After Try Guys alum Ned Fulmer’s cheating scandal made headlines, Saturday Night Live decided to spoof how the remaining YouTube personalities are coping.
In a Saturday, October 8, skit, cast member Ego Nwodim and episode host Brendan Gleeson play CNN reporters. While the 67-year-old Ireland native portrays a White House correspondent intending to cover daily political news, things took a turn after a development came to light.
“I’m getting breaking news that the Try Guys have now responded to the whole Ned Fulmer situation,” Gleeson quipped in the Saturday sketch. “It’s obviously an evolving story, but CNN can confirm that the Try Guys have released an official YouTube video clapping back at ex-Try Guy Ned Fulmer, the ‘Wife Guy’ Try Guy. He disrespected the brand by making out with one of the ‘Food Babies’ at the Harry Styles concert. It’s a sad day indeed.”
After Nwodim’s character asked who the internet personalities were, Gleeson offered an explanation.
“How do you not know The Try Guys?” the Paddington 2 actor asked. “These are the Buzzfeed pranksters who try stuff, like trying fingernail polish or weird haircuts. They even tried eating bugs!”
The NBC skit then cut to a fake interview with the remaining Try Guys — Eugene Lee Yang (Bowen Yang), Keith Habersberger (Mikey Day) and Zach Kornfeld (Andrew Dismukes) — to address their side of the story.
“Thank you, it’s surreal. There’s a lot of anger on this couch,” the Fire Island star, 31, quipped as Eugene. “We had no choice and we hope he is somewhere on his back with a bullet in his brain and belly.”
Dismukes’ Kornfeld, for his part, referred to the media company deciding to fire Fulmer and edit him out of future videos as the “battle of our lives.” Nwodim proclaimed that since Jay-Z allegedly cheated on wife Beyoncé in 2014, everything would turn out “OK” in the end.
SNL’s Saturday skit comes weeks after news broke that the Yale University grad, 35, had cheated on his wife, Ariel Fulmer, with a coworker.
“Family should have always been my priority, but I lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship,” Ned — who shares two sons with the 36-year-old interior designer — wrote in a September statement shared via Instagram. “I’m sorry for any pain that my actions may have caused to the guys and the fans, but most of all to Ariel. The only thing that matters right now is my marriage and my children, and that’s where I am going to focus my attention.”
As a result of Ned’s actions, the remaining Try Guys announced several hours later that they had fired him after conducting an HR investigation.
Shortly after SNL’s Saturday broadcast of their Try Guys parody, the skit sparked backlash among late-night viewers.
“Oof, rude awakening to SNL that the entire internet is on the Try Guy’s [sic] side,” a social media user tweeted on Saturday. “There were so many other ways they could have parodied this, but they went for making the victims the punchline while downplaying workplace harassment. That’s pretty tasteless comedy.”
Many other viewers similarly slammed the variety series — which has not publicly addressed the criticism — for downplaying sexual misconduct in the workplace.
“This feels reductive of a situation in which there was a big power imbalance in an unethical relationship in the workplace,” another social media user wrote via Twitter. “Not to mention the families, employees and friends hurt by this now have to see their pain being trivialized for a skit? Feels weird.”
Saturday Night Live airs on NBC Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET.
For more, watch the clip above.
