Dave Chappelle sat down with fellow comedian Mo Amer for a one-on-one interview as part of Variety’s “Actors On Actors” series. In the interview, Chappelle admits that he wasn’t especially prepared for his first time hosting Saturday Night Live.

“The first one especially was winging it,” Chappelle reveals. “But I’ve been doing it long enough that you’re never really winging it. Even if I don’t have jokes, I got experience enough. But on live television, it’s dangerous. You got to navigate standards and practices and all the rest of it. But to Lorne Michaels’ credit, he never knows what I’m going to say. As a tradition, I never do my actual monologue in rehearsal.

“For me, rehearsal is just ‘How’s the sound?’” he explains. “It’s so much pressure on live television. But the joy of doing that show for me is the monologue. What a gift for a stand-up to be able to do what he does on live television on such a revered platform like SNL is. It’s always exhilarating. It’s a little terrifying, but just a little. You never do as good as you think you’re going to do, but it’s never that bad. The hardest one was maybe the one when Biden got elected, because we didn’t know he was going to be president until Saturday morning. So I had a set for if Trump won, and I had a set for if Biden won.”

Chappelle often hosts SNL with major political events as a backdrop. His first time hosting was Nov. 12, 2016, in the aftermath of Donald Trump winning the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton. Chappelle hosted Nov. 7, 2020–just after Joe Biden won that year’s presidential election. His hosting stint on Nov. 12, 2022 was right after midterm elections; and his fourth time hosting SNL was Jan. 20, 2025–two days after Donald Trump was sworn into his 2nd term. In their sitdown, Amer asks Chappelle about his especially-controversial 2016 monologue, delivered just after Donald Trump won his first term. Chappelle urged the audience to “give him a chance,” but he says it’s just a snapshot of that particular time.

“I look at it like a photograph,” shares Chappelle. “That’s what it felt like in that moment. Now, if it ages well or not, I don’t get mad if I look at a picture because it’s not today. That’s what it was at that time. You might look at an old set and cringe, but you could just cringe because of how you were at that time.”

You can watch the interview video below.

– YouTubewww.youtube.com