Dear Gossips,
There was an article published at Vulture by Guy Branum on Friday about the old boys’ club of comedy. It’s a table, there’s one in every club, where only the top comics are given a seat. Those seats are occupied almost exclusively by men. These are the men who’ve declared themselves the gatekeepers of comedy and, for years, they decided that only they get to decide what’s funny and who gets to be funny and how the people who are funny get to show us that they’re funny. Louis CK was one of the men who sat at the table. And just two days after he was publicly disgraced, Tiffany Haddish hosted Saturday Night Live.
SNL’s producers would never have known when they booked Tiffany to host this weekend that Louis CK would go down. So this was a sort of magic, non? As Tiffany said, at the end of the show, she’s the first black female standup comic to have hosted Saturday Night Live. The first ever. I’m so happy for Tiffany, but I’m not sure, given that it’s 2017, that in addition to being happy for her, we shouldn’t also be wondering what the f-ck took so long. Might it have something to do with that old boys’ table? Watching Tiffany deliver the opening monologue, after spending the previous 48 hours talking about Louis CK taking out his dick and pumping whenever he wanted to and then reading his grossly inadequate “apology”, did you wonder how many Tiffanys there could have been if Louis CKs and the Knights of the Comedy Table weren’t hoarding everything for themselves?
And she glowed on that stage, didn’t she? We’ve seen her glowing all year. Tiffany Haddish has to be, undoubtedly, one of the Entertainers of the Year. She has a strong chance of getting a Golden Globe nomination in the comedy category. Some say there is also a possibility she could be nominated for an Oscar. Her success, particularly this weekend, feels like a further indictment of the comedy culture that protected and promoted Louis CK for all these years.
Speaking of the Oscars, there was so much campaigning happening this weekend in Hollywood as we move deeper into the season. Almost everyone who’s in contention – and many who want to be in contention – showed up at the Governors Awards this weekend. More on that throughout the day.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey
