Sabrina Carpenter had the double duty of being host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live on Oct. 18, but some were more interested in a past musical guest, who just passed away, not being honored
12:13 ET, 19 Oct 2025Updated 14:23 ET, 19 Oct 2025
Saturday Night Live viewers were upset that D’Angelo wasn’t honored during the Oct. 18 episode following his death
NBC’s late-night comedy sketch show, Saturday Night Live, failed to pay tribute to a past musical guest, who recently passed away, during this weekend’s episode.
Sabrina Carpenter had double duty, being host and musical guest on Oct. 18, and while her appearance shocked some, others couldn’t help but rage that the show didn’t honor one of its past musical guests, R&B legend D’Angelo, who died on Oct. 14.
SNL has traditionally displayed tribute cards for past hosts and musical guests who have died near the episode’s airdate. They’ve held up cards for Val Kilmer, Matthew Perry, Quincy Jones, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, and more. It comes as Sabrina Carpenter left fans shocked by dropping the F-bomb TWICE during the live broadcast.
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Just last weekend the show paid tribute to Diane Keaton, who had never appeared on SNL.
Yet the Grammy winner, who served as musical guest on SNL on Jan. 31, 2015, to support his critically acclaimed comeback album, Black Messiah, didn’t get a card or a single mention during Carpenter’s expletive-filled episode.
D’Angelo appeared on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest in 2015
The Untitled (How Does It Feel?) singer, who championed the neo-soul movement of the 1990s, died on Oct. 14 at age 51 following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
During his duties as musical guest during Season 51 episode, which was hosted by J.K. Simmons, D’Angelo performed the songs Really Love and The Charade. During his powerful second performance — which came months after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner — the backing band and vocalists wore “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” shirts.
D’Angelo fans took to social media to fume about SNL failing to honor him.
One person wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “Fail. Granted SNL doesn’t usually/always acknowledge single time musical guests and of current cast only Michael Che & Kenan Thompson have *any* connection to D’Angelo. But it’s D’Angelo …”
Someone else commented on D’Angelo’s SNL snub while retweeting a post about Diane Keaton defending Woody Allen, who has faced allegations of grooming and sexually abusing his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow, which he and his team deny.
Keaton’s tweet read, “Woody Allen is my friend and I continue to believe him. It might be of interest to take a look at the 60 Minute interview from 1992 and see what you think.”
D’Angelo died on Oct. 14 and his fans are still mourning him
The fan added, “So snl tributes a person who defended grooming but couldn’t tribute D’Angelo, mind you the latter the only one who actually appeared on the show lmao.”
D’Angelo fans shouldn’t feel too bad. One Direction singer Liam Payne was also not mentioned on the show following his death in October 2024. He performed three times as musical guest and appeared in sketches with his bandmates.
Meanwhile, during last night’s episode, fans were shocked that Carpenter was not censored when she cursed not once, but twice. During her second performance on the night, she belted out her single Nobody’s Son. She didn’t censored herself and was heard singing, “He sure f—ed me up” on two occasions.
Saturday Night Live is set to return after a brief hiatus on Nov. 1 with host Miles Teller and musical guest Brandi Carlile.