USA News Hub

Seriously, what’s going on with Jerrod Carmichael? The roll out for his new HBO series has been non-stop controversy and mess.

After kicking things off with the extreme awkwardness of confessing his romantic feelings for good friend Tyler, the Creator, the comedian followed that up with an uncomfortable “slave joke” about his white boyfriend. During a stand-up set shown in a recent episode of “Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show,” he mused about how his boyfriend recommends books to him.

“My boyfriend, he makes me smarter, he makes me read. I have so many books. Realistically I’m not gonna read all those books. He knows that,” Carmichael said. “But the fact that I bought them says I love you. They’re little monuments around my apartment just like ‘look at this book from Amazon that I’m never gonna read.’ I sometimes joke to him that our relationship is like that of a slave and a master’s son … who, like, teaches me how to read by candlelight.”

That didn’t go over well with the audience, who reacted with groans. An unbothered Carmichael continued: “Yeah, he groans too ‘cause he’s a good person. He doesn’t like that f***ing joke. I like that joke. That’s my burden, I think that shit’s hilarious.”

The moment led Charlamagne tha God to name the Emmy winner “Donkey of the Day” on a recent episode of “The Breakfast Club.” On Tuesday, Carmichael appeared on the show to discuss his series and to explain the joke.

“You played a clip of my stand up, but it started at the punchline, and it like completely erased the setup of it,” Carmichael said. “I really don’t like that. It made it seem like I was talking like I’m into some type of race sexual slavery role play with my boyfriend, which is untrue.”

“It’s so false, and I expect that type of thing from TMZ, ‘cause they have no humanity. They don’t care about the people that get hurt when they report these sort of things. But you’re a friend, so I really didn’t like that.”

When Charlamagne noted that the clip he played was the only part of the episode he’d seen, Carmichael challenged him that taking it out of context painted an unfair picture.

“Yeah, but I need you to watch the show! And anybody who watches the show knows it’s not what I said,” he said. “It’s so false, it’s so untrue, and I don’t like that because it’s like… it has nothing to do with my boyfriend. It has nothing [to do with] the sex that we have. It has nothing to do with sex. It’s something that people have been reporting on and I really really don’t like it.”

Backlash to the clip was swift and intense with critics calling out the dangerous message of the joke. After defending himself and his boyfriend from ridiculous trolls, Carmichael noted that it’s not really his problem if people don’t like his style of humor.

“I evoke provocative imagery sometimes in my jokes. Some people are very sensitive to that. That’s your right. You don’t have to laugh at that,” he said. “You could like, hear the word slavery and completely shut off. That’s completely fine. But don’t misconstrue what I said and don’t make it into something that it’s not, because that’s where I start to get offended.”

Obviously, no one is forcing viewers to like or watch Jerrod Carmichael, but he needs to be careful how provocative he wants to get, because it feels like he’s very close to crossing a line from which he may not be able to come back.

“Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show” is available to stream on Max.