Last night’s (April 3) episode of Saturday Night Live was hosted by Daniel Kaluuya, who took a humorous look at the recent racism scandal around the British royal family.
During his opening monologue, Kaluuya discussed the differences between British and American racism.
“First of all, I know you’re hearing my accent and thinking, ‘Oh no, he’s not Black — he’s British’,” he began, before confirming that he is, indeed, both. “Basically I’m what the royal family was worried the baby would look like.”
Explaining that people ask him which is worse between British and American racism, he said: “Let me put it this way. British racism is so bad, white people left. They wanted to be free — free to create their own kind of racism. So that’s why they created Australia, South Africa and Boston.”
Discussing his pride at hosting SNL, Kaluuya added: “When I was 9 years old, I wrote a play that got performed at Hampshire Theatre with real actors and everything. This is a true story — that play was based on Kenan & Kel. And that play led me down a path that got me to this stage tonight with Kenan [Thompson] backstage right now.
“And I just want to take this moment to in front of Kenan and the whole world to say: Thank you, Mom. Thank you, God. And thank you Kel.”
Elsewhere on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, St. Vincent was the show’s musical guest, and gave live debuts to two tracks from her forthcoming album ‘Daddy’s Home’.
The show’s cold open, meanwhile, addressed the recent controversy involving Lil Nas X. The latest episode of the late night sketch show opened with a a fictional talk show hosted by Britney Spears (played by Chloe Fineman) called Oops You Did It Again. The premise of the show is to spotlight “pariahs of the week” and after speaking with all her guests, Fineman’s Spears would determine who is “innocent or not that innocent”.
It came after Nas X released a video for his song ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’ last week, which sees him play around with religious imagery, including a Garden Of Eden-like scene and another that sees him giving the devil a lap dance. Right-wing commentators then criticised the singer’s new video.
The post Daniel Kaluuya compares British and American racism in ‘SNL’ opening monologue appeared first on NME.
