It seems that when Elon Musk isn't being a weird white nationalist sycophant for our incoming president, he's being a bit of a jerk to his colleagues—according to those who shared Studio 8H with him at Saturday Night Live, anyway.
Back in August, SNL cast member Bowen Yang revealed that a certain celebrity host made "multiple cast members cry." Then just yesterday, after months of speculation, cast member Chloe Fineman revealed that she was the cast member in question.
Now, Musk has taken to X to defend himself and say that berating Fineman was all in service of the quality of the show, just days after getting upset about the show mocking him during its cold open sketch after the election.
It all began when Yang appeared on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and Cohen asked him, "without naming names, what is the worst SNL host behavior you have witnessed?”
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Yang did not even hesitate:
"Oh my gosh. This man, this person, this host made multiple cast members cry.”
“On Wednesday, before the table read, because he hated the ideas. Terrible.”
There was lots of speculation, and Yang discussed it again a bit later on Dana Carvey and David Spade's Fly On The Wall podcast, but the uproar soon died down. Until this week.
Last week's episode of SNL featured a cold open in which Musk was portrayed by Carvey in his cringe moment at Donald Trump's weird Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden where Musk wouldn't stop jumping up and down in an X shape.
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Suffice to say, like most tyrannical billionaires, Musk doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. He was not happy about the portrayal, posting to X that the show is "dying" and "out of touch with reality" and that it "helped sink" Kamala Harris's campaign. Triggered, snowflake?
As that news broke, Fineman seems to have had her fill—in a since-deleted TikTok she called out Musk and revealed that she was the cast member he made cry.
Fineman pointed out that for someone who apparently hates SNL and thinks it's "dying" and "out of touch," he sure seems up to date on its comings and going. Fineman said:
“You’re clearly watching the show, like, what are you talking about?”
She went on to explain:
"I saw some articles and stuff and was like: ‘I’m not gonna say anything,’ but I’m like, no, if you’re going to go on your platform and be rude, guess what?"
"You made I, Chloe Fineman, burst into tears because I stayed up all night writing this sketch, I was so excited, I came in, I asked if you had any questions, and you stared at me like you were firing me from Tesla and were like: ‘It’s not funny.’”
“I waited for you to be like: ‘Haha, JK.' Then you started pawing through my script, like, flipping each page being like: ‘I didn’t laugh, I didn’t laugh once, not one time.'”
No wonder he and Trump get along so well.
Anyway, in response, Musk took to X to say:
"Frankly, it was only on the Thursday before the Saturday that ANY of the sketches generated laughs. I was worried."
"I was like damn my SNL appearance is going to be so fucking unfunny that it will make a crackhead sober!!"
"But then it worked out in the end"
This may shock you to hear about someone with the kind of comedic stylings to come up with that "crackhead" joke, but as someone who vividly remembers Musk's stilted, deeply awkward SNL performance, I can confirm that it did not in fact "work out in the end," despite Fineman's best efforts.
On X, most people seemed to agree that Musk's SNL stint was memorable mostly for all the wrong reasons, and applauded Fineman for dragging him.
At this point, being unfunny and not embraced by mainstream pop culture is a direct pipeline to the alt-right, so this story certainly makes lots of sense.
And it has a happy ending too, because Musk gets plenty of laughs nowadays. They might not be for the right reasons, but he gets them.
Hooray!
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter