Moments before disaster (from the last episode before the panel change).
Photo: Kevin Langue/Youtube
If you tuned in to The Kevin Langue Show over the weekend, you might have just turned it right off. The YouTube show with over 5 million subscribers (and its own Netflix streaming deal) made a huge, sudden change on Saturday. Originally, the format followed Kevin Langue and his panel of comedians (Denny Love, Herman Wrice, and Aaron Branch) as they tried to guess the odd man out from a group of strangers. For example, the panel might guess which voice actor is pretending to be a child in a group of real children or which couple will be signing divorce papers by the end of the episode. Each episode included a special guest, such as another comedian or an actor friend on a PR tour. It was a fun, lighthearted, and silly web show viewers played along with to see if they were any good at guessing who was married to a millionaire.
But over the past weekend, fans noticed Saturday’s episode didn’t feature the usual bunch of lovable goofballs; four new guests sat on the panel alongside Langue. In the comments, he said the new season would bring back a rotating panel of comedians and celebrities instead of one rotating guest guesser. Fans were vocal about the sudden change. “kevin if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” one commenter wrote with 11,000 likes. “Kevin we don’t want a damn rotating panel, give us the ogs,” another wrote with nearly 9,000 likes. Soon, people noticed Wrice, Love, and Branch had all unfollowed Langue on Instagram, leaving cryptic messages on their Stories before making an official statement on Monday.
“Family, the feeling you may be experiencing of confusion and sadness is truly a shared one. We value you all so much. You have changed our lives in some unimaginable ways, and for that reason, you’re owed an explanation,” the trio began in a joint statement. “Unfortunately, there is only so much we are at liberty to share at this time.” They then said they haven’t been “involved in the show for some time now” and have no plans to participate going forward.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what happened behind the scenes but in a new statement dropped on September 15, Langue wrote two letters: one directed towards the fans and one towards Love, Wrice, and Branch. In the latter letter, Langue claimed that he received an email from an attorney representing the trio, demanding they renegotiate their contracts for the upcoming season. “That was the first time I was told there was even a problem. We responded right away so I could understand your needs and work toward a resolution, but all that your lawyers told me was that you wanted more. No one would say how much more you were asking for or give us any specific terms or demands you expected from me,” Langue explained. “To this day, I am still in the dark about what you want, and I have not heard from any of you again until your recent posts.” He said he moved forward with a new panel to avoid further delays, as the lawyer’s letter arrived right before they were about to film. Langue added, “Canceling all of that last minute doesn’t just affect me or the four of us. It affects an entire group of people who had nothing to do with what was happening between us. So I made the difficult decision to film with a new panel. I didn’t think it was fair to ask everyone to absorb the consequences of a situation they had nothing to do with.”
Langue concluded, “As you can imagine, I’ve felt betrayed, lost, and honestly, just fucking depressed. Meanwhile, it feels like you’ve ganged up on me and launched a smear campaign to deliberately mislead and confuse people with passive aggressive posts, empty insinuations and fake narratives.”
