Jail began to get crowded on Saturday Night Live: The show skewered a number of recent high-profile arrests in a cold open featuring Lori Loughlin, Michael Avenatti, Julian Assange, and Tekashi 6ix9ine bragging about their crimes.
Loughlin, played by Kate McKinnon, tries to one-up her cellmates (played by Chris Redd, Kenan Thompson, and Kyle Mooney) with tales of her “loco” crimes, explaining she “paid 500 grand to get my daughter into USC.”
“You think prison is hard?” she asks. “I have been in 68 Hallmark movies; I have seen hell, man!”
Michael Avenatti, played by Pete Davidson, enters the scene and brags to his cellmates that he is “accused of crimes you can’t even conceive of,” including blackmailing Nike.
“I’m so shady that a porn star once said that she needed to distance herself from me,” he says.
Julian Assange, played by Michael Keaton, assures them all that he’s the boldest criminal in the room.
“Yeah, you cheat your schools and you rob your companies, that’s cute, it is, yeah,” he says. “I’ve attacked the US military, bitches, cuz I’m an actual-dactual Bond supervillain.”
At this point, the prisoners agree Assange has them all beat. However, they soon notice Melissa Villaseñor as Tekashi 6ix9ine in the corner, swaying to music only he can hear, who fills them in about his recent guilty plea on charges of drug trafficking and racketeering.
The cold open was well-received by the audience, but Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, may not find it all that funny. The two faced charges of mail fraud in a college admissions bribery scandal. After they refused to take a plea deal last week, they were hit with additional charges of money laundering and conspiring to commit fraud, and could face up to 40 years in prison.
Prosecutors in the Avenatti case say the lawyer used money from one set of crimes to fund other scams, including defrauding his own clients. Avenatti could face 333 years in prison should he be found guilty on all charges.
For his part, Assange faces extradition to the US for his WikiLeaks work. He also once faced allegations of rape in Sweden, and Swedish officials are reportedly considering reopening their investigation into the case.
