Jeff Ross defends his Historical Roast of Anne Frank, previews his roast of Alec Baldwin

The Daily Beast

“We roast Abe Lincoln, Freddie Mercury, Cleopatra, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali and Anne Frank," the Roastmaster General says of his Netflix series in an interview on The Last Laugh podcast, responding to the backlash to the roasting of Frank. "And the only ones complaining are the Jews. I was channelling something I once heard Mel Brooks say, which is essentially, you can’t take back the lives lost, but you can seek some revenge through ridicule. And by making Hitler and the Nazis a joke, I think that’s a victory. The Jews survive, and not only that, we flourish. And as Anne Frank, played eloquently by Rachel Feinstein on the show, she says to Hitler, you know the greatest revenge, Hitler, is the fact that you’re being portrayed by the loudest, most annoying Jew we could find.” As for this summer's roast of Baldwin, Ross recalled that he once interviewed the actor for The Daily Show many years ago. "I remember him yelling at a publicist, so there’s always that, the mood swings," says Ross. "People go, oh, there’s so many messed-up things about somebody to make fun of, but to me it’s easier to make fun of someone when they have a million hits, and he has so many good films. It’s more fun to watch those than watch bad ones and make fun of those.”