In a comedy from Saturday Night Live’s 48th episode of the second season of the NBC variety show, the cast makes a funny attempt to explain why the Try Guys cheating controversy made headlines.
The sketch begins as a CNN report, with SNL cast member Ego Nwodim serving as the cable news show’s host and SNL episode host Brendan Gleeson as an on-air correspondent. The Try Guys are YouTubers who are played by Bowen Yang as Eugene Lee Yang, Mikey Day as Keith Habersberger, and Andrew Dismukes as Zach Kornfeld.
The fake interview, which is a remake of a real video from the original Try Guys release last week, interrupts Gleeson’s live White House broadcast as the three talk about the fallout of former Try Guys member and “Wife Guy” Ned Fulmer’s adultery scandal.
According to Gleeson, “I’m getting breaking news that the Try Guys have now addressed the entire Ned Fulmer matter.” CNN is able to establish that the Try Guys have put out an official YouTube video criticizing former Try Guy Ned Fulmer, the “Wife Guy” Try Guy.
He continues, “He violated the brand by having an intimate relationship with one of the ‘Food Babies’ at the Harry Styles concert.”
Gleeson’s reporter asks, “How do you not know The Try Guys?” This is a reference to the fact that the group, which started out as a Buzzfeed thing before the four pranksters went out on their own as a brand, probably isn’t as well known as the coverage of their incident allegedly made it seem.
He continues, “These are the Buzzfeed pranksters who try things, like trying nail polish or strange haircuts. They even attempted to eat bugs.
The act then transitions to a video of the three remaining Try Guys, Yang, Habersberger, and Kornfeld, performing a parody of their Oct. 4 “what happened” video response and statement. The three YouTubers recognize that Ned Fulmer, who was exposed as cheating on his wife Ariel in late September when a Reddit post including a video of Fulmer with another woman surfaced, is no longer a member of the group, just like the video it’s based on. (Ariel was a part of the Try Guys brand and the Try Wives Wine Time podcast and YouTube series.)
Yang’s Lee remarks, “There’s a lot of animosity on this couch.” We have no choice, and we’re hoping he’s lying on his back somewhere with a bullet in his gut and brain.
Day, who is portraying Habersberger, continued, “He did the awful act of having a consensual kiss and not telling us, his pals.”
The scandal, which led to the genuine Try Guys not only announcing Fulmer’s resignation but also removing him from earlier recordings, was referred to as the “fight of our lives” by Dismukes’ Kornfeld.
The trio responded to Fulmer’s behavior with a video statement, in which they said he would not be joining them again, and Habersberger said that what transpired “betrayed our confidence and was a workplace infraction. To everyone in the office who knew what they knew, it would imply that we weren’t living up to the ideals we claimed to uphold.
“He would have been taken out very easily. In response to the question of whether the group was previously aware of Fulmer’s cheating, he stated, “We would have tried to avoid that for the sake of the other people involved, but it happened how it happened.”
The trio acknowledged experiencing a range of “emotions,” including fear, perplexity, anger, and sadness, during the committee’s investigation of the charges against Fulmer and his subsequent dismissal from the group.
The group stated that Fulmer won’t be replaced and that there won’t be a new official Try Guy.
Kornfeld stated that “new people will come in and leave.” I don’t want to pressure anyone to announce that this Try Guy is the replacement and the new Try Guy. That isn’t being fair to them.
In an Instagram post on September 27, Fulmer talked about the claims and called it “a consensual workplace relationship.”
“Family ought to have been my top priority always, but I lost focus,” he wrote. I apologize for whatever harm my actions may have brought to the guys and the audience, but especially to Ariel. I’m going to concentrate my attention on my marriage, my marriage, and my children since they are the only things that count right now.
Fulmer, Yang, Habersberger, and Kornfield started their careers as the Try Guys brand with a Buzzfeed series that first debuted in 2014. Later, the group split out into a standalone brand of family-friendly YouTube pranks and humor, similar to other Buzzfeed organizations. Over 8 million people subscribe to the group’s YouTube profile, which was founded in 2018.