Comedian Jeff Ross Talks Roast Culture Evolution, Lessons In Manifesting From Jim Carrey & How Broadway Debut With…

In the fall of 2024, after a routine colonoscopy, comedian Jeff Ross received an unexpected diagnosis: He had Stage 3 colon cancer and would need to undergo surgery to remove seven inches of his colon, followed by six months of chemotherapy.

It’s the sort of revelation that would lead most people, understandably, to panic and shut down. But not the RoastMaster General, who less than a year later, would mine the experience with Take a Banana for the Ride, a deeply personal one-man show marking both his Broadway debut and the coalescing of a lifelong dream.

Ross’ show takes its name from a cherished piece of advice given to him by Pop Jack, his late, beloved grandfather, with whom he lived while starting out as a comic. It’s a portrait of resilience in the face of loss and life’s other challenges, explaining the role humor has played in helping Ross to navigate it all.

Over the course of 90 minutes — taped as a special for Netflix, which is now up for Emmy consideration — Ross doles out his life story, delving into the history of his New Jersey family, his origins as a comic, and how he’s dealt with not only the early loss of his parents, but also that of a trio of comedy superstar pals (Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried, Norm McDonald), one of his beloved dogs, and more.

Backed by a set of gold frames that he uses to pull up images from his past, Ross is dressed in a banana-yellow suit and concludes his show by handing out bananas to strangers dealing with their own battles, as a sign of camaraderie and token of his appreciation.

Here, Ross breaks down his journey with a show which he first began touring in the ’90s, which took its full form decades later. He reflects on the emotion summoned by a show he equates to “digging up my parents” and how he learned to conquer it, also sharing how advice from Jim Carrey on manifesting led him to pursue Broadway full force.

Amid his “career-defining moment” with Take a Banana for the Ride, which he believes helped “cure” him of cancer, Ross also discusses why Kevin Hart “deserves a Nobel Peace Prize” for taking the hot seat at this year’s Netflix roast, the evolution of the art form from the days of Comedy Central’s roasts, and the prospect of more seasons of his Netflix stand-up series Bumping Mics.

DEADLINE: Congratulations on your run with Take a Banana. Did you always dream of making it to Broadway?

JEFF ROSS: I fantasized about it because I always knew that was my crowd. I went to see shows when I was a kid. You know, when my mom was in the hospital, which you learn about in the show, what I don’t say in the show is my dad would take us to visit her on the weekends. Because it was far away. And then afterwards we would go to shows to cheer us up. Back then, they were all orphan shows, like Annie and Oliver. [Laughs] So it had a reverse effect. But it did make me really love Broadway. And then when I saw Jackie Mason on Broadway, I knew that that’s what I wanted to do someday.

It’s funny: To me it, wasn’t really realistic. It was like, all right, let me tour [the show], and maybe I’ll do it off-Broadway and then maybe a streamer will buy it. But Jim Carrey is a friend of mine, and he taught me about manifesting. He would berate me for playing it down. I’d be like, “Don’t jinx it. ” He’d go, “This is going to Broadway. You have to say it, and other people will hear that and help it come true.”

He said, “I’m coming to opening night.” And two years later, he came the day after opening night because he doesn’t like crowds. So he really helped me manifest it.

DEADLINE: What’s the key to manifesting, in your mind?

ROSS: Well, it’s about getting out of your head. I experienced so much loss and heartbreak as a young man, and I never liked saying things out loud. I never liked planning way ahead because I always felt like stuff would fall apart. People would disappoint you or die, or plans would cave. But [Carrey] taught me that life is long, and sometimes your dreams do come true, and you have to speak it into reality. It’s not a spiritual thing, it’s a practical thing. I think positive energy really can fuel you. It can push you to the next level.

DEADLINE: As someone who experienced so much loss from a young age, was there a specific point when you learned to metabolize the pain and channel it into something positive? How did you navigate through your earliest experiences with it?

ROSS: I tried to always not feel like a victim. When things go bad, I try to see the silver lining. It doesn’t always happen right away. Making jokes helps you see things with clarity sometimes, and I’m good at that. Staying positive. One of the things I talk about in the show is sometimes you have to put a fake smile on, hoping it becomes a real smile. And it sounds corny, but it works. It worked for me. Just trying to get off the couch, put one leg in front of the other and just take a walk when you’re feeling blue. I’m a simple guy with simple needs. I don’t need a lot of positive reinforcement, I just need a little bit to get me going, and that’s what helps me. Just walking outside and saying hi to your neighbors and getting a high five from a fan, petting a dog. Little positive reinforcements can snap you out of the blues.

DEADLINE: Tell us about the initial spark for the show. Did the banana metaphor come to you early on as a key element?

ROSS: I haven’t thought about this in a long time, but when I first started workshopping short stories, they were about my grandfather. I lived with him as an open mic’er, and I would take him to his doctor appointments all day, and at night, he would give me money for the bus and a banana. “Take a banana for the ride,” kind of a tough guy’s way of saying, “I love you. ” And it always stayed with me because I really would take that advice and it would always come in handy. You’d be stuck in traffic or you’d have low blood sugar or somebody would be hungry. It’s a nice gesture to give somebody a banana.

I started workshopping this show in 1995 after he passed away. So I did this show ’95, ’96, ’97, maybe like 20 times at festivals without any real mission behind it, just a way to express myself. There was no end game for it. But over time, I realized that bananas were a metaphor, that they have thick skin on the outside and they’re mushy on the inside, kind of like us as humans. And they grow in bunches, they protect each other.

That wasn’t something that was obvious to me as a young man. It was only later, as I became a better writer, more of an entertainer. But to be honest, I was miserable doing the show in the beginning. It was having an emotional effect on me. I was doing the show and then leaving and I had a headache or a stomachache. I was digging up these old memories; I was basically digging up my parents. I was reading their love letters, and then I read the baby book [my mom] wrote about me, and it would really affect me. It was only later, when I learned more about acting, that I thought, oh, if I get a silly, yellow banana suit with some bruises on it, then I could wear that. It gives me one layer of protection, like a suit of armor, and I can leave that in the dressing room after and go out with my friends for dinner. And that’s when I realized, oh, all right, I could do this eight times a week on Broadway. I’ve learned how to fortify my emotions, and it sort of came alive once I understood that.

DEADLINE: I loved what you shared about your mother hiding secret messages for you on bananas.

ROSS: I see that so much now. People are writing to me, constantly posting bananas and tagging me with little love messages. I dug up one of my mom’s letters to me when she was in the hospital, and I had the words “I love you” pulled out, and I just had this banana tattoo [made] with her handwriting on it. I’m not necessarily a tattoo guy, but there’s something about the constant reminder that someone cares about you, someone’s worried about you that’s kind of nice.

DEADLINE: I didn’t realize your experience with this show goes back decades. How did it finally come together for Broadway? What about the show changed the most in all that time?

ROSS: Neil Simon once said in an interview, “You don’t know if you’re getting a headache because your body doesn’t know if you’re remembering or living it in that moment when you’re writing. Are you still a kid getting that trauma, or is your body just remembering it?” The show was too intense for me emotionally back then, but I realized people were getting something out of it. People would stop me. For 30 years, people would go, “Whatever happened to that show about your grandfather? I always think about that.” And there was that emotional thought in there of mourning. I say in the show, “Human beings were made to mourn and then move on. You can’t mourn forever or a part of you dies.” I learned that young. And 30 years later when [Bob] Saget, Gilbert Gottfried and Norm Macdonald died, I realized, I still kind of feel that way. You can mourn them and remember them, but you can’t let that define you or bring you down.

So I went back and looked at the old show. Jimmy Kimmel had a videotape of it from 30 years ago, a VHS tape, and he sent it over. I found some old scripts and I go, “Wow, I really am philosophically the same, the way I am about death and mourning. But now, I’m the Roastmaster. I can make this more entertaining and make it not just about me and my resilience, but how that could help other people. ” And once I realized that it could be beneficial to other people, that fueled me to bring it back — to tour it, to refine it, and to get help.

I had a lot of help. I knew I was out of my normal path, and I had to elevate it for Broadway. [But if] getting it to Broadway was the dream, getting it to Netflix and now talking about it for [awards] consideration, I’m playing with house money. This is a career-defining moment because I’m not the new, cute guy anymore; this is a life story sort of project. So to see people that I respect, my peers and my colleagues, reaching out to me and going, “I really like what you said…” Comics keep telling me, “This is our story. It’s a comic story.” And I love that because I’m a comic before I’m anything else. That’s my tribe.

DEADLINE: Tell us about conceptualizing the various aspects of Take a Banana — from the visual experience to the songwriting — and the logistics of bringing this iteration of the show to life.

ROSS: I knew my experience was in nightclubs, in comedy safe places, but I wanted to come out of my safe place and do something more provocative, allow people to be emotional. I had to be vulnerable, and I started just doing the most sensitive parts of the show at 11 o’clock at The Comedy Store. I was just dropping it into the cauldron where I wouldn’t be so precious with the material anymore, and as I got used to that, I go, “Okay, well, now I’ve expanded as a performer. How do I expand the show?” And to me, that’s set design and music.

I was doing a little show downtown and I met Asher Denburg, who was just playing piano, riffing back there, and he became my musical director. Avery Pearson and I wrote “Don’t F*ck With The Jews,” that song. And I go, “Oh, well, here’s something that’s not expected. I never really talk about my cultural background on stage, but I think on Broadway I have room to open up a little bit.” So we started doing music, and to me it was like Broadway fantasy camp. Here I am, singing at the Nederlander Theatre, [with] people of all shapes and sizes. I had Asian people and Black people singing, “Don’t f*ck with the Jews,” not because it was religious, but because it was a pride thing. You could substitute “Puerto Rican” or “Filipino” in there and the song works, and I even say at the end, “Or whatever this guy is.” You know, Black, Mexican, Muslim, Puerto Rican. It’s about all of us, just having pride and not letting religion and politics divide us.

Once I started to unravel that music could elevate the show, there’s a song about my dog that I sing from the perspective of this Nazi German Shepherd. I go, “Well, now the staging has to be better. I want to do some choreography; I want to do some karate.” So Jeff Calhoun, who is a choreographer, came in. You know, he did Newsies, and he started helping me with my movement and my nunchucks and where to get them, where to put them so that I wasn’t just a schlubby comic pulling up my pants every two minutes on stage. Suddenly, I had some moves and some swagger. Beowulf Boritt, who’s a Broadway legend of set design, he came up with this beautiful set that reflected my great-grandma Rosie’s catering hall, these beautiful gold frames, and suddenly the images behind me being projected became like my scene partners. I was almost dancing with them. So the blocking, the choreography, if I motion to the right, there was my great-grandma Rosie. And when I go to the left, suddenly there’s my Uncle Murray. And I was talking to them and interacting with them.

So elevating it for Broadway was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, lifting it up from a comedy club show to Broadway expectations. That was really exciting.

DEADLINE: What are the steps you have to go through to get a show on Broadway? Obviously, heavy workshopping would be one.

ROSS: I toured it. I did it in any little theater that I could get it. We did the Den Theatre in Chicago. We did the Flyover Comedy Festival in the Midwest, the New York Comedy Festival, Netflix Is a Joke Fest. I wanted it to be road-tested and I knew that the more I did it, the better it would get because like any act, the more you get those reps in, the stronger it becomes. And then if you want to improvise within that, it’s not an issue because you know where you’re going.

I’m a big believer in, enjoy the process — enjoying working it out and finding new things and discovering things within the script, but also within the relationship between me and the audience. Like, I didn’t have that ending until we were in previews on Broadway where I come off the stage, hold up a banana and go, “Come earn your banana.” After I open up about my health crisis, I invite people to stand up and testify in the theater, and suddenly they felt like they could, too. And then I knew I had something. Then, I knew it wasn’t about me; it was about all of us. As soon as it was about all of us, I knew I could do it forever. I knew that I was going to be able to do it eight shows a week. Billy Crystal was very kind to give me some advice, and one thing he said is, “You’ll be a new kind of tired doing eight shows a week.” And I laughed and I got a little nervous. But to be honest, once I started doing it, it invigorated me. I wasn’t tired. It lifted me up, the way I could see that it was lifting people up who were coming to the theater.

DEADLINE: Even though you were fresh out of chemo at the time?

ROSS: I was, and I still had my port. I just got it out. I got the scar here, so I’m free and clear. But doing the show and getting those laughs and having that bond with the audience every night, I think that helped cure me. It sounds corny, and I’m normally the guy who makes fun of stuff like that, but it really did.

I always wanted to be a working actor in New York, to be able to take a cab or the subway to Broadway and clock in as a union actor. And that, I got to do. My dog Nipsey and I, we went up to the theater every day, we had our routine. She had her own dressing room, and then at the end of the show, she would run out, hit her mark. Bill Berloni…was her animal trainer; he did Annie 40 years ago or whatever it was. So that’s where I got my joke, “This show’s like Annie, where the dog comes out at the end, except I play the bald guy and the orphan.”

DEADLINE: Are there gatekeepers you had to deal with in locking down a Broadway theater? Did you simply approach the Nederlander once you generated a certain amount of interest in the show?

ROSS: I decided not to let that part of it affect what I was doing. I was like, let me just trust that if the show’s good, people will come. And the reviews were great and I didn’t have to do too much.

You’ve got to get producers who know Broadway, and that was the hard part. My friend from my old Friars Club days, Mark Cornstein, said, “Let me find some investors who love Broadway.” Because he loved me and neither of us had done it before. So it was kind of a leap of faith. And Bob and Eric Nederlander, who know Broadway — that family is legendary in that world — they were supportive. So we said, “All right, well, I could workshop this for another year, but I also have a chemo port in my chest. Maybe I should just do it now.” So I was like, I don’t care how big the theater is. I don’t care that we’re opening in August when all my friends are out of New York. I don’t care if anyone comes to opening night because we’re doing it in August in New York City. But there it was: We had the most star studded opening night of the year. Everybody was there.

So like I said, if you manifest things, sometimes they come true. I learned a lot of lessons, just to trust it. I didn’t want to be intimidated by Broadway. I was worried that I wouldn’t be accepted, but theater kids from all over came to the show — Susan Stroman and Matthew Broderick. Danny Burstein came twice. Mario Cantone. And I’m in New York now. Everywhere I go, people go, “Hey, I saw you on Broadway.” And no one can take that away.

DEADLINE: Do you have another Broadway show in you?

ROSS: I have so much stuff left — letters and family films from way back — I really could do another one. I’d probably have to wait for a few more friends to pass away. [Laughs] Because I never like making it about me. I like making it a tribute to some of the people that made me who I am, and when it’s about other people, it’s easier for me to write. If it’s just about me, it makes me not just uncomfortable, but I don’t want to seem self-serving. So as long as it’s a tribute to someone else, I think I could do another one, yeah. I’m hooked.

DEADLINE: What are you up to now? Are you touring over the summer?

ROSS: No, I’m off. I just did my last show. I’m officiating my nephew’s wedding next weekend; I’ve never done that before. So I’m writing a wedding ceremony, which is kind of fun. I’m going to take a much needed break; I think I’m going to take the summer off.

DEADLINE: You’re coming off The Roast of Kevin Hart — could you talk about how roast culture has changed since Comedy Central first got into that game? Roasts have obviously evolved into a global phenomenon, now that Netflix has become a de facto home for them. But is there anything you miss about the old days?

ROSS: Well, I like that you say they’re the home of roasting. That’ll make them feel good because that’s something they have tried to make happen and have now made happen. I like the size and scope of the roasts. Yes, there’s certain things from the old days that I missed, but mostly that’s nostalgia. It was sort of this niche thing on Comedy Central…

DEADLINE: The Comedy Central roasts certainly had a different feeling.

ROSS: And I get that. But it was also pretty bawdy and at times controversial back then, also. I like that it’s a spectacle now because we don’t have the White House Correspondents’ Dinner anymore, where comedians are roasting the President, speaking truth to power, free speech. The late-night shows are getting dinged. I think the roast, it’s like The Purge: Once every year or two, anything goes. And if you don’t like a joke, there’s another one coming in 20 seconds. The jokes permitted at the roast is like no other show. And the fact that it’s up there now…Last year, we got nominated [at the Emmys] with the Oscars, the Tonys, the Grammys, and the Super Bowl halftime show. So the roast now, you can’t argue the cultural relevance. Tens of millions of people watched it, so it’s providing a service.

DEADLINE: Roasts do seem to keep a certain looseness in the culture. They’re a nice reminder not to take everything too seriously.

ROSS: You know, I think Kevin Hart is a hero for saying yes to the roast.

DEADLINE: Seemingly, Netflix approached a number of stars about taking the hot seat, but most are too nervous to put themselves out there like that. Especially after Tom Brady expressed regrets about his experience with the first big Netflix roast.

ROSS: Yeah. And I personally made it my mission to bring Tom back into this. I got him into it in the first place after he won that last Super Bowl. I said, “Now’s the time.” And I didn’t want there to be… Let me think of how to say this.

DEADLINE: A lasting, bitter impression?

ROSS: Well, he said he regretted it, and that hurt because I wanted him to love it. And I had a feeling he secretly loved it and was just saying he regretted it. So I tracked him down in Vegas at the opening of our friend’s club, Zero Bond. We didn’t even have Kevin signed on officially yet, but I said, “Tom, this is your win. You brought comedy back. You ended the woke era in America by agreeing to be roasted the first time; you melted all this ice between you and Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick and your former teammates. You guys are all doing Super Bowl commercials now, and you just had this great induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame.” All his teammates, they credit the roast for doing that for him, and he went on to get ownership of the team in Vegas and become this tremendous broadcaster.

I said, “You’ll never hear another Gisele joke again. Take the win. You did this. We got an Emmy nomination. We won the Director’s Guild Award, Beth McCarthy.”

I go, “This is your thing, Tom. Come back and take the W.”

And I go, “And you’re going to want to come back.” He goes, “Why?”

I go, “Revenge.” He goes, “Who?”

I go, “We’re going to roast Kevin Hart.” And he just turned his head like a puppy and said, “When?” [Laughs]

So getting him back and then it becoming this sort of celebration of free speech, that excites me. That’s something the country needs. This isn’t the Comedy Central edited roast anymore; this is a live spectacle. Kevin’s saying yes and us laughing at him for three hours — what is it, 15, 16 million people that first week, laughing for three hours, forgetting our own problems and laughing at Kevin? He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for that.

DEADLINE: One of the interesting things about these Netflix roasts is that they’ve become an engine for minting comedy stars — giving a bump to people like Nikki Glaser and Sheryl Underwood who have been around for some time. Has that been cool to see?

ROSS: It’s the best. It just delights me to no end to know that the roast is like this launching pad. Everybody who did this Kevin Hart roast is selling out now wherever they go; everyone’s doing each other’s podcasts. I saw Pete Davidson last night — he had Sheryl Underwood on his podcast this week. To me, bringing people together, that’s the goal. That’s what I love about it, comedians loving on each other. And seeing how Nikki is soaring, it just fills me with joy. It really does.

DEADLINE: I should note before we wrap up that I’m a big fan of your Netflix show Bumping Mics with Dave Attell. Any chance we’ll see more of that?

ROSS: It’s so funny you said that. I have to be careful because Dave is so grumpy. But last night, we stopped by the Comedy Cellar and went up together for 20 minutes, and he had me laughing so hard, I was falling on the floor. So I want to do it. It’s up to Dave. I love doing Bumping Mics with him; it’s pure joy.