Joe DeRosa Quits His Podcast, and Explains His Fight with Anthony Cumia
Comedian and writer Joe DeRosa (Better Call Saul, The Pete Holmes Show, Opie & Anthony, Grand Theft Auto V) asks Alison Rosen if he can use this episode of ARIYNBF as a cross-over for his own show, Down With Joe DeRosa. Then he announces he’ll be ending his podcast soon.
Joe DeRosa Quits His Podcast
“I’m really not feeling my show,” DeRosa, who started his podcast in February 2014, tells Rosen. “This now will be the episode where I announce to the fans that my show is ending. I haven’t said it yet.”
DeRosa says he feels like his show, in which he and a guest delve into one main topic per episode, has run its course and is limiting because it won’t work in a live setting. “I just don’t care anymore. I just don’t feel the urge. It was fun but I didn’t really see where else we could go with it,” says DeRosa.
DeRosa Addresses His Fight with Anthony Cumia
DeRosa, who used to regularly appear on Opie and Anthony, and was friends with Anthony, also talks openly and diplomatically about his strained relationship (“quite a falling out”) with Anthony Cumia following Cumia’s highly publicized incident in Times Square.
“In hindsight, I still agree with the opinions I expressed at the time,” DeRosa said, “but in hindsight I don’t know if it was the best move to openly talk about that on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which is a huge podcast.”
DeRosa explained that at the time he went on Rogan’s podcast, he was having some personal and family problems, and had been getting a lot of pressure from Cumia’s fans to say something supportive after SiriusXM fired Cumia, and he decided to just put it on the table, in the hopes of closing the door on the social media pressure to support Cumia. Unfortunately, he said, “it led to us having quite a falling out.”
Joe says is mindful of all that Opie and Anthony have done in the past to help him in his career. “I’m completely grateful and I still fucking love those guys. They did so much for me, Opie and Anthony did so much for me in my career. They put me on. I will never be ungrateful or take any of that for granted,” he told Rosen. “It also doesn’t mean that I have to fire you into the fires of hell if you choose to go that way.”
Although DeRosa was aware of the “shitstorm” he was inviting by speaking up, he felt he needed to tell people to “stop asking me to defend this thing because I don’t feel comfortable defending it. I dont agree with what was said, I dont agree with the actions that followed it up. That was it.”
As a result, DeRosa’s gotten plenty of messages of hate, and his album ratings have all gone down to one or two stars. That’s okay, he says. It has “become now a promotion of mine, where I’m saying, the people that hate me got most of them down to one star but not all them. Let’s get them all down to one star. Let’s make it a universal one star. I don’t want to see two and a half stars that’s bullshit.”
You can hear the entire podcast on the soundcloud file below.
The Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend Podcast is released on Mondays and Thursdays. It’s available for free on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or www.alisonrosen.com.
