Jaleel White’s Impersonations Steal The Show On ‘Historical Roasts’ On Netflix

Jeff Ross, the “Roastmaster General,” hosts and executive produces a new six-episode series of Historical Roasts on Netflix.

Ross is the butt of more jokes than anyone, living or dead, onstage throughout the series.

Make no mistake: All of the famous figures roasted in these half-hour roasts already had dearly departed from us years, if not centuries, ago. And most of the fun comes from seeing who portrays who and how from history. Of course, “the loudest and most annoying Jew” Gilbert Gottfried gets to play Adolf Hitler. And the celebrity uttering that line about Gottfried is Nikki Glaser as Kurt Cobain. Getting Fred Willard in your show in any capacity equals comedy gold, even more so when he’s playing God.

Rock star Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age plays rock “King” Elvis Presley. And Mindy Rickles impersonates her own father, Don Rickles, as a young man serving in the Navy during World War II, putting Ross in his place. “Sit over there. Eat a cookie. Figure out where it all went wrong. You’re roasting dead people. It’s over!”

But of all the inspired casting choices in these throwbacks from the first century BC to today, none quite inspires and delightfully surprises us so much as the inclusion of Jaleel White, our once and future Urkel, as not only the late great South African leader Nelson Mandela, but also as “the greatest,” Muhammad Ali.

White stands alone as the only celebrity booked twice on Historical Roasts.

His hair may not have gotten whitened as Mandela’s had in his old age, but White’s speech in the “Martin Luther King, Jr.” episode is a tour de force that earns a standing ovation. He mimics Mandela so well, his put-downs have Jerry Minor’s MLK doubled over in hysterics. White one-ups himself later as the roastee of honor Ali, delivering his rhymes with the swagger worthy of the champ.

There are other stand-out moments, to be sure, in the series.

The premiere episode features Bob Saget as President Abraham Lincoln, with his Full House cohort John Stamos as his assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

Joke for joke, the best roasting comes from the stand-ups with the most experience with the form, from Natasha Leggero as Mary Todd Lincoln to Glaser as Cobain.

While the comedians and actors stay true to their impersonations, their jokes sometimes break the fourth dimensional wall to hit home even harder with their targets, the live studio audience or you the viewers. Leggero describes Ross as a “Union general who ate a Rebel Wilson;” to the rest of the dais, she later zings: “My husband famously said, ‘A house divided cannot stand.’ Too bad he didn’t say, ‘A Full House divided cannot be reboot.'”

Some of the comedians spends as much time on themselves or on their character’s place in history as they do ribbing anyone else. Yamaneika Saunders as Harriet Tubman got heated explaining what the slaves endured. John Gemberling spent his time as Babe Ruth roasting Ruth in the third person.

Three of the six episodes get musical numbers, thanks to Freddie Mercury (James Adomian), Isis (Bridget Everett) and Elvis (Homme).

And some of the episodes are more interesting as theatrical period pieces than they are as actual roasts. Even the audience gets into the act, costume-wise.

For longtime Roast Battle fans of the Comedy Central series (or live shows even before that at The Comedy Store), Ross has found roles for his Wave members Jeremiah Watkins (a larger-than-life-sized cat) and Jamar Neighbors (as Joe Frazier).

Ross repeatedly tells audiences that “we only roast the ones we love,” which explains why the televised roasts for Comedy Central, the Friars Club (and Dean Martin before that) typically only casted the roastee’s closest friends and colleagues. For Historical Roasts, it’s an In Memoriam Hall of Fame. So I get why they chose Memorial Day.

Even if these tricks and treats make it feel a lot more like Halloween.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Historical Roasts on Netflix