Being in the entertainment industry, and especially in comedy, you learn how to have a tough skin as not everyone will agree with your ideas. However, some critiques can be harsher than others and cause more harm than good. Saturday Night Live star Chloe Fineman is sharing her own experience about how a guest host for the long-running sketch comedy show once made her "burst into tears."
Months after SNL standout Bowen Yang claimed that a male host once made "multiple cast members cry" because he "hated the ideas" they had, Fineman revealed in a now-deleted TikTok that Elon Musk made her cry when he hosted the show in May 2021, per People.
Fineman said she wanted to say her piece after seeing reports that Musk was "butt-hurt" about SNL's impression of him on the November 9 episode in which Dana Carvey impersonated the SpaceX founder. Even though the incident occurred years ago, Fineman said she decided make her story public after Musk chose to "be rude" about the show on X (formerly Twitter) when he said, "SNL has been dying slowly for years, as they become increasingly out of touch with reality."
"I was like I'm not gonna say anything, but I'm like, no, if you're gonna go on your platform and be rude, guess what? You made I, Chloe Fineman, burst into tears because I stayed up all night writing this sketch," she said.
Fineman added that when she presented Musk with the script for the unnamed sketch, he didn't hold back on how he felt about the idea.
"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,'" she recalled. "I waited for you to be like, 'Haha, JK.' No. Then you started pawing through my script, like flipping each page being like, 'I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh once, not one time.'"
Despite Musk's reaction, the sketch made it onto the show, and Fineman said "it was fine." While Fineman told the Tesla CEO that he was "funny" in the sketch, he needed to have better "manners" when talking with other people.
"I actually had a really good time and I thought you were really funny in it, but, you know, have a little manners here, sir," she said.
Musk responded to Fineman's claims on X, saying that he had been "worried" as "it was only on the Thursday before the Saturday that ANY of the sketches generated laughs" but that "it worked out in the end."