The former 'The Soup' host reveals Ted Harbert's successor on E! asked him to stop making fun of the stars of the network's hit reality show after a complaint by momager Kris.
- Feb 19, 2018
AceShowbiz - Those who were closely monitoring "The Soup" on E! might have been wondering why Joel McHale stopped making jokes about the Kardashians all of sudden. Turns out it wasn't solely the comedian's decision to stop poking fun at the famous family. In a new interview with Variety, Joel, who has a new show on Netflix, reveals that he was told to lay off the Kardashians altogether after Kris Jenner complained about it.
Asked whether there were certain topics that he couldn't cover on "The Soup", the 46-year-old actor says, "When Ted Harbert got in there, he basically said the sky is the limit and do what you want to do. Way back when, Kris Kardashian would complain about our jokes, and Ted would literally go, 'Hey man, Kris called, can you just lay off of her for a week?' It was like our softball went into our yard and they were like, 'Just don't throw it over the fence.' So that was cool and that's as far as it went with him."
However, things got even more strict after the network appointed a new president. "When [Ted] left, things changed and they definitely had a different feeling. The next administration, the president said to my face, 'Don't make fun of the Kardashians. We don't want you to make fun of the Kardashians anymore,' " Joel shares.
"So I was like, oh this show is doomed because that's why the show worked, because we would make fun of ourselves," he continues, "It's like when Letterman made fun of GE in the '80s. You have to bite the hand that feeds you. The network really did not like when the Kardashians first came out and then we just said Kim Kardashian was only famous for having a big ass and a sex tape."
Now that he moves to a different network, Joel is asked whether he will joke about the Kardashians again on his new show "The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale". He says, "That is a week-to-week thing. If the clips are good and engaging, absolutely, we will cover them. Even on 'The Soup', if we didn't have a good Kardashian clip, we wouldn't just do it. So I don't know. It could be a lot and it could be very little."
The "Community" alum goes on explaining, "It's not a thing where I'm like, 'Finally, I get to say what I want to say about the Kardashians!' I'm also a tiny little pilot fish on a huge whale shark that is the Kardashian empire. I don't think they've thought about me much. They probably saw a bloated Paul Bettany somewhere and thought it was me - not that Paul Bettany is bloated."
Claiming that "creatively, we are unrestricted" on Netflix, Joel says he will be making fun of Netflix's shows on his new show. "We're going to be making fun of all of the streaming shows and all that stuff. We're definitely having a tribute to 'Stranger Things' in our first episode," he teases. "All I care about is making jokes that are funny and making people laugh."
