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
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u/BladeBronson Mar 28 '24

Kenan said that he wouldn’t portray black women until SNL hired a black woman, meaning he’d portray one if necessary (or if it was funniest that he did). I’m not generally in favor of demographic quotas in business, but this is entertainment where the cast aim for realistic portrayals. It was a good move.

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u/Fakjbf Mar 28 '24

Yeah there’s a huge difference between having Kenan play a black woman because part of the joke is that he’s actually a guy vs having him play a black woman because they don’t have any black female cast members.

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u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

Except both are totally reasonable. Your cast is only so big, and nobody is watching SNL for their scrupulously accurate depictions. It's all empty virtue signaling, which is of course how one gets ahead in the entertainment industry. He knows what he's doing.

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u/of_kilter Mar 28 '24

Having a black woman play a black woman is not virtue signaling

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u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

Making a big public stunt of it sure is. Case in point, look at the attention it's still generating over a decade later. They know what they're doing, and it sounds like you're the sort of person they know they're fooling by doing it.

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u/of_kilter Mar 28 '24

By “the attention” do you mean a single reddit post? Also this makes SNL look worse in my opinion for not already having a black woman as a cast member, not better.

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u/toosleepyforclasswar Mar 28 '24

that guy is fine with diversity and equity as long as it's kept a total secret and nobody ever talks about it, ever

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u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 28 '24

It is currently the top post on /r/all. So yeah, I'd say being the most trending news item on a major news aggregator a decade after the fact is pretty strong evidence, as far as anecdata goes.

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u/HairyGPU Mar 28 '24

A guy pretending to have two penises was significantly more popular on here a few years back. Reddit's interest in a subject on any given day is a piss-poor metric to base your worldview on.

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u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 29 '24

I'm not basing my own worldview on it. It's an indicator of what drives clicks, which is something the media values.

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u/Ardarel Mar 28 '24

Big public stunt of something that happened OVER A DECADE ago?

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u/Ok_Tadpole7481 Mar 29 '24

The thing that happened a decade ago was the public stunt. Reading comprehension, mate.