Saturday Night Live (TV Program)

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Can’t Keep it Together

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    Ryan Gosling hosted an episode that included appearances by Caitlin Clark, Emily Blunt and Kate McKinnon, another Ken song and multiple sketches full of people laughing at their own jokes.If an entire Oscars ceremony full of Barbenheimer jokes and a killer Ryan Gosling performance of “I’m Just Ken” didn’t give you sufficient opportunity to say goodbye to the pop cultural phenomenon of “Barbie,” “Saturday Night Live” is here to make sure that you’ve had Kenough.Gosling, who hosted “S.N.L.” this weekend with the musical guest Chris Stapleton, began his monologue by vowing that he was there to promote his coming movie “The Fall Guy.”“So don’t worry, I’m not going to make any jokes about Ken,” he said. “Because it’s not funny. Ken and I, we had to break up. We went too deep and it’s over. So I’m not going to talk about it.”Gosling paused and added, “I actually am going to talk about it a little bit. I have to, because when you play a character that hard, that long, letting go just feels like a breakup. And for processing a breakup, there’s really only one thing that can help: the music of the great Taylor Swift.”Taking a seat at a piano, Gosling began to sing a variation on Swift’s “All Too Well” that began like this:I shredded Venice Beach, it’s true.My clothes were tight,But something about that spandex felt so right.I left my Rollerblades in that big pink house,But I’ve still got that fur coat and I’ll wear it right now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bowen Yang Thinks This Artist Nails What It’s Like Living in New York

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      The “S.N.L.” comedian talked about his Audible series “Hot White Heist” and solitude — a state of being he senses in Edward Hopper’s paintings.Bowen Yang had just played an overcompensating straight guy opposite Sydney Sweeney on “Saturday Night Live.” But in a video call from his Brooklyn apartment, he was all about “Hot White Heist,” his queer action-comedy audio series on Audible.Last season, he was the voice of the fortune teller Judy Fink, who with his squad of misfits went after a government sperm bank.In Season 2, Judy and his coalition are living in bliss on their private island, Lesbos 2. That is, until a true-crime podcaster comes nosing around. Series veterans including Cynthia Nixon, Jane Lynch, Cheyenne Jackson and Tony Kushner are joined by Raúl Esparza, Sara Ramirez, Ian McKellen and Trixie Mattel.“It revolves around these really poignant themes about community and the smallest unit of queerness being two people,” said Yang, who also hosts the pop-culture podcast “Las Culturistas” with Matt Rogers.Then Yang unfurled a must-have list centered on life as a unit of one. “I feel like a lonely person who always has a consistent desire to reach out,” he said.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1PopeyeIt’s a Japanese magazine “for city boys.” I can’t read a single character of Japanese, but I just do it for the visuals. It’s like eating a warm stew while I’m flipping through it. Every page is so beautifully laid out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kristen Wiig Hosts ‘SNL’ With Help From a Few Famous Friends

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      Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling, Paul Rudd, Jon Hamm, Martin Short, Paula Pell, Fred Armisen and Will Forte all turned out to help induct Wiig into the show’s Five-Timers Club.Despite her claim that her fifth time hosting “Saturday Night Live” would not be celebrated with a parade of celebrity guests and other “S.N.L.” alums wishing her well, Kristen Wiig turned her opening monologue into just that as she marked this milestone with help from Paul Rudd, Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling and other famous pals.Wiig, an “S.N.L.” cast member from 2005 to 2012 who was joined on this weekend’s broadcast by the musical guest Raye, began by saying hello to members of the house band. Before she could get much further, she was interrupted by Rudd, who sat in the audience wearing the jacket he received as a member of the show’s hallowed Five-Timers Club.Rudd told Wiig he had “heard a rumor that you might be doing one of those five-timers sketches featuring awesome celebrity cameos.”“So is there, like, a script or something I could look at for that?” he asked.Wiig replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re doing one of those.”But she was halted again by Paula Pell, the “Girls5eva” star and former “S.N.L.” writer. She told Wiig that the jackets were not all that special anymore, adding, “They basically hand those out to everybody like free maxi pads.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph Just Want You to Like Them

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      Good friends and “Saturday Night Live” alumnae, the actresses are each headlining an Apple TV+ comedy of wealth and status.Sometimes Maya Rudolph will watch a movie and marvel at how miserable an actor looks. “They’re covered in fake blood and broken glass, and they’re crying the whole time,” she said. “I don’t know how people do that for work! That looks so hard and stressful.”“And how do you get all of that glass off your skin?” her friend and former colleague Kristen Wiig said.“Listen,” Rudolph said, “glass seems tough.”This was on an afternoon in late March, and Wiig and Rudolph, who specialize in lighter, glass-free fare, were perched high over New York in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel with a zillion-dollar view — rooftops, rivers, the Statue of Liberty in the distance. They were dressed in natural fabrics and neutrals, a far and elegant cry from the demented spandex and polyester they so often wore during their years on “Saturday Night Live.”Acquaintances since their early days in the comedy scene (they met at a bridal shower hosted by Melissa McCarthy), they were both members of the famed comedy troupe the Groundlings before they found their separate ways up the 30 Rock elevator to “S.N.L.” And they have wound in and out of each other’s lives and careers ever since: as co-stars in “Bridesmaids” (Wiig was also a writer of the movie); popping back into “S.N.L.” together; jointly presenting an Oscar. Now they are both leading Apple TV+ shows, each a comedy of wealth and status.In “Palm Royale,” which premiered on March 20, Wiig stars as Maxine, a frenzied social climber in 1960s Palm Beach. In “Loot,” which returns for its second season on Wednesday, Rudolph plays Molly, a divorcée with a multibillion dollar settlement.During a brisk chat, they discussed laughter, likability and what “Bridesmaids” taught the world. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Presents Trump Bibles

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      Ramy Youssef hosted this weekend’s episode, which also spoofed immigrant fathers and Flaco the owl.Former president Donald Trump’s recent foray into the business of selling his own Bibles provided plenty of comic fodder for “Saturday Night Live” on Easter weekend, including an opening sketch that, for a moment, seemed like a sincere retelling of the resurrection of Jesus.This weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Ramy Youssef and featuring the musical guest Travis Scott, began with a voice-over recounting that the resurrection was witnessed by three women “who had come to anoint the body of Jesus and tend to his tomb.”Following an aside from one of the women played by Sarah Sherman (who wryly observed, “When we’re done grieving, maybe we should come up with a girl’s name other than Mary”), the stone of the tomb was rolled away to reveal a glowing light.“Is it Jesus?” asked another woman, played by Heidi Gardner.“Basically, yes,” answered James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as Trump. “Happy Easter, everybody,” he declared as he entered. “As it was stated in the Bible: ‘Guess who’s back, back again. Shady’s back.’”Johnson noted that it was “the time of year when I compare myself to Jesus Christ,” which is “just a thing I do now, and people seem to be OK with it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ramy Youssef on His New Special, ‘More Feelings,’ and the Push to Represent

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      In the week after he appeared as a presenter at the Oscars, the comic Ramy Youssef, a creator and director of the Hulu series “Ramy” and Emma Stone’s co-star in “Poor Things,” was taking meetings in Hollywood on what’s known as a water-bottle tour — “except without the water bottle,” he said. He is fasting for Ramadan.Youssef, who will turn 33 this month, has been a rapidly rising star since the 2019 debut of “Ramy,” a semi-autobiographical award-winning show in which he plays the son of Egyptian immigrants in suburban New Jersey — as he is in real life — struggling to define himself amid the sometimes conflicting pull of Muslim faith and young adult, Tinder-era life. When Youssef won a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy in 2020, he accepted the trophy by saying, “Allahu akbar. This is thanks to God — and Hulu.”Now his ascent is even sharper. He is following his surprising turn in the Oscar-winning “Poor Things” — as a thoughtful scientist and cast-aside love — with a standup special, his second for HBO. The program, “More Feelings,” due Saturday, mines personal territory, religious and cultural stereotypes, and his budding friendship with Taylor Swift (a pal of Stone’s), who went to see his set. He will also host “Saturday Night Live” on March 30.Those are only a few of the many projects he has going, he said in a video interview from Los Angeles, before he taped “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” He and his buddies “always joke that we make TV like immigrants,” he said. “We’re always working. We’re not going to outsource too much. We’re just figuring out how to do what we can, small budgets. So that’s my expectation for my career. I’ll just, you know, figure that out.”Youssef’s HBO special, “More Feelings,” will premiere on Saturday; the following week, he’ll host “Saturday Night Live.”HBOBut he is also mulling the advice he got from Yorgos Lanthimos, the “Poor Things” director, to get out of TV and start making movies. Then again, an invitation to direct an episode of “The Bear” led Youssef to Copenhagen and a daylong stint staging at the fabled restaurant Noma. “It’s such a hard table to get,” he said. “I felt bad for whoever had waited a year to eat there and then I made their plate.” (The episode garnered him a nomination for a Directors Guild of America Award.) A fourth season of “Ramy,” delayed by the Hollywood strikes, will happen, he promised. “The question is, when?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘SNL’ Riffs on the State of the Union and Republican Response

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      The Republican rebuttal delivered by Senator Katie Britt already struck many viewers as parody, making Scarlett Johansson’s job look easy.It was inevitable that “Saturday Night Live” would sample heavily from the buffet of satirical potential offered by Thursday’s State of the Union. Perhaps the only question going into this weekend’s broadcast, hosted by Josh Brolin and featuring the musical guest Ariana Grande, was who would play Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, who delivered the much-discussed Republican response to President Biden’s speech.As it turned out, “S.N.L.” did not draw from its own cast for this role, but it didn’t look far to find someone: Britt was played by Scarlett Johansson, the two-time Academy Award-nominated actress, six-time “S.N.L.” host and — yes — wife of Colin Jost, the Weekend Update co-anchor.Following a brief introduction from Ego Nwodim as CNN’s Abby Phillip, the show began with Mikey Day, now the resident Biden impersonator at “S.N.L.,” taking his place in front of Punkie Johnson (as Vice President Harris) and Michael Longfellow (as Speaker Mike Johnson).“Folks,” Day said, “tonight I’m going to cover a lot. There’s going to be a lot of applause. So, Kamala, I hope you didn’t skip leg day, girl. You’re going to be up and down all night.” (Naturally, Johnson stood up and applauded; Longfellow did not.)Day continued: “Tonight, I’m also going to be talking about my predecessor,” he said. “Mainly because every time I say predecessor, Mike Johnson shakes his head, like he just accidentally caught 30 seconds of the show ‘Euphoria.’ Look at that weirdo.”After being booed by Heidi Gardner (who was playing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene), Day threw to the Republican response: “I think she’s going to help me more than anything else I could say here,” he said. “Enjoy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shane Gillis Finally Appears on ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      The comic was fired from the show in 2019 before ever appearing on it, history he barely mentioned when he hosted on Saturday. “Please, don’t Google that,” he said in his monologue.Finally given the opportunity to take the stage at NBC’s Studio 8H, the comedian Shane Gillis did not say much about how he’d been fired as a cast member from “Saturday Night Live” before appearing in a single episode.Instead, Gillis, who has since gone on to become a popular standup and podcaster, delivered an opening monologue that perhaps suggested both he and “S.N.L.” were both better off for having followed separate trajectories.Gillis, who has performed in standup specials like “Beautiful Dogs” on Netflix and is a co-host of “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” was announced to be an “S.N.L.” cast member in September 2019. Just days later, “S.N.L.” reversed course and dropped him from its lineup, following criticism of resurfaced podcast segments in which Gillis used a slur to describe Chinese people and performed a caricature accent, and used a homophobic slur to refer to the filmmaker Judd Apatow and the comedian Chris Gethard, as well as the presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Senator Bernie Sanders.At the time, “S.N.L.” said in a statement that the language Gillis had used “is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable.” Gillis himself wrote in a social media post that he was “a comedian who pushes boundaries” adding that in comedy, “you’re going to find a lot of bad misses.”Returning to “S.N.L.” nearly five years later as a guest host, Gillis did not take a scorched-earth approach in his monologue, like when Norm Macdonald appeared as a host in 1999 after he’d been fired from the show. (“I haven’t gotten funnier,” Macdonald said at the time. “The show has gotten really bad.”)“Yeah, I’m here,” Gillis began. “Most of you probably have no idea who I am. I was actually — I was fired from this show a while ago. But if, you know, don’t look that up, please, if you don’t know who I am. Please, don’t Google that. It’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Shane Gillis to Host ‘S.N.L.’ After Being Dropped in 2019. Here’s What He’s Done Since.

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      The comedian was abruptly fired in 2019, just after being named to the cast, when offensive comments he’d made surfaced. Now a rising stand-up star, he is set to appear on the show this weekend.When the comedian Shane Gillis was dropped from “Saturday Night Live” in 2019 just days after the announcement that he’d been added to the Season 45 cast, he lost one of the most sought-after jobs in comedy. Immediately after his addition to the cast, multiple instances surfaced of him using language that the show called “offensive, hurtful and unacceptable” in a statement addressing his ouster.Among the inflammatory language he’d used, on his podcast and on others, was a slur to refer to Chinese people, along with a caricature accent, and a homophobic slur, which he used to describe the filmmaker Judd Apatow and the comedian Chris Gethard as well as the Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Senator Bernie Sanders (the latter two prefaced with the word “Jew”). “Fat, ugly idiots promoting hate, that’s what this is,” he said, ribbing himself and those with whom he was talking.Gillis could have become a pariah. Instead, on Saturday, he’ll make his debut on NBC’s storied Studio 8H stage, as a host.Since his firing, Gillis’s star has quickly ascended: His debut special, released on YouTube in 2021, has amassed about 24 million views; and his podcast with Matt McCusker, “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” on which some of the problematic statements were made, has the most subscribers of any podcast on Patreon with more than 80,000 paying listeners, tens of thousands more than the next highest. He has also been touring rigorously, performing on comedy stages across the United States and the world.He reached new heights in September with the release of Netflix’s “Beautiful Dogs,” which had a lengthy run on the streamer’s Top 10 most popular shows list. In that special, he walked the line between satirizing conservatives and playing to them, according to The New York Times’s comedy critic, Jason Zinoman, who described its opening bit as “dumb and smart, cocky and self-mocking, homophobic but relentlessly self-aware.”“Don’t be surprised if he becomes an arena act,” Zinoman added.A few weeks ago, Bud Light announced that it was partnering with Gillis. “Welcome to the team,” the brand posted on Instagram along with a photo of the comedian. Bud Light has been scrambling to contain the fallout, which included plummeting sales, from last year’s right-wing backlash to Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, promoting the beer on Instagram.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More