You needed to be a sharp-eyed fan to spot yet another celebrity guest on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live. No, not Jimmy Fallon in his Barry Gibb disco suit. Nope, not Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran. If you look closely at host Dakota Johnson waving goodnight at show’s end, you’ll see controversial comic Dave Chappelle clapping along on Stage Left. Weird — he wasn’t in the show at all so what’s he doing on stage? Keep looking and you’ll notice another curiosity, at least if you’re a comedy conspiracy theorist: Bowen Yang is standing as far as possible from Chappelle on the other side of the stage. What the what? Let’s go, Twitter — time to cook up some SNL drama!
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Yang certainly looks as if someone just poured sour milk on his Lucky Charms. Check out Sarah Sherman’s reaction below when — we’re spitballing here — Yang alerts her to Chappelle’s offending presence and suggests they scooch as far away as possible.
Pride.com speculated that Yang’s discomfort was related to Chappelle “self-identifying as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or TERF, and for promoting nasty and homophobic rhetoric in his Netflix specials The Closer and The Dreamer.” It’s as good a theory as any.
“The last time he was on the show, neither Yang, Sherman, nor the non-binary castmate Molly Kearney were involved in that taping,” noted Pride.com, “which could also add to the shock Yang and Sherman experienced when Chapelle (sic) showed up unannounced.”
Er, that’s not exactly true. Chappelle hosted just last season, an episode in which Yang (as Brian Kilmeade in a Fox and Friends sketch), Sherman (doing Sarah News on Weekend Update) and Kearney (the star of a Please Don’t Destroy sketch) all appeared. If they were angry about sharing a show with Chappelle, their principled stance wasn’t enough to give up any screen time.
Broadway Video
OR WAS IT? Check out the goodbyes that night — no Yang, Sherman or Kearney in the shot! Was it a conscious boycott? Were others missing in the shot — Cecily Strong, for example — expressing their disgust as well? With this additional puzzle piece, let’s hope Twitter can get to the bottom of the Yang/Chappelle feud that may or may not be happening but likely is, at least as far as we know. Probably.