Saturday Night Live (TV Program)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Television

      Punkie Johnson Announces She Is Leaving ‘Saturday Night Live’

      by

      Johnson told a stand-up audience she was leaving “Saturday Night Live” before confirming her departure in an Instagram video the next day.Punkie Johnson, a performer on the NBC sketch comedy series “Saturday Night Live” since 2020, announced on Thursday that she will not return this fall for the show’s 50th season.Johnson, who played characters on “S.N.L.” including Vice President Kamala Harris and the women’s basketball star Angel Reese, first said she was leaving during a stand-up comedy set on Wednesday at Union Hall in Brooklyn.She posted a video on her Instagram account the next day, confirming her decision to leave the show. She said that she was not leaving on bad terms, however, as some audience members had understood some of her onstage comments to imply.Johnson had told the Union Hall audience that “S.N.L.” staff wanted her to change her hair and to stop working out so much and looking “buff.” She had also mentioned a heated argument with a talent producer, adding that being on the show had been stressing her out and that she was happier since having decided to leave.An NBC employee confirmed that Johnson was leaving the show but did not respond to questions about Johnson’s onstage comments about the circumstances of her departure.In her Instagram video, Johnson said she had woken up to text messages and phone calls about the comments.“I’m like, it was a comedy show!” she said. “I was just having fun! It’s no bad blood; it’s no bridges burnt; it’s no hard feelings.”Born and raised in New Orleans, Johnson, 39, moved to Los Angeles to start her comedy career and worked as a server at the Comedy Store before she was made a paid regular onstage. Johnson joined “S.N.L.” for the show’s 46th season as a featured player and was promoted to the regular cast in 2022.Johnson was also the first openly lesbian Black cast member of “S.N.L.” (An earlier Black lesbian cast member, Danitra Vance, was not publicly out while on the show in the 1980s.)Johnson’s other screen roles have included the HBO series “Love Life” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” the Netflix series “Space Force” and the fight-club buddy comedy movie “Bottoms.”She is so far the only “S.N.L” cast member who has announced a departure ahead of the new season, which begins on Sept. 28.Genevieve Ko More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      If A.I. Is Coming for Comedy Writers, Simon Rich Is Ready

      by

      The author of humorous short stories finds emotional connections in tales that engage with tech. But he’s more interested in the ties between humans.The author Simon Rich believes it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence will be able to outwrite any human. Specifically, four years. So, what’s the twist?That’s what you wait for in a Simon Rich story, one of pop culture’s most consistently funny genres, with a foundation built like a classic joke: a tight premise developed in clear language, some misdirection, and then a pivot, delivered as quickly as possible.Rich, whose 10th collection of short stories, “Glory Days,” was released this week, said his dark view of the future was informed by a longtime friendship with an A.I. scientist, who recently showed him a chatbot the public hasn’t seen. It’s more raw, unpredictable, creative.“Even though I don’t know anything about A.I. really, I’ve been processing it emotionally for several years longer than everyone,” he told me in his Los Angeles home office one afternoon in May.He considered the implications of artificial intelligence displacing human creativity in “I Am Code,” a book he helped edit last year that featured A.I.-crafted poetry. The theme is also deeply woven into his new collection, his most mature effort yet, which includes some regular obsessions like “Back to the Future”-style encounters between generations, dystopia and the inner life of video game characters.“The whole book is basically about different types of obsolescence,” he said of “Glory Days,” whose other organizing theme is early midlife crisis. There’s a story about Super Mario turning 40 (Rich just did, too) and a spiky rant from the perspective of New York City itself. It’s about “the great migration when an entire generation discovers they are too old to live in New York,” he said.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

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Judy Belushi Pisano, Who Defended Her Husband’s Legacy, Dies at 73

      by

      She was married to John Belushi until his fatal drug overdose in 1982. She went on to celebrate his comic talent in books and a documentary.Judy Belushi Pisano, who after the death of her husband, the actor and comedian John Belushi, from a drug overdose in 1982 became a fierce defender of his legacy, died on July 5 at her home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. She was 73.Her son, Luke Pisano, said the cause was endometrial cancer.Mr. Belushi, a member of the original cast of “Saturday Night Live” and a star of hit films like “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers,” was among the best-known comic actors in the world when he was found dead in a Hollywood hotel.Though it took weeks to determine the cause — from a mix of heroin and cocaine — the public immediately seized on Mr. Belushi’s death as a cautionary tale of excess in an era defined by it.His reputation as a hard-partying drug addict was further underlined by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in his book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi” (1984), which Ms. Pisano had initially authorized but later came to regret.“The book is both unfair and inaccurate,” she told The Philadelphia Daily News in 1984. “To me the biggest lie is that it claims to be a portrait of John but it’s not. It’s only about drugs.”Ms. Pisano at the 2004 ceremony posthumously honoring John Belushi with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Vince Bucci/Getty ImagesWe 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

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Interview’: Eddie Murphy Is Ready to Look Back

      by

      Eddie Murphy has been so famous for so long, occupying such a lofty place in the cultural landscape, that it can be easy to overlook just how game-changing a figure he actually is.Let’s start, as Murphy’s career did, with standup. There had been star comics before — Steve Martin, Richard Pryor — but none exploded with anything like Murphy’s speed or intensity. Swaggering, magnetic and able to bounce between sweet personal storytelling and controversial, defiantly un-P.C. material, he was, and forgive me for mixing disciplines, a rock star. “Eddie Murphy: Raw,” released in 1987 when he was only 26, is the highest-grossing standup-comedy film ever — still. The scale of his success, and the fact he achieved it without dulling his edge, redefined what a comedian could do, paving the way for the likes of Kevin Hart and Chris Rock.Listen to the Conversation With Eddie MurphyDavid Marchese talks to the comedy legend about navigating the minefield of fame, “Family Feud” and changing Hollywood forever.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | NYT Audio AppHe also, of course, cast his spell on TV. When Murphy arrived at “Saturday Night Live” in 1980, the show was thought to be on the verge of cancellation. Through sheer force of charisma as well as instantly iconic, hilariously unpredictable recurring characters like his crotchety Gumby and the Mr. Rogers parody Mr. Robinson, Murphy brought the show back to life. A highly plausible argument can be made that without him, television’s most reliable comedy-star-making machine might not have made it to a 10th anniversary, let alone be nearing its 50th.But Murphy made his greatest mark in movies, where he reached new heights, for comedians and Black performers, of popularity and bankability. He helped pioneer the action-comedy genre with his quippy, improvisational-feeling performances in movies like “Beverly Hills Cop” and “48 Hrs.” And then in the mid-1990s, after a bit of a career dip, he transitioned to family-friendly films like “Shrek” and “The Nutty Professor” (one of multiple comedies in which Murphy virtuosically played wildly different characters), and continued to score giant hits.All of which is to say that American pop culture looked different after Eddie Murphy came along. Now he’s returning to the character that sent his career into the stratosphere with “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” which comes to Netflix on July 3. It arrives 40 years after the first film in the series, in which Murphy stars as the wisecracking detective Axel Foley. He is clearly comfortable with the role — and with himself. In recent years, Murphy has been a somewhat enigmatic offscreen presence, but as I found out over the course of our two long conversations in the spring, he can be open and relaxed. He was eager to reflect on what he has achieved, share some Hollywood stories, explain why doing standup doesn’t appeal to him anymore and reveal the dream project he has never gotten off the ground. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      ‘S.N.L.’ Season 49 Highlights: Trump Trolling, ‘Dune’ Buckets and Beavis Breakdowns

      by

      Season 49 of “Saturday Night Live” has just ended. Here’s a look back at its most memorable monologues, sketches, product parodies and impressions.Season 49 of “Saturday Night Live” is barely in the history books, and everyone seems ready to turn the page to next season, when this long-running NBC sketch comedy series will tackle the 2024 presidential election and celebrate its golden anniversary.But “S.N.L.” did much more than simply mark the time in its 49th season: It gave us some memorable monologues, catchy comic songs and preposterous commercial parodies; it found the best argument in favor of nepotism; and it tried, yet again, to find someone to impersonate President Joseph R. Biden on a regular basis. And, when no one was expecting it, it served up a sketch so silly that its own cast members profoundly lost it.Join us now as we look back the best of the past season of “S.NL.”Cold open of the seasonWith its premiere delayed by the Writers Guild of America strike, “S.N.L.” started its season only a few days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel — a topic that seemed far too fraught and tragic for the program to comment on, and surely not in the wheelhouse of its host, Pete Davidson, who is no one’s idea of an astute political comedian.Yet “S.N.L.” and Davidson rose unexpectedly to the occasion, and the host addressed the topic at the start of the show, even before the customary monologue segment. Reminding the audience that his father, a firefighter, had been killed in the 9/11 attack on New York, Davidson said:“I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering, Israeli children and Palestinian children. And it took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. No one in this world deserves to suffer like that, especially not kids.”Davidson added, “I’m going to do what I’ve always done in the face of tragedy, and that’s try to be funny. Remember, I said ‘try.’”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

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in Television

      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Signs Off for the Season With Jake Gyllenhaal as Host

      by

      Jake Gyllenhaal hosted the final episode of the show’s 49th season. Sabrina Carpenter was the musical guest.In its final episode of the season, just before its cast members pack up their fright wigs and false teeth to head out on their summer vacations, “Saturday Night Live” gave its viewers what they presumably wanted: an opening sketch featuring James Austin Johnson as former President Donald J. Trump.This weekend’s broadcast, which was hosted by Jake Gyllenhaal and featured the musical guest Sabrina Carpenter, began with Johnson recreating one of the many public statements that Trump has made during his criminal hush-money trial.“I don’t like being in court because they say very mean things about me while I am trying to sleep,” Johnson said. “But I love being out here, in the hallway outside court, daring judge to imprison me. He gave me a gag order. I said, ‘That sounds like a challenge on RuPaul.’”Describing the trial as “very eye-closening,” Johnson said it would likely end with him “being sent to a horrible place I do not want to go to — the White House.”He added, “For me, much better to not win and say it was rigged and then get very rich raising money to stop the steal, and you never have to do president again. I like that a lot.”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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Wishes You a Happy Mother’s Day

      by

      The “S.N.L.” veteran Maya Rudolph hosted an episode that featured multiple sketches celebrating moms.Sorry, dads: Because your holiday doesn’t come until June, when “Saturday Night Live” is in reruns, you don’t get anything special from “S.N.L.” But moms, since Mother’s Day arrives the morning after the second-to-last live episode of the season — when everyone at the show has an eye on the door and is saving those last few drops of topical content for the finale — you get a whole brunch-load of “S.N.L.” sketches dedicated to motherhood, beginning with a now-traditional segment in which the cast members trade jokes with their real-life mothers.This week’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, which was hosted by Maya Rudolph and featured the musical guest Vampire Weekend, used the occasion of Mother’s Day to take a break from opening sketches that satirize current events, much to the disappointment of Kenan Thompson’s mother. “That’s too bad,” she said, standing on the stage of Studio 8H with her son. “I was excited to see who was going to play Stormy Daniels.”Andrew Dismukes’s mom shared embarrassing photos of her son in the bathtub, the mothers of Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang told jokes intended for the Netflix roast of Tom Brady, and Sarah Sherman’s mom pitched her daughter an idea: “R.F.K. Jr. said they found a worm in his brain — you could be the worm,” she said. (Stash that away in your own brains for later.)Rudolph, the “S.N.L.” alumna who returned to host for her third time, used her opening monologue to note the fact that she not only is a mother of four children — she is mother. That ubiquitous bit of internet slang was the framework for a surprisingly synchronized live musical number (à la Madonna’s “Vogue”) where Rudolph navigated some quick costume changes, referenced her roles in movies like “Bridesmaids” and her past “S.N.L.” impersonations of Vice President Kamala Harris and Oprah Winfrey, while also shouting out other beloved female “S.N.L.” characters like the Sweeney Sisters, Debbie Downer and Mary Katherine Gallagher.If all of that wasn’t enough to make you O.D. on M-O-M, there was also a filmed segment featuring Rudolph as a beleaguered mother repeatedly rescuing her daughter from slumber parties, and Heidi Gardner offering Mother’s Day gift suggestions on Weekend Update as the character A Woman Who Says She’s Not Mad. Oh, mother.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Welcomes Dua Lipa and Jerry Seinfeld

      by

      The pop star hosted and performed as the musical guest. The comedian poked fun at the abundant promotion he has been doing for his Netflix movie.A fake commercial from this weekend’s broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” offered these tepid endorsements for “a bigass aluminum tray of penne alla vodka”: “Loved by none, but tolerated by all. Because it’s not that good. But it’s not that bad either.”So, think of this episode as the penne alla vodka of the season. It was hosted by Dua Lipa, who was also the musical guest. The first sketch of the night had something to do with parents of college students who have protested the Israeli offensive in Gaza. But if you stuck around until Weekend Update, you did get a surprise appearance by Jerry Seinfeld.That opening sketch, a satire of cable TV public affairs shows, was hosted by Michael Longfellow and featured Mikey Day, Heidi Gardner and Kenan Thompson as parents of college students who were weighing in on the protests at their children’s campuses.“I want to let my son make his own choices, but to be honest, it’s a little scary,” Day said.“My daughter is an adult and has to live her own life,” Gardner said.“Nothing makes me prouder than young people using their voices to fight what they believe in,” Thompson said — until it was explained to him that his daughter was one of these protesters.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