Elon Musk isn’t too concerned about making Saturday Night Live cast member Chloe Fineman cry.
The Tesla CEO responded Tuesday to Fineman’s recent TikTok, where she revealed that Musk had made her “burst into tears” after she stayed up all night working on a sketch that he ended up hating. Fineman’s post, which has since been deleted, also mentioned that Musk was the host who made multiple cast members cry during his May 2021 SNL appearance.
Musk didn’t apologize. Instead, he offered a candid response on his social media platform, X. “Frankly, it was only on the Thursday before the Saturday that ANY of the sketches generated laughs,” Musk shared. “I was worried. I thought, ‘Damn, my SNL appearance is going to be so f—ing unfunny it’ll make a crackhead sober!’” He then added, “But then it worked out in the end.”
In a more in-depth discussion about his SNL experience, Musk referred to his week with the cast as “rough,” particularly the initial pitch meeting. He even shared an R-rated sketch idea he had pitched, which was quickly rejected by producers. Musk had imagined a cold open where he would walk onstage, toss his monologue script aside, and say, “We’re going to find out tonight, right now, if Saturday Night Live is actually live. And the way we’re going to do this is I’m going to take my c— out. And if you see my c—, you know it’s true. And if you don’t, it’s been a lie.”
The sketch would then have Musk pull out a baby rooster from his pants, with Kate McKinnon joining him on stage to joke about his “tiny c—.” Musk said his team thought it was funny, but producers were “aghast” and didn’t respond at all.
“We came in guns blazing with ideas,” Musk said, referring to his team’s approach. “But we didn’t realize that’s not how it works. Normally, the actors just get told what to do, and we can’t just do the funny things we thought of.”
Musk also recently took to X to criticize SNL after seeing Dana Carvey’s impression of him in a more recent episode. Musk said the show “has been dying slowly for years,” accusing it of becoming “increasingly out of touch with reality.”
Fineman’s TikTok, in which she described being “so excited” to present her sketch to Musk only to face harsh criticism, came in response to Musk’s remarks. She recalled presenting her script, only for Musk to look at her “like you were firing me from Tesla” and bluntly tell her, “It’s not funny.” Fineman said Musk then flipped through her script, saying, “I didn’t laugh. I didn’t laugh one time.” Her response? “Have a little manners here, sir.”
Earlier this year, Bowen Yang, another SNL cast member, hinted at the incident while discussing the worst behavior he had seen from an SNL host. Without naming names, Yang said one host made multiple cast members cry before a table read because they hated the ideas.
