Saturday Night Live opted not to roast one of its own on Saturday, as a report claims that a joke jabbing Jimmy Fallon for his use of “Gen-Z slang” was cut just before the show aired.
According to LateNighter, SNL’s Marcello Hernandez’s appearance on the show’s “Weekend Update” segment was originally written with a different punchline.
The final version of the quip went as follows: “Basically, Black people start saying something, young people think it’s cool, so they start saying it, then white people say it. Then once Elon Musk says it, it’s over.”
But the site reports that originally, Fallon’s name was in place of Musk’s.
No explanation has been given for why the joke was changed. The Daily Beast has reached out to reps for Fallon and SNL for comment.
According to LateNighter’s sources, when Hernandez told the original joke aimed at Fallon during the show’s dress rehearsal, it drew laughs from the room. As the host of The Tonight Show, Fallon has been criticized for his “lame” jokes—a point that the team at SNL is seemingly aware of, but not willing to publicly roast him over quite yet.
One of the rare times the show has poked fun at a working alum is David Spade’s 1995 jab at Eddie Murphy, calling the movie star a “falling star.” Murphy has been adamant that, given the rarity of jokes aimed at SNL alumni, the joke felt personal. He also called attention to the fact that the jokes have to go through multiple channels to pass muster—a fact that kept the quip aimed at Fallon off the air.
“I know that he can’t just say that,” Murphy said in 2024. “A joke has to go through these channels. 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 continued, “Most people that get off that show, they don’t go on and have these amazing careers. It was personal.”
Hernandez, currently in his fourth season on SNL, was a guest on The Tonight Show for the second time just two weeks ago. Following his six seasons on SNL, Fallon returned to host three times—most recently in 2017.
