WATCH: SNL Had John Mulaney Play Alan Dershowitz Counseling Robert Kraft

John Mulaney on Saturday Night Live as Alan Dershowitz Image by Saturday Night Live

By Jenny Singer March 4, 2019

Like a Jewish edition of the murder mystery game Clue, John Mulaney was on Saturday Night Live, playing Alan Dershowitz, giving legal advice to Robert Kraft.

In a sketch patterned on the ABC reality investment show “Shark Tank,” comedian Mulaney (Jewish in our hearts) played lawyer Alan Dershowitz, offering his possible services as a legal counsel to billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who was recently and charged for soliciting prostitution.

The sketch also featured Jew-ish SNL comedian Pete Davidson (as Michael Avenatti,) and SNL’s Chris Redd as the disgraced Jew-ish actor Jussie Smollett. Let this be a friendly reminder from the Schmooze that it is always, always a good time to invest in Jewish pop culture figures.

The mostly painful sketch features Dershowitz and Avenatti on a panel alongside Jeanine Pirro (Cecily Strong), and Rudy Giuliani (Kate McKinnon). The ever-endearing Mulaney took on Dershowitz’s claim of social ostracism by the denizens of Martha’s Vineyard, and skewered the former Harvard professor’s ubiquity in high-profile cases. Mulaney, as Dershowitz, said, “Jussie, you’ve got everything I love in a client — you’re famous, you’re probably guilty — end of list.”

The sketch danced around the fact that Kraft, who was arrested for soliciting a prostitution, was brought down in a sex trafficking sting. “I’m also the only person ever to take a private jet straight to a $59 hand job,” said Beck Bennett, as Kraft — police say “services” at the spa where Kraft was apparently a “regular” cost as little as $59 for half an hour.

“Let the man have his fun,” the Dershowitz character responded. “Also, $59 in Palm Beach! I respect a man for getting a great deal.”

Dershowitz’s career is long, and he’s known for many things — pinching pennies is not one of them. It’s hard to see this line as anything other than anti-Semitic stereotyping, not to mention lazy joke writing.

Cecily Strong rescued the sketch with her hyper-realistic spoof of Judge Jeanine Pirro, shouting, of Jussie Smollett, “A gay, black man lying about an attack! I wrote Fox News fanfiction about this, but I never thought it would come true.”

View the spectacle for yourself here:

Correction, April 4, 2:10 p.m.: [An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Robert Kraft was “arrested and charged.” Kraft was charged, but never arrested.]

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

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