The actor made these comments after appearing on the show in October 1992, a week after O'Connor's infamous performance of Bob Marley's 'War', where she replaced the lyrics 'Racism', with 'Child Abuse', before controversially tearing up a photo of of the pope live on camera.
Ending the performance with the words, "fight the real enemy", Sinéad O'Connor explained that this was a protest against child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
A week later during Pesci's monologue, the Goodfellas star said, “Before we start the show, there’s a little matter I wanna clear up. There was an incident on the show last week: Sinead O’Connor tore up a picture of the pope, and I thought that was wrong, so I asked someone to paste it back together".
Presenting a the photo to the audience, Pesci added, “I mean why should I let it bother me, right? It wasn’t my show. But I’ll tell you one thing, she was very lucky it wasn’t my show, because if it was my show, I would have gave her such a smack".
In the wake of O'Connor's death, this video has resurfaced, with fans venting their anger at Joe Pesci over his comments.
“One very disturbing thing to remember about the SNL incident with Sinead O’Connor is that on the next week’s show, Joe Pesci came out and basically fantasized about physically assaulting her and the audience cheered", one person commented.
Another added, “I never saw this clip in response to Sinead at the time. This is so hideous,” one person wrote in response, with an additional user stating: “Damn. I’ve never seen this clip. He threatened to slap Sinead O’Connor / Shuhada’ Sadaqat for telling the truth on Saturday night tv, and the crowd clapped. Vile".
Sinéad O'Connor passed away this week, after police in London found the singer unresponsive in her home. She was 56 years old.
