kennedy allegedly getting $1M+ to save family's reputation — as cousin Caroline is ‘virtually blacklisted' over son's odd behavior
For decades, the Kennedys — America's so-called royal family — were known for politics, scandals and tragedies. Today, they're earning a schoolyard reputation for infighting, with mean-spirited attacks on siblings and cousins, bizarre social media rants and revelations of historically bitchy personal feuds. Hoping to quell the embarrassing, reality show-worthy drama and bring the family together before it implodes, Kerry Kennedy has signed what sources describe as a seven-figure deal for a book paying tribute to her mother, family matriarch Ethel Skakel Kennedy who passed last October at 96. 10 Kerry Kennedy is writing a new book about family matriach Ethel Kennedy. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP This is somewhat ironic given that penned by Kerry, the seventh of Ethel's and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's brood of 11, is one of the most vocal leaders in the family's current display of bad blood. 'Kerry's well-varnished book will be little more than a last-ditch attempt to salvage the increasingly tarnished Kennedy name,' one insider told The Post. Kerry Kennedy declined to comment. Entitled 'Ethel: Faith, Hope, Family, and an Extraordinary Life' and penned with a ghostwriter, the book is planned for fall 2026. Whether it can bring the family together, or truly spiff up their tarnished legacy, remains to be seen. 'Like the Titanic, the Kennedy brand is a sinking ship,' the insider said. 10 Caroline Kennedy-Schlossberg is said to be ostracized by her famous cousins' over her son's odd behavior on social media. FilmMagic 10 Caroline has called cousin RFK Jr. a 'predator' while her son Jack (right) has called him a 'liar' and a 'guru shaman.' Democratic National Convention via CNP / MEGA But, for all their talk about public service, the family's battles are no surprise. In fact, sources said, RFK's staunchly Democratic widow, Ethel, who died of a stroke, would have 'savored and enjoyed the very public attacks and controversy' involving some of her children — including the verbal assaults on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — when he briefly ran for president last year and later became Donald Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. At least some of the 'attacks and snubs against Bobby Jr. were actually at the behest of Ethel,' alleged the insider. 'She also was behind the photo [taken March 2024, just before RFK Jr. announced his presidential run] of three generations of her family with a smiling Joe Biden in their midst — all as a subtle [message] to Bobby. He was her least favorite son.' 10 Jack Schlossberg, the only grandson of former US President John F. Kennedy, has mocked cousin RFK Jr.'s vocal disorder and made strange jokes about Second Lady Usha Vance. Ron Sachs – CNP for NY Post It was alleged favorite daughter Kerry who, on her mother's instructions, posted the photo on X, declaring of Biden, 'You make the world better.' In addition to six of RFK Jr.'s living siblings — former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy, former US Rep. Joe Kennedy II, human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, filmmaker Rory Kennedy, lawyer Max Kennedy and businessman Christopher Kennedy — rebuking his presidential campaign by calling it 'dangerous' and publicly endorsing Joe Biden, his cousin Caroline also made her feelings known. Early this year, Caroline, now 67, and. the former US Ambassador to Japan and then Australia, wasn't very diplomatic when it came to her first cousin, calling him a 'predator' and hypocrite and unqualified to run HHS. She also claimed: 'Bobby expropriated my father's image and distorted President Kennedy's legacy to advance his own failed presidential campaign and groveled to Donald Trump for a job.' 10 John. F Kennedy and wife Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Getty Images Nonetheless, according to insiders, Caroline has been 'virtually blacklisted' by some of her cousins over the bizarre social media postings of her son, Jack Schlossberg. The 31-year-old has posted videos of himself making fun of RFK Jr.'s spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that affects his speech and which other members of the family may also have. Schlossberg has also called the health secretary a 'liar' and a 'guru shaman figure who runs a cult' and taunted Vice-President J. D. Vance and his wife, Usha, joking about having a baby with her and writing, 'True or false: Usha Vance is way hotter than Jackie O' — his maternal grandmother. 10 Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 at a hotel in Los Angeles. Getty Images His various remarks prompted RFK Jr.'s daughter, Kathleen 'Kick' Kennedy to previously tell The Post: 'I hope he gets the help he needs.' Sources say Schlossberg's behavior has led to Caroline — whose parents and brother are deceased — being completely isolated from the Kennedy tribe, which 'is hurtful to her.' The Post has reached out to Caroline for comment. 'Jack's more Schlossberg than Kennedy in attitude,' a close source said, referring to Schlossberg's father, the very private and eccentric artist and designer Edwin Schlossberg, 73, who comes from a prominent Jewish New York family. 10 RFK Jr. shocked and upset many members of his own staunchly Democrat family when he first supported Republican Donald Trump's election then joined his government at secretary of Health and Human Services. REUTERS Snarky Spy magazine once called Edwin 'a well-to-do hippie-yuppie who's self-consciously interesting… Camelot's egghead-in-residence.' Although little known publicly, the current feuds within the Kennedy family have a long history going back to Ethel and her late sister-in-law, John F. Kennedy's widow, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, whom Ethel ruthlessly attacked. 'She thinks she's a queen. When Jackie once mentioned she dreamed of being a ballet dancer, Ethel stared at Jackie's slender size-11 feet, muttering to her face, 'With those clodhoppers of yours? You'd be better off going into soccer,' ' a source commented for my book 'The Other Mrs. Kennedy: An Intimate and Revealing Look at the Hidden Life of Ethel Skakel Kennedy.' 10 RFK Jr.'s daughter Kick Kennedy waded into the fray to call out cousin Jack Schlossberg. Getty Images for RFK Human Right Meanwhile, Jackie, sources added, considered Ethel 'crude and boorish,' and referred to her as a 'baby-making machine — wind her up and she becomes pregnant.' Jackie's revenge against the insults was to distance her own children, John Jr. and Caroline, from Ethel's children. When Ethel extended an invitation to her niece and nephew to stay for a couple of weeks at her family's home Hickory Hill in McLean, Virginia, Jackie declared, 'No way!'' And through the generations the feuding continues. JFK Jr. also got his digs in when he was founding editor of the political magazine George in the mid-1990s. 10 The Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. AP In a signed editorial, he pilloried his Kennedy cousins — Ethel's sons Michael (who died as the result of a skiing accident in 1997) and Joe — as 'poster boys for bad behavior' regarding their marital scandals. While Kerry Kennedy's planned book is said to paint her mother as a virtual saint, and the Kennedys as a close and loving family, an insider told The Post that 'dysfunction rather than perfection' was a way of life for the late matriarch. As Ethel's fourth-born, David Anthony Kennedy, who died of a heroin overdose in 1984 at 36, once revealed, 'Those stories about what a big, happy family we had at Hickory Hill were all bulls—t. Life at home was mayhem, a mess. 'My mother was always having screaming rages. The house looked like a shithole. She didn't know how to deal with so many kids.' 10 RFK Jr. originally ran for president himself in 2024, before dropping out and endorsing Trump. Paul Martinka A child-care sitter retained by Ethel once even admitted that the middle children — Courtney, David and RFK Jr. – 'were virtually left to fend for themselves, with little or no supervision.' The sitter also called Ethel a 'distant, detached, and standoffish mother. When popular Look magazine decided to do a cover story on Ethel, then pregnant, as the possible next future first lady when RFK began his ill-fated 1968 presidential run, the bi-weekly's crack photographer-reporter team, Stanley Tretick and Laura Bergquist, were assigned. The magazine ran an upbeat story, but Tretick and Bergquist were privately shocked by what they witnessed. Tretick later revealed: 'I never thought she was a great mother… The kids all went their separate ways. It was like bedlam, everyone running around crazy… one night Ethel was going to fix food for us, but she said 'I don't know how to fix s—t!' She couldn't handle anything in the kitchen. Bobby looked at her and said, 'Mother of the year.' 'Our view of Ethel was, 'God, it's going to be bedlam, just nuts, if she goes to the White House, because that place will become a real zoo.''
New York Post
4 hours ago
- New York Post
Hollywood and Obama should be judged for covering up Joe Biden's frailty
One year ago this month, attendees packed the 7,100 seats inside the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles to watch a parade of A-list celebrities — George Clooney! Julia Roberts! Barbra Streisand! — unite in a common goal: to raise more money for President Biden's re-election campaign than had ever before been tallied for a single fundraising event. By that standard the evening was a smashing success: Over $30 million, a record, was raised. 6 George Clooney, Joe Biden, Julia Roberts and Barack Obama at the Los Angeles fundraiser last June 15th, the beginning of the end of the wide-scale cover-up of Biden's inability to maintain his presidential campaign. X/Chris Jackson 'How important the event was to his re-election bid could be seen,' the Associated Press reported, 'in Biden's decision to fly through the night across nine time zones, from the G7 summit in southern Italy to Southern California, to attend.' Advertisement Nothing was left to chance. Outside the Peacock, riot police ringed the Gaza protesters; inside, the biggest weapon was rolled out. Former President Barack Obama appeared onstage with his old No. 2, the pair of presidents interviewed by the ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Their recurring theme: A second Trump presidency would ruin America. Obama called the current moment 'a by-product of 2016,' when, he said, 'a whole bunch of folks . . . sat out . . . Hopefully, we have learned our lesson, because these elections matter.' When Roe v. Wade came up, and the audience hissed, Obama scolded them: 'Don't hiss; vote.' 6 Within weeks of the event at the Peacock Theater, Biden would bow out of the campaign, which passed onto Vice President Kamala Harris. AP Still sharp, still charming, the familiar smile still beguiling, the forty-fourth president deployed all his gifts to urge the high rollers at the Peacock — and by extension, all Americans — to support Biden with money and votes: the most precious commodities a civic-minded American can be asked to invest. Advertisement The only problem was: Biden. At the event's end, as he and Obama waved goodbye with Kimmel, the incumbent became catatonic, just as he had five days earlier, at a Juneteenth concert at the White House. His whole body froze, as if immobilized by a science-fiction ray-gun. Obama had to guide his friend, gently but firmly, off the stage. As the Washington Post later reported, the commander-in-chief, keeper of the nuclear option, appeared 'slow . . . frail.' 'Even with Kimmel posing softball questions, and Obama frequently interjecting to provide support,' the story said, 'Biden struggled to explain key parts of his campaign platform, with attendees saying that the president frequently stumbled over his remarks, trailed off or was simply confusing.' 6 Pres. Obama has staked his post-presidential legacy on moral authority, clarity and legitimacy. His role in clouding Biden's health demands that legacy be reconsidered. AP Advertisement By June 27, Biden's disastrous performance in the CNN debate with former President Trump in Atlanta had triggered an open revolt, with leading Democrats and rank-and-file primary voters clamoring for Biden to withdraw from the contest. Throughout the incumbent's long political death-spiral, former President Obama — who had urged Biden against running in 2016 and 2020, worried the older man might 'embarrass himself' — remained silent. In what the Associated Press called 'the most delicate political moment for Democrats since former President Bill Clinton's impeachment,' Obama was seen struggling 'to balance his role as a party elder and an honest broker for Democrats seeking advice while avoiding being seen as betraying his former vice president.' Missing from this depiction was a key group: the American people. In Biden's season of torment, Obama may have deemed it prudent to keep his own counsel; but that doesn't explain his presence at the Peacock Theater in the first place. Could someone as perceptive and politically astute as Obama, a bestselling memoirist and two-time winner of the Electoral College, really have failed to discern Biden's unfitness until the fundraiser? Advertisement 6 Despite being enabled by sycophantic aides — and his Vice President — Biden's deterioration was well-known among much of Washington. Getty Images And even if that were true, why did Obama wait until after the debate, almost two weeks, before taking action to protect the electorate? By July 11, 'Morning Joe' relayed the whispering of top Democrats who believed Obama was 'working behind the scenes to orchestrate' Biden's withdrawal. In short: What took him so long? Barack Obama entered office with a Gallup approval rating of 67% and, after sinking to 40% in 2011, left office with a robust 59%. Polling on former presidents is scant; but Gallup still has Obama at 59%, while a recent YouGov survey lists him at 62%. 6 Following his humiliating defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1980, Jimmy Carter went on to rehabilitate his legacy via ambitious, progressive humanitarian efforts. Getty Images What does it say for a man who, trusted by so many, colluded in a lie to them — that Joe Biden was fit for office — and moreover participated in an enormous transfer of wealth, $30 million in a single evening, to prop up that lie until it became impossible even for the most deluded souls to believe? Rather than use his enduring appeal to force the Democratic Party to do the right thing in mid-2023 — when Biden was still officially mulling whether to seek re-election — Obama held his tongue and hoped for the best. For the winner of the 2017 Profile in Courage Award, the crucible of 2024 was not a Profile in Courage moment. 6 Biden and Obama on that fateful Peacock Theater stage last June, which raised $30 million. AP Advertisement Obama's historical legacy won't rest entirely on the arc and perceptions of his presidency. His actions since 2017 matter, too; and in covering for Biden for so long, Obama displayed a contempt for our democracy, and his own party, unbefitting of a two-term president. Jimmy Carter's post-presidency helped lift his standing in history. For Barack Obama, at least so far, the narrative runs in the other direction. James Rosen is chief Washington correspondent at Newsmax and the author, most recently, of 'Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986.'
Fox News
4 hours ago
- Fox News
Elon Musk and Trump appear to end nasty feud
Pride parades were held across the world on weekend during Pride month. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
