The ‘Wayne’s World’ Joke That Got Edited Out of ‘SNL’ Reruns

On a 1992 episode of Saturday Night Live, Wayne and Garth did one of their patented David Letterman rip-offs, running down their list of the Top Ten Things We Love About Bill Clinton. The official SNL channel on YouTube is still sharing the clip — well, most of it anyway.

Notice anything missing? After Wayne and Garth meow their way through #3, a horny ode to Al Gore’s daughters (“Schwing! Finally there’s some talent in the White House!”), the clip dissolves past the #2 item on the list. If you missed the sketch’s original run 30 years ago, you’d never know the jokes behind that second item, simply labeled “Chelsea.”

The Chelsea punchlines aren’t just missing on YouTube. Those jokes never made it to reruns, thanks to some cruelty that Mike Myers thought better of, at least after the fact. Here’s what’s missing: After a pregnant pause, Wayne explained that “adolescence has been thus far unkind” to the First Daughter. Good news, however: Wayne believes that Chelsea, just 12 years old at the time, is “going to be a future fox.”

Garth agrees: “Under the right clinical conditions, she could turn into a babe-in-waiting.” 

Let’s forget for a minute that Wayne and Garth’s randy evaluation of the Gore daughters was for girls ranging in age from 19 down to 13. Yikes. (In an unrelated bit of trivia, then-15-year-old Kristin Gore grew up to write for Saturday Night Live.) It was the criticism of Chelsea that drew the ire of Hillary Clinton. “I think it’s sad that people don’t have anything better to do than be mean to a child,” she said in a Redbook interview. “I’m going to do everything I can to help Chelsea be strong enough not to let what other people say about her affect her.”

Bill weighed in as well in a PEOPLE interview. “I really find it hilarious when they make fun of me. The Saturday Night Live skit where I was in McDonald’s talking about Somalia — I thought that was hilarious,” he explained. “But I think you gotta be pretty insensitive to make fun of an adolescent child.” 

Oof. The public criticism prompted Myers to write a personal letter of apology to Chelsea and the Clintons. It also earned a rare public apology from SNL producer Lorne Michaels. “We felt, upon reflection, that if it was in any way hurtful, it wasn’t worth it,” he said about the decision to cut the jokes from future airings. “She’s a kid, a kid who didn’t choose to be in public life.” The apology’s sincerity was blunted, however, by Michaels lamenting that no one cared when SNL roasted Amy Carter in the 1970s, even though the earlier jokes were “a little rougher.”

Apparently, running for president heals all wounds. That ‘90s anger at SNL was long gone by the time Hillary wanted the publicity of a 2008 cameo appearance to counter Obama’s splash. Getting what you want is a good way to get past slights — just a few years later, Chelsea took an NBC job with Rock Center with Brian Williams. Under the right clinical conditions, all can be forgiven.