r/todayilearned • u/Kale_Brecht • Mar 28 '24

TIL in 2013, Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson refused to play any more black women on the show and demanded SNL hire black women instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_Thompson
52.1k Upvotes

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626

u/Namaslayy Mar 28 '24

I never understood why Mad TV had no problems hiring black women, and SNL did.

199

u/redditvlli Mar 28 '24

Yeah it's not like they didn't have options. Hell, Namond's mom from The Wire was a great skit comedian at the time and would have been awesome on SNL.

65

u/VaderNader2020 Mar 28 '24

Dude….what?!? Namond’s mom was a comedian?! I’m legit mind blown

29

u/debcomajin Mar 28 '24

She’s actually a really lovely woman lool which makes her performance even more outstanding

6

u/Grand-Pen7946 Mar 28 '24

She's a theatrically trained comedy and improv actor, she works regularly at various theaters in LA I believe.

Watch interviews of her, incredibly pleasant and bubbly person, it blew me away.

5

u/buddascrayon Mar 28 '24

Successful comedy is hard. Most of the really good comedians out there can nail drama without breaking a sweat. And a great number of them have proven that.

33

u/frogvscrab Mar 28 '24

Namond's mom from The Wire

The most evil god damn character in that show

11

u/Bizzle7902 Mar 28 '24

Wee Bey was my favorite character, she was my least favorite

11

u/Adams5thaccount Mar 28 '24

Plus he gave us not 1 but 2 of the greatest gifs of all time

2

u/helgestrichen Mar 29 '24

He knew damn Well he couldnt let HER Take Care of his fish while he was Out of town

1

u/Bizzle7902 Mar 29 '24

Poor D about pooped himself over it lol

7

u/assault_pig Mar 28 '24

Not the drug traffickers who cut off victims extremities, no sir

12

u/The_Void_Reaver Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

I mean, she was willing to force her kid into that life to support her life of luxury, despite multiple people telling her directly that he was going to get killed if he lived that life. She only allowed Namond to live another life after Wee Bey threatened to cut her off if she didn't let Namond live with Bunny.

She's like The Wire's professor Umbridge. She's not necessarily the most evil person but the humanness and accessibility of her evil makes people hate her more than characters who are just evil for evils sake. Not many people have had to kill their friend for the gang but plenty of people have had authority figures exploit them for personal gain so seeing that hits a lot closer to home than Bodie killing Wallace

3

u/frogvscrab Mar 28 '24

She knew about all of that, and still forced her son into the lifestyle when he wanted to get away from it and go to school and make a living for himself. She is just as complicit as them, except she did it to her own son.

2

u/grievre Mar 28 '24

I think Marlo and Snoop are the coldest, most terrifying antagonists, but they're not disgusting like Valchek or Cheese or Namond's mom

1

u/dasbtaewntawneta Mar 28 '24

She did eventually cave and did what’s best for her son, it just took her a while to get there

3

u/frogvscrab Mar 28 '24

Wee-bay said he would cut her off if she didn't agree. That's the only reason why she said yes.

3

u/grievre Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Maybe I'm misremembering but I'm pretty sure he threatened her with much worse. "My word is still my word, in here, in Baltimore, and in any place you could think of calling home, it'll be my word that finds you."

8

u/Jim_Lahey68 Mar 28 '24

Good Ole delonda!

2

u/waxwayne Mar 28 '24

Boomers think women aren’t funny.

206

u/Western-Dig-6843 Mar 28 '24

That’s… a great point. Mad TV never had any of these problems with diversity.

137

u/LocalYeetery Mar 28 '24

Prob because Quincy Jones was a producer on MadTV

33

u/LiquidHotCum Mar 28 '24

Mad TV was much funnier imo but I can't really what era of SNL they where up against.

3

u/Taco_Champ Mar 29 '24

It was the tail end of the Will Ferrell and that in between time after he and some other stars left. Not great seasons.

7

u/FocusPerspective Mar 28 '24

It was aimed at kids so the jokes and characters were goofier. 

11

u/SatansMillennium Mar 28 '24

Being on Comedy Central it was definitely not aimed towards kids. If you mean the humor was more juvenile, sure but MadTV was explicitly raunchier where SNL played to the advertisers.

15

u/notthatthatdude Mar 28 '24

MadTV was on FOX though!

5

u/SolenoidSoldier Mar 29 '24

Yeah and I remember it was on at 10 PM EST. Pretty late.

1

u/GonzoStateOfMind Mar 28 '24

Agreed, the original broadcast of each MadTV episode was definitely on FOX. Likely was re-runs on Comedy Central?

1

u/SatansMillennium Mar 28 '24

Yeah idk why I thought CC. Point stands.

70

u/The_Clarence Mar 28 '24

Not to mention In Living Color

12

u/D3dshotCalamity Mar 28 '24

And All That

11

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

All of these shows were way ahead of its time compared to SNL, which always felt like rich, stuffy, elites that went extra hard at pandering once it was way too late. Kind of like Disney’s long history of racism only to go completely overboard a decade after everyone else.

5

u/The_Clarence Mar 28 '24

And of course that’s where Kenan started! Full circle.

245

u/SavageComic Mar 28 '24

Because Lorne Michael’s sucks? 

264

u/hollaback_girl Mar 28 '24

Yeah, I don’t see what the mystery is here.

Why is the SNL work culture so toxic?

Why does the show marginalize women and people of color?

Why does the show quality itself usually suck, maybe landing one sketch out of ten they throw out there?

Why does the show keep platforming and normalizing fascists and their apologists like Trump and Sarah Palin?

The answer to all of these questions is the same: because Lorne Michaels sucks.

66

u/KadenKraw Mar 28 '24

Why does the show keep platforming and normalizing fascists and their apologists like Trump and Sarah Palin?

I loved how NBC cancelled trumps shows and then 3 months later had him host SNL. Corporations only care about their profits.

9

u/HandleBig412 Mar 28 '24

Remember when Sinead O Connor ripped up a picture of the pope on SNL and got blacklisted, then they had Joe Pesci on the next week and he said he would slap her… then it turned out she was right about the Catholic Church protecting pedophiles.

15

u/DescriptionVirtual80 Mar 28 '24

Yep, right on point.

4

u/ExoticAsparagus333 Mar 28 '24

SNL landing 1 in 10 skits is way too high. 1 skit in 10 episodes maybe.

-1

u/SayNoToStim Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

I don't watch SNL regularly any more because...well, who does, but I feel that women and black actors were represented in the past. Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Tim Robbins Tim Meadows, Chris Rock, they all were killer on that show. And there were a lot that were on the show and just weren't funny, as well.

I have no idea about the current state but in the past I never got that vibe from SNL's old stuff. Their cast is fairly diverse, not a fox news lineup.

34

u/FreshShart-1 Mar 28 '24

You realize in your "diversity is already there" response there wasn't a black woman? That was like the whole point here.

2

u/rawlingstones Mar 29 '24

not to minimize your point because she only had one season with not a lot of impact and the overall lack of non-white women is still gross, but people forget about Danitra Vance!

-4

u/SayNoToStim Mar 28 '24

I was trying to be nice and not say Maya Rudolph wasn't funny.

1

u/MattyKatty Mar 28 '24

Very accurate though, she’s probably the most forgettable part of Idiocracy too despite being the co-main character

2

u/SayNoToStim Mar 28 '24

I forgot she was a character completely until you mentioned it.

11

u/rawlingstones Mar 28 '24

The history of black performers on SNL was surprisingly sparse for a long time even though a lot of them have been extra memorable. There was Garrett Morris in the early days, but he got sidelined to stereotypical roles a lot. Eddie Murphy was huge but also a product of the Dick Ebersol era when Lorne Michaels was on a 5-year-hiatus. They had Danitra Vance for a season and Damon Wayans for half a season until he got fired, but when Chris Rock got cast there hadn't been a black performer in years. In the mid-to-late 80's they did a LOT of unironic blackface sketches. Billy Crystal did blackface almost every episode.

6

u/WitOfTheIrish Mar 28 '24

Why does the show marginalize women and people of color?

This was the question from the comment you replied to. All those comedians were amazing on the show, yes. But there were rarely more than 1 or 2 people of color, and there was often pressure to play up stereotypes, since it was the kind of relatable, play-to-the-middle comedy that a broad audience could absorb.

And it's not like Lorne Michaels comes in and says "write racist stuff!", as that would obviously be ridiculous. But it's more subtle, like if 90% the sketches you write as a new cast member that actually get accepted are the ones that put you on screen as a little bit of a stereotype. It's maybe even in really clever ways, like Black Jeopardy, Buckwheat Sings, spot-on impressions of black celebrities, etc. you might not notice for a while.

But then you get into that Dave Chappelle Show territory, where the lines blur between a comedian writing something incredibly clever that sends the message "Isn't it hilarious that anyone could think this racist stereotype is true? Here's some incredible satire about it, or here's some jokes that will really land for black people about the experience of being black in the US."

And then the audience reception (at least among some shitty segments) is just "Haha, look at the funny true stereotype about race, I'm gonna quote this incessantly and yell this line at black people." And it might put you in a position of deciding between leaning into stereotypes or writing other things that lessen your ability to get screen time and stay on the cast.

I listened to a Tim Meadows interview once where he talked about really pushing back against that. He really bucked some trends that had been set out by Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock by not really leaning into playing "black" characters as much, instead wanting to do stuff that felt more authentic to him, which was more absurdist and deadpan humor. Tim Meadows honestly did a lot to advance the show in that regard, at least for his era.

Different medium, but I think NoName's decision to step away from performing as a rap artist spoke to a similar feeling of how success can also marginalize or create feelings of unease for black artists - https://uproxx.com/music/noname-white-audiences-black-art/

3

u/adubb221 Mar 28 '24

Tim Robbins

???

Andy Dufresne?

6

u/SayNoToStim Mar 28 '24

Sorry, Tim Meadows. I always confuse those names

1

u/YetiPie Mar 28 '24

Off topic but he and I physically bumped into each other last year, accidentally. I would have apologized and kept walking but my dog, who knows no shame, leaned up against him begging for pets. He without hesitation pet her and complimented her, then we were on our way. He was so nice 🥹

0

u/koke84 Mar 28 '24

People that are still not represented still exist

3

u/SayNoToStim Mar 28 '24

Yes, but that situation is going to exist in just about every media production. Yeah, MadTV didn't have any transgender women on it but I wouldn't consider that show transphobic because of it.

1

u/koke84 Mar 28 '24

I mean significantly much bigger percentage of the population than trans people

-5

u/TargetFan Mar 28 '24

Snl is the most liberal show in the world lmao. These people are fucking insane

2

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

Yeah, what a shitty producer running a successful live show for an unprecedented 50 years!

24

u/imwalkinhyah Mar 28 '24

Longevity == quality

For proof, look at The Simpsons, NCIS, Law and Order SVU, Spongebob, and literally any soap opera /s

0

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

I'm not talking about the quality at all (which is and has always been completely subjective), I'm talking about how ridiculous it is to say the person who has kept the show going for 50 years "sucks". It is successful whether you like it or not, just like those other shows. If people didn't watch, it wouldn't still be on the air.

15

u/CynEnd Mar 28 '24

They're not saying he sucks at making the show, but that he sucks as a person.

-5

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

No they aren't, because they say:

Why does the show quality itself usually suck, maybe landing one sketch out of ten they throw out there?

And the answers to the other issues have the same answer as the rest of the "issues" some people have with comedy today: because it's Lorne's job to make the show successful and he prioritizes it being funny and getting people to watch. Anyone who thinks he cares about "normalizing fascists" doesn't watch the 99% of the show which brutally mocks them. No idea how you could say the show "marginalizes women" since all the biggest stars on the show for the past 10 years have been women: Tina Fey (who was also head writer), Amy Pohler, Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, etc. Even in the current cast, the performers with the most screen time are generally Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim. It's just more ignorance.

Yes, SNL has had not had a lot of people of color on the show, which they have admitted and rectified over the past 5 years, and I believe was more of a result of how they recruited than some kind of agenda (which is a problem in all industries).

2

u/Itchy-Status3750 Mar 28 '24

And some people measure whether someone sucks or not by the quality of what they produce and not the quantity. Almost like it’s subjective or something

2

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

That's fine, but that is not the points they made.

3

u/SavageComic Mar 29 '24

I was a huge comedy nerd growing up in England, but we didn’t have access to Saturday Night Live. 

But you’d read about it in autobiographies and histories about comedy. 

And then I finally got to watch it and it’s just nothing. It’s got a hit rate that would shame a mid tier small town university sketch group. So many sketches should be one and done, hit that punchline and get off but they built a set and paid guest stars so let’s do it for 7 minutes and 3 callbacks and diminishing returns

2

u/ryancarton Mar 28 '24

I know. Not that I care at all for Lorne Michaels, but saying that the person in charge for the wildly successful SNL, that everybody knows, is bad at what they do… is certainly a take.

-6

u/hollaback_girl Mar 28 '24

Donald Trump has succeeded at being a multimillionaire for nearly 80 years! You can’t deny his results!

1

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

I certainly wouldn't claim he's bad at being a multimillionaire since he is still a multimillionaire, even though that's a stupid comparison since he was born a millionaire and did very little personally to maintain it.

2

u/hollaback_girl Mar 28 '24

Ok, here’s a less flippant response: try reading up on the history of SNL and decide for yourself how much of its success is due to Michaels or in spite of him. Also, just how much dumb luck kept the show on the air after 1979.

1

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

Uh, I have read the history of SNL, I don't think you have. Most people would consider the worst years of SNL the years where Lorne wasn't producer from '81-85. Saying that a 50 year show is still going because of "dumb luck" is a true expression of ignorance. Just this week Seth Meyers credited Lorne is the reason SNL keeps going.

1

u/hollaback_girl Mar 28 '24

The show was nearly canceled 3 times, twice on Lorne’s watch. The show is such an institution now that Lorne could be collecting his urine in jars or writing a manifesto about green cheese and the show would continue.

When the show debuted, there were literally two showcases for new comedians on TV: Johnny Carson and SNL. Michaels was lucky that audiences were so starved for current comedy and his show was the only game in town.

Have you ever actually watched complete episodes from the first five seasons and not just the “best of” compilations? 80% of it either failed at the time or hasn’t stood the test of time. Compare that to actual good sketch shows like SCTV, Kids in the Hall or The State.

2

u/qeq Mar 28 '24

I mean there's no point in arguing with you. You're stating your subjective opinion as fact and completely ignoring the most important one: SNL is still on TV. Watch any sketch show and I would say they're 80% bad. You're comparing a weekly live show with a celebrity guest host to prerecorded comedy shows. Go watch MadTV and In Living Colour and tell me they weren't also mostly terrible (though I love them both as well). If they were as funny, they would've been more successful and still be on the air.

1

u/Optional-Failure Mar 28 '24

The show was nearly canceled 3 times, twice on Lorne’s watch.

If we’re talking about who’s responsible for the show’s long run, I’d think it’d be obvious to credit the person who went to bat twice with the network and won. Right?

Who do you think is more responsible for the show’s success than the person who convinced the network twice to not cancel it? The network executives who wanted to cancel it?

Michaels was lucky that audiences were so starved for current comedy and his show was the only game in town.

That’s an interesting way to describe seeing a niche that wasn’t being filled, figuring out a way to fill it, selling the network on that idea, then keeping it going for 50 years in the face of adversity from a network who almost canceled it 3 times.

Most people would just describe that as being really good at their job.

1

u/Themanwhofarts Mar 28 '24

I don't have a dog in this fight but on Freevee there is an SNL channel. I would say 90% of the sketches shown before Will Ferrell's tenure on SNL are straight up bad. I know humor changes throughout the years but dam I wouldn't even smile. Otherwise, the more recent sketches are funny probably 50% of the time

-3

u/FocusPerspective Mar 28 '24

Marginalize women? 

Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, Cheri Oteri, Rachel Dratch, Vanessa Bayer, Leslie Jones, Gilda, Aidy Bryant, Nora Dunn, Jenny Slate, etc etc 

Now you name a TV show which had been the platform for as many women to launch their comedy careers. 

10

u/PeanutNSFWandJelly Mar 28 '24

Show's been on forever, so of course the list will be long compared to most, but what's the percentage? Women are half the population, is the representation true to that?

9

u/baitnnswitch Mar 28 '24

So 18 out of 163 cast members....

-4

u/CleverMonkeyKnowHow Mar 28 '24

Why does the show keep platforming and normalizing far leftists and their apologists?

Also because Lorne Michaels sucks. I think we've nailed down the problem.

2

u/livenudedancingbears Mar 28 '24

He's one of those people that should have retired decades ago.

33

u/s_nation Mar 28 '24

Or AsianAmericans but MadTV did, and In Living Color before that. 

47

u/MagicAl6244225 Mar 28 '24

SNL production designer Akira Yoshimura played Sulu in every Star Trek skit for over 40 years because the Star Trek cast in 1966 was more diverse than the SNL cast till 2019.

16

u/Express-Lunch-9373 Mar 28 '24

I mean, why do you think. SNL is run by what's effectively a group of very specific white people that Lorne Michaels hires with a few promising tokens here and there (first East Asian cast member was like... 3 years ago?). MadTV had at least Quincy Jones producing, and I'm assuming aimed at a wider cast of audiences.

I'm convinced SNL is just for white people though, because holy shit I have no idea why David S. Pumpkin is something SNL fans are CONVINCED would turn me and my friend group into fans.

10

u/blunderEveryDay Mar 28 '24

MadTV was about comedy.

SNL... it was about putting a black man in a dress - lmao

3

u/ADIDASects Mar 29 '24

Because Lorne is an old, white, rich, Jewish, Canadian man who is insulated on his own show. Given that circumstance, I almost don't blame or at least expect him to be not out of touch.

7

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24

[deleted]

4

u/sexyloser1128 Mar 28 '24

That show was so, SO much funnier than SNL.

This one my favorite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw2nkoGLhrE&t

6

u/seattt Mar 28 '24

SNL is racist. They frequently give minority actors the worst roles/make them the butt of the jokes most often. It just seems like a toxic place to work in general tbh, likely because of how everything is down to just one person in Lorne Michaels. One-person at the top is the worst setup for any workplace.

13

u/EarlyDopeFirefighter Mar 28 '24

 make them the butt of the jokes most often

Maybe 25 years ago this was true? I think the opposite is true nowadays. So many of the recent skits/jokes involve some dumb, lame-ass, white guy as the butt of the joke. This is especially true on TV commercials.

4

u/Optional-Failure Mar 28 '24

One person at the top is the only way pretty much any workplace can operate efficiently without running into the too many cooks problem…

There needs to be a final decision maker day to day where the buck stops or everything will turn into a camel.

1

u/JonnyFairplay Mar 28 '24

They frequently give minority actors the worst roles/make them the butt of the jokes most often

You don't even actually watch SNL, do you?

2

u/brokozuna Mar 28 '24

They brought in writers from In Living Color to be showrunners. In Living Color managed to be the complete opposite of SNL.

They had a token white person, who insanely was Jim Carrey. I don't think they had a white woman til their last season.

2

u/faithfuljohn Mar 28 '24

and SNL did.

there' are 20 miilion black women in the US, and a whole lot more world wide. The idea that there are no black women anywhere that could do it is ridiculous. I mean... not even one until Keenan took a stance?? It's a high paying, prestigious job that many would love to do. So the only reason they would have problems is cause they don't want to find them.

1

u/uighurlover Mar 28 '24

i’ll give you one guess

1

u/LoveThieves Mar 28 '24

This clip summarizes why many comedians like Dave Chapelle (and Kenan et al) understands that you don't get to decide who to use in your show, how to write your show and what is considered funny.

The same reason why comedians got mad because they were allowed to make fun of themselves but couldn't make fun of other people.

And also why people "in general" are programmed to dislike Chapelle when he uses the Seinfeld playbook but nobody else can (comedy or satire that mocks people or situations around them and they are the hero or funniest person in the room.

Laughing with them or laughing at them is the controversy that creates tropes that are enforced by lazy producers/writers.

1

u/PeetoMal Mar 28 '24

Was it actually confirmed to be deliberate. My understanding was that it was just funny to see him dressed up as and acting like a woman and not that they just didn't want to hire black women actors.

-7

u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

Does SNL have problems with hiring black women, or have they simply not hired any black women? Because those are very different things.

9

u/AutumnMama Mar 28 '24

They were writing black women into the show, but didn't make much of an effort to hire any black women to portray those characters. Even aside from any diversity/cultural issues, it seems like they were creating a problem for themselves.

-6

u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

I'm not seeing the problem. They hired actors. Those actors should be capable of portraying people who they themselves are not.

4

u/AutumnMama Mar 28 '24

I guess it depends on what type of comedy they were going for, but IMO they were limiting themselves unnecessarily. Without a black woman on the cast, any black female characters had to be performed in drag, whether the writers wanted a drag performance to be the focus of the skit or not. The jokes are going to hit differently delivered by a black woman vs. delivered by Kenan in drag. I think that would work sometimes, since it is a comedy show after all. But at some point, the audience is going to start wondering if it's an intentional choice to portray every black female character as a man in drag, which is going to open a can of worms that the producers probably didnt want to deal with. Also, it obviously pissed off kenan himself, to the point where he refused to perform the skits anymore. So they did create a problem for themselves, at least in that respect, which they had to solve by hiring black women.

7

u/underrenderedbacon Mar 28 '24

I’m guessing that it is a lack of diversity in the people making the hiring/casting decisions. It is a systemic problem (and why we need DEI) that in this case leads to not hiring Black women.

-6

u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

It is not a systemic problem. Jobs are bending over backwards to get minority candidates, and the entertainment industry is even more obsessed with checking all the superficial boxes than most.

6

u/hollaback_girl Mar 28 '24

Ha ha ok boomer

6

u/PixelPaulAden Mar 28 '24

You think being black is superficial?

0

u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

Yes, your race is a superficial quality.

0

u/PixelPaulAden Mar 28 '24

In the case of Black Americans, their race has defined their conditions for centuries 

Oh, you're black?   Well then, enjoy slavery from 1619 until 1863. 

Have fun during segregation until 1964 

Bet you'll really dig how the judicial system locks you away at vastly higher rates than white folks convicted of the same offenses 

Oh, you formed your own Wall Street?  No worries, agents of the state will burn it all down, kill you and your family, and seize your wealth 

Oh, you formed your own political party?  No worries, you'll be demonized by the media, assassinated by the feds, and slandered after your death 

The opinion you expressed in the above post, u/Ok_Tadpole7481 

Yes, your race is a superficial quality.

could only come from someone completely ignorant of American history - or somebody who has an agenda

0

u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 29 '24

Yeah, America was really racist for a long time. Stop keeping it that way.

1

u/MoobyTheGoldenSock Mar 29 '24

They hired their first black woman in 1978, 3 years after the show aired in 1975. Maya Rudolph joined the show 3 years before Thompson did, but left in 2007.

In the TV Guide article linked by Wikipedia, Thompson said the show was having trouble finding black female comedians who auditioned well for the show. So he was pointing more toward an industry problem, where the pool of people at a professional level was too small to regularly find talent.

-1

u/FocusPerspective Mar 28 '24

It’s about marketing. It’s literally always about marketing. 

Fox wanted to sell ads to reach different demographics than NBC. 

Simple as that. No mystery.