Laraine Newman Confesses O.J. Simpson Was “A Good Kisser” On ‘SNL’, Shocking Andy Cohen
Andy Cohen stirred up some juicy vintage gossip when he welcomed some of the Saturday Night Live women to the Watch What Happens Live clubhouse on Tuesday (Feb. 11) night. As they prepare to celebrate SNL‘s 50th anniversary on Feb. 16, former female stars of the sketch series Cheri Oteri, Ana Gasteyer, Cecily Strong, Laraine Newman and Rachel Dratch dropped by Cohen’s show.
While some of their time on SNL overlapped, the woman collectively spanned many seasons, with Newman notably launching the show with the original cast back in 1975, while Strong, the most recent cast member, left SNL in 2022.
Cohen used their wealth of experience to grill them about some hot takes on SNL, including, “Do athletes make good SNL hosts?”
All the women agreed yes, prompting Cohen to ask about one particularly notorious athlete who hosted SNL back in 1978: O.J. Simpson.
“Any of you there when O.J. hosted?” Cohen asked the group. Newman sheepishly raised her hand, and when Cohen asked if Simpson was “a good host,” she replied, “and a good kisser.”
Cohen, shocked, asked Newman, “Did you kiss O.J.?”
She told him, “I did. We did a parody of a movie that is so horrifyingly objectionable called Mandingo,” which shocked even Cohen, who said, “Oh wow, OK. Wouldn’t play today.”
Per Ultimate Classic Rock, the sketch was about a film called Mandingo II, in which Simpson played a slave “making out with everyone from Laraine Newman’s southern belle to Garrett Morris (in drag) as a fellow enslaved woman.”
Simpson hosted alongside musical guest Ashford and Simpson during the episode, which has since been removed from the NBC website. Thankfully, some clips still exist on YouTube and TikTok, including a recreation of Simpson’s Hertz ad, plus his opening monologue in which he’s a Conehead.
Watch What Happens Live airs Sunday through Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on Bravo. New episodes are available to stream the next day on Peacock. Watch Newman’s confession in the video above.
