Longtime "Saturday Night Live" cast member Rob Schneider pinpointed the exact moment the comedy sketch staple was "over" during a recent conversation on Glenn Beck's podcast.
Schneider, 58, said that Kate McKinnon's 2016 post-presidential election performance of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," in which she was dressed as Hillary Clinton, was the beginning of the show's end.
"I hate to crap on my own show," he said. "When Hillary Clinton lost — which is understandable, she's not exactly the most likable person in the room. And then when Kate McKinnon went out there on 'Saturday Night Live' in the cold opening and all that, and she started dressed as Hillary Clinton, and she started playing 'Hallelujah.' I literally prayed, 'Please have a joke at the end.'"
"Don't do this," he continued. "Please don't go down there. And there was no joke at the end, and I went, 'It's over. It's over. It's not going to come back.'"
McKinnon's performance of the hit song has more than 13 million views on the show's official YouTube page.
According to CNN, McKinnon often portrayed Clinton on "SNL" over the years, before announcing she would be leaving the show earlier this year.
During his conversation with Beck, Schneider also talked about how all the late-night TV hosts are openly biased and have the same ideology.
"You can take the comedic indoctrination process happening with each of the late-night hosts and you could exchange them with each other," he said. "That's how you know that's not interesting anymore because ... it's not an independent voice anymore. It's all just indoctrination by comedic imposition."
Successful comedy, Schneider said, had always been going against the current.
"That's when we had millions of people [watching 'SNL'] and it was both sides," he said. "It wasn't … what I call it, it's not interesting to just do it for your choir, for clapping people. It's not as interesting. I mean to me it's more interesting to go against … all the great comedians go against what the mob was doing."
Initially hired as a writer in 1988, Schneider was a main cast member on "SNL" from 1990 to 1994, according to CNN.
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