Michael Che Campbell is a stand-up comedian, actor and writer from the United States.
He is best known for his work on NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) as Weekend Update co-anchor with Colin Jost also serving as co-head writer from 2017 to 2022.
Born on May 19 1983 in Manhattan New York City Che was raised on the Lower East Side and attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.
His comedy career started in 2009 leading to appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2012 and acclaim from Variety and Rolling Stone in 2013.
Here are some of the most hilarious quotes by Michael Che.
Best Michael Che Quotes
There’s tons of stuff where you’re like, “God, I wish I could take that back”. ~ Michael Che.
When I was little, I used to suck the candy coating off of Advil and spit the white part back in the bottle. ~ Michael Che.
I can tell how honest a joke is or how true a joke is by how fast the laughs come. ~ Michael Che.
I grew up in the projects with four older brothers. ~ Michael Che.
I get to do what I love for money. It’s weird to process that. ~ Michael Che.
I’m a huge Steven Martin fan. ~ Michael Che.
If I could work with Eddie Murphy on ‘SNL,’ I think I could quit comedy forever. For me and my generation, he’s God. ~ Michael Che.
Comedy is subjective. ~ Michael Che.
When I was about nine, I went to school with a toothbrush in my mouth. I saw Method Man do it in a video. ~ Michael Che.
When you grow up in the city, New York is so big that you can kind of stay in your own little corner of the city and think that that’s it because you don’t need anything. You don’t have to venture out; you don’t have to touch the boroughs. You can kind of stay in your neighborhood, and there’s everything there. ~ Michael Che.
To deliver something deadpan is very difficult; I don’t think people know how hard those jokes are. ~ Michael Che.
I have six brothers and sisters. My mother has six kids from two different marriages. And we would just sit around making fun of each other’s dad, and all our dads had real problems. ~ Michael Che.
It’s a unique fraternity to be a standup. I think everybody understands, you know, opportunity, and everybody – especially at the top – are genuinely rooting for you. ~ Michael Che.
I think satire suffered under Obama, but not because of Obama. People are more sensitive now than ever, and strong satirical voices are stifled because of that. I don’t think a Clinton presidency would change that. ~ Michael Che.
I like comedy that’s not political but social, dealing with issues of people talking to each other. No matter what your politics, we still have to live with each other. Politics is taking a side. I’m not running for office, you know? ~ Michael Che.
Famous Michael Che Quotes
As a guy comedian, your special is probably the closest thing to the excitement of a wedding day. It’s your first one, and you want it to be perfect, and you want it to mean something. You want it to look good. ~ Michael Che.
Nothing is funnier than a true story told by a bitter old black man. ~ Michael Che.
Your number one job as a comedian is to be aware. You’re supposed to understand the temperature in the room more than anyone on the planet – that’s the whole craft of comedy. ~ Michael Che.
I kind of write in my own little world. ~ Michael Che.
If I’m doing a show on Sunday at 7 P.M., that wouldn’t be the same show that I’d do at 11 P.M. on a Saturday – it’s a different room at a different time of day with different sensibilities. That doesn’t mean you have to compromise your art, but it is communication: you have to know how to talk to people. ~ Michael Che.
I always feel like you don’t do comedy for the special – you do the specials so you can do comedy. That’s like a commercial for people to come out and support the new shows. ~ Michael Che.
Live comedy is fantastic. It’s when live comedy is transcribed and reported and critiqued outside of the venue without context that things become complicated. ~ Michael Che.
Top Michael Che Quotes
In comedy, you work with people so often that they just become familiar faces – it’s like a fraternity. ~ Michael Che.
When you’re doing comedy constantly, you’re organized: you know where everything is, you know how to get out of it, you know how to stretch it. But, like, doing ‘SNL,’ I stopped doing spots, and then I would finally do some sets – it take me so long to, kind of, get in the rhythm of it. ~ Michael Che.
It’s weird doing a show on a Saturday, because we get the news after everybody had their way with it. We still have to find a way to get something fresh out of the story, but also keep the integrity of it. A lot of times the obvious take is so obvious it’s already been on Twitter, so we gotta find a new thing. ~ Michael Che.
I’m a big Knicks fan, and I will tell a professional basketball player that they suck because they didn’t do what I wanted them to do. ~ Michael Che.
I feel like comedy is only respected on the highest level, and on every other level, it’s like a joke, like, ‘Ugh – comedian,’ you know? ~ Michael Che.
I’m not saying I shouldn’t have to pay any taxes, but I shouldn’t have to pay as many as somebody that votes. I don’t vote because I don’t know anything about politics. And honestly, I can’t believe they’d let me. Isn’t that an important thing? They’ll just let me pick the president! I don’t gotta know anything! ~ Michael Che.
Yes, I believe in equality. But I don’t like the word ‘feminist,’ because it’s such a rational belief to think that women are equal to men, and I’m a rational person. You shouldn’t be labeled for being reasonable. ~ Michael Che.
I don’t know how you can do comedy once every two weeks. Ever since I started, if I’m off for three days, I got to learn how to do comedy again. ~ Michael Che.
Great Michael Che Quotes
I’ve learned a lot just being around people who grew up so differently from me, which is cool. It teaches you how to be a lot more tolerant. The bigger your world is, the more tolerant and accepting you become, because you have friends from all walks of life. You learn to be a little bit less selfish. ~ Michael Che.
I’m from New York, and I started in New York, which I think is a huge advantage because I wasn’t overwhelmed by the city. I understood the city. All of the distractions that could come with somebody that started comedy in New York didn’t really happen for me. ~ Michael Che.
I feel like it’s a lot easier to parody Democrats just because they take themselves so seriously. I think Republicans have a little bit more of an open mind as to how ridiculous they are. Democrats pride themselves in being the highbrow, smart, right choice. ~ Michael Che.
I can’t speak for every American comic, but for me, a great show is its own reward. Comedy is too subjective for awards. ~ Michael Che.
I used to paint pictures – what happened was, I used to draw and paint pictures. And some of my friends would be, like, ‘Yo, you should put that on a T-shirt,’ because that’s where their brain would go. ~ Michael Che.
I feel like most standup comedians do it the way I did it, where you just go to open mics and cut your teeth. Sketch and improv – they take a lot of classes. It’s not unusual, the way I did it. It’s just that, with standup, no one knows how to start because there’s no book for it; there’s no place you can really go. ~ Michael Che.
I think when you first get a job, you’re just trying to do what the last regime did, just to keep it going, as opposed to actually doing what you want to do. ~ Michael Che.
If you’re honest about things, people will trust you, even if you’re a bad guy. That says something about where we are and who we are as people. ~ Michael Che.
Memorable Michael Che Quotes
One of the hardest things in the world to say is “President Trump,” and not out of disrespect – just because people have known him just as Donald Trump for so long. It would be like if people said, “He’s a doctor now, call him Doctor Trump”. ~ Michael Che.
Cartoon violence is something very vivid and dark but made palatable for children in a fun way. That’s the kind of comedy I do – I try to take subjects that might seem deep and make them as silly as possible. ~ Michael Che.
Donald Trump is making decisions that affect people’s day-to-day life, and he’s constantly, constantly making some crazy announcement. It’s like, “Well, what are we supposed to talk about? The D train? Traffic?” Trump is the one guy that’s like, “Yeah, I’ll do 90 minutes of live comedy. Seems easy enough. ~ Michael Che.
Some things hit close to home with people, and it’s going to be hard to tell someone who lost somebody on 9/11 that a 9/11 joke is funny. ~ Michael Che.
It’s a hard, lonely feeling, to be completely yourself in front of strangers. ~ Michael Che.
If you really think everything in your life, everything that you benefit from comes from socially aware, like-minded, good-hearted people, then you’re out of your mind. If you want only those people to have good jobs, we would have to learn how to adjust very quickly without those people. Maybe I’m cynical, but I truly believe that. ~ Michael Che.
Funny Michael Che Quotes
You can go anywhere in New York. There’s always something to do in New York. There’s always a place to eat no matter what time it is. There’s always a place to work, a place to drink. It’s conducive to my lifestyle. I don’t know how to drive a car, so I like to be able to walk places. ~ Michael Che.
If I think something’s funny, I try to mold it into a joke as soon as possible. Once I have a joke, I say it a million different ways on stage until I find a rhythm and it feels like it’s as good as it can be. ~ Michael Che.
I’m lucky enough to have two different platforms to perform on – I do stand-up comedy, and I have ‘SNL.’ That’s where I make my most controversial statements because I can explain myself and I’m in control of the microphone, as opposed to Twitter, where it’s in the hands of the reader. ~ Michael Che.
Comedy’s my outlet for my ridiculous emotions. ~ Michael Che.
I would say Colin Jost is Kanye West because he takes like the creative risk a lot of times, whereas I’m like, “Uh, I don’t know… ~ Michael Che.
Black people have, like, this thing, and I have it, we all have it, we have this kind of embarrassment. Where we don’t like white people to find out our little insecurities and out little quirks. We don’t really like that that much. It’s kind of, we’re like, ‘Don’t let them know – that ours; that’s for us.’ ~ Michael Che.
I follow a lot of news outlets on Twitter, so I’ll just go skim through the headlines and see what’s going on. ~ Michael Che.
Improv classes were too expensive, so I just started going to open mics. And the day I did it, I did, like, three because I just loved it so much. It was so much fun. And it wasn’t good, it was just fun to do. It felt like a release. ~ Michael Che.
My uncle is a martial artist, and in the early ’80s, he made a kung fu flick with director Charlie Ahearn. ~ Michael Che.
I remember liking the MTV awards when I was a kid. ~ Michael Che.
Watching someone getting really angry can be very funny – if it doesn’t affect you, you can laugh at it, and the sillier the thing he’s angry about, the funnier it is. ~ Michael Che.
I would love to do more TV and do movies for the experience, but my ultimate focus is stand-up. It’s the number one thing that I love most because there is nothing like being with a live audience. ~ Michael Che.
I don’t like to travel. I go out. When you do stand up, you travel a lot. Just working out. I don’t really enjoy it. I like New York. There’s nothing really like New York. Everything just becomes a worse version of New York. ~ Michael Che.
It’s true – my mother kicked me out the house at 14. I had to go live with my sister. I had some problems. I was very rebellious as a kid. I don’t even know why or where it came from, but I had a lot of anger. Me and my mom clashed a lot because she didn’t tolerate that, as she shouldn’t from a 14-year-old. ~ Michael Che.
So these were the 60 top Michael Che quotes and sayings.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Solanus Casey quotes and Mary Lou Williams quotes.
