NBC Tried to Censor Larry David’s ‘SNL’ Monologue at the Last Minute
Larry David never had the easiest time at Saturday Night Live. During his brief tenure as a staff writer in the mid-1980s, he only managed to get one sketch on the air. The piece, all about one architect’s controversial plan to install a stool for an elevator operator, didn’t go over so well with the audience. The joke fared better when it was recycled for a Seinfeld episode years later.
Famously, David became so frustrated that he quit SNL, only to regret the decision and show up to work on Monday morning as if nothing had happened. This anecdote, too, was later repurposed for Seinfeld.
But that was all before David became an Emmy-winning sitcom creator and the star of his own cable series. When he returned to host the show as a venerated celebrity, surely he had an easier time getting his material on the show, right? Well, not exactly.
While guesting on Dana Carvey and David Spade’s Fly on the Wall podcast, David revealed that after making cameo appearances playing Bernie Sanders, he was invited to host in 2016. “It was okay,” David said of the experience, noting that “they invited me to do it again (in 2017).”
David went on to explain that “the hardest part was having to prepare a monologue. Because I hadn’t been on (stage doing comedy) in a long time. So I had to write a monologue and then do it in different clubs.” Unfortunately, one of his SNL monologues proved to be a problem with the nework’s standards and practices department.
“A half hour before the show, at 11 o’clock, I was called up to Lorne’s office and the censor was there. And the censor said that I couldn’t do this bit,” David recalled.
“At 11? Fuck off,” Spade replied.
The censor had an issue with “two bits.” And while David was willing to let go of one, he insisted on keeping the other. “I said, ‘I can’t. I have to do it.’ I go, ‘What? Why is it offensive? I don’t get it. Who’s gonna be offended by this?’” And Lorne Michaels eventually stepped in to defend his host. “Lorne after five minutes of this, said to the censor, ‘I don’t think you’re gonna win this one.’”
Presumably, David’s anecdote is about the second time that he hosted SNL, because that first monologue, aside from a questionable riff on eating disorders and a joke about how musical guest The 1975 “also happens to be the year I broke my masturbation record,” wasn’t exactly controversial.
But his 2017 monologue, on the other hand, included jokes about Harvey Weinstein and the difficulty one would face trying to pick up women in Nazi concentration camps, which even some members of the studio audience audibly groaned at.
As for his question about “who’s gonna be offended” by the monologue, well, the answer turned out to be a lot of people.
