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Taraji P. Henson finally graced the famed stage of Saturday Night Live on April 11. Or, as she felt to commemorate the moment as: “proves after 20 years in show business, white people finally know who I am!” (True?) Henson is always a delight to watch and she does have a great dry comedic effect when exercising her funny bone. There were some misses from her SNL-led episode, but the hits were major and we’ve got selected the top 3!
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We didn’t get to see the best of Henson’s comedic chops until later in the episode, such as the second hip-hop flavored parody of the night “South Centros”, a play off HBO’s Game of Thrones. (The first was a cameo packed sequel called Home 2 that had impersonations ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Nicki Minaj). And the moment that viewers were waiting, which was a reference to her arguably career-defining role as “Cookie” on Empire, happened when her character was placed into a cross-over series with the children’s show Sesame Street! Cookie continued her character’s sly ways and chatted it up with Bert, Ernie and Big Bird. But yes, Cookie finally got to meet the Cookie Monster.
That was too cute! We want more!
And here’s the “South Centros” skit we mentioned earlier below:
The most provocative skit of the night actually edged on the intellectual side when out of the blue, there was a parody of the 1992 film A League of Their Own, a biopic (about the real-life 1940s All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) that originally starred Madonna, Tom Hanks and Geena Davis.
The White female cast members (including one male) portrayed the female baseball players. After a quick rallying of “Girls can play baseball!”, Taraji’s character, a docile dressed Black woman, asked if she could play too. The other women reacted a little stunned and unsure of what to do. One character commented that they were already pushing the envelope in trying to play ball as girls and that including a Black woman would be too much. And the most infamous line of the night came from another who said, “While our husbands are away, we are the racists.”
The skit all-together definitely touched on the issue of intersectionality in feminism which a lot of scholarly Black women have made into a larger discussion. As much media attention and an uprise feminism has had in recent years from Beyonce endorsing it to more female politicians in the spotlight, feminism still feels more exclusive to the needs or voices of White women than the betterment of all women. It was an interesting move for SNL that was also kind of smart.
So while her was not entirely a grand slam (we’ll pass on that Home Shopping Network one), Taraji’s best skits were memorable. And we’re always down to see a Black woman host the iconic comedy show. Who got next?
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The Best Moments From #TarajiOnSNL Featured ‘The Cookie Monster’ And Feminist Intersectionality was originally published on hellobeautiful.com
