As is tradition, Saturday Night Live closed out its season with its annual Weekend Update joke swap, and this year, it featured a special mystery guest: Dr. Hattie Davis. Kate McKinnon returned to host the SNL Christmas episode, which also saw the return of another beloved show fixture. SNL resumed the joke swap for the first time after three years of extenuating circumstances, like cast goodbyes and the Covid-19 pandemic, derailed plans, and it was great to see it return. The tradition is one of the most anticipated of the year for viewers and SNL‘s best ongoing segment. Weekend Update anchors (and SNL writers) Colin Jost and Michael Che write jokes for each other and swap them, with the other not knowing what the joke will be until they read it live on air.
The joke swap usually sees Che getting the better of Jost, with his jokes often seeing Jost turning bright red and putting his head in his hands in disbelief–which, quite honestly, is one of the most fun parts of the yearly swap. This year, however, Che upped his game and introduced a special guest to sit next to Colin Jost before beginning the joke swap: Dr. Hattie Davis. The elderly Black woman and wheelchair user is an author, a poet, and an activist, and, as Che explained, had appeared on SNL 46 years ago, sending people to Google the forgotten episode with the renowned activist.
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SNL Weekend Update’s Hattie Davis Is Not A Real Person
As it turns out, Che’s joke of bringing out Dr. Davis to sit next to Colin was a double-layered one, as Dr. Hattie Davis doesn’t actually exist. SNL Weekend Update’s Dr. Hattie Davis was played by actress Daphne Skeeter, and the character was completely made up by Che for the sake of the bit. It makes the joke swap extra funny knowing that the extra pressure was put on Jost by someone who wasn’t even real; not only did he have to read Che’s jokes live, but he was also the butt of Che’s genius Hattie Davis prank.
Che did a great job of not overselling her, but giving audiences, and Jost, just enough to make it believable. The name “Hattie Davis” itself is a common enough one for women of her era. In fact, the name itself was likely taken from a few well-known Black activists and trailblazers. Her first name almost certainly came from Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in Gone with the Wind and was the first Black actor to win an Academy Award. The last name is a little harder to pinpoint, but it’s likely that it came from Ossie Davis, the late renowned actor and Civil Rights activist who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and others.
What Makes SNL’s Weekend Update Joke Swaps So Great
The Weekend Update joke swap is arguably SNL‘s most anticipated segment of the entire year for audiences. While the Weekend Update segment is a part of Saturday Night Live every weekend, there’s something extra special about the joke swap. Part of it is down to the fact that, as the last show of the season before the holidays, the whole SNL cast feels a little looser during the show. There’s an air of school kids on the last day of school before Christmas break starts that permeates the entire episode, and the audience picks up on it.
More than that, though, the joke swap is arguably Colin Jost and Michael Che at their comedic best, showcasting their sharpest writing. With them writing jokes for each other, it allows them to push the boundaries that they normally wouldn’t be able to. While a great number of the Weekend Update jokes are always a little snarky, they can’t go too far with them. The joke swap allows Che and Jost to be edgier than normal – after all, the fun of it is seeing if they can embarrass the other. Jost turning beet red and Che groaning aloud is just as much part of the tradition as the jokes themselves, and the inclusion of “Dr. Hattie Davis” made it even better. After three seasons on hiatus, they came out swinging this year, making it the best Saturday Night Live joke swap yet.
Saturday Night Live
The longest-running sketch-comedy/satire show on television, premiering in 1975, Saturday Night Live is a weekly series that features new hosts for each episode, with a core cast of actors and comedians that rotate over time. Episodes feature several skits that are sometimes ad-libbed on the fly, with the hosts engaging in most of them, and also provide musical guest performances that cap off each night.
