It wouldn’t be Monday without somebody saying, “SNL stole my sketch!”
This week, it’s the long-running BYUtv comedy show, Studio C, which aired a ‘Beauty and MrBeast’ sketch last Monday, November 3, according to a LateNighter report. “I turned a hundred servants into common household items and trapped them in this castle in the French countryside!” says MrBeast as a terrified clock and candlestick look on. “The only way they’re going to get their human bodies back is if they make this lady (Belle) fall in love with me.”
So it’s no wonder that Mormon eyebrows raised when Saturday Night Live did its own ‘Beauty and MrBeast’ sketch only a few days later. “I’m keeping her dad trapped in a dungeon for 30 days for a chance to win over $300,000,” enthuses Ben Marshall’s version of MrBeast. “For every pound he loses, I’ll give a Tesla to a random stranger.”
Studio C, a clean-comedy sketch show produced in Utah, isn’t some obscure Internet oddity unlikely ever to blip on SNL writers’ radar. Its YouTube channel has more than 2 billion views, and the show has featured guest spots from SNL veterans like Will Forte and current cast member Kenan Thompson.
But was the MrBeast idea really stolen? The Studio C version only went up on its YouTube channel this afternoon — after SNL aired — so it would have been challenging for 30 Rock writers to see. And like the minor kerfuffle around the “ChatGPTio” sketch earlier this year, the similarities end once you get past the basic premise.
You know who’s not mad about the sketch? Jimmy Donaldson, the Riyadh theme park mogul who also goes by MrBeast. “I didn’t know they were gonna talk about me but the second it aired my phone blew up haha,” Donaldson told Dexerto. “Thought it was funny.”
One reason to give SNL the benefit of the doubt: This is at least its fourth Disney Beauty and the Beast parody over the past few years. Kristen Wiig and Gerard Butler did their own version in Season 35, with each character believing the other must be the hideous creature in need of transformation.
In the Willem Dafoe episode three years ago, Pete Davidson and Chloe Fineman played the titular characters, spying on Belle’s dad via a magic mirror.
And Abby Elliott was Belle in The Real Housewives of Disney in Season 37. “The Magic Kingdom is my playground … and I like to play.”
All of these Beauty and the Beast parodies mean no one at SNL gets originality points for this week’s version. As for the Studio C sketch, SNL writers can always claim parallel thinking. But given that both sketches aired during the same week, the coincidence is not a great look for Saturday Night Live.
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