Last Sunday, in about 30 seconds, Will Smith changed his entire career — and later he won an Oscar. The beloved rapper-turned-actor has been the top news story for a week after he stormed the Academy Awards stage and slapped presenter Chris Rock over a joke he made about his wife (and, later, danced to one of his own songs). And while hosts Michael Che and Colin Jost kicked off their latest Weekend Update with an update about Ukraine, the punchline was about that slap — as were most of the jokes.
“Intelligence officials are saying that Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisors about how badly the Russian military is performing in Ukraine,” Jost said, “which is kind of like Will Smith’s agent telling him, ‘You crushed it at the Oscars!”
Jost also called Smith’s actions “disgraceful,” adding, knowingly, that they set “a terrible precedent for having to defend your wife at awards shows.”
Che seized upon one of the things Smith said during his acceptance speech: “Love will make you do crazy things.”
“You know what else makes you do crazy things? Crazy,” Che joked. “But I understand where Will’s coming from. I mean, you can’t expect him to sit there and watch another man jump all over his wife—without signing an NDA.”
Che also took issue with the idea that everyone knew Jada Pinkett Smith, whose bald head was the source of Rock’s joke, had a hair condition.
“Can we stop pretending everybody knew Jada had alopecia?” Che said. “I mean, as much as we’ve heard about Jada and Will’s personal lives, you can’t expect us to retain everything,” he said. “It’s like Kanye saying, ‘Don’t act like y’all don’t know I had psoriasis!’”
On a more personal note, Che said he was “tired” of audiences “putting their own insecurities” onto him when he’s cracking wise. “I mean, I can’t make a joke about it being cold outside,” Che said, “without somebody yelling back, ‘Stop making fun of my small penis! Keep my small penis out your mouth!’”
In summing up, Jost deemed it “one of the craziest things we will ever see in our lives.”
You can see those jokes and more in the video above.