By Gil Kaufman

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Michael Che attends the Canelo Alvarez vs Terence Crawford Netflix Live Event at Allegiant Stadium on September 13, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Bryan Steffy/Getty Images

There’s a moment in the new Ye documentary, In Whose Name,in which “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che confronts the rapper after his infamous 2018 pro-Trump show-closing rant. That bit — which was cut from the broadcast but widely circulated online — included Ye calling out an unnamed Saturday Night Live cast member for being what he described as the go-to Black person when it comes to talking about disgraced comedian Bill Cosby.

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“You can’t always have, every time you have a Black subject matter like [Bill] Cosby that you have to have a Black comedian talking about him,” West said during the Sept. 29, 2018 appearance where he wore a red MAGA hat and dressed as a water bottle during a performance of “I Love It” with Lil Pump. Che is seen in the doc confronting Ye backstage afterwards, saying, “I work here. Like, come on, man. We treat everyone that come in like family, and you gonna sell us out? Like, that’s f—ked up, man. We look up to you, we love you. What you got against us?”

A frustrated Che added, “But airing it out like that without letting us be able to reply is kind of foul. You wait until the last song and then say that foul s–t to us?… You’re a hero to us, man! We love you. Seriously, we love you. But it’s foul to do that.”

It’s an intense moment, one that, frankly, Che has been reluctant to revisit, until this week. During an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Bonfire with comedians Big Jay Oakerson and Robert Kelly on Thursday (Sept. 25), Oakerson brought up the incident and Che said it was so long he doesn’t really remember it and is “terrified” to watch it.

Oakerson said he didn’t see it as a dressing-down, but more like two adults hashing something out, while Che recalled that it was, in general, a “very stressful week” on the show. How crazy? Che said Ye mentioned the song “Cousins” back then — a track released this year in which the rapper alleges he had an incestuous relationship with a cousin — and he’d completely forgotten about it until it came out this year. “That’s how crazy that week was,” Che said of the episode hosted by Adam Driver that ended with Ye’s long rant following a performance of “Ghost Town.”

Che noted that Ye, who had visited the show many times over the years, did not “seem like his normal self” that week, so the cast and crew were doing their best to accommodate him.

Che told Oakerson that he ran into Ye again about a year later in Dec. 21, 2019, when Eddie Murphy hosted SNL. “Every Black person in Hollywood was at this show,” Che said of the eagerly anticipated appearance by one of the show’s most illustrious alum. “I had a lot in that show, and I was running around crazy and people were just in my dressing room kind of using it as their green room. I had no place to really go.”

The two men ran into each other in the hallway and Che said Ye immediately said, “‘I owe you an apology.’”

“And I hadn’t seen him in years. I didn’t even know if he remembered that that happened because he was saying so much s–t [that day],” Che said. “And he was like, ‘I owe you an apology.’ And we talked and I never brought it up again.”

Watch Che discuss the Ye rant and apology here.

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