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      ‘S.N.L.’ Invites University of Phoenix to the House Antisemitism Hearing

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      The satire was only slightly less awkward than the real thing, in a freewheeling episode hosted by Adam Driver. Olivia Rodrigo was the musical guest.Sometimes even an up-to-the-minute comedy show like “Saturday Night Live” can’t quite stay ahead of the news cycle. Hours after it was announced that Elizabeth Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, was resigning after an appearance before Congress in which she appeared to evade questions about whether students should be punished for calling for the genocide of Jews, “S.N.L.” led its broadcast with a satirical recreation of the Tuesday hearing.The result was a sketch that was only somewhat less uncomfortable than the real-life event it was mocking.This week’s broadcast, hosted by Adam Driver and featuring the musical guest Olivia Rodrigo, opened by spoofing a C-SPAN broadcast of a House committee hearing in which university presidents had testified about antisemitism on their campuses. Heidi Gardner, playing Magill, was joined by Chloe Fineman as Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. and Ego Nwodim as Claudine Gay of Harvard.Chloe Troast, playing Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, the House Republican who grilled the university presidents, told the presidents: “Now I’m going to start screaming questions at these women like I’m Billy Eichner. Antisemitism, yea or nay?”Troast added, “Yes or no: Is calling for the genocide of Jews against the code of conduct for Harvard?”Nwodim replied, “Well, it depends on the context.”Following an equally unsatisfying answer from Gardner, Troast announced to Fineman: “M.I.T. Lady, chance to steal. And keep in mind, if you don’t say yes, you’re going to make me look good, which is really, really hard to do.”“Could I submit an answer in writing at a later date?” Fineman answered.“Am I winning this hearing?” Troast said in disbelief.Bowen Yang, playing Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, posed further questions to the panelists. What if someone on campus yelled, “I poisoned the water supply?” he asked.Nwodim answered, “If they poisoned it with diversity, that could be wonderful.”What if they yelled, “Fire!” in a crowded theater?Gardner replied, “I’d be excited the theater was crowded because I support the arts.”Breaking from reality, the “S.N.L.” sketch added Kenan Thompson, who was playing the president of the online University of Phoenix.Asked if he would condemn antisemitism, Thompson said, “Well, my campus is the internet, so antisemitism is kind of our most popular major. And our mascot is porn.”But he told Troast that his school would consider offering a course on the subject. “Lady, we’ll offer a course on anything,” he said. “The only mandatory courses we have are how to login to the University of Phoenix online and how to set up autopay.”Opening monologue of the weekTrue fans of Adam Driver — Driverheads, we call ourselves — don’t appreciate him only for his breakthrough roles in “Girls” and the “Star Wars” franchise but also for unexpected moments like when he sang “Being Alive” in “Marriage Story.”In his fourth monologue as “S.N.L.” host, Driver didn’t break into song, but he did play a lovely piano as he shared his year-end wish list with Santa Claus. Among the things he asked for were five pairs of Chinos (for having just turned 40) and for “Star Wars” fans to stop blaming him for killing Han Solo. (“I didn’t kill Han Solo,” he said. “Wokeness killed Han Solo.”) Maybe next year we’ll get our wish and Driver will sing another Sondheim number.’Tis the season of the weekTechnically, the big year-end “S.N.L.” Christmas episode isn’t until next week, but the show didn’t waste any time getting into the Yuletide mood with a slew of sketches that were holiday-themed — and very, very weird. If any of them could be described as down-to-earth, there was this one in which Driver and Dismukes play the mustachioed host and guest at a dinner party where neither will budge when the other one holds out a tray of food and declares: “Beep beep.”Then there’s the filmed segment in which the seasonal spirit inspires Mikey Day to contact a friend he lost touch with (Driver), only to find that the old acquaintance has grown very crazy and now has a companion named Big Filthy (Devon Walker). And finally there’s the sketch set at a TV shopping channel, where Driver plays a confectioner selling a Santa Claus chocolate that takes on an unfortunate shape when it is unwrapped. Happy holidays (until next week, when we wish you happy holidays again)!Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, riffed on Hunter Biden’s indictment for tax evasion and on the congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.Jost began:A federal indictment issued this week against Hunter Biden alleges that he evaded paying over $1 million of taxes between 2016 and 2020. And they’re only catching him now? Man, this is super embarrassing for whoever was president from 2016 to 2020. The indictment claims that instead of paying taxes, Hunter Biden spent his money on drugs and escorts. But honestly, it would have been more surprising if he remembered to do his taxes during that time. No one finishes doing cocaine with a hooker and is like, could I get a receipt?Che continued:Speak for yourself. If convicted, Hunter Biden could be sentenced to up to 17 years in prison, which would be the first time any Biden has successfully completed a sentence.Later, Jost added:The president of the University of Pennsylvania has resigned after appearing to dodge questions about genocide during a Congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. She will be replaced by literally anyone who knows you say genocide is bad. The whole crazy part is that the whole point during her speech was that free speech on campus should never be punished. And then she was immediately punished for her speech.Weekend Update dance number of the weekIn still another peculiar segment inspired by the year-end holidays, Fineman stood in front of the Weekend Update desk and told the anchors, “The sexiest gift you can give your partner is trying something new in the bedroom.” Before things could get much weirder, Fineman explained that she meant the hybrid hip-hop/ballet dance performed by Julia Stiles at the end of her 2001 romantic drama “Save the Last Dance.”While explaining the film, Fineman delivered a faithful rendition of this dance — no small feat — and apparently earned the approval of the real-life Stiles, who joined her at the end. Now can we get an equally heartfelt tribute to Stiles’s TV debut on “Ghostwriter”?Parental instincts of the weekIf only because it was funny and as weird as anything else from this week’s show (and maybe because my editor just recently became a parent himself: Congratulations, Austin), here’s a sketch in which Driver plays a visually disturbing and yet somehow surprisingly plausible baby accompanying his mother (Sarah Sherman) on his first-ever plane ride.If the sight of Driver’s adult head placed on a baby’s body doesn’t haunt your dreams, the sound of his scream when he believes his teddy bear has disappeared surely will. More

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      Danielle Brooks and Sam Jay on Confidence and ‘The Color Purple’

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      Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the actress and the comedian.Viewers first saw the actress Danielle Brooks as Taystee, the smartest and funniest of the prisoners on “Orange Is the New Black,” the incarceration dramedy that began in 2013 and ran for seven seasons on Netflix. This month, she’ll appear in “The Color Purple,” the second film adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, this one based on the 2005 Broadway musical it inspired. Brooks’s character, Sofia, forced to work a grueling job as a maid for a white political family in early 1900s Georgia, was portrayed by Oprah Winfrey in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation; Brooks, 34, a Juilliard School-trained actress who was raised in South Carolina, played her in the musical’s 2015 revival. That production was Brooks’s Broadway debut; last year, she starred alongside Samuel L. Jackson in a revival of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” (1990).The comedian Sam Jay, who grew up in Boston and whose humor Brooks has long admired, recently released her first HBO special, “Salute Me or Shoot Me.” Jay, 41, spent years doing stand-up in Los Angeles before joining the writers’ room of “Saturday Night Live” in 2017. She left the show after three seasons for two series, “Pause With Sam Jay” (2021) and “Bust Down” (2022), both of which she helped create and starred in, and which highlight her frank, anecdotal style. This past October, the two gathered in a photo studio in downtown Manhattan to discuss acting, impostor syndrome and learning the importance of asking for what they need.T: Many stage shows that perform well are rumored to get adaptations that never materialize — but this one did, and quickly. Is that just the power of the film’s producer Oprah Winfrey?Danielle Brooks: I think for Oprah it’s making sure the story continues to have a life — that it lives through generations.Sam Jay: You shot in Georgia, right? I always wonder about Black people shooting these period films where they have to go back to being downtrodden, sweaty Black. How do you snap out of that and then just, like, go chill at Checkers?D.B.: It was tough but at times cool because you’re in it. It’s the difference between doing it on a stage versus on an actual plantation. It did get real at times: All I could think about was how many of my people were hung from those trees. I had the responsibility of making sure I told this very beloved story as honestly as I could to represent those people who aren’t here.Brooks and Corey Hawkins in the forthcoming film adaptation of “The Color Purple.”Eli Ade/Waner Bros.S.J.: Are they going to let the main characters Shug and Celie be gayer? Because they’re gay as hell in the book, and they really skipped over that in the first movie. When I read the book … it wasn’t just some crush; they were together.D.B.: You’re going to be satisfied. You get that, which I was happy about.S.J.: I feel like that was a part of the story Walker was trying to tell.D.B.: I got to meet her on set, and my close friend Corey Hawkins, who plays Harpo [Sofia’s husband], took a video of it, which was great because for me it starts with her. My whole pop-off — my Broadway career — started through her book.S.J.: These Broadway runs. …D.B.: It’s crazy. I imagine there was a lot of preparation before doing your HBO special, though, too. Do you remember how many shows you did before that?S.J.: I did somewhere around 300 shows for a year and a half. I was maybe three or four months into touring when I bumped into Chris Rock. We had dinner and he was like, “I don’t do less than 250 shows before filming.” So I immediately called my agent and got more on the books. Then I’m feeling myself because I’m, like, 20 shows away from my 250 and Chris goes, “Yeah, 50 more shows. I’m not telling you to do anything I wouldn’t do!” But I watch that special now and think, “Ah, growth.”D.B.: That’s how I feel with “The Color Purple.” When I did the Broadway show, I had so much anxiety and was going to therapy because I felt like an impostor. Cut to five years later, doing the movie, I felt such comfort. I might have done 500 shows, now that I think about it. One year, eight shows a week — someone do the math — but I felt more confident, worthy enough to portray this character.S.J.: Confidence, I’ve come to feel, is just knowledge. The more information you have, the more confident you are. When I look at my special, I can tell I was free.D.B.: I always thought you were free, every time I’ve watched you. I’m pretty picky about comedians; I don’t laugh at a lot of stuff. I’m the person in the audience the comedians make fun of, like, “Look at this bitch not laughing,” and then I’m still not laughing.S.J.: I think only you know what you’re hiding. In real life, I’m very silly and physical when I’m talking but, for some reason, when I’m onstage, I’m like, “You ain’t no clown! You don’t need to be doing all that flailing around.” It’s dumb because it’s comedy, but it was really me just being afraid to let that side out.D.B.: Did you ever feel, when you were starting out, that there was a comedian you wanted to style yourself to be like?Jay’s 2023 HBO special, “Salute Me or Shoot Me.” Courtesy of HBOS.J.: I don’t think I wanted to be like anyone, but you get ideas from others. Chris Rock was the first comic I saw who made sense to me. I grew up in a “Def Comedy Jam” era, with Black and white comedy being very separate. I love that era, but that’s not how my brain works. I’m not good at roasting. I’d seen George Carlin, too, and that seemed very white. But Chris was this hybrid I thought was cool.D.B.: I feel like some people won’t give you the real — where you think, “I can’t believe they just said that” — but also make you examine why you think the way you do. That’s so important in any medium, and the point of what we do, so we can see ourselves. Comedy’s always been that easier pill to swallow, for the truth. So when somebody can do that, not just make you laugh but question why you think about, you know, disabled people in some way, or why you don’t like to use the N-word, I find it important. What I’ve always enjoyed is that you don’t hold back. In a way, I can be guarded, but you’re very, “No, let’s talk about it.”S.J.: It comes from a kind of twisted place of my mom passing away [in 1998, from lupus] and me accepting the idea of mortality, that you don’t live forever. I moved out when I was 16 — I’ve had no parent longer than I’ve had a parent. I sometimes don’t remember my mother’s face, but I remember how she made me feel. That’s all that remains. I remember the lessons she taught. So it’s just about trying to be intentional in every interaction.D.B.: I think that’s the same for me … being more guarded because my mother is a minister. She’s very much, “Be careful what you do; what you say is going to affect you till you die.” I love my mom, I respect her 100 percent, but I have to live for me because it’s my life. But I want to hear about your experience booking “S.N.L.” I want to be on that show so bad!S.J.: I get this call from my manager, “Will you audition for ‘S.N.L.’ tomorrow?” I’m like, “Do they really want me? I’m not doing a character.” I didn’t want to set myself up for failure. I audition, then get a call saying, “We know you auditioned for the cast but how would you like to come be a writer?” I hang up and I’m like, “Damn, OK, too ugly for TV.” But I needed to step into something new at that point in my career. I’m all about going toward things that you’re afraid of, so I said yeah.Brooks (center) as Sofia in the 2015 Broadway revival of “The Color Purple.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesD.B.: Do you ask for what you need when you’re doing a show, or do you settle a bit?S.J.: I’m going to ask for what I need.D.B.: I think about a lot of women in comedy who aren’t matching up to what men are making or getting, in terms of perks. It’s just not happening. I was watching Luenell’s comedy show, and she was talking about being on a plane with comedians, and the men are flying first class and she’s in coach.S.J.: At first, I was absolutely scared to ask. I didn’t know what was OK.D.B.: You do have a core group of people that you can go to where you can say, “Let’s be real: How much do you make on this?”S.J.: I wish it was stronger, but I do feel like I got a couple of people where we try to be pretty transparent about that stuff. That’s the age-old trick where you have a 9-to-5 and they’re like, “You guys aren’t allowed to talk about this.” And it’s like, “Yeah, so you can keep us all poor.”D.B.: That’s been one of the best parts of having a friend group in the industry, our transparency. We’re not gonna brag about our contracts, but if you want to know, we’ll lay it out so we can come up together. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s what drives me crazy: when you find out someone had a personal chef or a trainer, and you’re like, “Nobody told me that was a possibility, and I needed it more than they did.”S.J.: I think working behind the scenes, working on “S.N.L.,” knowing the lengths they’ll go to make sure the talent is OK, now when I’m being the talent, I’m like, “Do that for me.” It sometimes feels bitchy, but that’s just a stigma in our heads as women.D.B.: There are a lot of ways we should be given more respect. I think about hair and makeup: Why is it so much to ask for someone who can actually do my hair, rather than teaching somebody to do it? And why is it so wrong to ask for somebody who can do my face rather than having to come to them with the products I use?S.J.: The ask, at its core, is coming from a place of having to build up the confidence to do this work. That’s the thing that gets misconstrued when Black people say they want Black people in these spaces. The reverse racism crowd sees that as wanting everything to be all Black, when, no, it’s because we know we need this stuff.D.B.: I don’t want to go to a costume fitting and have to give them a list of shops and places to get my clothes. On “The Color Purple,” our hair and makeup departments were phenomenal — the wigs matched; the lace was lacing.S.J.: You know “The Color Purple” is coming correct.T: How do you work comedy into your performance of Sofia, who’s one of the most visibly oppressed, but also most joyous, characters in the film?D.B.: Sometimes, when people go through so much, they don’t want to dwell on that; they’re longing for joy and laughter. She’s somebody who tries to stop generational curses, whether that be through an abusive marriage or abusive parents. She’s trying to bring her community to the right path. She might not have all the skills to do so — she might use her fists or her mouth — but, at her core, she’s not looking for a fight. She’s looking to have a great day.This interview has been edited and condensed.Danielle Brooks: Fashion: ObyDezign. Hair: Tish Celestine at La Belle Boutique, NYC. Makeup: Renee Sanganoo using Nars at the Only AgencySam Jay: Hair and makeup: Merrell Hollis More

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      Recap: Timothée Chalamet Hosts ‘Saturday Night Live’

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      Timothée Chalamet hosted an episode that presented former President Trump as an aggrieved forerunner. The musical guest was boygenius.Come on, you didn’t really think that “Saturday Night Live” would begin this weekend with a parody of the third Republican presidential debate, did you?OK, let’s indulge this little fantasy for a moment and pretend that this broadcast — hosted by Timothée Chalamet and featuring the musical guest boygenius — might actually open on a sketch featuring the candidates who aren’t Donald J. Trump, impersonated by the “S.N.L.” cast including Heidi Gardner as Nikki Haley, John Higgins as Ron DeSantis and Ego Nwodim as Vivek Ramaswamy.Well, not long after Gardner and Nwodim reenacted a testy exchange between Haley and Ramaswamy and Devon Walker (as Tim Scott) began to rhapsodize about his girlfriend, the entire sketch was frozen and the lights were dimmed on the debate stage.Enter James Austin Johnson, in his recurring role as Trump: “How adorable,” he said, mocking the other candidates. “They actually think they’ve got a chance. Sad in some ways, but in other ways, funny. Can you believe it, folks? Ninety-one indictments, four trials. And I’m still the best choice. They’re all stuck behind me and there’s nothing they can do about it. Just like in real life.”Johnson went on to mock the low poll ratings of his Republican rivals: “One percent, very low,” he said, indicating Walker. “Lower than, frankly, milk. Apparently there’s a milk lower than 1 percent. People are calling it skim, we’ve never had it, we don’t drink it.”And he offered a satirical meta-commentary on Higgins, the actor playing DeSantis. “Poor Ron DeSantis,” Johnson said. “Even ‘S.N.L.’ doesn’t think he has a chance. If they did, it’d be like Paul Rudd or something in there, right?”But mostly, he talked about himself: “Isn’t it sad, folks?” Johnson said. “None of them can beat Joe Biden. The worst president since, frankly, me.” Why hasn’t Trump appeared at the debates? As Johnson explained it: “I’m very, very busy. I’m going from trial to trial. I’m basically doing ‘House Hunters’ but with courtrooms.”Johnson complained about the fact that he was being put on trial at all: “They’re saying I committed fraud,” he said. “Not true, OK? Not true. I’ve committed a lot of things. Adultery, treason, a lot of fraud, perhaps.”But on the witness stand, Johnson said he was on his best behavior: “The judge asks, ‘Did you approve these financial reports?’” he explained. “And I very respectfully say, ‘You’re a dumb-ass. This is a sham. When I’m president again, I’ll have you executed.’”Bringing the debate and the sketch to a conclusion, Johnson said, “I’ll pick one of these lucky five to be my VP, or in many ways, I will not at all. Maybe in my third term.”Opening monologue of the weekChalamet, who was hosting “S.N.L.” for the second time, expressed relief that a deal had been reached between the actors of the SAG-AFTRA union and the Hollywood entertainment studios, ending a monthslong strike and allowing him to flog upcoming projects like his film “Wonka.”Picking up a cane, Chalamet began to poke fun at the self-promotional opportunities that he could now indulge, singing a song set to “Pure Imagination” from the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Its lyrics ran, in part:“If you want to view a three-and-a-half hour filmGo see ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’Or just wait for Part 2 of ‘Dune’Just make sure before to use the bathroom …”In the latter part of the monologue, Chalamet and Marcello Hernández performed a bawdy tribute to their status as baby-faces — presumably, the material they had prepared in case the strike wasn’t resolved by this weekend.Not-phoned-in performance of the weekA round-table segment paying satirical homage to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop may not be the most revolutionary idea for a comedy sketch, though it provides a great showcase for cast members like James Austin Johnson and Punkie Johnson to show off their impressions of people like Rick Rubin and Mary J. Blige.But what makes this memorable is Chalamet’s delightfully committed performance as a fictional (if frightfully successful) young rapper with the stage name of SmokeCheddaThaAssGetta, who knows nothing about the history of his chosen genre and has no business being on the panel. There’s also the sight of Chalamet being spanked by Kenan Thompson (playing Cornel West), the soon-to-be viral GIF from which the whole sketch, one assumes, was reverse engineered.Impersonation showcase of the weekYes, there was already the sketch about the Republican debate and the hip-hop round table. But for good measure, why not throw in one more segment that lets Chloe Fineman and the “S.N.L.” cast show off their talents for pretending to be other famous people?That is the duty fulfilled by this short film in which the best-selling memoirist Britney Spears (Fineman) reveals that, before choosing Michelle Williams to read the audiobook of “The Woman in Me,” she had tried out other readers as well. Feel free to admire the sheer versatility of Fineman (who also plays Chalamet, Julia Fox and Natasha Lyonne in the sketch); the levels of inside baseball (Sarah Sherman and Michael Longfellow as the “S.N.L.” alums John Mulaney and Bill Hader); or the weirdness of James Austin Johnson as Werner Herzog.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the Republican debate, the F.B.I. investigation into Mayor Eric Adams of New York and President Biden’s re-election efforts.Jost began:The third Republican debate was held this week, and Vivek Ramaswamy started by saying that the GOP had become “a party of losers.” Weirdly, “a party of losers” was also how NBC advertised the debate. Ramaswamy then criticized Nikki Haley’s daughter for having a TikTok account. He also stressed that it’s not important how he knows her daughter has a TikTok account. Then Nikki Haley responded to the attack by saying, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” which was pulled directly from the Japanese subtitles of the Will Smith slap.Che continued:Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign got a major boost after Iowa governor Kim Reynolds endorsed him. Also giving DeSantis a lift: his leather hooker boots. The F.B.I. has launched a corruption investigation into New York mayor Eric Adams by seizing two of his cellphones. One named “work phone” and the other named “shorties and shady stuff.”Jost resumed:After new polls showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden, Democratic strategists are calling Biden’s re-election campaign a five-alarm fire. Which is scary for Biden, because in a fire, you have to use the stairs. More

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      ‘S.N.L’ Welcomes Bad Bunny and Mick Jagger

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      Bad Bunny was the host and musical guest in an episode that included cameos from Jagger and Pedro Pascal.The chaos surrounding efforts to choose a new speaker of the House may be less than ideal for the nation, but it’s practically a gift to “Saturday Night Live,” which satirized House Republicans’ political turmoil in an opening sketch this weekend.The broadcast began with Mikey Day playing Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who on Friday lost a secret ballot vote to remain the Republicans’ nominee for the speakership after losing a third vote for the position on the House floor.Speaking on a phone in his office, a seemingly calm Day said, “No, I didn’t win, honey. No, not this time either. It’s OK. I’m feeling good.” Then after completing the call he broke the receiver in two.“Some of us are here to actually serve the American people,” Day said angrily. “All I want to do is get Congress back to work so I can shut it down again.”An assistant (Heidi Gardner) offered him a new phone and introduced a visitor: Representative George Santos (Bowen Yang), who was holding a baby.Asked why he had the baby, Yang answered, “No one seems to know.” He handed it to Gardner and said, “Just put him in an Uber.”Offering his consolations to Day, Yang said, “I want you to know I voted for you and — get this — so did Shoshanna Loggins.” Day asked, “Who’s that?” Yang responded, “Also me.”Day asked him if he should try running for speaker one more time. “Well, look, I would be lying if I said yes,” Yang answered. “So, yes.” Then he took a call on his cellphone that he said was from Tupac: “Girl, I know,” Yang said into his phone. “Jada is crazy.”Day received a call from Representative Lauren Boebert (Chloe Fineman), who offered her support while a hand reached in from offscreen and groped her. “Are you out somewhere?” Day asked her. “Yeah,” Fineman said, “I gotta go. I’m at the theater seeing ‘Aladdin.’”Finally, Day was visited in his office by former President Donald J. Trump (James Austin Johnson). “Yoo-hoo, is this the loser’s office?” Johnson asked as he knocked and entered.“You endorsed me and then you kind of disappeared,” Day told him.“Yeah, well, that’s because I prefer the Jordans who win, OK?” Johnson said. “Like the great Michael Jordan or the even greater Jordin Sparks. ‘No Air,’ remember that? Now that was a song. Tell me how I’m supposed to breathe with no air? You can’t. You can’t do it.”Johnson boasted he’d make a great speaker himself if he weren’t otherwise occupied. “Sadly, I’ll be too busy campaigning, traveling from city to city, visiting their beautiful courtrooms,” he said.Day complained, “I did exactly what you would do. Intimidation. Threats. Why didn’t it work?”Johnson answered, “Well, because, frankly, you’re not me, OK? You’re no fun, I’m hilarious.”Opening Monologue of the WeekBad Bunny, the Puerto Rican pop star who was both host and musical guest this weekend, continued a recent “S.N.L.” tradition of Spanish-speaking hosts who delivered a portion of their monologue in Spanish. As he spoke, a satirical caption appeared below him on the screen that read “[SPEAKING IN NON-ENGLISH],” tweaking a (nonhumorous) incident in which similar captions were shown at the 2023 Grammy Awards when Bad Bunny performed and during his acceptance speech for the Best Música Urbana Album.“Not again, please,” Bad Bunny said, and the caption below him changed to say “[SPEAKING A SEXIER LANGUAGE]”.As a surprise guest, Bad Bunny was joined by Pedro Pascal, the star of “The Mandalorian” and “The Last of Us,” who translated some of the host’s remarks into English and offered him advice on connecting with the audience.“Audiences love it when you show an embarrassing photo of yourself,” Pascal suggested, and the screen displayed a beefcake-y photo of Bad Bunny.“I’m sorry, how is that embarrassing?” Pascal asked. “Because I forgot to put on clothes,” Bad Bunny answered. (If that’s not enough Pascal content for you, he returned later in the night for a sketch where he reprised a past role as Marcello Hernández’s wryly judgmental mother.)Filmed segment of the weekEven rarer for “S.N.L.,” a filmed segment called “La Era del Descubrimiento (The Age of Discovery)” was presented entirely in Spanish.It featured Bad Bunny as a 16th-century Spanish monarch, Hernández as his son, and Day and the “S.N.L.” alum Fred Armisen as explorers who have come to share the wonders of un nuevo mundo to their unimpressed rulers. A turkey is described as having “testicles on its face,” while the king and prince recoil at the sight of a pumpkin: “That melon has herpes!” they scream.Celebrity cameo of the weekNo disrespect intended to Pascal or to Lady Gaga (who popped up to introduce Bad Bunny’s first musical performance), but we’ll give the edge to the Rolling Stones lead singer and longtime Lorne Michaels pal, Mick Jagger, making the latest in a long string of “S.N.L.” appearances that stretch back to the late 1970s.Jagger was a beast of burden in two sketches tonight: once in a fake mustache, playing a cackling character in a Spanish-language telenovela, and later on playing a lusty Lothario hiding out in a convent. If his comedy career doesn’t work out, there’s always rock music.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on President Biden’s diplomatic efforts during the Israel-Hamas War, and Republicans’ struggles to choose a new speaker of the House.Jost began:In what many people are calling a high point of his term, President Biden gave multiple speeches this week in which he issued the same strong warning to anyone thinking about attacking Israel. And here was his message: [The screen showed a video montage of Biden saying, “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.”] I won’t. I really like that Biden only needs one word to get his point across. He’s basically the Groot of presidents. But to give you an idea of how effective “Don’t” is, it’s the same thing Biden says to his dog right before it bites another Secret Service agent.Also while he was in Israel, Biden said the Hamas attack was like “15 9/11s.” OK, you can’t go somewhere to calm people down and then start rating things in numbers of 9/11s. That is not a calm scale. It would be like if your doctor gave you Ambien, and said, “This will make you sleepier than 20 Cosbys.”Che continued:Jim Jordan, seen here describing how he attacks the nipple, is no longer the nominee for House speaker after Republicans dropped him Friday, which by the way he’s used to because he was dropped a lot as a child. Potential new candidates for speaker include Tom Emmer, Kevin Hern, Jack Bergman and six more candidates who are clearly George Santos. [The screen showed six images of George Santos in obvious disguises.]Weekend Update desk segment of the weekCapping a highly quotable and often baffling period of promotion for Jada Pinkett Smith’s new memoir, “Worthy,” Ego Nwodim appeared at the Weekend Update desk to impersonate that actress and on-again/off-again spouse to Will Smith.“Sorry if I seem a little tired,” Nwodim said to Che. “I’ve been on the ‘Today’ show 14 times in three days.”She shared what she said was the secret to a successful marriage — “Never go to bed happy,” Nwodim said — and explained why she would never divorce her husband.“Divorce is not an option,” Nwodim said, adding: “I have principles, Michael. If we got divorced, he could mess around and end up happy.” More

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      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Returns with Pete Davidson, Ice Spice

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      Pete Davidson — who left the cast of the show in 2022 — will host the season premiere on Oct. 14.With the five-month writers’ strike ending last week, a certain corner of television is coming back to life: first with the return of the late night shows on Monday, and now with “Saturday Night Live,” which will kick off its 49th season on Oct. 14, the show announced Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter.Pete Davidson, who left the long-running NBC sketch comedy program in May 2022 along with other big-name cast members including Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant, will host the season premiere; the Bronx rapper Ice Spice will be the musical guest. On Oct. 21, the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny will serve as both the host and musical guest. On Wednesday, “S.N.L.” also posted a welcome to its newest cast member, Chloe Troast.Season 48 was supposed to run through May 20 but concluded early because of the strike. The Writers Guild of America, which represents more than 11,000 writers, reached a tentative deal with the major entertainment studios on Sept. 24, and the guild’s board members approved of the deal on Sept. 26, announcing then that the strike would end the following morning. SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents tens of thousands of actors, on strike since July, returned to the negotiating table this week.While Davidson is also an actor, starring in the recently released film “Dumb Money” and the Peacock dramedy “Bupkis,” the actors’ union does not consider hosting to be a violation of their strike. In a letter to members that was posted online on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA made clear that union members who appear on “S.N.L.” as either hosts, guests or cast members are not in violation of their strike rules because they are working under the Network Code Agreement, not the contract the union is striking.“The majority of our members who are regular cast on ‘Saturday Night Live’ had contractual obligations to the show prior to the strike,” the letter also states. “Many are under option agreements that require them to return to the show if the producers exercise their option, which the producers have done.” More

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      How Shane Gillis Both Plays to and Mocks Red Staters

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      The comic’s savvy approach fits into the evolving meaning of conservatism and has resulted in hugely popular stand-up specials, like “Beautiful Dogs” on Netflix.At the start of his new special “Beautiful Dogs,” Shane Gillis, a bulky comic with the mustache of a Staten Island cop, announces that America is the best country in the world and that all the others suck. His crowd roars. Then he says he’s only been to three other countries and when he boasts about his home abroad, they ask about mass shootings.“There’s really not a good comeback,” he says, shifting from swaggering to struggling, then exclaims, using a profanity: “What, are we going to give up our guns like a bunch of gay guys?” His tone flattens into resignation: “No, we’re just going to have shootings all the time.”This opening bit, which celebrates and satirizes rah-rah American jingoism in the style of “South Park,” encapsulates the Shane Gillis experience. It’s got the amiable idiot swagger, plus the trolling offensive spin. Then there’s the satirical overlay that subverts the perspective. It’s dumb and smart, cocky and self-mocking, homophobic but relentlessly self-aware.Since getting fired from “Saturday Night Live” in 2019 after videos surfaced of him using Asian and gay slurs on a podcast, Gillis has built perhaps one of the fastest growing comedy careers in America. His debut special, released on YouTube in 2021, racked up a staggering 14 million views, and he’s the most popular podcaster on Patreon with more than 71,000 paying listeners. “Beautiful Dogs,” his second special, has been lodged in Netflix’s Top 10 most popular shows since the streamer released it on Sept. 5. He regularly sells out theaters. Don’t be surprised if he becomes an arena act.Getting fired paid off. It made Gillis a martyr to some, and he was savvy enough to embrace those fans without tediously obsessing over cancel culture. He has said he understood the criticism of his comments, offered a halfhearted apology, then doubled down on lumbering through the china shop of cultural sensitivities. A comic who tells the crowd he has no female friends isn’t looking to appeal to everyone.There’s an element of shock jock to his persona. Onstage, his bits are more controlled and agile than they seem, and he’s skilled at winning fans in unexpected places. Speaking in an admiring 2022 New Yorker profile of Gillis, the comic Jerrod Carmichael, who came out as gay in his last special, called him one of the few truly funny comics working today. “His material still feels dangerous,” he said.Gillis, a 35-year-old former football player from central Pennsylvania, often holds the microphone with two hands, more like a singer than a stand-up. His attitude is less telling you the truth about the world than stumbling through the mess of his thought process. His appearance telegraphs rumpled ordinary guy, not polished entertainer. And he speaks to crowds as if he were messing around with friends. Few comics do more with the word “dude.”To fully understand his success, you must use a word taboo in certain comedy circles: conservative. Many comics who rail against cancel culture tend to flinch at that one. Call Joe Rogan one and you will hear umbrage and a list of his liberal policy positions. And look, no one likes to be pigeonholed. But there is a political valence to Gillis’s comedy and the way it fits into the evolving meaning of what it is to be right wing.Being conservative in the age of Trump is not as much about opinions on free markets or foreign policy anymore; now it can mean projecting a certain attitude, alternatively nostalgic and contemptuous, fixated on the supposed oppressiveness of liberal norms and bluntly giddy about transgressing them.That posture sits comfortably in the comedy scene. It’s no accident that two prime-time hosts on Fox (Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld) cut their teeth doing comedy, of sorts. Part of the reason Gillis is such a phenomenon is clearly political. (The title of the special is a Trump quote.)Right-wing media adores him. The Spectator called his success a major turning point in the resurgence of comedy. But unlike comics who are primarily animated by caricaturing and picking apart the left, Gillis lands a broader crowd by focusing on an affectionately mocking insider perspective of the half of the country that voted for Trump (which isn’t to say he did, though there’s no question he finds the politician hilarious).There are MAGA-like identity politics at the center of some of his bits, as when he describes the story of the first baseball game played by Jackie Robinson not as a civil rights landmark but as the moment when white people stopped being cool. “I know what I look like,” he says. “I got the body type of the guy who says, Let’s look at the rest of the body cam footage before jumping to any conclusions.”His last special lovingly poked fun at his “Fox News dad,” who goes to bed angry every night. In “Beautiful Dogs,” he describes himself as a bit of a history buff, which he calls a sign of “early onset Republican.” He levels with his audience: “If you’re a white dude in your 20s and 30s and can’t stop reading about World War II, it’s coming, brother.”The assumptions here are that being a Republican makes you a beleaguered outsider. He compares the pull of it to that of a person turning into a werewolf. “I’m not a Republican, but I can feel it,” he says. “It grows.”Gillis, who lives in New York, regularly works clubs here, and there’s a way that his comedy is pitched as an explanation of a red state sensibility for a blue state audience. Some of this can feel forced and far below his intelligence, tipping over into Larry the Cable Guy territory.He uses a hack sexist line, only to draw attention to how bad it is. His punchlines about porn cover well-trod ground, and his contrarian joke about terrorists is similar to the one that got Bill Maher fired from his ABC show after Sept. 11. Gillis can get stuck in his own bubble, drawing some familiar or easy laughs. His new special has more sex jokes than his last, some about his own grossness (“coughing during sex is funny”) and others about the hopelessness of being competitive with the Navy SEAL who previously dated his girlfriend.His most ambitious bit in the new hour involves a trip to George Washington’s Mount Vernon during the racial upheaval of 2020. He describes the absurdity of the historical re-enactors, but also the gruesome detail of the slave quarters, mapping how he vacillated between hero worship of our first president and denunciation of our country’s original sin.Not unlike his opening bit, Gillis moves back and forth on his feelings about our country through the narrative of Washington, his military exploits, his lore. “I was trying to be cool and liberal and hate him,” he says. “Couldn’t do it.”Interestingly, he includes a joke that is identical to one John Oliver recently told mocking the idea that we are more divided than ever by bringing up the Civil War. Of course, in the 19th century, we couldn’t express our dislike for one another as easily. But what hasn’t changed is that people remain curious about those different from them, even those they dislike or hate. It may be human nature or strategy. (Know thine enemy.)Partly people watch Shane Gillis for the same reason some liberals binge Fox News — to see how the other half thinks. More

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      in Theater

      Franne Lee, Tony Winner Who Also Costumed Coneheads, Dies at 81

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      She worked on “Sweeney Todd” and “Candide” and also on the early seasons of “Saturday Night Live,” contributing to the look of the Blues Brothers and the Killer Bees.Franne Lee, a costume and set designer who while doing Tony Award-winning work on Broadway in the 1970s also made killer-bee suits and cone-shaped headwear for early “Saturday Night Live” sketches, helping to create some of that era’s most memorable comic moments, died on Sunday in Atlantis, Fla. She was 81.Her daughter, Stacy Sandler, announced the death, after a short illness that she did not specify.Ms. Lee did some of her most high-profile work in the 1970s while in a relationship with the set designer Eugene Lee. She collaborated with him on productions including an acclaimed “Candide,” directed by Harold Prince at the Chelsea Theater Center in Brooklyn in 1973. It moved to the Broadway Theater in Midtown Manhattan the next year and ran there for 740 performances.“The production has been designed by those experts, Eugene and Franne Lee,” Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times, reviewing the Broadway incarnation, “and they have knocked the innards out of this respectable Broadway house and made it into an obstacle course of seats, musicians’ areas, catwalks, drawbridges and playing platforms, with one conventional stage thrown in at the end of the space for good measure and convenience.”The Lees shared the 1974 Tony Award for scenic design, and Ms. Lee won another for costuming, her specialty. As the story goes, one person who saw that “Candide” was a young producer named Lorne Michaels, who was creating an unconventional late-night show for NBC. He was impressed and brought the Lees in as designers on the show that, when it made its debut in October 1975, was called “NBC’s Saturday Night” but soon became “Saturday Night Live.”The original “S.N.L.” cast quickly made its mark with outlandish sketches, and Ms. Lee was integral to the look of those now famous bits — dressing John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in black when they became the Blues Brothers, turning cut-up long johns into the yellow-striped Killer Bee costumes, and more.Dan Aykroyd, left, and John Belushi as the Blues Brothers on “Saturday Night Live.” Ms. Lee designed their costumes.Edie Baskin/OnyxIt was costume designing on the cheap. Ms. Lee’s father, a tool-and-die maker, came up with the bouncy springs that were the Killer Bees’ antennae, which she finished off by sticking Ping-Pong balls on the ends. John Storyk, who first met Ms. Lee in 1968 when both worked at the short-lived Manhattan club Cerebrum, recalled in a phone interview dropping by the Lees’ apartment and seeing on her work table the beginnings of the cones that became the defining feature of the Coneheads, the extraterrestrials who were a recurring presence on the show in the late 1970s and later got their own feature film.In an interview for the book “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers and Guests” (2002), by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, James Signorelli, a longtime “S.N.L.” producer, said that Ms. Lee influenced fashion beyond the studio walls.“The way Franne Lee, our costume designer, dressed Lorne for the show suddenly became the way everybody in New York was dressing,” he said. “Lorne used to come out onstage wearing a shirt, jacket and bluejeans. Nobody had ever seen it. But before you knew it, everybody was sitting around in Levis and a jacket.”Laraine Newman, an original “S.N.L.” cast member, recalled one time when Ms. Lee herself became part of the action — not on the show, but during a photo shoot Ms. Newman was doing with Francesco Scavullo, the noted fashion and celebrity photographer. Ms. Newman was working a vampire look, complete with fangs.“Franne found me this incredible Edwardian black lace dress,” Ms. Newman said by email, “and we did wonderful shots with that, and then Scavullo had this idea that Franne should be my victim, and so there are shots of me like biting Franne’s neck. It was so hard not to laugh because Franne was making these faces trying to look horrified or drained of blood. It’s a wonderful memory, and it still makes me laugh when I think about it. She was so very talented.”Len Cariou, left, and Angela Lansbury in the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd.” Ms. Lee won a Tony Award for her costumes.Martha Swope/New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman CenterThat talent earned Ms. Lee another Tony Award in 1979 for her costume designs for the original Broadway production of “Sweeney Todd,” the Stephen Sondheim musical about a murderous barber who has his victims made into meat pies. The show was directed by Mr. Prince, who Ms. Lee said initially told her he was reluctant to take on the project despite her urging.“He told me: ‘You’re crazy, absolutely crazy! You can’t do a musical about people eating people,’” she recalled in a 2002 interview with The Tennessean newspaper. “‘I said, ‘Why not?’”Frances Elaine Newman was born on Dec. 30, 1941, in the Bronx to Martin and Anne (Marks) Newman. Her father had a small machine shop on Long Island, and her mother was an offset printing supervisor.Ms. Lee was studying painting at the University of Wisconsin, her daughter said, when she discovered her love of theater and costume design. She was married to Ralph Sandler at the time and relocated to Pennsylvania when his job took him there, doing costume and design work for local theaters. The couple divorced in 1967, and Ms. Lee relocated to New York.“Franne and I both answered the same ad,” Mr. Storyk said, recalling how they found themselves working at Cerebrum. Mr. Storyk designed the club; Ms. Lee was what was called a guide, leading patrons through the place, which promoted consciousness-raising and featured various interactive environments. It closed in less than a year.Ms. Lee, though, continued to pursue her theatrical interests, creating costumes for groups including Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia. She also met Mr. Lee. Among their earliest collaborations as scenic designers — with Ms. Lee still credited as Franne Newman — was a version of “Alice in Wonderland” staged by the director André Gregory in 1970 that drew rave reviews.Ms. Lee in 2015.Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State JournalThe two became a couple and Franne adopted Mr. Lee’s name, though the nature of their relationship remained hazy; Patrick Lynch, a longtime aide to Mr. Lee, said the two were never formally married. (Mr. Lee died in February.) In any case, their personal and professional partnership continued until 1980, the year Ms. Lee left “Saturday Night Live.”She continued to design costumes for shows in New York in the 1980s and ’90s, including a few short-lived Broadway productions and, in the mid-’90s at the Public Theater, Christopher Walken’s examination of the life and legend of Elvis Presley, “Him.”She also tried the West Coast for a time, working on a few television shows and made-for-TV movies. In 2001 she settled in Nashville, where she was involved in founding Plowhaus, a gallery and artists’ cooperative. She later lived in Wisconsin, and since 2017 she had lived in Lake Worth Beach, Fla., about 65 miles north of Miami, designing costumes for theaters in that area.In addition to her daughter, from her marriage to Mr. Sandler, Ms. Lee is survived by a son from that marriage, Geoffrey Sandler; a son with Mr. Lee, Willie Lee; a brother, Bill Newman; six grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.The frugal D.I.Y. ethos of her “S.N.L.” years stayed with Ms. Lee throughout her costume-designing career. In 2018 she worked on costumes for a production of Conor McPherson’s thriller “The Birds” (based on the same source material as the Alfred Hitchcock movie) at the Garden Theater in Winter Garden, Fla. It required a wedding dress, which she bought at a thrift shop for $45.“I’m a senior citizen,” she told The Orlando Sentinel, “so if I go on Wednesday, things are half price.” More

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      The Night Sinead O’Connor Took on the Pope on ‘SNL’

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      Tearing up a photo was the moment nobody forgot. The performance that preceded it was just as powerful.What people remember about Sinead O’Connor’s Oct. 3, 1992, appearance on “Saturday Night Live” is this: At the end of her second performance of the show, a cover of Bob Marley’s “War,” O’Connor intoned gravely, “We have confidence in the victory of good over evil.” As she held tight to the word, stretching it like a castigation, she grabbed a photo of Pope John Paul II and held it up to camera. When she let the word go, she punctuated her exhale by tearing the photo three times, followed by an exhortation to “fight the real enemy.” She tossed the fragments to the ground, removed her in-ears, and stepped off the stage into culture-war infamy.Throughout her career, O’Connor — whose death, at 56, was announced on Wednesday — was a fervent moralist, an uncompromised voice of social progress and someone who found stardom, and its sandpapered and glossed boundaries, to be a kind of sickness. She was also a singer of ferocious gifts, able to channel anxious passion with vivacious power and move through a lyric with nimble acuity. She was something grander than a simple pop star — she became a stand-in for a sociopolitical discomfort that was beginning to take hold in the early 1990s, a rejection of the enthusiastic sheen and power-at-all-costs culture of the 1980s.And so, in an era where late-night television performances could still prompt monocultural mood shifts, her gesture was a volcanic eruption. She became a target instantly — of the religious right, of other celebrities, and, as she reported many years later in her memoir, of a couple of egg-tossing young men, as she exited the studio that same night.But none of that extinguished the power of her protest. And she was a savvy radical — reportedly she had done something slightly different in rehearsal, and saved the pope photo for the actual show. (The photo itself had hung on the bedroom wall of O’Connor’s mother, who O’Connor later said had physically and sexually abused her as a child.) Also, she was on live television, holding court for three minutes on the miseries of discrimination and abuses of power, under the guise of being a pop star performing a song. She was daring the cameras, and the viewers, to look away; no one did.The recriminations O’Connor faced recall the bankrupt culture wars of a different era — she was “banned” from appearing on “Saturday Night Live” again, and the show mocked her on subsequent episodes. The following week’s host, Joe Pesci, took direct aim at her. “I’ll tell you one thing: She’s very lucky it wasn’t my show. ’Cause if it was my show, I woulda gave her such a smack.” Cue laughing and clapping from the audience. He continued, “I woulda grabbed her by her … eyebrows.” More laughter. At one point, he triumphantly held up the taped-together pope photo, like a feckless politician stirring up his base. (Tellingly, footage of Pesci’s monologue is available on the official YouTube channel of “Saturday Night Live”; footage of O’Connor’s performance is not, though it can be found in various unofficial locations online.)Joe Pesci on “Saturday Night Live” the week after Sinead O’Connor’s performance, holding up the taped-together photo of Pope John Paul II that O’Connor had ripped.NBCOf course, she was correct — the scale of sexual abuse perpetrated within the Roman Catholic Church that came to light in later years was staggering. By then, O’Connor’s protest felt distant, but the damage it did to her career was permanent.At the time, O’Connor was only a couple of years past her American breakthrough — her piercing cover of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” written by Prince (and originally performed by his side project the Family). Subsequent to “S.N.L.,” she had a handful of hits, but mostly retreated from the pop spotlight. Or maybe the way to think about it is that she right-sized her career, away from the silly and grim expectations of complaisance that come with universal acclaim and toward a more earnest plane.Whichever the case, the pope brouhaha obscured something perhaps just as extraordinarily powerful — the song that O’Connor had been performing. Her “War” cover had lyrics slightly modified to allude to the abuses in the Catholic Church that she was protesting. (She also performed “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home” that night.)She’s performing “War” a cappella, staring hard at a camera off to her left.Less singing than declaiming, she renders the song with a forceful clarity, landing every line with nervy syllables held just a microsecond past comfort, as if reminding the viewer of the need to gulp them down whole. Marley’s original — the lyrics are drawn from a speech given by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia before the United Nations General Assembly in 1963 — moves with a sly breeze. O’Connor’s, with its silence, turns the original plaint into a jolt.Her performance is anthemic, invigorating, a call to arms for the dispossessed and an elegant dissection of the authoritarian powers who hold them down. Her vocal is level and determined, but her howl is spiritual and undeniable:Until the ignoble and unhappy regimeWhich holds all of us throughChild abuse, yeah, child abuse, yeah,Subhuman bondage has been toppledUtterly destroyedEverywhere is warIf there is a moment of true singing here, it’s right before the grand gesture at the end. “Childrennnn! Childrennnn!” O’Connor sweetly chants, calling everyone to attention. Then, with everyone’s ears perked, she nods her head forcefully and jabs out a quick, urgent instruction: “Fight.” More