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Joel McHale Says The Soup Stopped Making Kardashian Jokes After Kris Jenner Complained

Of course that's what happened

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Amanda Bell

Joel McHale might have begun his tenure on The Soup in 2004 with unlimited room to harp on his fellow E! stars the Kardashians, but by the time the series came to a close in 2015, he wasn't allowed to mock the reality stars at all.

While promoting his new Netflix talk show, The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale, the actor/host told Varietyhis former network slowly stopped him from talking about the Kardashian-Jenner family, saying, "Way back when, Kris Kardashian would complain about our jokes, and Ted [Harbert] would literally go, 'Hey man, Kris called, can you just lay off of her for a week?'"

Once the network presidency changed hands, however, things got even more strict around his studio.

"The [new] president said to my face, 'Don't make fun of the Kardashians. We don't want you to make fun of the Kardashians anymore,'" said McHale. "So I was like, oh, this show is doomed because that's why the show worked, because we would make fun of ourselves. It's like when Letterman made fun of GE in the '80s. You have to bite the hand that feeds you."

On his new show, McHale gets to do just that during a tour of Netflix's production facility that puts him face-to-face with some of the streaming service's current stars.

"All I care about is making jokes that are funny and making people laugh," McHale said of the new opportunity.

The Joel McHale Show with Joel McHale is now on Netflix.