Many people remember Elon Musk’s SNL hosting stint as awkward, but it sounds like that was doubly the case behind the scenes.
During an appearance at the All-In Summit on Monday, the Tesla/SpaceX/X head, who hosted Saturday Night Live in 2021, recounted a particularly cringe sketch idea he brought to the show.
Musk explained that he and his team went into SNL expecting to have more control. “We come in just, like, guns blazing with ideas,” he said. “We didn’t realize… that’s not how it works. That it’s normally actors and they just get told what to do.”
Musk also told the crowd that he didn’t like the ideas he was presented with early in the week. “I was a bit worried at the beginning there,” he said, “because frankly nothing was funny.”
He then went on to reveal his idea of funny, describing one pitch in particular that did not go over well.
“One of the things that everyone’s been wondering this whole time is: Is Saturday Night Live actually live… or do they have a delay just in case there’s a wardrobe malfunction or something like that?,” Musk said to set up the pitch. “But there’s a way to test this.” (SNL does, in fact, air without a tape delay.)
In Musk’s vision, he’d tell the audience he was going to put this to the test by taking “his cock out.”
“So I’m going to reach down into my pants… and then I pull out a baby rooster,” Musk explained. “Like, ‘This is my tiny cock.’”
Unfortunately, the joke didn’t end there.
“And then Kate McKinnon walks out,” added Jason Calacanis, co-host of the All-In Podcast, who was also present in the pitch meeting. “And she says, ‘Elon, I expected you would have a bigger cock.’”
McKinnon, meanwhile, would have been holding a cat.
“You can see where this is going,” Musk told the crowd. While the audibly shocked audience had presumably fully understood the direction Musk was headed in, he continued to detail it anyway.
According to Musk and Calacanis, the Saturday Night Live team was… unenthusiastic.
“They’re looking at us like, ‘Oh my god, what have we done inviting these lunatics on the program?’” Calacanis recalled.
According to Musk, they gently rejected the idea with an excuse: “Well, it is Mother’s Day,” he was told. “Lot of moms in the audience.”
While Musk’s idea of funny (mercifully) didn’t make it past the pitch, the billionaire assured the audience that he did still leave his mark on SNL.
“There’s a bunch of things that I said that were just not on the script,” he proudly told the crowd. “They have these cue cards for what you’re supposed to say, and I just didn’t say it. I just went off the rails.”
Musk’s episode of Saturday Night Live holds a 13 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes—the lowest of season 46.
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