The latest episode of Saturday Night Live was hosted by Chris Rock, who used his monologue to address the arrest of the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “Everyone’s obsessed with how good-looking this guy is,” Rock quipped. “If he looked like Jonah Hill, no one would care. They’d have given him the chair already. He’d be dead.”
While expressing sympathy for Thompson’s family, Rock delivered the joke as part of his trademark comedic build-up.
“(Mangione) actually killed a man,” he said. “A man with a family, a man with kids. I have condolences for the health care CEO. I mean, this is a real person. But, you know, sometimes drug dealers get shot. I mean, you’ve seen ‘The Wire,’ right?”
Saturday’s episode opened with a cold open featuring Sarah Sherman as Nancy Grace, covering the arrest of Mangione. Sherman’s Grace expressed disbelief while reading explicit online comments about the suspect, describing him as “Dave Franco with Eugene Levy’s eyebrows.”
“Of course, everyone online praised law enforcement for capturing this dangerous criminal,” she joked. “Just kidding, you psychos turned him into a sex symbol!”
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace: Luigi Mangione pic.twitter.com/XvbGSUE2QP
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) December 15, 2024
She then interviewed a witness, played by Kenan Thompson, who had been at the McDonald’s where Mangione was spotted before his arrest. “Women love bad boys,” he said. “Back in the day, you could impress your lady with a little poem. Now you’ve got to write a manifesto.”
The show couldn’t help but highlight the resemblance between featured player Emil Wakim and Mangione. Wakim portrayed a man whom Nancy Grace, played by Sarah Sherman, pointed out “happens to look like” the alleged shooter.
“I haven’t paid for a meal in Brooklyn in days,” Wakim joked.
The Mangione humour carried over to “Weekend Update,” where Colin Jost noted that while the suspected shooter was allegedly furious with corporate America, he still patronized Starbucks and McDonald’s.
“So perhaps his greatest crime was hypocrisy,” Jost quipped.
