Saturday Night Live jumped into the nation's morbid fascination with Luigi Mangione, the man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The cold open kicked off with Sarah Sherman’s incredulous true crime entertainer Nancy Grace, who complained that “women and gay guys alike” have made Mangione into a “sex symbol.”
She said Mangione looked like “Dave Franco with Eugene Levy's eyebrows.”
“This man is not a sex icon. This man is — and I cannot say this any clearer — a murderer,” she said, slurring the “u” into incoherence.
Later in the sketch, she asks a character played by Kenan Thompson if he believes social media users are actually attracted to the “sexy slayer,” to which Thompson replied: “Well I mean, you can look at him and tell he had h**s.”
“I mean, women love bad boys,” said Thompson, whose character was at the Altoona, Pennsylvania restaurant where police discovered Mangione.
The sketch kicked back to Grace asking his character about the state of healthcare in the US, then cut back to Thompson shoving a McDonald's burger into his mouth.
“People are saying healthcare in this country is bad. Then how come by dentist gives me breast exams for free?” she asked.
“Well Nancy, I been eating McDonald's every day for 10 years,” Thompson’s character said. “I've got type-10 diabetes. ... You know what my health insurance plan is called? ‘Hoping it goes away.’”
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace: Luigi Mangione pic.twitter.com/XvbGSUE2QP
— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) December 15, 2024
Grace’s final guest: a “guy who looks like Luigi Mangione,” played by cast member Emil Wakim.
Being mistaken for Mangione hsa “kind of a rollercoaster for me,” he said.
“On one hand I keep getting tackled by bounty hunters, but on the other I've gotten some of the horniest DMs of my life,” he said.
Saturday’s host, comedian Chris Rock, also tackled the phenomenon surrounding Mangione’s fan in his opening monologue.
Rock joked that if Mangione look like Jonah Hill, “no one would care.”
“They’d already give him the chair already, OK?” he said.
Rock expressed sympathy for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, reminding the audience that he was a real human being with a family.
“But sometimes,” he said, “drug dealers get shot.”
Chris Rock's monologue! pic.twitter.com/MedUMLCBqz
— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) December 15, 2024
Thompson was shot on the streets of Manhattan by a gunman — alleged to be Mangione — which kicked off a days-long manhunt for the killer.
He's now facing second-degree murder charges in New York.
The CEO’s killing has brought to light the absolute disdain that some Americans have for the private US health insurance industry.
Some social media commenters have expressed a total lack of sympathy for Thompson, with many recalling how their loved ones either died after their healthcare insurance claims were rejected or live in pain due to claim denials.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore — whose 2007 documentary Sicko interrogates the US healthcare industry — was allegedly mentioned by name in Mangione's manifesto. After being asked by some media outlets to condemn the murder, he said he did — but he also condemned what he called the murders of Americans at the hands of health insurance companies and the politicians who protect a for-profit healthcare industry.
He said Americans were "1,000 percent justified" in expressing rage towards health insurers, and said he wanted to "pour gasoline" on that fire.
Even the UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty acknowledged that the US insurance industry is broken.
“We know the health system does not work as well as it should, and we understand people’s frustrations with it,” Witty said in a recent op-ed for The New York Times. “No one would design a system like the one we have.”
