James Franco’s Comedy Central Roast adds Bill Hader, Sarah Silverman, others

We have never made our love of the Comedy Central Roast a secret. It’s a night where celebrities and comedians have a license to be as awful as they can to someone who deserves to be the butt of a few jokes, and they have to sit there and take it because they’ve received plenty of money.

And while James Franco may seem like an odd choice given how some past targets of this show were the likes of Roseanne Barr, Donald Trump, and Charlie Sheen, one of the great things about getting James is the sort of talent that he will bring along with him. It’s already been official for some time that Seth Rogen will be replacing Jane Lynch as the Roastmaster for the show, and the group of roasters for now includes longtime participant Jeff Ross, Jonah Hill, Nick Kroll, Sarah Silverman, Natasha Leggero, and recent “Saturday Night Live” cast member Bill Hader. All in all, it’s a pretty nice mixture of people who are very funny, and while there are surely at least a couple more names coming on board in the coming weeks, nobody here seems to be a dud.

The only real surprise here to us is the omission of Amy Schumer and Anthony Jeselnik, who have been as of late the golden children of Comedy Central. While we haven’t loved every one of their jokes over the years, they’ve each been really bold and unafraid to go to dark places in their comedy, and we appreciate that so much more than someone going on stage and mocking people with the same material that we’ve heard before. On a different note, we’ve been wondering when Silverman, a top-five female comic in our book, was going to have an opportunity to take part again. (It’s been a few years since she took part in a roast.)

This edition of the roast airs on Monday, September 2, which is great news for those of you who can’t find anything better on to watch. (Hey, it’s a roast; only appropriate to put the show down a little bit.)

Photo: Comedy Central