Yahoo Movies YouTuber Joel Haver addresses accusations that SNL stole his sketch: 'I don't think it was malicious'
Saturday Night Live returned last weekend with a crop of new faces and one sketch that felt a little familiar to some viewers.
Now YouTube creator Joel Haver has responded after eagle-eyed comedy observers noticed some striking similarities between an SNL sketch about the Charmin bears and an animated video he posted earlier this summer titled "Toilet Paper Bears." Haver called any likeness between his bear family and SNL's "pretty alarming," while allowing that the twin concepts could be a case of "parallel thinking" or simply a "wild coincidence."
In the SNL sketch, episode host Miles Teller suited up in blue fur to play a young Charmin bear who wants to get out of the butt-wiping family business and pursue his true passion: dance. Kenan Thompson played his disapproving dad, Heidi Gardner portrayed his confused mom, Punkie Johnson was his peacekeeping sister, and Bowen Yang stole the show as usual, as a fellow dancing bear who somehow mistook the family's kitchen for their bathroom. ("You have my apologies.")
Haver's video, also about TP-loving blue bears and an artistic son hoping to get out of the family biz, came out in July. The setup is pretty much the same, though SNL's delivery was more in line with a variety show that's been on for nearly 50 years, compared to Haver's.
"When it comes to these stealing accusations, I always err on the side of coincidence," Haver said in his video response. "I think parallel thinking does happen more often than not."
He continued, "When it comes to the Charmin bears thing, there's a lot of coincidences that would have to line up to make it truly a coincidence, but I don't think it was malicious. It was either a subconscious borrowing from somebody on their writers' staff who saw my video, or it was a wild coincidence."
Sources close to the NBC show told EW that the sketch writer was unaware of Haver's "Toilet Paper Bears" video.
Haver, who has more than 1 million YouTube subscribers, and whose original bear video has about three times as many views as the new SNL sketch so far, doesn't seem particularly bothered by the similarities, though he admitted he might feel differently if he was still an up-and-coming filmmaker.
"If I still was a smaller creator, which I was for a long time, I could see it rubbing me the wrong way and me being a little more likely to believe they did steal it," he said. "I have to recognize I'm in a position to not be bothered by it."
Watch both sketches, as well as Haver's address, above. SNL is new this Saturday with host Brendan Gleeson at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC.
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