Comedian James Adomian Accuses ‘SNL’ of Homophobia, Stealing Jokes

The past few years have seen Saturday Night Live achieve some of its highest rated epsiodes in years. However, in a frank interview with The Daily Beast, comedian James Adomian had some harsh words for the sketch comedy juggernaut.

“It would be nice if they put a gay man on camera on that show,” the comedian and noted impressionist said in the interview. Adomian is fairly well known in alt-comedy circles, but it’s his Bernie Sanders impression that made him more of a mainstream name. Perhaps most notably, Adomian and his Sanders impression appeared on Comedy Central’s @midnight with Chris Hardwick to debate Anthony Atamanuik’s Donald Trump. “I’ve been out of the closet the whole time since I auditioned 13 years ago. You would think that they would have tried to put someone else on that was a gay man. It’s about time.”

The Daily Beast article takes note of some of Saturday Night Live‘s history with LBGT cast members and writers. The first openly gay SNL cast member was Terry Sweeney, who lasted for one season from 1985-1986. Three decades later the sketch show brought on its second openly gay cast member, Kate McKinnon. In 2016, Chris Kelly became the show’s first openly gay co-head writer, though he and Sara Schneider left to pursue other opportunities after a year.

The Daily Beast article does not mention other LGBT cast-members (there have been more, though not all openly out), nor that the writing staff reportedly includes up to 60% LGBT writers, something that would somewhat complicate Adomian’s allegations.

Adomian claims that the fact that he was gay didn’t help him in his auditions. He also revealed that he thinks SNL creator Lorne Michaels has a problem with casting gay men:

“I think that Lorne Michaels is afraid of America’s dads.” He imitates a middle-American straight guy saying, “I’m not gonna let my kid watch a show with a gay man.” He predicts the trend will change “sooner or later” but says it’s up to Michaels “whether he’ll be a part of” that change or not.

Adomian also pulled no punches when asked about his fight with SNL‘s resident Trump impersonator, Alec Baldwin. Back in March of 2017, Atamanuik‘s fans launched a campaign to have the lesser known comedian host the White House corespondents dinner instead of Baldwin. Baldwin in turn called out these “internet guys” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Though Atamanuik was relatively calm about the fight, Adomian has maintained a fiery defense of his friend.

“Alec Baldwin is a bully and is insensitive to people who are not as famous as him being better than him at comedy,” he said. “So he started a fight by shitting on Anthony Atamanuik because of a grassroots movement of people — not Anthony — campaigning for him to host the correspondents’ dinner as Trump.

“There was a groundswell of people and fat, jealous, bully fuck Alec Baldwin went on television, which Tony didn’t have access to, and called us ‘internet guys,’” he says. “And I’m sorry, I don’t like having big fights with people, but it is not allowed to call me an ‘internet guy.’ I am superior to you, Alec. So I beat him up, I taught him a lesson. He got a week of bad press, and from time to time I kick him again.”

Adomian also opened up about his allegations that Saturday Night Live steals jokes — an allegation Decider has covered before. He called joke-stealing an “industry-wide problem” but said that SNL is probably the worst offender. “That’s a scandal that’s going to break open sooner or later, I guess. SNL is notorious for passing around audition tapes. It happened to me. It happened to Anthony. It’s happened to other people I know.”

You can read the full Daily Beast interview here.

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