Some Saturday Night Live cast members got quite the shock during the latest episode.
Weekend Update is a popular segment of the show that sees hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che behind the news desk as hosts, usually airing around the middle of each episode.
During Season 50 Episode 16 with Jack Black as host, cast member Ego Nwodim joined Jost and Che behind the Weekend Update desk for a segment playing off the news that Amber Ruffin had been uninvited to host the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
Watch the video above.
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Nwodim pitched herself to take on the role, joking “every year a comedian gets up there talking trash about the White House, about the media. But no one’s ever just made fun of the dinner.”
She then got in to character as her stand-up alter ego Ms. Eggy and her routine quickly went off the rails as she told a series of jokes about food, men and sex.
After warming the audience up, Ms. Eggy started to do some call and response crowd work with the 340 strong audience.
Her first attempt went fine with the audience responding as expected, but it was her second piece of crowd work that potentially landed the show in some hot water.
”Cory Booker out here with his filibuster – shoot, I’ve had my fill of busters. ‘Cause these men ain’t what?” She said as she held the microphone out to the audience for their response.
While most answered correctly, some over enthusiastic audience members instead seemed to shout out “shit”.
Jost and Che burst out laughing from shock while Nwodim tried to keep it together, improvising like a pro.
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“We finna get fined for that,” she said. “Y’all gonna have to pay for that. Lorne’s gonna be mad at y’all.”
The next day fellow cast member Bowen Yang took to social media to share a clip of the moment to his story, alongside the caption, “favourite televised moment ever!!!! emmy for eggy NOW!!!!”
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While some may think that Nwodim was simply exaggerating for comedic effect when she joked that the team at SNL would “get fined for that” adding that the show’s creator Lorne Michaels is “gonna be mad at ya’ll” it turns out that SNL may actually have landed themselves in hot water with this one.
The curse word managed to slip by network censors as it aired live on the East Coast, however was bleeped out in other time zone feeds that are broadcast with a slight delay and has also been muted in clips of the moment shared on SNL’s social media pages.
With ‘shit’ being one of George Carlin’s famous “seven words you can never say on television” the show very nearly landed itself a fine from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
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The FCC’s guidelines states that “Indecent and profane content are prohibited on broadcast TV and radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience” which means that the East Coast broadcast – which begins at 11:30PM – is probably in the clear.
SNL is broadcast during primetime in the US West Coast and Mountain time zones, however thanks to the slight delay, NBC censors were able to swiftly mute the curse before it hit the air.
So, it looks this time SNL has gotten lucky. But there’s no denying that Jost, Che and Nwodim had a brief moment of panic when it all went down.
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