Saturday Night Live star Michael Che revealed how Kanye West reacted after he confronted the rapper for slamming him and the show on stage in 2018.
Che appeared on Sirius XM’s The Bonfire Thursday, where he reflected on his conversation with the rapper, as featured in Ye’s new documentary In Whose Name?
The “Weekend Update” host said that the rapper was still apologetic about the heated exchange months later, pulling him aside to discuss it backstage when Eddie Murphy hosted the show’s 2019 Christmas episode.
“Every black person in Hollywood was at this show,” he said. “I’m walking through the hallway and he’s coming out the elevator bay, and as soon as he sees me goes, ‘I owe you an apology,’” Che recalled. “I didn’t even know if he remembered that that happened because he was saying so much s---.”
Che came face to face with the rapper when West finally got off the SNL stage in 2018 after his long-winded post-show rant, much of which never made it to air.
Che tells West in the footage, “Why you gotta call me out on the f---ing [stage] if I don’t got a chance to say anything for myself?”
Part of West’s remarks, which spanned not only his pro-Trump views but also his railing against Black support for the Democratic Party, among other things, included a dig at “Black comedians” who joke about Bill Cosby’s sexual assault accusations at the time. Che tells West, “I’m the Black comedian that made a joke about Cosby.”
“Why would you do that to me? I work here,” he tells him, also challenging West’s accusation that he was “bullied” for wearing his Trump hat. “Like, come on, man. We treat everyone that comes in like family, and you gonna sell us out? Like, that’s f---ed up, man. We look up to you, we love you. What you got against us?”
West stops short of apologizing in the clip, but tells Che “I love you” and lets him say his piece.
Che said that after West later apologized, “We talked and I never brought it up again.”
As for the confrontation itself, Che said he was surprised to see it play out in West’s documentary. “I was like, how would they even get permission for that? Because taping at SNL…they won’t let me do it. So, I’m like, ‘how are you guys able to do that?’”
Che was far from the only SNL staffer who was miffed by West’s 2018 musical guest appearance on the show. West had called the cast to the stage to stand behind him ahead of his most incendiary remarks.
Recently departed cast member Ego Nwodim lsays in the documentary Ladies & Gentleman… 50 Years of SNL Music that she thought at the time, “I don’t want to be up here for this because I don’t agree with this and standing up here looks like I’m standing in solidarity. So it’s like, ‘Don’t make any faces—neutral face, neutral face—everyone’s gotta know I’m just fulfilling my duties as a cast member.”
Kenan Thompson had similar thoughts in the doc, though he avoided West’s call to the stage. “When he grabbed the mic and was just, like, you know, wandering around, you could see he was gearing up to say something. I was like, ‘I’m out.’”
