Sterling K. Brown Spoofs Black Panther and This Is Us on Saturday Night Live

Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning This Is Us actor Sterling K. Brown hosted Saturday Night Live (SNL) last night. He fully embraced some super-weird sketches, like one about a Shrek superfan and another about a dying old woman who just loves Nickelback, but he also parodied two of his most popular recent projects: Black Panther and This Is Us. 

Given Brown’s role as N’Jobu in Black Panther, and given Black Panther‘s continued box office dominance, it was inevitable that SNL would do a Black Panther skit. (Though, as many people have pointed out, it was quite a surprise that the show actually had enough black actors to do this sketch, given their hiring history with black comedians.) I really liked the premise of this one: that in a world with an Ancestral Plane, even the ancestors and relatives you don’t like might show up to spend eternity with you. And watching Brown and Leslie Jones try not to break character as Kenan Thompson’s character, Uncle M’Butu, gets more and more ridiculous, was pretty darn charming.

“All of you live here in harmony together?”

“We … do our best.”

However, some of the jokes—like Thompson’s Lion King sequence—felt uncomfortably against the spirit of the movie. Like, making “African languages sound funny” the punchline of the joke … That felt neither appropriate nor funny. But I’m curious to see what you all thought of it.

Next up, Brown parodied the ratings bonanza This Is Us with a skit about the Trump administration called “This Is U.S.” Brown absolutely crushes his Ben Carson impression; I giggled so hard at his first line. And the skit’s descriptions of the Trump administration as “a drama so unnerving, you can’t look away” and “like This Is Us, but without the parts that feel good” were so spot-on. Plus, Kate McKinnon returns as Kellyanne Conway, ready to join in the general weeping before she remembers: “Oh, can’t cry. I have nothing in me.”

What’d you think of Sterling K. Brown’s episode?

(Featured image: screengrab)

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