In a development that hopefully won’t be included in his forthcoming biopic, actor-comedian Steve Harvey has admitted that he retired from stand-up due to “cancel culture.” We sure it wasn’t all those flubs on stage, Mr. Harvey?
Harvey’s comments came during a recent episode of The Pivot Podcast (via Complex). He explained that he saw a significant shift in comedy coming down the cultural pipeline, and dropping stand-up was a necessary reaction to the forthcoming upheaval.
“You remember, I said change is inevitable. You got to react or participate,” Harvey said. “So my participation was to get away from it because the cancel culture started becoming everywhere. Comedy is too hard to do right immediately. And all you got to do is look immediately the way the cancel culture works.”
Harvey added that, despite the lucrative nature of his stand-up career, he ultimately chose to step away after more than 30 years on the road. “That’s why I left stand-up in 2012, 2015 — one of them,” he said. “I had so many shows and had built such a catalog of work that I was making money, but I had to let something go. If I toured on the weekends, I wouldn’t even have a family.”
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This isn’t the first time Harvey has rallied against cancel culture. During a 2022 panel appearance for the Television Critics Association, Harvey said that “no standup [comedian] alive that is sponsor-driven can say anything he wants to,” citing the likes of Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, and D.L. Hughley. At the time, Consequence pointed out that, despite significant backlash for transphobic remarks, the similarly seasoned Dave Chappelle still performed at Netflix’s L.A.-based comedy fest. But then poking holes in these kind of “arguments” isn’t really the point.
No, what Harvey and other denouncers “cancel culture” are really talking about is a kind of artistic/comedic stagnation. These comedians want to be allowed to say what they want and whenever they want, and to counter their claims is somehow an attack on them and free speech itself. Fortunately, not every comic agrees with Harvey and his ilk. In a 2021 appearance on the Joe Budden Podcast, Katt Williams said that “Cancellation doesn’t have its own culture,” and that a lot of this ongoing discourse is really about minority groups policing themselves/their culture. He added that it’s a comedian’s job to adapt to ever-shifting social norms, explaining, “Nobody likes the speed limit, but it’s necessary.” And, of course, Anthony Jeselnik has made regular rants against these “anti-accountability” comedians during his own sets.
Harvey’s new comments came at a time when comedians are actually being cancelled due to the democracy-busting actions of President Donald Trump. In July, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert was axed due to “financial reasons”; though some critics believe the Trump Administration leveraged a Skydance-Paramount discount to silence the outspoken Colbert. Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was recently suspended (and potentially pulled from the air outright ) after his (mostly innocuous) comments surrounding the recent assassination of alt-right activist Charlie Kirk. And with Trump making thinly-veiled gestures toward the shows of both Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers, it seems like comedians actually trying to do good work are facing unintended consequences. But I guess comedy’s truly dead if you can no longer make, like, the same dumb jokes about pick-up lines.
Check out Harvey’s Pivot appearance below. The cancel culture comments begin near the 37-minute mark.
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