SNL accused of plagiarizing from a sketch troupe's YouTube videos

Variety

Nick Ruggia and Ryan Hoffman of the sketch comedy troupe Temple Horses uploaded a video about employees at a pumpkin patch having sexual intercourse with a pumpkin in October 2014. When they saw Saturday Night Live do a similar sketch in October 2018, they decided not to pursue any action in response. “We felt like nothing good would come from addressing it, and also we were afraid of potential repercussions, and we were kind of afraid of being dismissed by our peers, even though everyone we showed it to said it was blatant,” Hoffman tells Variety. “So we decided to let it go.” But they changed their mind last month after seeing SNL air a "Pound Puppy" sketch during Don Cheadle's episode that bore a resemblance to their "Pet Blinders" sketch that was uploaded in 2011 -- about a fictional product sold to prevent pets from watching their owners perform sex act. "It was twice in the same season, and we felt that at this point, that we didn’t really have a choice but to address it,” says Hoffman. “And we don’t really want to be involved in a mess like this, but there’s a certain point you have to stand up for yourself and your work.” NBC declined to comment to Variety, but a source told the publication that NBC found that different writers worked on each digital short. “This is not ‘parallel construction’: Two separate instances of wholesale lifting of concept, setting, characters, plot, and outcome in the same season do not happen by coincidence,” their attorney, Wallace Neel wrote in a letter to NBC, “Someone(s) at SNL is plagiarizing material.”