AceShowbiz - Mark Normand recently shared a story on his Tuesdays with Stories! podcast involving a dispute with Netflix over a joke about Muslims in his new special, Mark Normand: None Too Pleased. According to Normand, Netflix executives expressed concerns about promoting the joke on social media, fearing it could pose a risk to the company.

In his recount, Normand describes a conference call with Netflix where multiple Jewish executives participated. He said they asked him to remove the Muslim joke from his promotional social media posts due to prior incidents involving bomb threats and death threats after a similar joke by another comedian. The executives allegedly conveyed that the studio had been seriously threatened and damaged in the past, leading them to caution against sharing this material publicly online.

Normand explained the conversation: “We got to do a conference call. There’s 18 Jews on there with a speakerphone and my Jews. And they go, ‘Yeah, bad news. We reviewed the special again, we’d like you to take out the Muslim joke.’ I go, ‘Oh, why?’ And [they] go, ‘Well, the last time a comic did a Muslim joke, we got bomb threats. We got death threats. They said they were going to kill us. They ruined the whole studio, blowed the place up to smithereens. So we’d like to not use the Muslim joke.’ So I was like: I gotta fight for the joke here.”

Later, Normand says the executives clarified they only wanted the joke removed from social media promotion, not from the special itself. “They said, ‘We’ve got to get it off socials … socials is where all the shit starts,’” he recalled.

He added a humorous but pointed remark from the call: “I was like, ‘Okay, okay, I don’t love it, but okay. I will take it off on one condition: I want you to admit on this call they’re a dangerous people. You gotta admit it, or I’ll post again.’ I mean, I’m half joking … and they go, ‘Well, we’re not going to do that.’ And I’m like, ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, that’s offensive.’ And I go, ‘I just need you to say it out loud. I need acknowledgement’ … Like we’re all signaling, we’re all virtuous, but you don’t actually act that way, right? And I think this is a perfect example of that. ‘Hey we’re scared.’ Why are you nervous? That’s what I was getting at. So they admitted it.”

However, a source from Netflix strongly disputes most elements of Normand's account. The source acknowledged that Netflix advised the comedian to exercise caution with the clips and jokes he used to promote the special on his personal social media channels because the company operates globally.

Yet, the source denied the claim that any Netflix executive described Muslims as a dangerous group during a conference call or agreed with Normand’s comment labeling them as “dangerous people.” The source emphasized, “That is not true, not correct, completely false.”

The Netflix source also revealed that Normand himself was not on the conference call — only his representatives participated. Consequently, the back-and-forth dialogue Normand described between himself and Netflix executives did not actually take place, calling it “an embellishment.”

Normand is known for delivering jokes that playfully mock various groups. For context, the Muslim joke in question from his special goes as follows: “All my friends with kids are just telling me horror stories about theirs. One of my friends has a teenage daughter, she’s like going through all these phases. First she went through a promiscuous pothead phase. Now she’s going through a Muslim phase. I was like, ‘Hey, she slept with a Muslim, that’s not bad. Now she’s on her knees five times a day for a different reason … He’s like, ‘Yeah, I guess, but you think she’ll stop smoking weed?’ I was like, ‘Well, she’s a Muslim woman. She could still get stoned.’”

He humorously added, “Uh-oh, a Muslim joke! You laughed at the Jew shit, just trying to keep it even.”

At this time, a representative for Mark Normand has not issued an official comment regarding the dispute.

Below is the trailer for Mark Normand: None Too Pleased, which highlights his comedic style and the material surrounding this controversy.