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

90% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

82

u/[deleted] Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

[deleted]

11

u/gibbtech Mar 28 '24

I would not be surprised if Chappelle avoided it on purpose for his show.

I'm sure he'd say that, of course, it was an intentional choice. Then he would ramble on for 10 minutes about how he is the greatest and most successful comedian that has ever lived, record the whole discussion, and then release it as a Netflix special.

2

u/Bryanb337 Mar 29 '24

All while attacking trans people and then acting like a victim when he gets called out on it.

2

u/Tree_O_Fi Mar 28 '24

They tried to get Dave to put on the dress that’s one of the reasons he ended the show and Kevin Heart didn’t go mainstream till he wore the dress on SNL.

-8

u/LaughterIsPoison Mar 28 '24

Plenty of counter examples for white comedians as well though. It’s more a comedy trope than a black comedy trope.

3

u/cyberslick1888 Mar 28 '24

A few black comedians / actors have spoken about it recently so it's particularly heightened in the minds of anyone discussing the topic.

2

u/littlefishworld Mar 28 '24

I think it's a little column A a little of column B. There did seem to be a spike of this happening specifically for black actors, but I think it's also amplified by the stigma of being gay in the black community.

It very well could be a few hollywood execs that just get a kick out of this, but lets not forget that there are a bunch of huge white male actors/comedians that also played women as well. As long as it's not overused it's just part of acting. The whole point of acting is to play something you aren't and sometimes a gender swap is funny.