Bowen Yang set Reddit ablaze this week when he revealed that a male host made several cast members cry during his week at Saturday Night Live.
Though Yang was careful not to include any other details besides the host’s gender, fans are still indulging their best guesses based on the tidbit of info and the fact this mystery person would had to have hosted some time after Yang’s casting on the show, which was in 2019. While the Daily Beast has no idea who Yang may have been talking about, here are some of the names fans have glommed onto so far from the five seasons in question.
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Musk hosted the show in 2021 and is known to get under peoples’ skin, so it stands to reason that fans consider him as a contender. However as one Redditer pointed out, “I feel like they would laugh at Elon Musk. It’s more likely someone they admire.” Another wrote that Musk isn’t likely to be the host in question since, “I don't think he’s astute or coherent enough that a bunch of comedians would start crying.”
That said, Musk did annoy a few cast members before he ever appeared on the show—like when he tweeted, “Let’s find out just how live Saturday Night Live really is,” and Yang responded, “what the f— does this even mean?” Cast member Andrew Dismuke posted on Instagram, “Only CEO I want to do a sketch with is Cher-E Oteri,” after it was announced Musk would be hosting. If Redditors are right, perhaps the X owner decided to give everyone a hard time in retaliation for their lack of enthusiasm.
Murphy left SNL in 1984 to focus on his box office career. It took 35 years for him to return and host the show again—and he recently revealed in a New York Times podcast interview that he still holds some SNL-related resentment, despite making his long awaited return in 2019.
In June, Murphy admitted he felt it was “racist” that the show’s producers allowed then-cast member David Spade to joke that Murphy was a “falling star” during a “Weekend Update” segment in 1995. “A joke has to go through these channels,” Murphy said at the time, “So the producers thought it was OK to say that. And all the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career,” he also said, and added, “It was personal.”
“Bet it was Eddie Murphy,” one Redditor posited, to which another replied, “It almost has to be him. He’s the only one that anyone in the cast would actually care about at the end of the day.” Another added, “I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear that he was getting sh--ty because he thought the writing wasn't good enough.”
Chappelle last hosted in 2022 following his controversial comedy special The Closer, which drew backlash for how he spoke about trans people. Though the cast didn’t appear to speak out about Chappelle hosting at the time, social media users speculated that at least a few may not have been too happy. “Wonder how SNL’s first nonbinary cast member this season must feel about them platforming Dave Chappelle next week,” wrote one user on X, “Disappointing but not surprising. Feeling for Molly Kearney right now.”
At least one of the show’s writers, Celeste Yim, on the other hand, was explicitly unhappy about the move and rumors of a potential writers boycott swirled before Chappelle’s episode. Yim posted on Instagram, “I’m trans and non-binary. I use they/them pronouns. Transphobia is murder and it should be condemned,” she said in reference to the news that Chappelle would host, according to Page Six. Yang made headlines again by seeming off put by Chappelle’s hopping on stage during a January episode, but later clarified that he was “just confused.”
NBC would ultimately delete Chappelle's monologue from its YouTube page (hence the blurry video here)—so, do with that what you will. Sources told Page Six that the comedian rehearsed a different monologue during prep and delievered his live one as a surprise. As seen above, his live monologue featured a sarcastic apology to Jewish people.
“The cast members probably admire Chappelle and may take his opinions to heart,” one fan wrote on Reddit. “Could easily see it being Dave.”
Majors hadn’t been accused and convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend Grace Jabarri at the time he hosted the show in 2021, so he was not yet a controversial figure.
Though cast members didn't express any concerns about his appearance at the time, Rolling Stone published an exposé in 2023 that suggested Majors had been a terror on many of the productions he’s been a part of since his time as a student at Yale Drama. Based on that, fans are speculating that Majors could be the host Yang referred to.
As one person put it on Reddit, “i was recently at a comedy show with a bunch of the cast and they did a Q and A section. one person asked who the worst hosts were, and the first two they said were elon musk and jonathon majors lol.”
Former SNL writer and Five Timers Club member John Mulaney was also floated as a possibility in the Reddit chat, albeit with some flimsy reasoning. Citing Mulaney's past struggles with drug addiction, one Reddit user admitted Mulaney was a “stretch” when they wrote, “Mulaney hosted in October 2020 which was within a month or so of him entering rehab. Addicts can be extremely moody and he’s so respected [that] maybe he got grouchy and [was] cutting [ideas] and hurt people’s feelings.” As one of the show’s most frequent hosts, it would be particularly disheartening to learn that cast members would have had to deal with the behavior on five separate occasions.
Mulaney himself offered some reasons for why he has grace for SNL hosts who are less than pleasant, when he moderated a 92nd Street Y talk in 2019. “They’re in such a weird headspace,” the comedian said when asked why he’d never reveal which hosts were no fun, according to Vulture.
“A film actor who’s quite possibly never been in front of a live audience is so terrified or in an altered state that to hold them to their—not even bad behavior but just attitude, or what they were giving off that week, is not fair,” he continued. “That’s why in general we’re not telling you about some of the really sh--ty people we encountered.”
Fans are not likely to be satiated by Mulaney's words of wisdom from five years ago, as they continue to discuss potential mean hosts. Other mentions on the Reddit thread include Adam Driver, Woody Harrelson, and Chris Rock.
