Michael Keaton’s ‘Crazy’ Julian Assange Squares Off Against Michael Avenatti on SNL
This week’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ cold open found Assange sharing a prison cell with Lori Loughlin and Michael Avenatti.
“You’re watching MSNBC,” Saturday Night Live began this week. “Now that the Mueller report turned out to be a big fat zero, we’re back to prison shows.” What followed was a truly bizarre Lockup sketch that found a series of recently arrested celebrities sharing a cell.
First there was Kate McKinnon as Lori Loughlin, who threatened to shank one of her fellow prisoners for calling her Aunt Becky before revealing that she had already joined the Nation of Islam. “That’s right, I bought my way in for 100 grand,” she said. “Plus another hundred for them to stop calling me the white devil.”
“You think prison is hard?” she asked. “I have done 68 Hallmark movies. I have seen hell, man. And in half those Hallmark movies, I marry Santa’s son, so I have lost all sense of reality.”
Next up was Pete Davidson as Michael Avenatti. “Bitch, I’m accused of crimes you can’t even conceive of,” he said. “Like blackmailing a sneaker company and stealing taxes from a coffee shop to fund a racecar team. And I’m so shady that a porn star once said that she needed to distance herself from me.”
“And you know what the worst part is?” he asked. “I might still run for president. Avenatti/Baldwin 2020!”
Then, just like that, Michael Keaton emerged as a bearded and completely unhinged Julian Assange.
“That’s right, it’s me,” he said. “I’m the architect of anarchy. I’m the king of chaos. I’m the scourge of the cleaning staff at the Ecuadorian embassy.”
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“Now you sons of bitches want to hear how crazy I am?” Assange continued. “Here’s how crazy I am. I’m wanted in the U.S. and Sweden. I’m from Australia. I live in London, in Ecuador—you try figuring that one out! Yeah, you cheat your schools and, you know, you rob your companies, that’s cute. I’ve attacked the U.S. military, bitches, because I’m an actual James Bond supervillain and I’m one step away from destroying the goddamn moon.”
“So you want to get nuts?” he asked, quoting his own iconic Batman performance. “Come on, let’s get nuts!”
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