After footage of Che confronting Ye backstage was featured in the rapper’s new documentary, ‘In Whose’s Name?,’ the SNL star opens up about the moment for the first time, while also claiming Kanye later apologized for his behavior.
Michael Che is shedding light on his now-viral confrontation with Kanye West following the latter’s infamous pro-Trump rant on Saturday Night Live.
While appearing on Thursday’s episode of SiriusXM’s The Bonfire, the SNL star opened up about the heated conversation he had with the rapper after footage of the moment was featured in Kanye’s new documentary, In Whose Name?
Back in 2018, Ye appeared as a musical guest on an episode of Saturday Night Live. During his third and final number, which closed out the show, Kanye — who was wearing a Make America Great Again hat — went on a bizarre, pro-Trump rant, during which he accused the SNL cast of bullying him, and slammed Black comedians for making jokes about Bill Cosby, gesturing to Che, according to Entertainment Weekly.
As shown in a now-viral clip, which you can watch below, from Kanye’s documentary, released last week, Che confronted Kanye backstage over his speech, calling him “foul” for making the comments about the show — and essentially Che himself — on live television.
“We treat everybody that come in like family, and you’re gonna sell us out? Like, that’s f–ked up man,” Che told him. “We look up to you, we love you. What you got against us?”
On Thursday, Che broke his silence on the confrontation, admitting that he’s “terrified” to watch the footage.
While looking back at that evening, the comedian said Ye “didn’t seem like he was his normal self.”
“He’d been at the show a million times. So it seemed like he was kind of not behaving like himself,” Che recalled. “So we were just like, ‘What’s going on?’ We were trying very hard. And then when that happened, and he made it seem like we was bullying him, and I was like, ‘Why would you say that?’ Like, what happened that you felt that way?”
According to the 42-year-old, that tense evening wasn’t the last time he saw Kanye. Che said he ran into the “Runaway” rapper at SNL a year later, revealing that Kanye apologized for his behavior.
“That’s another reason why I don’t really like talking about it, because the next time I saw him was years later, I remember. … It was the Eddie Murphy show, and every Black person in Hollywood was at this show,” he said of the 2019 Christmas episode, which was hosted by the legendary comedian.
“Every Black person in Hollywood was at this show,” Che continued. “It was crazy. It was people [who] had never came to SNL. … I had a lot in that show, and I was running around crazy, and people were just in my dressing room kind of using it as their green room. I had no place to really go.”
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“I’m walking through the hallway, and he’s coming out the elevator bay, and as soon as he sees me, he goes, ‘I owe you an apology,'” Che recalled. “And I hadn’t seen him in years. I didn’t even know if he remembered that that happened because he was saying so much s–t. And he was like, ‘I owe you an apology.’ And we talked, and I never brought it up again.”
Kanye’s documentary, In Whose Name?, was released on September 19. Director Nico Ballesteros filmed the performer for six years, beginning in 2019 when the filmmaker was only 18 years old.
The doc’s synopsis, per The Hollywood Reporter, reads: “What began as silent observation evolved into a profound journey of artistic and personal growth. Immersed in Ye’s world of extremes, he bore witness to brilliance and breakdowns, triumphs and turmoil; but also observed the paranoia and intensity that increasingly shaped Ye’s world. In the end, Ballesteros captured not just a portrait of Ye, but a reflection of the human condition in all its contradictions.”
