JB Smoove’s First ‘SNL’ Sketch Mysteriously Vanished
JB Smoove is probably best known for playing Larry David’s sidekick/soulmate Leon Black on Curb Your Enthusiasm. But years earlier, the comedian was a writer for Saturday Night Live, where he came up with some gloriously bizarre pitches. For starters, there was the “Urine Detective” sketch, in which host Johnny Knoxville would play a gumshoe who solves crimes by tasting the pee of suspects. It never made it to the air.
Another rejected idea was about a couple that met as military helicopter pilots, but even after settling down and starting a family, they keep constantly screaming because they “can’t get the helicopter out of their systems.” He also pitched a sketch featuring host Tom Brady as “Nick Buttkowski,” the first football player to ever smack his teammate on the ass.
But the first sketch of Smoove’s that actually made it onto the show was somehow more unhinged than all three of those ideas put together. “They used to call me the king of the pitch, because I would pitch as if I was doing stand-up,” Smoove recently told Vanity Fair. “I think the first one that even made it was ‘Butt Pregnant.’” Smoove recalled that the pitch “got a big laugh in the room.” And when it came time for another writer to share their idea, they simply said, “My idea is I wanna help JB write ‘Butt Pregnant.’”
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The premise of 2005’s “Butt Pregnant,” aka “Butt Pregnancy,” is that Amy Poehler shows up for a baby shower with her partner (host Jason Lee) and reveals to her family that she is carrying the baby in an unusual position: housed in her posterior. “We have no idea how it happened, it’s a fluke really,” the father desperately explains.
In the sketch’s closing moments, a narrator suddenly chimes in and randomly reveals that the butt baby “grew up to be Saturday Night Live’s Will Forte.” It then cuts to Forte, who waves enthusiastically to the crowd.
In retrospect, it’s amazing that a body horror-coded, anal sex-themed sketch made it onto the show. But it didn’t stay there for long. According to Vulture, when the show was rerun in the summertime, “Butt Pregnancy” was nowhere to be found. In its place was a sketch from the dress rehearsal about office workers “singing about their cafeteria’s dessert selection.”
While it isn’t wholly unusual for SNL to remove and replace sketches for subsequent airings, it’s usually due to controversies, mistakes, rights issues or other evident behind-the-scenes reasons. Since there’s no obvious explanation for why “Butt Pregnancy” had to be pulled, maybe it was just too gross and weird for Lorne Michaels? The studio audience didn’t exactly love it, either.
Weirdly, as one fan pointed out, the episode’s listing on Peacock clearly notes that it contains the sketch “Butt Pregnancy” — but it’s nowhere to be found!
Enough with the mind games already. #ReleaseTheButtPregnancyCut.
