With 26 year-old Luigi Mangione apprehended in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s Monday in connection with last week’s assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, late-night shows found themselves in a bit of a quandary Monday night: Do they identify the suspect by his undeniably comical name—or don’t they?
Thompson’s murder and the manhunt for his killer is a story that’s captivated the country in unexpected ways.
As Colin Jost joked on this weekend’s SNL, “It really says something about America that a guy was murdered in cold blood, and the two main reactions were, ‘Yeah, well health care stinks!’ and also ‘Girl, that shooter hot.’” (That joke itself drew criticism.)
The convergence of violent crime with the internet’s entertaining topic du jour created a sticky situation for late-night shows, who generally reflect the day’s news in their monologues, yet had to weigh capitalizing on the story’s buzzy nature against the notion that they’d be giving undue recognition to an alleged murderer.
The production schedule of late-night shows also presented some added difficulty. By the time Monday’s shows were beginning their afternoon tapings, Mangione had been apprehended but not officially charged as the suspected gunman.
So how did the shows handle the situation?
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, for one, steered clear of the story altogether, while Late Night with Seth Meyers (which tapes earliest among the late-night shows) only glancingly addressed the manhunt.
Of the four shows that mentioned Mangione’s apprehension last night, only one did so by name: Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“No matter how you feel about this,” Kimmel commented at the top of his monologue, “I think we can all agree that no one could have imagined this suspect would have a name as funny as Luigi Mangione.”
Over on CBS, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert took a safer approach, bleeping out Mangione’s name during his monologue.
“We have a name of the person apprehended,” Colbert told his audience. “A name that we will bleep before broadcasting this, because if he didn’t do it, I don’t want to say it. And if he did do it, I don’t want to say it.”
“So for the rest of this monologue, let’s just say his name is comically close to ‘Guido Casseroli,’” Colbert added, later also referring to him as “Vinnie Rigatoni.”
Following Colbert, After Midnight host Taylor Tomlinson addressed the story in her monologue. She herself did not name Mangione, but on-screen graphics and the segment’s YouTube title did.
The Daily Show also skirted naming the suspect, with Jon Stewart only referring to him as “that guy” during a fleeting mention.
Notably, The Daily Show was the only late-night show to initially address Thompson’s murder after it happened last week.
