New Details About Kanye’s Unhinged MAGA ‘SNL’ Rant Revealed

Saturday Night Live cast members reveal what it was like for them behind the scenes in 2018 when Kanye West went on a long-winded pro-Donald Trump rant trashing Black support for the Democratic Party and seemingly accusing the show of “bullying” him for wearing a MAGA hat—after having coaxed many of them to stand behind him on stage as he spoke.

In a new documentary to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the show, Ladies & Gentleman… 50 Years of SNL Music, premiering today, Jan. 27, on NBC and streaming the next day on Peacock, current cast member Ego Nwodim recalls what it was like to stand behind West on stage at the end of her very first episode and realize something was very wrong.

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson said in a recent interview that it was Nwodim’s experience that helped him find his way into “the Kanye situation,” as he put it.

“A lot of our interviewees are like, ‘I’ll talk about everything except Kanye.’ And I was trying to figure out how we could [find] a Kanye angle that doesn’t necessarily speak of just his antics?” Questlove said. “And it just so happens that Ego Nwodim, her very first show ever was that episode.”

“Something made me be like, ‘Are the other Black people up here from the cast?’ And I look and, no, I was the only one,” she says laughing. “And I thought they had a meeting. And so then I’m like, ‘These motherf---ers.’ I moved to New York exactly eight days prior for this job.”

Nwodim reveals she thought at the time, “I don’t want to be up here for this because I don’t agree with this and standing up here looks like I’m standing in solidarity. So it’s like, ‘Don’t make any faces—neutral face, neutral face—everyone’s gotta know I’m just fulfilling my duties as a cast member.”

West had asked the oblivious cast and crew to join him on stage before launching into the impromptu remarks—only a snippet of which made it to air—including several hot takes about race and politics.

“There’s so many times I talk to a white person and [they] say, ‘How could you like Trump, he’s racist?’” he said from the stage to the stunned crowd. “Well, if I was concerned about racism I would’ve moved out of America a long time ago.”

“They bullied me backstage,” West complained at another point. “They said don’t go out there with that hat on. They bullied me.”

The episode aired just days before West met with Trump in the Oval Office, during which the rapper ranted to assemble press about the president’s “hero’s journey”—a scene that was later recreated on SNL featuring Alec Baldwin as Trump and cast member Chris Redd as West.

“Wow, this guy can talk. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t listen to anyone but himself, who does he remind me of?” Trump’s inner monologue could be heard saying in the sketch, before exclaiming, “Oh my god, he’s Black me!”

Redd told The Daily Beast in 2022 that West tried out a version of his rant during the show’s dress rehearsal. “I was like, bro, he’s about to pull some bulls--t. And I’m not about to be on stage for that.”

The cast’s longest running member Kenan Thompson also reveals in the doc that he was thinking along the same lines when he declined West’s offer to join him on stage.

“When he grabbed the mic and was just, like, you know, wandering around, you could see he was gearing up to say something,” Thompson says. “I was like, ‘I’m out.’”

The doc also reveals never-before-seen footage of Thompson, West, and the episode’s host Adam Driver as they shoot a promo—including the moment Thompson first realizes West is actually wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

“Oh, yeah that is a MAGA hat, huh?” Thompson says to West in the unaired clip, with Driver standing between them, smirking. “You didn’t notice that ‘til now?” West responds, to which Thompson says, “I just noticed now, I’m puttin’ it all together.”

In the interview portion of the film, Thompson says, “It would have been cool if he just did the music thing and, I don’t know, just spoke through the hat I guess. Because the hat was loud.”