Elon Musk has responded to comedian Chloe Fineman’s claims that he made her cry during his stint guest hosting Saturday Night Live.
The Tesla founder presented SNL back in 2021, in what has widely become known as one of the most divisive episodes in the show’s almost-50-year history.
After Musk made headlines over the weekend when he criticised SNL comic’s Dana Carvey’s impersonation of him on last week’s show, Fineman spoke out about her own experiences of the X chairman in a now-deleted TikTok post.
In her video, Fineman said: “I just saw some news article about Elon Musk being butt-hurt about SNL and his impression. But I’m, like, you’re clearly watching the show. Like, what are you talking about?
“And I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna come out and say at long last that I’m the cast member that he made cry. And he’s the host that made someone cry. Maybe there’s others.”
Recalling her exchange with Musk, she claimed: “You made [me] burst into tears because I stayed up all night writing [a] sketch. I was so excited, I came in, I asked if you had any questions and you stared at me like you were firing me from Tesla and were like, ‘It’s not funny’.
“I waited for you to be like, ‘Ha ha, jk.’ No. Then you started pawing through my script, like flipping each page, being, like, ‘I didn’t laugh once, not one time’.”
Fineman went on to say that the sketch in question eventually made it into the show, and she even found Musk to be “really funny in it”, adding: “But, you know, have a little manners here, sir.”
Hours after posting the TikTok, it was deleted, but after several news outlets reported on it anyway, Musk had his say on X, stating: “Frankly, it was only on the Thursday before the Saturday that ANY of the sketches generated laughs. I was worried.
“I was like damn my SNL appearance is going to be so fucking unfunny that it will make a crackhead sober!! But then it worked out in the end.”
SNL favourite Bowen Yang alleged over the summer that an undisclosed male celebrity had reduced “several” cast members to tears while guest hosting the show.
“This man, this person, this host made multiple cast members cry on Wednesday during the before the table-read, because he hated the ideas,” he told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, when asked about the worst guest host of his tenure at SNL.
“Terrible,” he added.