Saturday Night Live rankings hit a season excessive with divisive host Dave Chappelle.
This week’s episode scored 4.8 million viewers and a 0.9 score within the adults 18-49 demo. Chappelle hosted the enduring NBC late-night collection’ sixth episode of its forty eighth season, which has been off to a really sluggish begin following a significant forged shakeup. Up till now, SNL has been averaging 4 million viewers — down 20 % from final fall. It’s not that a lot of a elevate in comparison with the prior week, when host Amy Schumer introduced in 4.3 million.
The numbers are additionally an enormous drop in comparison with Chappelle’s final time internet hosting the collection, in 2020, which propelled the present to 9 million viewers and a 2.6 score amongst adults 18-49 (which was the best rated SNL within the demo in three years). Chappelle additionally gained an Emmy for visitor internet hosting that episode.
The rankings observe a wave of criticism directed on the comic and at SNL for Chappelle’s prolonged 15-minute monologue the place he made a number of statements deemed antisemitic.
The monologue — which has racked up 6.4 million views on YouTube since its launch — included feedback the place Chappelle tackled the controversy surrounding Kanye “Ye” West’s antisemitic rants. “I’ve been to Hollywood,” Chappelle stated. “This is just what I saw: It’s a lot of Jews. Like, a lot. But that doesn’t mean anything! … There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. Doesn’t mean they run the place.” The comic stated he understood how any person might “adopt the delusion” that Jewish individuals “run show business. It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”
Before the monologue, Chappelle unfolded a bit of paper and skim a dutiful assertion — “I denounce antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community” — after which added, “And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”
But on Sunday, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt criticized the NBC program, accusing the late evening staple of “popularizing antisemitism.”
“We shouldn’t expect @DaveChappelle to serve as society’s moral compass, but disturbing to see @nbcsnl not just normalize but popularize #antisemitism,” he wrote on Twitter. “Why are Jewish sensitivities denied or diminished at almost every turn? Why does our trauma trigger applause?”
The Jerusalem Post tweeted: “The American comedian Dave Chappelle said during his SNL monologue that he ‘denounces antisemitism in all its forms’… before promptly engaging in antisemitic tropes.”
While Time Out New York theater editor and critic Adam Feldman tweeted: “That Dave Chappelle SNL monologue probably did more to normalize anti-Semitism than anything Kanye said. Everyone knows Kanye is nuts. Chappelle posits himself as a teller of difficult truths. It’s worse.”
NBC and SNL haven’t replied to requests for remark.
