'SNL' Accused of Plagiarizing Muhammad Sketch Starring Reese Witherspoon
Saturday Night Live is once again under fire for allegedly stealing a sketch.
After Reese Witherspoon's hosting stint on this past weekend's SNL, Canadian news satire show This Hour Has 22 Minutes noticed that one of the show's sketches looked familiar.
"Picture Perfect," which addressed the controversy surrounding the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad, greatly resembles a bit that aired on the Canadian program in January following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France.
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"This has happened a few times both ways but this is the closet I've ever seen," Mark Critch, one of the writers for This Hour, tweeted on Monday.
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Writer Bobby Kerr added: "Really liked the @NBCSNL Muhammed sketch when @jwPencilAndPad wrote the exact same one for @22_Minutes."
Both sketches are set up like a Win, Lose or Draw game show and call out that any depiction of the Prophet Muhammad is sometimes considered blasphemous to the mainstream Islamic tradition.
This past October, SNL was also accused of stealing a sketch from the members of a Groundlings troupe in Los Angeles. The SNL bit titled "River Sisters" bared a striking resemblance to a sketch performed at the Groundlings theater. "Over the years, I have seen MANY MANY sketches flat out stolen from my friends by Saturday Night Live," Groundlings teacher Ian Gary wrote on Facebook after SNL's sketch aired. "Nearly verbatim. Word for Word."
Ah! No way! For several weeks at the Groundlings, Vanessa Bruiser Ragland and Kimberly Condict performed the heck out of...
Posted by John Irwin on Sunday, October 5, 2014
Do you think SNL's "Picture Perfect" is too similar to This Hour Has 22 Minutes' "Win Lose or Draw Muhammad"?
On a lighter note, check out this flashback video of Eddie Murphy talking about SNL:
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