A Saturday Night Live mystery brewing since August has now been possibly solved: In a since-removed TikTok posted earlier today, featured player and master impersonator Chloe Fineman revealed that Elon Musk is the SNL host that made her “burst into tears” prior to the live show.
“OK, I just saw some news article about Elon Musk being like butt-hurt about SNL and his impression, but I’m like you’re clearly watching the show, like what are you talking about?” she began. “And I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna come out and say at long last that I’m the cast member that he made cry. And he’s the host that made someone cry.”
Fineman then went on to say that she had seen some other “articles and stuff” about the situation, in reference to colleague Bowen Yang’s appearance on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live opposite his Las Culturistas co-host Matt Rogers, in which he described a male host who made “multiple cast members cry” ahead of the table read because he “hated the ideas.”
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While Fineman said she was initially not going to say anything, Musk’s recent gripes with SNL changed her mind. (However, the TikTok clip has since disappeared from her page. It’s unclear if she decided to remove it or if it was scrubbed by the platform.)
“And I was like I’m not gonna say anything, but I’m like, no, if you’re gonna go on your platform [X] 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.’ No. Then you started pawing through my script, like flipping each page being like, ‘I didn’t laugh, not one time,’” she recalled.
The sketch (likely this one), though, went to air and everything turned out “fine,” per Fineman, who had some parting words: “I actually had a really good time and I thought you were really funny in it, but have a little manners here, sir!”
The X owner and Tesla CEO hosted SNL in May 2021, alongside musical guest Miley Cyrus. The episode was a bit of an awkward one, and also one of the more controversial installments given Musk’s polarizing effect on the populace (to say the least).