Five days after CBS This Morning debuted their unhinged interview with R. Kelly, Saturday Night Live took the opportunity to parody the two-part interview with a new cold-open sketch. With SNL‘s Kenan Thompson portraying Kelly and Leslie Jones portraying CBS’s Gayle King, the sketch poked fun at Kelly’s willingness to speak on camera just days being arrested on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
Asked why he made the decision to do the interview, Thompson’s Kelly said, “Because people think that I’m some kind of monster. I’m here to remove all the doubt. My lawyer was telling me no, but my ego, my ego was telling me yes.”
At various points in the mock interview, Thompson broke out into an updated rendition of Kelly’s hit “Trapped In the Closet.” “It’s 10 o’clock in the morning/ And I’m talkin’ to Oprah’s friend,” he sang. “If I can just get through this/ Everybody’s gonna love me again.”
Touching on the specific allegations reveled in Surviving R. Kelly, Thompson’s Kelly character jokes that throughout the the six-part documentary, no one had anything nice to say about him. “These people made a six-part documentary about me. Six! That’s almost 10,” he said. “And not one of them said a nice thing about me. They made it seem like I was the devil. I’m not the devil, and even if I was, you can’t think of one nice thing to say about the devil? I can: Nice horns. Gives good advice.”
“I really want to laugh right now, but I don’t know if this is a prank on your or a prank on me,” Jones said in character as King. Later she added, “Robert, you’ve been combative, defensive and completely unhinged, but somehow you expect us to believe you are completely innocent?”
Elsewhere in the episode, Pete Davidson commented on the recent allegations of sexual misconduct made against Kelly and Michael Jackson. Joining Colin Jost on his “Weekend Update” segment, Davidson called Kelly a “monster” who should “go to jail forever,” later adding that “it seems like all really talented people are sick.” Kelly was recently released from jail after a $161,000 child support payment was made on his behalf. Watch the SNL cold open below.
