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Donovan Goliath on Comedy Central Roast Battle: It's scarier than stand-up

Johannesburg – With the Comedy Central Roast Battle finale taking place on Monday, The Juice reached out to funny-man and roast battle finalist, Donovan Goliath, to get his take on what the competition was like. 

What was this experience like for you? 

It’s such a different experience. It’s scarier than stand-up comedy because you’re doing all the material for the first time. Cause you can’t practise any of that stuff. It’s very personal and obviously you’ve gotta hold it until the last minute before you throw it out there. So, you actually have no idea how it’s gonna go. If you went backstage to see all the comics getting ready to go on stage, nobody was calm. It’s so unsettling. A lot of the time you feel like the stuff you’ve written is too hectic because you know it’s not in our nature to be so mean and throw out malice, but that’s the aim of whole thing.  

Was there one joke that you felt you needed to hold back on? Where did you draw the line? 

I drew the line on Rob van Vuuren. He spoke about it on the roast, he can’t reproduce, basically. And I had written, I can’t even remember what the line was, I just felt so terrible about it, I didn’t wanna go there. You know, as a man it just started touching me deep in my soul, and I was like no man I can’t do this. So I scratched it out. Fortunately I didn’t have to go up against him. 

I'm loving how my life story is playing out at the moment. ?????

A post shared by Donovan Goliath (@donovan_goliath) on

What was the best part about this experience? 

The best part for me I think is throwing out a roast, when the audience gets it, when it really lands, and there’s the shock factor, but they also applaud and go, okay, that was pretty sharp, that was pretty good. 

Would you do it again? 

You know when I finished it I said I would never do this again cause it’s too much pressure writing all the stuff, but there is something exciting about it though. It’s an interesting challenge, it’s very different to a lot of the other stuff we do. That’s why I can honestly say that I really enjoyed it, only because it’s so different, cause there were a lot of comics who pulled out cause they were too afraid to get into it. 

If you could roast anyone in the local entertainment industry, who would it be? 

That’s such a difficult question. It would probably be AKA. I don’t know what I would say to him yet because AKA is quite a brutal guy, he’d come back at me hard. But nobody wants to attack him, so ja that would be interesting. 

Dope portrait by my dude @ricardomarcusk

A post shared by Donovan Goliath (@donovan_goliath) on

If you could choose three local stars to roast you, who would you pick? 

Definitely Somizi, I think Somizi is incredible. Julius Malema, definitely. The final roaster would be Dineo Renaka. 

What can viewers expect from the show tonight? 

These are the winners of every round, so it’s very brutal. The guys have spent a lot of time figuring out what they’re gonna say. It’s no holds barred, it’s funny, it’s cringeworthy. There are gonna be a lot of surprises in it as well. It’s pretty amazing, there are a lot of plot twists and turns.

The Comedy Central Roast Battle finale airs on Comedy Central (DSTV channel 122) on Monday 20 February at 21:00.

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