Jeff Ross to make his Broadway debut this summer in one-man show that's
far from a roast
[June 19, 2025]
By MARK KENNEDY
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeff Ross, a comedian known for hosting brutal roasts of
celebrities, is coming to Broadway this summer with a one-man
autobiographical show that will offer fans a softer, more intimate side.
“The hard part for me is letting go of a bit of my armor — of my
roastmaster persona — and letting the audience get to me so that I can
then get them,” he tells The Associated Press ahead of a formal
announcement Wednesday. “I think it’s healthy to change it up and
surprise people.”
“Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride” will play the Nederlander
Theatre starting Aug. 5 for an eight-week engagement through Sept. 29.
The show will explore Ross' close relatives, especially his grandfather
on his mother's side — Ross calls him “the hero of my childhood” — who
stepped up after the comedian's parents died when he was a teenager.
“It’s very autobiographical, but it’s also not really about just me.
It’s about all of us. When I talk about my uncle or my mom, I want you
to see your uncle and your mom in the stories. That’s really important
to me,” Ross says.
“It’s very joyful. It kind of takes the stigma out of loss and sickness
and lets people know that they’re going to be OK no matter what
happens.”
The title comes from the days when Ross was living with his grandfather
in New Jersey. The younger man would take his grandfather to doctor
visits or visit him in the hospital during the day and at night go into
New York for open-mic nights.
“My grandfather would always give me money for the bus and a banana, and
he’d say, ‘Take a banana for the ride.’ I reluctantly took it, and more
often than not, I’d be stuck in traffic, or I’d get low blood sugar, and
that banana would be a lifesaver,” says Ross.
“But it was really his way of saying, ‘Be ready for anything’ and also,
‘I can’t go with you but I’m there with you in spirit.’ So it was an
emotional thing, it was a practical thing. It’s something that I still
do.”
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Jeff Ross performs at Madison Square Garden in New York on Aug. 22,
2023, (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
 Ross is known as “The Roastmaster
General” for his incendiary takedowns of Justin Bieber, Rob Lowe,
Alec Baldwin and Tom Brady, among many others.
The seeds for “Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride” were planted
in the mid-1990s when Ross gathered jokes and stories about his
grandfather for an hourlong set. But digging up the past proved too
much.
“I couldn’t sustain it emotionally. It was just too much for me as a
30-year-old guy,” Ross says. “But now, 30 years later, I can dig in
and look back and add a layer of experience over it all.”
He was spurred on in large part to losing three comedic friends —
Bob Saget, Gilbert Gottfried and Norm Macdonald — within eight
months. “That motivated me to look back at the old show from decades
earlier and rewrite it completely for my current brain and my
current skill set.”
Ross will be the latest comedian to come to Broadway, following John
Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia, Alex Edelman, Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael
Key, Rachel Dratch, Billy Crystal and Colin Quinn. Bill Burr made
his Broadway debut this year in a revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Ross reaches back even further. His aunt took him to see Jackie
Mason’s “The World According to Me!” in the 1980s, and the young
comedian was floored by the comedian's captivating set.
“It was elegant, but it was also punk rock because he was being
bawdy and naughty and hilarious and saying taboo things and it
really, really stayed with me for a long, long time.”
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