American comedian Norm McDonald has come under fire for his defence of Roseanne Barr and Louis CK.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter McDonald, whose Netflix talk show Norm McDonald Has A Show starts on September 14, spoke up for Roseanne and CK. "Louis and Roseanne are the two people I know. And Roseanne was so broken up [after her show's reboot was cancelled] that I got Louis to call her, even though Roseanne was very hard on Louis before that. But she was just so broken and just crying constantly. There are very few people that have gone through what they have, losing everything in a day. Of course, people will go, "What about the victims?" But you know what? The victims didn't have to go through that."

He was also critical of Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, even though he admitted that he had never seen the acclaimed show: "I have never seen the Nanette thing because I never wanted to comment on it. But from what I have read about it, [comedian Hannah Gadsby] is saying that comedy is now not about laughter. And of course that's a slap in the face of a traditional stand-up comedian who thinks that comedy by dictionary definition is about laughter. And that that's your job. You actually do have a job onstage. Nanette doesn't sound like stand-up to me. That sounds like a one-woman show. And one-person shows are, to me, incredibly powerful. But it's not stand-up comedy and it's not the same thing."

Gadsby responded by tweeting: "I'd never heard of this Norm McDonald bloke because I didn't want to make a comment about him. I don't like him though. #dickbiscuit"

Guests on the 58-year-old's forthcoming talk show include Jane Fonda, Judge Judy Sheindlin, Macdonald's former SNL boss Lorne Michaels and David Letterman.

Read the full interview here.

Norm McDonald Has A Show is on Netflix from September 14.