Saturday Night Live (TV Program)

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      in Television

      ‘S.N.L.’ Recap: Maya Rudolph Returns to Play Kamala Harris

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      The 50th season began with several surprise guests and alumni — including Dana Carvey, Jim Gaffigan and Andy Samberg — playing figures in the 2024 election.“Saturday Night Live” dug deep into its contact list of celebrity alumni and friends in the comedy world as it kicked off its 50th season with an opening sketch that featured Maya Rudolph’s anticipated return as Vice President Kamala Harris.The sketch, for which the cast member James Austin Johnson returned in his recurring role as former President Donald Trump, also saw the debuts of the comedian Jim Gaffigan as Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Bowen Yang, another “S.N.L.” performer, as Senator JD Vance of Ohio.And for good measure, the segment included appearances from “S.N.L.” alums Andy Samberg as Douglas Emhoff, the Second Gentleman, and Dana Carvey as President Joe Biden.Speculation had swirled all summer about who would play these roles on “S.N.L.,” which tends to receive increased attention during presidential election seasons. That curiosity was intensified by the reshuffling of the Democratic ticket in July, when President Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race.In early August, when Harris chose Walz as her running mate, many fans wondered if Steve Martin, a frequent “S.N.L.” host and friend of the show, would be cast as the Minnesota governor and vice-presidential hopeful.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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      in Television

      ‘S.N.L.’ Picks Maya Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan to Play Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

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      The casting ended months of speculation after President Biden, played on Saturday by Dana Carvey, withdrew from the race. James Austin Johnson continued as Donald Trump.“Saturday Night Live” dug deep into its contact list of celebrity alumni and friends in the comedy world as it kicked off its 50th season with an opening sketch that featured Maya Rudolph’s anticipated return as Vice President Kamala Harris.The sketch, for which the cast member James Austin Johnson returned in his recurring role as former President Donald Trump, also saw the debuts of the comedian Jim Gaffigan as Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and Bowen Yang, another “S.N.L.” performer, as Senator JD Vance of Ohio.And for good measure, the segment included appearances from “S.N.L.” alums Andy Samberg as Douglas Emhoff, the Second Gentleman, and Dana Carvey as President Joe Biden.Speculation had swirled all summer about who would play these roles on “S.N.L.,” which tends to receive increased attention during presidential election seasons. That curiosity was intensified by the reshuffling of the Democratic ticket in July, when President Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the 2024 race.In early August, when Harris chose Walz as her running mate, many fans wondered if Steve Martin, a frequent “S.N.L.” host and friend of the show, would be cast as the Minnesota governor and vice-presidential hopeful.But Martin himself quickly nixed that, telling the Los Angeles Times that he did not consider himself an impressionist. “They’re going to find somebody really, really good,” Martin said at the time. “I’d be struggling.”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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      in Television

      ‘Saturday Night Live’: Here’s What Critics Thought of the First Episode

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      The late-night institution begins its 50th season on Saturday. Here’s how The New York Times and others covered its debut in 1975.It is strange to read the early press coverage of “Saturday Night Live.” No matter how much the show has changed over the years, the focus of the criticism is still much the same.“Saturday Night,” as it was known when it premiered on Oct. 11, 1975, was considered to be … rather uneven. Some saw this as a flaw, others as an endearing element. Many saw the ragtag show’s potential to change TV forever.With “Saturday Night,” which recreates the run-up to the first episode, currently in theaters and the show’s 50th season beginning — when else? — Saturday night, here is a look back at how the world greeted the arrival of “S.N.L.”‘Simon and Garfunkel Reunion on NBC’s “Saturday Night”’The New York Times, Oct. 20, 1975The Times did not review the first episode. But the critic John J. O’Connor did write about the second, and he included his thoughts about the premiere. He disliked the inaugural host George Carlin’s “pretentious comedy lectures” and the juxtaposition of fake and genuine commercials. “Even an offbeat showcase needs quality, an ingredient conspicuously absent from the dreadfully uneven comedy efforts of the new series,” he wrote. O’Connor admitted that he missed the first hour of the second episode because of “an unusually good dinner on Long Island” and travel challenges. So he highlighted a Simon and Garfunkel reunion on the show, which he did see. Lorne Michaels complained about this in “Live from New York,” a 2002 oral history of the show.‘Sprightly Mix Brightens NBC’s “Saturday Night”’The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1975By the fifth episode, with Lily Tomlin hosting, O’Connor changed his tune. The format now worked, more of the humor was now “on target,” and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players were “incredibly adept” at going live. The show had become “the most creative and encouraging thing to happen in American TV comedy since ‘Your Show of Shows,’” he wrote. Could Tomlin’s hosting have anything to do with that assessment? Perhaps. In the spirit of full disclosure, O’Connor confessed to being “helplessly in love” with the comedian. (“It’s best to get that kind of thing out in the open.”)Lily Tomlin, center, with Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night” in 1976. Tomlin was a popular early host of the show.NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal, via 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

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      in Movies

      ‘SNL’ Debut Cast and Crew Look Back on 50 Seasons

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      As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin 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

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      in Movies

      ‘Saturday Night’ Review: Live TV at Its Mildest

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      When it debuted 50 years ago, “S.N.L.” was chaotic, rangy, even offensive. But nothing’s wild or crazy in Jason Reitman’s fictional reimagining of its first episode.Movies about tectonic cultural shifts tend to be too neat and tidy, too frictionless. “Saturday Night,” the director Jason Reitman’s fictional reimagining of the debut of “Saturday Night Live,” is a nice, safe movie about a revolution. Busily plotted and sporadically funny, it is a backstage look at the night a gang of comics whom most of the world had never heard of began taking over TVs across the country. It was a comedy home invasion on a national scale, and it was glorious (when it didn’t suck).The movie, written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, has a straightforward conceit. It opens at on Oct. 11, 1975, the night that the show, then called “NBC’s Saturday Night,” is scheduled to debut. (The name was changed in 1977.) In just 90 minutes — ticktock — the show will go live if the performers, writers, crew, network suits and some guy named Lorne can get it together in time. A lot of money, reputations and possibly bright futures are riding on the show, but with its deadline looming, it still seems underbaked and, from some vantage points, overly abstract.To convey that premiere and what it portended, Reitman both sticks to the historical record and embellishes it, building momentum by zeroing in on some mini-crisis amid rapid edits, swish pans and rushing bodies. Everything and everyone at 30 Rockefeller Plaza runs too fast or seems immobilized, with characters either in frenetic motion or huddling in pools of flop sweat. As the minutes pass, Reitman periodically cuts to a clock onscreen or someone calls out the time; at one point, a set designer, Leo Yoshimura (Abraham Hsu), slowly begins installing bricks on the stage of Studio 8H, each brick an emblem of the show’s parts sliding into place.In a (real) 1975 news release, NBC called the show “a new concept in late-night programming.” The network wanted a replacement for weekend reruns of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” and this venture was going to be a comedy show with sketches, musical guests, short films and the Muppets. But it was unclear what it was, maybe even to those behind the scenes. That much seems obvious when an NBC executive, Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), asks the show’s creator-producer, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), if he knows what it is. The straight-faced Lorne responds with an amusing, self-aggrandizing analogy involving Edison, the lightbulb and electricity. Who are you in this metaphor, the baffled exec asks.Lorne doesn’t answer, but the movie does by making him its focus. The character is less interesting than his surroundings — he’s more a blurry place holder than a fully realized personality — but whether here or there, Lorne is the center of this storm. He’s the hub, the visionary, the guy who can see past the chaos. Sure, there’s his wife, the writer Rosie Shuster (a tart Rachel Sennott); the host, George Carlin (Matthew Rhys); and a creepy suit, Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe, in by far the funniest turn). But the star is Lorne because even genius apparently needs a boss.So, hi Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O’Brien), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) and John Belushi (Matt Wood). It’s nice to see them, so it’s too bad that only a few of the actors playing the main cast — and only the men — manage to register. That’s the case even when Reitman gestures at the show’s gender problems, as in a peek at a still-funny sketch about female construction workers learning how to harass a guy in short shorts. It’s Dan’s squirmy embarrassment, and how he then wags his rump, that makes it work.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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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: Lots of Medical and Police Dramas

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      ABC, NBC and Fox are all premiering new shows about doctors, cops or firefighters. The Voice is also returning, with Snoop Dogg joining the judges’ panel.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Sept. 23-29. Details and times are subject to change.Monday9-1-1: LONE STAR 8 p.m. on Fox. As we reminisce about “The West Wing” premiering 25 years ago and daydream about Rob Lowe’s Sam Seaborn (oh, just me?), it’s the perfect time to turn our attention to his current show about a fire station, which is returning for its fifth season.THE VOICE 8 p.m. on NBC. Gwen Stefani and Reba McEntire are back in their red swiveling judges’ chairs, this year joined by Snoop Dogg and Michael Bublé. While in Paris covering the Olympics, Snoop called the judges “a fearless foursome.”Zachary Quinto in “Brilliant Minds.”Rafy/NBCBRILLIANT MINDS 10 p.m. on NBC. If there’s something that we collectively can’t get enough of, it’s doctor shows. This one is inspired by the work of the famed neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, whose research and widely read writings illuminated disorders and cases he had studied or treated. The show stars Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf, a neurologist who works with his team not only to help solve their patients’ difficult cases, but also to deal with their own mental health.TuesdayMURDER IN A SMALL TOWN 8 p.m. on Fox. Based on the Karl Alberg books by L.R. Wright, this show follows Alberg (Rossif Sutherland), as he moves to a small town to become its police chief. And there is, of course, much more drama than expected in this seemingly idyllic community.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’s Cast for the 50th Season Includes Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline

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      Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline will be the show’s new faces in its landmark season.The cast for Season 50 of the NBC sketch comedy series “Saturday Night Live” is in place, with the up-and-coming comedians Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline joining as featured players, the network announced on Tuesday. The new season is scheduled to premiere on Sept. 28.Chloe Troast, who joined “S.N.L.” as a featured player last season, was not asked to return, she said in an Instagram post on Monday.“Unfortunately I was not asked back to ‘S.N.L.’ this season,” Troast wrote. “I wish I was going back to be with all the amazing friends I made there, it truly felt like home. But it wasn’t in the cards.”Padilla, like many “S.N.L.” alumni before her — including Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig and Phil Hartman — comes from the Los Angeles improv and sketch comedy troupe the Groundlings. She also appeared this year in a final-season episode of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and in an episode of the NBC revival of “Night Court.”Chloe Troast, pictured playing Mama Cass in 2023, will not be returning to “S.N.L.”Will Heath/NBCWakim, a Lebanese American comedian who grew up mostly in Indiana, made his late-night stand-up debut in 2022 on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” That year, he was named the New Face of Comedy at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal and has opened for the comics Roy Wood Jr., Nikki Glaser, Hasan Minhaj and Neal Brennan.Wickline is probably most recognizable from TikTok, where she has nearly a million followers and contributes regularly to “Stapleview,” a live TikTok comedy show.Also returning are the main cast members Michael Che, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner, James Austin Johnson, Colin Jost, Ego Nwodim, Sarah Sherman, Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang. The former featured players Marcello Hernández, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker — all of whom joined “S.N.L.” for its 48th season — will move up the ranks to the main cast.In August, Punkie Johnson, who had been a part of “S.N.L.” since 2020, confirmed that she would not return for the coming season. Among the characters Johnson played was Vice President Kamala Harris. Maya Rudolph, an “S.N.L.” cast member from 2000 to 2007 who has returned to play Harris 10 times through 2021, seems poised to reprise the role as Harris vies for the White House as the Democratic candidate.Molly Kearney, the show’s first nonbinary cast member, announced in August that they would not be returning after two seasons with the program. “It was such a dream come true,” Kearney wrote in an Instagram post. “So incredibly grateful for this period in my life.” More

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      in Theater

      John Mulaney to Star in a Broadway Comedy About Love and Marriage

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      “All In: Comedy About Love,” a new play by Simon Rich, includes a celebrity cast taking on the roles of pirates, dogs and other zany characters.John Mulaney is coming back to Broadway.The comedian will star in a new play, “All In: Comedy About Love,” staged as vignettes about relationships, marriage and heartbreak and written by the humorist Simon Rich, Mulaney’s former “Saturday Night Live” collaborator.The production, set to feature a rotating group of actors, will be directed by Alex Timbers, who helmed Mulaney’s most recent Netflix special, “Baby J,” as well as his Broadway debut, the 2016 comedy “Oh, Hello on Broadway.”“It’s a weird fantasy camp of things I always wanted to do with my very good friends,” Mulaney said in a video interview.The comedian, who has two Emmy Awards for his stand-up specials “Kid Gorgeous” and “Baby J,” will lead an ensemble cast of four actors portraying pirates, the Elephant Man, dogs looking for love and other characters: Initially, Mulaney will be joined by Richard Kind (“Spin City,” “Mad About You”), Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton,” “Girls5eva”) and the “S.N.L.” alum Fred Armisen.“We jump around between eras and countries and species, but they’re all love stories,” said Rich, a former “S.N.L.” writer who is making his Broadway debut with the play, which is adapted largely from tales that have previously been published in his 10 short story collections and in The New Yorker.The idea for the show, which will also feature songs from the indie band the Magnetic Fields, came about when Timbers approached Rich about adapting some of his short stories for the stage. And once Mulaney, who first met Rich when they were writing partners on “S.N.L.” from 2008-11, was on board, the built-in rapport between the two proved irresistible, Timbers 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