WATCH: SNL Had John Mulaney Play Alan Dershowitz Counseling Robert Kraft
Like a Jewish edition of the murder mystery game Clue, John Mulaney was on Saturday Night Live, playing Alan Dershowitz, giving legal advice to Robert Kraft.
In a sketch patterned on the ABC reality investment show “Shark Tank,” comedian Mulaney (Jewish in our hearts) played lawyer Alan Dershowitz, offering his possible services as a legal counsel to billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who was recently and charged for soliciting prostitution.
The sketch also featured Jew-ish SNL comedian Pete Davidson (as Michael Avenatti,) and SNL’s Chris Redd as the disgraced Jew-ish actor Jussie Smollett. Let this be a friendly reminder from the Schmooze that it is always, always a good time to invest in Jewish pop culture figures.
The mostly painful sketch features Dershowitz and Avenatti on a panel alongside Jeanine Pirro (Cecily Strong), and Rudy Giuliani (Kate McKinnon). The ever-endearing Mulaney took on Dershowitz’s claim of social ostracism by the denizens of Martha’s Vineyard, and skewered the former Harvard professor’s ubiquity in high-profile cases. Mulaney, as Dershowitz, said, “Jussie, you’ve got everything I love in a client — you’re famous, you’re probably guilty — end of list.”
The sketch danced around the fact that Kraft, who was arrested for soliciting a prostitution, was brought down in a sex trafficking sting. “I’m also the only person ever to take a private jet straight to a $59 hand job,” said Beck Bennett, as Kraft — police say “services” at the spa where Kraft was apparently a “regular” cost as little as $59 for half an hour.
“Let the man have his fun,” the Dershowitz character responded. “Also, $59 in Palm Beach! I respect a man for getting a great deal.”
Dershowitz’s career is long, and he’s known for many things — pinching pennies is not one of them. It’s hard to see this line as anything other than anti-Semitic stereotyping, not to mention lazy joke writing.
Cecily Strong rescued the sketch with her hyper-realistic spoof of Judge Jeanine Pirro, shouting, of Jussie Smollett, “A gay, black man lying about an attack! I wrote Fox News fanfiction about this, but I never thought it would come true.”
View the spectacle for yourself here:
Correction, April 4, 2:10 p.m.: [An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Robert Kraft was “arrested and charged.” Kraft was charged, but never arrested.]
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO