Interview: Jeff Ross Gets Personal (Hilariously) in His Broadway Debut

Comedian Jeff Ross has spent his career delivering punchlines that leave a mark.

But with Take a Banana for the Ride—his Broadway debut at the Nederlander Theatre—the Roastmaster General turns the spotlight on himself. Blending stand-up, storytelling, and memoir, the show explores Ross’s life growing up in Newark, his relationships with his late parents and grandfather, and his own brush with colon cancer.

It’s a project he’s been circling for decades, first scribbled in notebooks as a teenager, then shelved for years as he built a career roasting everyone from Justin Bieber to Tom Brady. But it wasn’t until three of his best buddies died in rapid succession that he found himself ready to take the journey. And it’s proving to be just as cathartic form himself as it will be for us.

This conversation/roast has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How’s the show going as you put it together?
We had a rehearsal last night that felt really good. I had some friends who had seen it in a workshop and they really didn’t have a lot to say because it was working. It’s a process. The hardest part is that my body is like, “Why are you rehearsing this show at two in the afternoon? You’re supposed to go on at eight at night.” Usually, I do a show and go eat a steak dinner and now I’m like, “Oh, I have to get ready for another show.”

You’ve been developing it for a long time now.
I started this incarnation almost two years ago, maybe more. I started writing it all out in 1995. Technically, I found some notebooks from even before that, from when I was in high school. I don’t think I knew I was writing the show yet, but I was definitely going, “I need to remember this for the future.” Coming back to it now as a man is wild.

What made you put it down for 30 years?
There weren’t a lot of places to do a show like this back then. Every time I did it, more and more people encouraged me to keep going, but I couldn’t handle it back then, emotionally. It was mostly about my parents and my grandfather, and they hadn’t been gone that long. My grandfather’s death was still raw. It was a great experience, but it was tough to sustain. It was like digging up dead relatives every day. And then when the Roasts landed in my life at the same time, I was like, “This is way more fun. I’ll just do this for 30 years and then go back!”

Why come back to it now?
In my stand-up coming out of the pandemic, I had been talking about life and death. I was talking about my dogs, I was talking about the Queen of England. And then, within eight months, three pals, Bob Saget, Norm Macdonald, and Gilbert Gottfried, all died. And it kind of took me aback. It made me go “How did I get through that when I was a kid? How am I doing now? Are there any crossovers in the way I think? Have I learned anything over 30 years that I can share?” When I started to sew it all together, I realized the show would still be tough, but it could be therapeutic for the audience. That motivated me to go “Jeff, toughen up and just do this.”

After they died, I started following all of the fan-made “Best of” Instagram accounts. Old videos of Norm pop up and I stop everything I’m doing to watch it.
I’m obsessed. Obsessed. I quote Norm in the show, one of my favorite jokes of his. One of my first paid gigs on the road was opening for Norm at a comedy club in New Jersey. He was always one step ahead of the audience. And in life, because he really didn’t share his health stuff with his friends. It was sad to not give him a proper send-off. Which is one of the reasons I talk about my health in the show.

How do you address your colon cancer in the show?
Like any other medical thing, I didn’t want to talk about that. Nobody wants to hear about that. It’s a bummer. But I found myself making jokes in my personal life about it, and it was taking the edge off for me. The stigma wasn’t so dramatic if I kind of dropped it in the blender of everyday conversation. Because as soon as it starts to leak, people are constantly saying “How are you?” I didn’t want to get maudlin; it’s just not my way. I started joking about it and realized it was helping me not just deal with it emotionally, but physically. Laughing about it gave me ownership over my own diagnosis. I’m still the king over this. I’m full Roastmaster, except I’m roasting a tumor in my colon.

Which, by the way, for the record, you look a lot like the tumor they took out of my colon. The tumor was a little better looking, but I think you have potential.

You have no idea how honored I am to hear you say that.
It’s my pleasure. And I hope you have a longer life than my tumor did.

Has the Broadway of it all hit you yet?
For a schnook from New Jersey, I’m a theater guy. I love going to the theater. I’ve always done that on the road on my days off. Usually, stuff that’s indigenous to where I am. I was just in Italy, and I went to the opera. Last night, I was lying in bed looking at pictures of the set in production and in the Ambien haze, I was like “Wow, I’m starring in a Broadway show.” It might not have dancing girls, it might not have a big 11 o’clock number, but it’s exactly what I want to do. I got very inspired and had one of those out-of-body experiences of, like, “Wow.”

Do you roast the audience?
I don’t want to give away too much, but there is some high-end insult comedy going on.

Is there a difference between an insult and a roast?
Well, an insult is what just I did to you. A roast is something you do to someone with a third party there to watch and laugh. To me, it’s about making the target of the joke laugh as well. It’s inclusive. Whether they volunteer or not, we can debate, but if they’re laughing, they’re all laughing. And I like to scratch the skin, not break it.

In all your years doing the roasts, what was the joke that even you thought was a little too far?
Now you’re asking a Vietnam vet to have a flashback. What comes to mind is recent. It’s Kevin Hart opening the Tom Brady roast and unleashing the ruthlessness that a headliner would normally have. Kevin came out and didn’t just break the ice, he slammed the Titanic into the iceberg. He crushed Tom and you could see in his face that he was on the ropes. I remember him Kevin just looking at him every few jokes and going “Fuck you, Tom.” The sheer brutality and simplicity made me laugh, but also a little scared because I had to come out and follow it, and I didn’t want Tom to leave. I promised Tom he was going to have fun.

So, I gotta give it up to Kevin for being so hilarious, and to Tom for taking the hits for three hours and six minutes. Two-and-a-half billion viewing minutes on Netflix. Take that, Dean Martin.