Dave Chappelle made a comedic return to Saturday Night Live, joking he was “too ugly” to attend Diddy’s alleged “freakoffs.” Known for stirring controversy, the 51-year-old comedian’s performances on the show have made headlines since his 2016 monologue after Donald Trump’s election.
In his latest appearance, Chappelle tackled topics like Trump, the Los Angeles fires, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Daily Mail. Chappelle targeted Sean “Diddy” Combs in his comedy, referencing Combs’ ongoing legal troubles.
Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges following his September arrest, remains in custody after three judges denied bail. His trial is set for May 5.
“I’ve been in trouble in my day but let me tell you, this guy, Puffy… this guy Puffy is in an enormous amount of trouble, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this. They’ve got this guy in a RICO case by himself!”
He joked that he was never invited to Combs’ alleged “freakoffs,” humorously suggesting a personal realization about the omission.
“I thought about it, I said oh my God… I’m ugly. Everyone in Hollywood had an orgy behind your back and none of y’all called me? That really hurts!”
He changed his mind, saying that he was not ugly but rather, “I have snitch energy. I look like I’ll tell. The last thing you wanna see at the orgy is me looking across at you.”
Chappelle – at one point joking that he was “tired of being controversial” and hoping to “turn over a new leaf” – ended his set to open the NBC show discussing Trump, saying: “He’ll be the 47th president, he’s done it again.”
During a 17-minute monologue on Saturday Night Live, Chappelle, seated on a stool and smoking a cigarette, joked that he agreed to host the show to revisit old Trump jokes.
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He shared a story about the late President Jimmy Carter visiting Palestine with minimal security during Chappelle’s own trip to the Middle East.
The comedian also reflected on his 2004 hiatus from comedy, when he left his hit Comedy Central show and traveled to Africa and the Middle East.
“I will never forget the images of a former American president walking with no security with thousands of Palestinians cheering him on and when I saw that picture, it brought tears to my eyes. I said I don’t know if that’s a good president but that right there, I am sure, is a great man. It made me feel very proud,” he said.
He added that “the presidency is no place for petty people,” then addressed Trump and the rest of the nation, joking that “I know you watch the show.”
To Trump and America, Chappelle said: “Man, remember whether people voted for you or not, they’re all counting on you. Whether they like you or not, they’re all counting on you. The whole world is counting on you. I mean this when I say this, good luck. Do better next time. Please, all of us, do better next time.”
“Do not forget your humanity and please have empathy for displaced people whether they’re in the Palisades or Palestine,” he concluded to heavy applause.
Earlier, Chappelle had what he said were admittedly “too soon” laughs about the wildfires, saying that “the moment I said yes” to SNL, “LA burst into flames.”
He said though he has never lived in the city before, he knows several famous friends who lost their homes there.
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“Then I go on the internet and I watch these fire videos and the comments all say it serves these celebrities right, I hope their houses burn down,” he said.
“You see that? That right there? That’s why I hate poor people,” Chappelle joked. “They can’t see past their own pain!”
He riffed on how Los Angeles’ wildfires would be the most expensive natural disaster in American history, joking that “it’s because people in LA have nice stuff. I could burn 40,000 acres of Mississippi for like $600-700.”
At one point, he dismissed the conspiracy theories about the fire, only to say: “If you were a rational thinking person, you have to at least consider the possibility that God hates these people. It’s a lotta whites!”
He then joked about one of the area’s LGBTQ-friendly communities, saying that God can’t have possibly do this “because West Hollywood was unscathed, because how can you burn what is already flaming.”
Chappelle further addressed last summer’s controversy involving Haitian migrants in Springfield, a city near his hometown. He said that Trump’s speculation that “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” made him “crazy.”
Chappelle claimed that these Haitians had come there legally and “they did jobs the whites weren’t doing. It’s not that the whites couldn’t do these jobs but they were doing other things: heroin, sleeping on the streets.”
Then he said, in hopes he could be supportive, he spent 10 days eating his lunch each day at a Haitian restaurant in Springfield “to let them know if I’m safe here, you guys are definitely safe here.”
“To be honest with you, I don’t know what that meat was,” he said with a wry smile. “But whatever it was, it fell right off the bone I’ll tell you that.”
He joked that he might leave Ohio along with the Haitians because “its just no fun being famous anymore.”
Chappelle has kept a lower profile over the past year but remains a controversial figure. In 2023, he faced backlash for criticizing Israel’s “war crimes” against Palestinians, sparking a walkout during a Boston show.
Earlier this year, comedian Michelle Buteau accused him of profiting from “dangerous” transgender jokes that she claimed made people feel unsafe.
His latest Netflix special, The Dreamer, released in 2023, marked the conclusion of his multi-million-dollar contract with the streaming giant, which he mentioned during his Saturday Night Live appearance.
