“Saturday Night Live” star Michael Che revealed this week that he wishes the NBC sketch comedy series would do fewer political cold opens but acknowledged, “I know how our bread is buttered.”
Che appeared as a guest on the Tuesday episode of former “SNL” co-star Ego Nwodim’s “Thanks Dad” podcast. During their conversation, Che shamefully admitted his love for R. Kelly’s 2005 rap opera, “Trapped in the Closet.” In response, Nwodim asked him he had ever tried to do an R. Kelly sketch on “SNL” about “Trapped in the Closet.”
“No, but I did do the one with Leslie [Jones], the Gayle King interview as a cold open,” Che responded, referencing a 2019 “SNL” cold open that starred Jones as King and Kenan Thompson as Kelly. Nwodim said she remembered the segment and called it “one of my favorite cold opens ever.”
“We had to do that s—t like that Friday night, and the only reason we did it is because they could not think of a political one,” Che recalled. “I was, ‘Yo! The R. Kelly interview is on right now!’”
“I hope we do more like cold opens that aren’t always political because those are just, like, fun to do,” Che added, noting, “I know how our bread is buttered.”
While he lamented the number of political cold opens that “SNL” does every season, Che did go out of his way to make it clear that he was not criticizing co-star James Austin Johnson, whose spot-on impression of President Trump has made him a cold open mainstay in recent years.
“James’ Trump has got to be one of the greatest impressions ever done on that show,” Che argued, to which Nwodim enthusiastically agreed. “I saw James on Instagram before he got hired at the show, I think like a year before,” she said. “I was like, ‘Whoever this guy is, this is crazy. This is insane.’”
“It’s scary good,” Che said of Johnson’s impression. He went on to reference an “SNL” montage the show put together compiling all of its past Trump impressions and impersonators. “They were all funny,” Che said. “But [with] James [it is] just, like, ‘Well, how do you do it after that?’”
