With the world focusing on the Black Lives Matter movement for much of last year, of course there would be jokes stemming from the campaign. Michael Che sat down with Howard Stern recently, and explained that a joke about race and police didn’t quite make the cut on SNL. Che, who has worked as one of the head writers for the sketch comedy series, said that a joke he tried to spin about the Avengers was cut. The sketch had the Avengers kill an unarmed Black teen on accident.
“I think for obvious reasons there’s no way that’s going on,” Che told Stern. “The audience is looking at Saturday Night Live as Lorne Michaels’s show. They’re not looking at it as ‘Oh there’s this Black writer who is making this nuanced observation or whatever.’ It’s a little trickier.” When it comes to race and TV comedy, Che shouted out Dave Chappelle for finding the perfect formula.
“He was talking about when he did his show he would set it up in stand up and that way the whole sketch would just be punchlines,” Che commented about the format of Chappelle’s Show. “I was like, ‘That’s genius.’ But, on SNL you can’t really do that because it’s a variety show so there is no person that’s really leading it in.” It would definitely be weird to have a comedian introduce each sketch with a few jokes on SNL, but maybe it’s something they should try doing more often.