‘SNL’ Fans Blast Michael Che for ‘Weekend Update’ Joke Calling Caitlyn Jenner ‘Fella’

Weekend Update co-host Michael Che made a joke involving Kanye West and Caitlyn Jenner that has some Saturday Night Live fans upset. During the segment, Che said that West is slowing turning into an old white lady. He then made a comment about Jenner’s former name, Bruce. Che started the jokes by talking about how West has just released his new Christian album, and that the rapper intends to change some of the lyrics from old albums to be more G-rated.

“At first I thought Kanye was losing his mind, and now I feel like he’s fine, he’s just turning into an old white lady,” Che said. “I mean, he used to be one of the coolest black dudes on Earth. Now he’s showing up to events in sweatpants and orthopedic sneakers, listening to Kenny G and trying to get black people to like Trump. It’s like, how long before this guy changes his name to Kathy?”

“Now, you might think that I’m crazy, but about five years ago, there was a fella named Bruce Jenner, and he moved to Calabasas…” He then looked at co-host Colin Jost, who laughed and moved on to the next topic.

People took to Twitter to express their outrage about the joke. “What gets me is that this disgusting, blatantly transphobic joke is both completely unfunny AND delivered incredibly poorly,” comedian Avery Edison wrote. “There’s just no point to it. Why this target? Why the deadnaming? Why the incorrect pronouns? WHY THE JOKE AT ALL?”

“There are great writers and performers at SNL, and they don’t mean s–t if the Lorne Michaels bottleneck keeps letting a–holes like Che spout crap like this and get chuckles from Jost,” she continued.

“Hi [NBC], please note that deadnaming and intentional misgendering is a form of transphobic violence. I’m so done with transphobic humor on SNL,” another person tweeted.

“It’s too bad that the best episode of SNL in recent memory had to be marred by Michael Che’s s—-y Caitlyn Jenner joke,” a third person wrote. “Come on, man, it’s 2019. Be better than this.

The rest of the most recent episode did get high praise, specifically Chance the Rapper’s performances both as an actor and musician. There were also several big name cameos, including one from Jason Momoa that brought down the house.