A John Mulaney ‘SNL50’ Joke Revives Interest in a Famous Cold Case
Saturday Night Live has certainly featured its fair share of dark jokes over the years, but viewers may still have been taken aback when the recent SNL50 special kicked off with Steve Martin and John Mulaney playfully reminding the world that two former guest hosts “committed murder.”
It seems as though Mulaney was referring to O.J. Simpson and Robert Blake, who were famously both arrested on murder charges. We should mention that they were both ultimately acquitted, but many, many members of the public, including a certain Weekend Update anchor, believed that they were actually guilty. Blake, though, never published a book hypothetically explaining how the murder was committed.
While Mulaney may have intended the line to simply be a throwaway joke that nobody would put much thought into, that’s not what ended up happening. The attention-grabbing moment ended up inspiring a number of theories from SNL fans eager to figure out exactly which murderous hosts Mulaney was referring to.
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Some people suggested that it could have been a reference to Alec Baldwin, even though his involuntary manslaughter charges were dismissed last year. Others recalled that Matthew Broderick caused a fatal car crash in 1987 and pled guilty to “careless driving,” but never faced criminal charges. Then there’s Snoop Dogg, who fans pointed out was acquitted of second-degree murder charges in 1996, eight years before he hosted.
The discussion eventually led to one of the most famous cold cases in Hollywood history: the death of actress Natalie Wood in 1981.
Wood’s drowning was originally ruled an accident, but the case was reopened in 2011 and the cause of death was changed from “accidental drowning” to “drowning and other undetermined factors.” And in 2018, actor Robert Wagner, Wood’s husband, was labeled a “person of interest” by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Wagner was the last person to see Wood alive during their yachting trip. Wagner was eventually cleared by authorities in 2022, but a lot of people, including Wood’s sister, believe that he did it.
Also on board the boat was Christopher Walken, who some have theorized, without evidence, could have been responsible for the crime, or complicit in its cover-up.
Walken has been a staple of Saturday Night Live for many years, but Wagner also hosted the show, albeit just once, back in 1989.
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A number of folks online pointed to the Wood case following Mulaney’s joke
While the joke was clearly funny, we’re guessing that “the internet spending several days ranking the murderousness of every SNL host" likely wasn’t the desired outcome.
