Saturday Night Live producers censor audience cursing during Ego Nwodim’s Weekend Update segment

Saturday Night Live season 50 episode 17 premiered on NBC on April 5, 2025. During the Weekend Update segment, cast member Ego Nwodim brought her stand-up alter ego, Ms. Eggy, to share the roast she would perform at the White House correspondents' dinner.

As part of her set, Ms. Eggy said, “These men ain’t what?," expecting a funny response from the live audience. Instead, one audience member shouted one of the FCC's seven banned swear words, “s*it,” leaving Ego and co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che visibly stunned.

According to Deadline, producers have since retroactively muted the response from all of their social media clips. However, the curse word managed to slip through in East Coast Feed and Peacock for some time, due to the episode being aired live.

The audience profanity on the Weekend Update segment was seemingly caught in time in NBC’s Mountain and West Coast feeds because of their additional few-second air delay.

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What happened during Saturday Night Live's Ego Nwodim Weekend Update segment?

Saturday Night Live season 50 episode 17, which premiered on April 5, marked Jack Black's fourth hosting appearance with Sir Elton John and Brandi Carlile, who made their third appearance as musical guests. In the Weekend Update segment, co-anchor Colin Jost shared the White House Correspondents' Association's recent announcement that they would not feature a comedian at this year’s event, citing a desire to "avoid divisive politics."

For context, the announcement was in reference to the cancelation of comedian Amber Ruffin's planned performance at the April 26 dinner, per Newsweek. It reportedly happened after criticism from President Donald Trump's administration.

Hinting at this topic on the NBC show, Colin turned to cast member Ego Nwodim, asking her to comment on the situation.

In response, Ego argued that the Association should let her perform at the dinner instead. She assured viewers that she would focus her jokes on the dinner, rather than targeting the White House or the media like some past comedians.

"Yeah, that's because every year, a comedian gets up there talking trash about the White House, about the media, but no one's ever just made fun of the dinner," she said.

The Saturday Night Live cast member then came out of the Update desk and brought out her stand-up alter ego, Ms. Eggy, to showcase the bit that she would perform at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, if she got the chance.

Ego leaned into a clichéd comic persona as she kicked off her segment, cracking a joke about the event's food options. After listing the non-vegetarian choices—beef, fish, or chicken—she added that there was a vegetarian option too, it’s just called “walking your gay a** to Sweetgreen across the street.”

The Saturday Night Live cast member's dinner roast soon turned into an audience call-and-response. When Ego's character first asked, "Miss Eggy don't what?" pointing at the live audience, they responded with the word "Play."

Surprised by the crowd's correct response, Miss Eggy later asked:

"Cory Booker out here with his filibuster. Shoot. I had my fill of busters. 'Cause these men ain't what?"

One of the crowd members answered the question with the word "s*it," which was soon censored by the show as it was one of the Federal Communications Commission's seven banned swear words, as reported by Newsweek. Ego even sarcastically addressed the response, noting that the audience member would have to pay for that and the long-time producer Lorne Michaels would be mad at them.

"We fittin' to get fined for that. Worth a damn, sucker. Y'all gonna have to pay for that. Lorne gonna be mad at y'all," Ego said in her character.

While the curse word has since been muted from all of its uploaded content clips, Saturday Night Live viewers can see shocked reactions by Ego and co-anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che.

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Saturday Night Live season 50 episodes premiere every Saturday on NBC.