The key facts

  • Jeremy Culhane debuted his Musk parody on Weekend Update; the role had previously been played occasionally by Mike Myers.
  • The sketch came after Musk spent about half a billion dollars on losing candidates and announced the halt of Cybertruck production.
  • In the parody, Grok calls Musk 'the worst thing South Africa ever produced'; this season SNL is also mocking other tech executives — Dario Amodei and Kevin O'Leary.

Musk's new SNL persona

In the late-night episode of Saturday Night Live, actor Jeremy Culhane unveiled his Elon Musk impression for the first time, portraying the head of SpaceX and Tesla as an awkward loser who vainly tries to befriend the Weekend Update anchors. TechCrunch reports. This is not the show's first jab at the world's richest man, who in 2021 hosted SNL himself: earlier, Mike Myers made occasional appearances as Musk wielding a chainsaw, freezing up and muttering 'Glitch!'.

A sketch against the backdrop of a bad week

The parody aired as Musk made the news for two reasons at once: he spent half a billion dollars on candidates who lost the midterm elections, and then announced plans to halt Cybertruck production in 2027. So, as TechCrunch notes, Culhane's version came out less provocative and more desperately seeking sympathy: the character tries to joke off his failures and reminds viewers: 'My car did a barrel roll!' — a reference to the roadster with a SpaceX engine unveiled in October. Anchor Colin Jost asks the character about his week: Musk moved to Texas because of the Democrats in California, relocated his companies there to avoid paying taxes, and built his own city — and now Texas is run by Democrats, and he'll have to pay taxes after all. Culhane nods at every step and replies: 'Bad?'

Grok against Musk and a season of anti-tech parodies

To show that he is 'a good sport,' the character asks the Grok chatbot to deliver 'an epic vulgar roast of me, Elon Musk.' Grok responds by calling Musk 'the worst thing South Africa ever produced,' and adds: 'Maybe if you have another 100 kids, one of them will talk to you' — a jab at his relationships with his children. TechCrunch also points to a broader trend this season: SNL is taking aim at tech company executives. The season opened with Jane Wickline as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei as a stuttering prophet of the AI apocalypse, and a couple of weeks later James Austin Johnson parodied data-center investor Kevin O'Leary, who, when asked about discontent over data centers, replies that he just wants to 'buy 40,000 acres of untouched God's beauty and replace it with a very loud computer that's stealing your job.'