This story originally appeared on Them.
Live from New York, it’s … a long, hard look in the mirror for the richest man on earth.
During its “Weekend Update” segment, Saturday Night Live debuted feature player Jeremy Culhane’s devastating new impression of Elon Musk, the red-pilled billionaire whose nearly $500 million investment in the U.S. elections did essentially nothing to move the needle.
The wasted cash was one of many reasons that SNL debuted the jittery, awkward rendering of Musk, including the fact that his company Tesla has begun winding down its production of the hideous (and sometimes dangerous) Cybertruck, as well as the loss of $457 billion in value for both Tesla and SpaceX on the stock market last week.
The skewering, courtesy of rising star Culhane, rendered Musk as a painfully unfunny bro who nevertheless is obsessed with being seen as humorous and well-liked. The impression also emphasized his preoccupation with the rather childlike nature of his inventions: “My car did a flip!” Musk yells over and over, referencing the “flying car” that he debuted to a whimper in October.
Throughout the impression, Musk tries to bro out with host Colin Jost, saying they have a shared love of “epic vulgar roasts” before asking X’s AI bot Grok to do a “epic vulgar roast” of Musk himself. That’s when SNL landed some of its harshest jabs.
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“Elon Musk, you’re the worst thing South Africa has ever done,” the Grok approximation says, making a grim joke about apartheid.
“When you’re on TV, it’s like Hate on the Spectrum,” the fake Grok continues before finally saying, “Maybe if you have 100 more kids, one of them will talk to you.”
Musk’s relationship with his estranged daughter Vivian Wilson is notably icy. In the past, rather than embrace Wilson, Musk has repeatedly deadnamed and misgendered her, saying she was “killed by the woke mind virus.” Wilson has responded to this by saying that she was not the cause of Musk’s noticeable rightward shift to the right.
“It’s such a convenient narrative, that the reason he turned right is because I’m a fucking tr***y, and that’s just not the case. That’s not what that does to people,” Wilson told Teen Vogue in March 2025. “Him going further on the right, and I’m going to use the word ‘further’ — make sure you put ‘further’ in there — is not because of me. That’s insane.”
Culhane’s impression of Musk drew rave reviews and compliments across the internet, especially for its savagery relative to most other SNL parodies.
“Culhane nailed Musk’s awkward cadence and mannerisms, as well as his penchant for self-humiliation, which came courtesy of his own AI chatbot Grok,” wrote culture site Consequence.
Previously, SNL has outsourced its rendering of Musk to alum Mike Myers, who appeared as the billionaire Trump once-sycophant in 2025. Myers’ impression of Musk was still awkward, but not quite as pathetic.
Musk hosted SNL in 2021, and has since been cited by fans and cast as one of the show’s worst hosts in history.
Former cast member Beck Bennett compared Musk’s appearance on the show negatively to another billionaire host, President Donald Trump.
“As far as having billionaire personalities come on the show, Elon Musk was a lot more offensive,” Bennett told The Last Laugh podcast, per Parade. “That was harder to deal with.”
Former cast member Chloe Fineman has also said that Musk made her cry with his criticism of a sketch she had written during his hosting gig.
Culhane has become one of SNL’s foremost impressionists; aside from Musk, he often goes viral for his precise rendering of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s whiny, meandering cadence.
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