Featured Image Credit: NBC
Topics: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard
Joe Harker
When it comes to targets for its comedy skits, almost nothing is off limits for Saturday Night Live, often better known as SNL.
This week, its cold open was a sketch on the ongoing defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
The sketch was quick to make a few jokes at how much fun some people are getting from the trial as the judge in the sketch kept watching evidence videos on the basis that 'we don't have to watch any of it, but we want to'.
Starring Kyle Mooney as Depp and Cecily Strong as Judge Penney Azcarate, the SNL sketch has divided viewers over whether it was a hilarious take on the trial or in bad taste considering the allegations of domestic violence made.
One person wrote: "The amount of people involved in SNL and nobody thought "hey maybe this should be off limits" ???"
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Another said: "When did domestic abuse especially against women became a thing to joke about? The people involved in this should be ashamed of themselves."
A third tweeted: "Absolutely no reason this should've been made into a skit. so unprofessional and weird."
Others found the funny side of the sketch as one fan said: "this is hilarious. I can't stop watching it lol"
A second chipped in with: "The best part of today's episode on SNL was the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard courtroom case skit."
There were also some complaints about SNL's choice to focus on the Depp/Heard trial rather than the political happenings going on in the US at the moment.
Someone wrote: "I'm pretty forgiving of @nbcsnl’s normal mediocrity, but with all of the things happening in this country right now, THAT is what you went with for your cold open? Cmon."
SNL seemed to admit there were more topical things it could have opened with, as Kate McKinnon introduced the sketch as 'not the most pertinent story of the moment' but something everyone could look at and think 'glad it ain’t me'.
Meanwhile, yet more fans just wanted to grumble that Kyle Mooney was a bad choice to play Depp, with some viewers saying he 'makes for a weak Johnny Depp' and others wondering 'who lied to Kyle Mooney that he could pull off Johnny Depp?'.
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