The downfall of Harvey Weinstein would seem like obvious grist for TV’s late-night comedy shows. Weinstein was facing three decades’ worth of allegations that he sexually harassed women…
The downfall of Harvey Weinstein would seem like obvious grist for TV’s late-night comedy shows. Weinstein was facing three decades’ worth of allegations that he sexually harassed women; on Sunday, his own film studio fired him. The story seemed to parallel those of other powerful men who were confronted with numerous accounts of sexual misdeeds, including Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes and President Donald Trump — all of whom were widely pilloried in the monologues of the late-night hosts and on shows like “Saturday Night Live.”
Yet since Thursday, when The New York Times published an investigation into the history of complaints against Weinstein, most of the late-night shows have avoided the matter altogether. “The Daily Show” addressed it fleetingly in an episode Thursday night, and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” weighed in Sunday night.
The omission seemed especially glaring on this weekend’s installment of “Saturday Night Live,” a show with a history of responding rapidly to news events and which, in a 90-minute broadcast, has multiple opportunities to address a range of topics.
As it turns out, the show did have jokes about Weinstein ready — they just were not used, according to a person familiar with how Saturday’s episode was prepared.
The absence of any commentary about Weinstein opened up “SNL” to rebukes from conservative critics who said that the show was covering up for a prominent liberal.
That criticism was hardly alleviated by remarks made early Sunday by Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “SNL.” Speaking to a videographer for The Daily Mail who noted that the show had made no mention of Weinstein, Michaels said, “It’s a New York thing.”
That brought a further round of jabs from people like Donald Trump Jr., who suggested in a Twitter post that “SNL” had one standard for people like his father, and another for people like Weinstein.
Michaels was unavailable for comment Sunday night. But the person familiar with the preparations for this weekend’s episode said the show cut material about Weinstein during its dress rehearsal. (This person spoke on the condition of anonymity because NBC had not authorized the person to speak for attribution.)
This person said there were jokes about Weinstein in a comedy sketch that was dropped before airtime, and also in its “Weekend Update” segment. These cuts were made simply because the material seemed to fall flat with the show’s studio audience, the person said.
Overall, this person said, the tone of this weekend’s show was greatly affected by the shooting massacre at a Las Vegas country music festival on Oct. 1, in which 58 people were killed and hundreds more were injured. The “SNL” broadcast opened with remarks and a performance by Jason Aldean, the country singer who was on stage at the festival when the shootings began; “SNL” also featured long comic monologues from the “Weekend Update” co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che, who spoke in favor of gun control.
The person familiar with Saturday’s episode said Michaels, in referring to “a New York thing” and Weinstein, had meant that the events surrounding Weinstein seemed at the time like a New York media story with which a national television audience might not be familiar.
After the news of Weinstein’s firing Sunday, this person said the story had only grown bigger, and that it was still possible for “Saturday Night Live” to address the topic in a new episode this coming Saturday.
Oliver told a series of jokes about Weinstein in Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight.” Referring to a TV journalist’s claim that Weinstein masturbated in front of her, Oliver said, “Step aside, ‘Chocolat,’ you are no longer the most horrifying picture that Harvey Weinstein has ever produced.”
