Saturday Night Live’s latest viral sketch may have felt out of left field—but it didn’t come entirely out of nowhere.
Andrew Dismukes has been racking up praise for his oddball turn as an increasingly distressed rideshare driver in “Rasta Driver,” a sketch from this weekend’s Olivia Rodrigo-hosted SNL that saw him involuntarily slipping into a dancehall/reggaeton persona mid-ride. But if his performance felt oddly specific, there’s a reason for that.
LateNighter has learned that Dismukes’ character was inspired—in part—by another viral video featuring Cheshire Cat, veteran UK reggae/dancehall MC, who can be seen holding court from behind the wheel in a way that unmistakably echoes the sketch’s central gag.
The SNL sketch, written by Dismukes alongside Jake Nordwind and Streeter Seidell, hinges on that uncanny contrast: a mild-mannered driver who suddenly discovers he is “one of the most talented rasta MCs on earth”—to his own horror. “I don’t wanna be a white rasta guy,” Dismukes pleads in the sketch, while his passengers (played by Olivia Rodrigo and Veronika Slowikowska) look on in confusion.
In real life, Cheshire Cat is no accidental performer. A veteran of the UK sound system scene dating back to the early 1980s, he built his reputation through clashes with heavyweights like Saxon Sound and Sir Coxsone before moving into chart success in the ’90s. His collaborations span from Leftfield’s “Release the Pressure” to a feature on Simply Red’s “Night Nurse,” and later work across jungle, drum and bass, and reggae—including releases with Mungo’s HiFi and Kingston Express.
That long résumé stands in sharp contrast to Dismukes’ SNL character, whose existential crisis is rooted in discovering an unknown talent he very much does not want. Still, the connective tissue between the two—the visual of a white MC confidently delivering from the driver’s seat—is hard to miss once you’ve seen both.
