However, “on live television, it’s dangerous,” Chappelle concedes. “You got to navigate standards and practices and all the rest of it. But to Lorne Michaels’ credit, he never knows what I’m going to say. As a tradition, I never do my actual monologue in rehearsal.”
This explains Chappelle’s most recent “How did he get away with this” monologue, which included him describing how Michaels begged him to host the post-election show and Chappelle declined. (Michaels reportedly “bristled” at being brought up in such a way; we guess the comic’s earlier transphobic jokes didn’t ruffle his feathers.) This isn’t to say Chappelle doesn’t participate in the rehearsal: “For me, rehearsal is just ‘How’s the sound?'” he explains in the Variety interview. That makes it all the more interesting that Vulture previously reported that Chappelle dropped a non-binary joke from his 2022 monologue after rehearsal at Michaels’ suggestion. If Chappelle is to be believed, his rehearsal jokes weren’t going to make it into the live show, anyway.
“It’s so much pressure on live television,” he says now for Variety. “But the joy of doing that show for me is the monologue. What a gift for a stand-up to be able to do what he does on live television on such a revered platform like SNL is. It’s always exhilarating. It’s a little terrifying, but just a little. You never do as good as you think you’re going to do, but it’s never that bad. The hardest one was maybe the one when Biden got elected, because we didn’t know he was going to be president until Saturday morning. So I had a set for if Trump won, and I had a set for if Biden won.”
Asked about his 2016 monologue, when he spoke of giving newly-elected President Donald Trump a chance, Chappelle says he remembers it: “But you know what? I look at it like a photograph. That’s what it felt like in that moment. Now, if it ages well or not, I don’t get mad if I look at a picture because it’s not today. That’s what it was at that time. You might look at an old set and cringe, but you could just cringe because of how you were at that time.”
