The Tea — May 13, 2026

The Kevin Hart roast aired Sunday. It's Wednesday. And the fallout is louder than the show itself — Pete Davidson called Kanye a "gay Nazi" to his face, Michael Che criticized the writing room from the outside, and Netflix has said exactly nothing about any of it. Meanwhile, Katy Perry turned her ex's engagement into a one-woman TikTok elegy, and somewhere in the middle of all this, Dani Rojas signed with an actual soccer team. Football is, apparently, life.

There are roast jokes, and then there are roast jokes delivered to a man who once posted a music video of you being buried alive.

Kanye West attended Kevin Hart's roast Sunday with his wife Bianca Censori. Mid-set, Pete Davidson — pivoting off a Tony Hinchcliffe bit — pointed in Ye's direction and said, "I was in a beef with Kanye, so I've taken shots from better gay Nazis." TMZ obtained video of the moment. Kanye sat stone-faced. Not a flinch.

He wasn't catatonic — he applauded when Teyana Taylor took the stage and smiled when Dwayne Johnson introduced Hart, per Consequence. He was just specifically unmoved by Pete. Which, for a man whose 2022 response to Davidson involved nicknaming him "Skete" and posting cartoon violence about him, is a genuine plot twist. Davidson's joke was pointing at real history: Ye's 2025 song "Cousins" got pulled from streaming, and earlier this year he bought a full-page Wall Street Journal ad discussing his bipolar disorder and saying he wanted to "earn" forgiveness.

So the question is whether the stone face is genuine growth or the most disciplined PR performance of Ye's career. The tell will be his socials in the next 48 hours — historically, Ye's silence has a shelf life of about three days before something surfaces. If the apology era is real, this is where it proves itself. If it isn't, we'll know by Friday.

The roast ended Sunday. The actual story started Tuesday, when Michael Che — who wasn't even there — posted the most pointed Instagram critique of the whole event.

Per Variety, two production sources said Che was supposed to appear but pulled out citing SNL scheduling conflicts. Then he watched it air, and had thoughts. "White guys and Black people joke different," he wrote, noting the white roasters' material gravitated toward "Slavery, math, slain teens, sex crimes, slurs, family secrets." He wasn't inventing the pattern — Shane Gillis made jokes about Hart's height that referenced slavery and lynching (the lynching one, he admitted, took "three weeks of deliberation"), and Hinchcliffe drew backlash for a routine about George Floyd.

Then Che went further. In a second post: "Let's do a roast celebrating the career of the most successful Black comic in the last 10 years. I love that! Who should we get to write it?" — attached to a photo of Gillis's five joke writers, all white. Variety notes the full telecast had 17 credited writers, several Black — so Che's aim was specifically at Gillis's room, not the production. Netflix has said nothing.

What's at stake: if Netflix lets the silence ride through the weekend, it confirms the streamer is willing to absorb the criticism rather than relitigate the jokes. If they respond, it tells you the Che post forced a conversation upstairs. Watch for any quiet talent reshuffling on the next roast announcement — that's the real signal.

This is not a sad story. This is a masterclass.

Monday, Katy Perry posted a TikTok of herself in a white bathrobe, pouring a comically large glass of champagne and fake-sobbing along to "The One That Got Away," her 2011 hit. The caption: "congrats," plus a champagne emoji. The trigger: Josh Groban — yes, that Josh Groban — got engaged to British actress Natalie McQueen.

The lore makes it: Perry confirmed in a 2017 livestream that Groban inspired the song, after their brief 2009 romance. Groban found out about it on Watch What Happens Live and said it was "a double take and a spit of my coffee." He also pointed out the lyrics don't actually match his life, which is somehow even funnier.

The bonus chaos, per Bustle: Perry is currently dating Justin Trudeau. She is dating an ex-world leader and still fake-crying over Josh Groban on the internet. If this is anything, it's a reminder of what celebrity self-deprecation looks like when the algorithm is the venue. The thing to watch is whether Groban responds — and whether anyone on Team Trudeau finds it as funny as the rest of us do.

The Late Show is ending Thursday, May 21. Tuesday night's episode delivered the kind of TV moment that only works when everyone in the room knows it's almost over.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus showed up in character as Selina Meyer, the fictional VP from Veep who never quite got what she wanted, and proceeded to roast Colbert with surgical precision. Per Variety, she told him: "Your cancellation gave Trump such pleasure," and called him "the Stormy Daniels of late night." It was brutal. It was also obviously delivered with love, which is the only register in which a line like that lands instead of stings.

CBS is replacing Colbert with a game show called Comics Unleashed, which tells you everything you need to know about where the network thinks late night is going. If Colbert uses the finale to say something genuinely pointed about CBS or Skydance, the David Letterman "lying weasels" storyline reopens immediately — and Paramount inherits a press cycle they cannot blame on a working employee, because Colbert won't be one. Watch May 21.

This one is genuinely delightful.

Per Deadline, Cristo Fernández — the actor who played Dani "football is life" Rojas on Ted Lasso — has signed with a professional soccer club in Mexico. AFC Richmond's return for the Ted Lasso revival hasn't been confirmed, but Fernández is back on a training pitch regardless, this time as himself.

It is the most on-brand possible coda for the character, and a small but real example of a new kind of celebrity crossover: an actor signing a sports contract partly on the strength of a role. If this works as a marketing arrangement for both the club and the show, expect more of it — IP-tethered casting is one of the few entertainment trends that costs studios nothing and prints engagement. Football, as we've been told, is life.

A man sat stone-faced through being called a gay Nazi, a pop star fake-cried in a bathrobe over a man who wasn't even sure her song was about him, and a fictional striker signed a real contract to play actual professional soccer in Mexico. Somewhere in there, Michael Che — who wasn't even at the roast — became the most quoted person about it, which is the most Michael Che outcome imaginable.

Stay messy.

Forward this to the friend who's been waiting all week for someone to explain the Kanye thing.