This Week’s SNL Mocked Jimmy Fallon at Dress—Then Swapped in Elon Musk

First on LateNighter: Saturday Night Live made a subtle but notable change to a “Weekend Update” joke between dress rehearsal and the live broadcast this weekend—swapping out a reference to Jimmy Fallon for Elon Musk in a bit delivered by cast member Marcello Hernández.

Hernández appeared on “Update” with a feature about the evolution of Gen Z slang. In the live broadcast, he explained the cycle this way: “Basically, Black people start saying something, young people think it’s cool so they start saying it, then white people say it. Then once Elon Musk says it, it’s over.”

According to multiple sources present for dress rehearsal, the final line was changed for the live show.

At dress, Hernández delivered the punchline as: “Then once Jimmy Fallon says it, it’s over”—a line that drew laughter in the room.

Fallon, of course, is a longtime member of the SNL extended family, having spent six seasons in the show’s cast before moving on to his own late-night shows. He has hosted SNL three times and has made numerous cameo appearances since his departure.

Fallon’s Tonight Show also shares close ties with SNL. Both air on NBC and count Lorne Michaels as an executive producer, while Fallon’s announcer and on-air sidekick Steve Higgins is also one of SNL’s lead producers and writers.

Hernández himself has appeared twice as a guest on The Tonight Show, most recently two weeks ago, when he shared Fallon’s desk for a gadget segment that went memorably awry.

All of which is to say that Hernández’s joke was clearly meant in good fun.

By airtime, however, Fallon had been replaced by Musk—a more familiar target for late-night punchlines.

SNL, of course, has a history of facing blowback over jokes aimed at its alumni. Most notably, a 1995 Weekend Update joke by David Spade about Eddie Murphy led to a twenty-year rift between Murphy and the show.

There’s no indication that Fallon was aware of Hernández’s original line or that it prompted any direct objection. Still, the swap stands as a reminder that even small joke adjustments between dress and live can reflect larger sensitivities—particularly when the punchline involves someone within the show’s orbit.

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