‘SNL’: Dave Chappelle Sets Hosting Return

Saturday Night Live announced its lineup for next week – comedian Dave Chappelle will be hosting while hip hop duo Black Star will be the musical guest. This will be the third time Chappelle has hosted the episode immediately following an election, which may mean it is becoming a bit of a tradition. However, not all fans of SNL are excited about it.

SNL Season 48 has been moving along at a breakneck pace, taking just one weekend off since premiering on Oct. 1. Critically speaking, reviews of the show have been mixed this season as viewers adjust to the new cast members and complain about the inconsistent relevance of the hosts and musical guests. Chappelle will not be much of a remedy for that issue.The comedian was regarded as an appropriate iconoclast the last time he took the stage in Studio 8H, but his recent jokes about transgender people have made his footing tenuous at best.

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Chappelle famously made his SNL hosting debut on Nov. 12, 2016 following the election of former President Donald Trump. His stand-up monologue in that episode has become legendary, and it helped propel him into a comeback on the national stage including several successful stand-up comedy specials. However, just about all of those specials included jokes about transgender people, and each one raised more and more outrage among his peers and among commenters online.

Chappelle seemed to welcome the backlash and engage with it in real-time, but he never quite apologized to his offended fans without qualifiers. At the same time, Chappelle was praised for his work both as a comedian and an activist in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, which obscured the conversation around his treatment of transgender people. In November of 2020, Chappelle returned to SNL to host the first episode after President Joe Biden was elected.

Since then, Chappelle has performed consistently around the U.S. and has faced a couple more incidents that likely bear mentioning in his SNL monologue. First, students at the Duke Ellington School in Washington, D.C. protested the school’s attempt to name its renovated theater after Chappelle on account of his jokes about transgender people. Chappelle agreed that the theater should have a different name. Next, in May Chappelle was attacked by a man with a knife while performing on stage in Los Angeles.

Chappelle will undoubtedly touch on these as well as other big stories that have transpired since he was last on a TV or streaming stage. At the same time, it seems safe to say he will weigh in on the 2022 midterm elections once again. Saturday Night Live airs at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC. Previous episodes are streaming on Peacock and Hulu.