“Let’s go, black giant!”
Warming Glow’s SNL recap included a clip of Jay Pharoah and Bobby Moynihan doing Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un (respectively, in the most unnecessary use of “respectively” ever) on Weekend Update. All they said was that they missed the weird, 90s Rodman that wore spaceship sunglasses and stuck his tongue into things. Hopefully they’ll have a similar reaction 10 years from now when somebody’s doing a Bobby Moynihan impression, so they can say, “I miss this Bobby Moynihan” and share a GIF of him pantslessly eating from a honey pot.
I’m way happier with Jay Pharoah playing all the black athletes than Kenan Thompson doing it, because at least he puts some effort into it, whether we need a 100% accurate impression or not. It’s a hell of a lot better than Kenan playing everybody with his Pierre Escargot voice. “I AM DENNIS RODMAN, THE WORM” and then he just looks at the camera.
Anyway, here’s the clip, if you missed it:
Somebody needs to remake Breakfast At Tiffany’s and cast Bobby as an Asian landlord, because that is totally a thing that is okay.
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I’m honestly trying to think. Has SNL ever has an Asian-American male as a castmate? Seems like they always use women like Nasim Pedrad to play Asians on the show?
I’m pretty sure they have not. I think Fred Armison gets the Asian roles that Nasim doesn’t get.
A history of minority SNL cast-members:
SNL was a “one black guy” show for a long time, first with Garrett Morris, then with Eddie Murphy. Damon Wayans was probably supposed to be the next black guy, but he hated being on the show and got himself fired midway through his first season (Danitra Vance also joined the show that season and was the first black woman on the cast, but the only cast members who were retained for the next year were Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, and Nora Dunn).
The show was black guy free for 5 seasons until Chris Rock joined the cast in 1990. Tim Meadows joined in 1991 and the “other black guy” phenomenon began. It always seemed like there wasn’t enough roles for the black cast members, so one always seemed to have a much bigger role than the other (Eddie Murphy had previously done a sketch about how there wasn’t any roles for him, so this really wasn’t anything new).
Tim Meadows (and female cast-member Ellen Claighorne) didn’t stop being a “featured performer” until Rock left. Then Meadows was the only black guy until Tracy Morgan joined the cast (Morgan had the sketch for which the “second black guy” phenomenon is named). Up until this time, this has only been about black people, but Horatio Sanz became the first Latino cast member in 1998.
Tim Meadows left and was replace by Jerry Minor. Minor only lasted one season, he was replaced by Dean Edwards. I stopped watching around this time, so I don’t remember him at all.
We get a couple bi-racial cast-members who can get away with some darker makeup without it being blackface: Maya Rudolph, whose mother was soul singer Minnie Riperton, and Fred Armisen whose mother is Latino and paternal grandfather is Japanese.
Finesse Mitchell and Kenan Thompson both join (to replace the departing Dean Edwards and Tracy Morgan). Mitchell only lasted a couple of years.
The aforementioned Nasim Pedrad became the first Asian cast member in 2009. She was born in Iran.
Then we’re up to Jay Pharoah, who joined the cast in 2010 and finally we didn’t have to see Fred Armisen as Obama.
And that’s where we’re at today, with Armisen, Thompson, Pedrad, and Pharoah.