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Tag: SNL

  • SNL Writer Appeals for Help in Search for Sister Missing

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    Jimmy Fowlie posted on multiple social media platforms asking Angelenos if they have seen his sister Christine Lynn Downey who vanished in late November

    A writer for Saturday Night Live is asking Angelenos to help the search for his sister, Christina Lynn Downer, who was last seen in Koreatown.

    Jimmy Fowlie, who also works as an actor, wrote on social media that his family is “worried that my sister isn’t safe,” and urged Angelenos to call police if they see her.

    The LAPD says it has opened a case into the 38-year-old woman’s disappearance. “Christina Lynn Downer was last contacted on December 10, 2025, via text message with a friend. Her last known location was in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles. She has not been seen or heard from since,” the LAPD said in a statement, adding, “The family wants the public to be aware that Christina Downer has no known medical conditions and has not gone missing before.”

    Christina Downer is described as a 38-year-old female with black hair and brown eyes. She stands five feet one inch tall and weighs approximately 115 pounds. Anyone with information regarding her location is asked to contact the Los Angeles Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit at (213) 996-1800.

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    Michele McPhee

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  • Alec Baldwin Says He Had Suicidal Thoughts After Charges Were Filed in ‘Rust’ Death a Second Time

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    Alec Baldwin says he had suicidal thoughts after charges were filed a second time in the fatal shooting on the set of his film Rust.

    The actor appeared on the most recent episode of Dopey: On the Dark Comedy of Drug Addiction, a podcast hosted by Dave Manheim, where he talked about battling some dark thoughts during that time.
    Baldwin said he was in a rough place mentally after it was announced that he was going to be charged a second time in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in 2021. (The case was ultimately dismissed, and he cannot be retried.) Baldwin said he was concerned about the impact it was having on his family.

    “The people I was most concerned about, the people that I had the deepest pain for, were my wife and my kids,” he said. “Because my kids would see me sitting in a corner, you know, I couldn’t even move.”

    Baldwin said there was a period where he took a nap every day for a year due to his mental state.

    “And I don’t want to dwell on this, I just want to say that this was very painful for my wife and my family, my sisters and brothers and so forth, my colleagues. … And I can tell you, it broke every nerve in my body, spiritually, financially … work-wise, my career, my wife, my kids, my friends, my health. I mean what it’s done to my health. I mean, if I told you what my health conditions have been since October 21st of 2021 … it’s taken 10 years off my life. It’s taken at least 10 years off my life,” he added, noting the date of the fatal shooting.

    Baldwin said he was able to get through it thanks to his wife, Hilaria, and his family, but not before some really dark thoughts took over.

    “When you get to that point where you go, ‘I don’t want to wake up another day, I’m gonna go’ — I swear to God, I mean, to talk about it, and it’s really kind of unappealing to me because to talk about killing yourself and to actually kill yourself are two so profoundly distinctive things. I think a lot of people, I think countless people think about killing themselves and ending their life, and then very few do. And for me, I remember, I used to lay there in bed and go, ‘Oh God, I can’t wake up another day and have it be the same. It’s the same every day. And I can’t do it.’ And but somehow I found the faith in God to, you know, not kill myself tomorrow. Let’s wait one more day.”

    Baldwin also said that he believes that the production followed the regulations laid out by the Hollywood guilds but the prosecutors in New Mexico “came along and said, ‘Oh no, no, those rules don’t apply here, and we have our own rules here and that’s what applies here. So we’re going to put you on trial for those rules.’ … No one came to me in the first week we were handling firearms the first week. No one came and told me anything different. It was after the fact. All the rules were changed after the fact, and that was very scary to me. I thought they were going to make it up as they go along.”

    He added that the New Mexico prosecutors “wanted to get their names in the paper. That’s what they wanted. And I mean thank God for this judge who called in on them and said, you know, what you’re doing is reprehensible.”

    In the same interview, the subject turned to President Trump, whom Baldwin portrayed on Saturday Night Live for four years. Baldwin admitted that he didn’t “want to play Trump every weekend for four years” but did it due to his friendship with SNL mastermind Lorne Michaels.

    “Overall, it was a good experience. Those first two years were glorious, and but you look at people who are made fun of on SNL. Comedy is all about mockery now. It’s all about mockery,” he said, noting that very few comedians aren’t “mean-spirited,” citing Ray Romano as one example. But, he said, much comedy these days veers toward being “negative.”

    “But you look at Trump. And you say to yourself, Trump’s a human being,” Baldwin said. “Now, do I disagree with Trump about everything? I disagree with Trump about fucking everything. Every fucking thing you could imagine I disagree with him. But at the same time, he’s a human being, and his mistake was when he was wounded, when he was hurt, when he was dismissed, when he was mocked, when he was outed or whatever, in any way he was treated badly, what was his response? What was his response? And that’s the lesson for all of us. What’s your response? Do you just try to get up and clean yourself off and move forward? No, Trump is bitter. He’s filled with hatred. He’s filled with bile, and he only made it worse for himself. 

    “I mean, Trump is a person who thought, ‘All of you have a problem. All of you making those observations about me, you’re the ones that are wrong. I don’t deserve any of this.’ Trump doesn’t believe he deserves any of what’s been ladled out against him. Now, has he been mistreated in some way or has it been too much of a pile on. Maybe, I don’t know. I mean, I think Trump, occupies a very unique place in our history, but at the same time, I think that you gotta walk that line. Trump’s a human being.”

    Baldwin recalled being at a dinner party and sharing his believe that comedy about Trump is “over” — not because it’s scary, but because “it’s just done.”

    “What else can you possibly say? If you’re still watching a nighttime talk show and laughing at jokes about Trump, there’s something wrong with you,” Baldwin said. “Al we need to do is just get ready for the next election, get ready for the midterms. That’s all you need to focus on. Fuck Trump. He’s gonna be gone. … And Trump, had he only had one ounce of self-awareness, how different things might have been.”

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    Kimberly Nordyke

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  • Bowen Yang Leaves Saturday Night Live in a Swirl of Red Wine, Cocaine, and Tears

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    Bowen Yang made his on-camera debut on the first episode of Season 45, with Vanity Fair‘s Karen Valby noting then that “the show’s first East Asian cast member was saddled with a dispiriting first line of ‘Wazzzzzzup!’ as Kim Jong-un, who [once and future President Donald Trump] called for advice on getting rid of whistleblowers.” But he quickly hit his stride, creating iconic characters such as Chinese trade rep Chen Biao, whose “a tariff is like a tax but it’s a little bit bitchy” was a chillingly prescient quip when uttered in 2019.

    With Yang’s Wicked and Wicked: For Good cast mate Grande in the host slot for the third time Saturday, Yang’s decision to make the last SNL of 2025 his final turn already feels poetic in its symmetry—and then there’s musical guest Cher, who Yang has attempted to lure to the show for years. “I would do anything with her,” Yang said of the icon in 2022.

    Those seated in Studio 8H were clearly clued in on tonight’s news: When Yang joined Grande on stage during her monologue (a gift frustration spin on “All I Want For Christmas”), the cheers threatened to drown out the singing. There was a similar uptick in audience energy when Yang appeared oh-so-briefly in a pre-taped take on Home Alone. In the SNL version, Grande’s Kevin failed to remove his booby traps before his family’s return, leading to (among other gory disasters) Yang’s double amputation.

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    Eve Batey

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  • Bowen Yang Pays Tribute to ‘SNL’ in Tearful Final Sketch: ‘This Is My Last Shift, I’m Gonna Miss Everything About This Place’ 

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    Bowen Yang said goodbye to “Saturday Night Live” with the final sketch of the night, which was also his last.

    News broke on Friday that Saturday’s episode would be Yang’s final appearance as part of the “SNL” cast after being on the show for eight seasons. He first joined “Saturday Night Live” as a writer in 2018 in Season 44 and later was added to the cast as a featured player in Season 45. He was upped to be a main cast member in Season 47.

    In the sketch, Yang played a flight attendant with a broken eggnog machine at the Delta One lounge who was leaving for his final shift.

    “This is my last shift. It’s sad. I’m gonna miss everything about this place. The way it smells. The celebrities who come through. Just last week, Josh O’Connor came through,” Yang said, referring to last week’s “SNL” host.

    Tonight’s host Ariana Grande, who co-starred with Yang in the “Wicked” movies, also appeared and said goodbye to her friend. Playing a family member of Yang’s character, Grande said, “I wish you were home but I’m so proud of you and all the eggnog you’ve made over the years. Some of it was great, some of it was rotten.”

    “And a lot of it got cut,” Yang added. “But you know, I also think eggnog’s kinda like me. It’s not for everyone, but the people who like it are my kinda people.” The two sang a song together and were joined by musical guest Cher (who played the eggnog maker’s boss) on stage, and Yang teared up saying goodbye.

    “Oh, Rhonda, I should have come home earlier,” he said while choking up. “I just feel so lucky that I ever got to work here. And I just wanted to enjoy it for a little bit longer. Especially the people. I’ve loved every single person who works here. Because they’ve done so much for me, especially my boss.”

    During the final goodnights to close out the show, Grande gave a special shoutout to Yang: “And Bowen yang, we love you so much! Goodnight!”

    Yang’s mid-season departure comes after several cast members left before Season 51 began, including Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Michael Longfellow, Devon Walker, Emil Wakim and John Higgins. Leaving in the middle of a season is rare but not unheard of — Cecily Strong, Molly Shannon and Dana Carvey did it in the past.

    Outside of “Saturday Night Live,” Yang hosts the pop culture podcast “Las Culturistas” with fellow comedian Matt Rogers. For the first time, the two hosted their yearly Las Culturistas Awards as a full awards show broadcast on Bravo and Peacock. Yang also reprised his “Wicked” role as Pfannee in this fall’s hit “Wicked: For Good” musical. He and Rogers are also writing and starring in an upcoming comedy for Searchlight Pictures.

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    Jordan Moreau

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  • Bowen Yang Is Leaving Saturday Night Live

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    It appears to be the end of an era: Bowen Yang is planning to leave Saturday Night Live, most likely after this Saturday’s episode hosted by his Wicked costar Ariana Grande with musical guest Cher. A source with knowledge informed VF that this episode may be Yang’s last—though Deadline asserts it as fact. Representatives for Yang and the show did not respond to requests for comment.

    Yang joined Saturday Night Live as a writer in 2018, appearing infrequently onscreen. He was promoted to featured player the following season, then full repertory player in 2021—becoming one of the show’s marquee faces, and earning four primetime Emmy nominations for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series.

    In an April interview, Yang indicated that he’d started to think about moving on. The star-studded events around SNL‘s 50th anniversary helped him realize “what life after the show is like and how beautiful it is,” he said then. The lauded sketch comedy show is “this growing, living thing where new people come in and you do have to sort of make way for them and to grow and to keep elevating themselves. And that inevitably requires me to sort of hang it up at some point.”

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    Hillary Busis

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  • Josh O’Connor May Be An Internet-Favorite “Soft Boy,” But ‘SNL’ Doesn’t Know How To Harness His Charms

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    For someone whose nerves were at a self-described 10 out of 10 in the week leading up to his Saturday Night Live debut, first-time host Josh O’Connor began his Studio 8H debut about as smoothly as possible: In his monologue, the Wake Up Dead Man star glided easily from self-effacing jokes — “No, I am not the mouse from Flushed Away” — ripped from the digital zeitgeist to cheekily leaning into his public persona as a “soft boy,” otherwise known as an “average 65-year-old woman” who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens.

    The tight 3-minute opener took a delightful turn when O’Connor addressed fans pitching him to play Alfredo Linguini in a live-action remake of Walt Disney/Pixar Animation’s beloved Ratatouille (a film he has espoused affection for more than once) and chief creative officer Pete Docter’s subsequent rebuke of such a project. “Do you know how it feels to be publicly rejected from a job I didn’t even want? For the record, I don’t even want a live-action Ratatouille,” he said, before eventually interrupting his own thoughts to pivot: “Sorry, sorry, for what it’s worth: I would kill as Linguini.”

    Unfortunately, similar to the (albeit heartwarming) tale between a restaurant garbage boy and Remy the rat, O’Connor — much like Linguini — was stuck playing second fiddle tonight on SNL, puppeted to and fro from sketch to sketch that sidelined his comedic talents. The late-night mainstay struggled to bottle up O’Connor’s distinct whimsical charms (ones showcased in Emma and The Mastermind, for example) via skits that didn’t play to his strengths as a deft performer, and often didn’t know how to utilize him entirely.

    In early sketch “Let’s Find Love,” O’Connor is a boyish dating show contestant who, when presented with three potential romantic partners in a blind format, is almost immediately upstaged by an 84-year-old, scooter-riding Ashley Padilla, whose blatant disregard of reality TV (and social) norms gets big laughs early on, but eventually peters out due to repetitiveness.

    Similar problems abound in a later sketch concerning deleted scenes from The Wizard of Oz, which features Dorothy (Sarah Sherman), the Wizard (Bowen Yang) and her ragtag group (Andrew Dismukes as the Scarecrow, Kenan Thompson as the Cowardly Lion and O’Connor as the Tin Man). When Thompson’s Lion is revealed to have wished for a “big ole thing” rather than bravery, the other two male characters hop on the bandwagon to wish for the same thing. Not only is O’Connor given a few middling lines, but the skit itself can only go so far as a dick joke can carry you. (As the naughty refrain goes, it’s not the size that matters, but how you use it; in this case, not the content of the sketch, but how it’s executed.)

    Meanwhile, the night’s closing brunch sketch didn’t feature O’Connor until the latter half; playing an awkward and intruding dad whose presence is clearly unwelcome, the sketch careens through a cast of characters who take turns breaking the fourth wall via song to comment on the “quite strange” nature of their outing. It is as overstuffed as Veronika Slowikowska’s character finds Chloe Fineman’s to be, after the latter character commits a mathematical faux pas by grabbing an extra slice of flatbread.

    In one solid, pre-taped sketch spoofing Spotify’s beloved wrapped playlist, O’Connor doesn’t show up at all. Perhaps this was a scheduling conflict, and certainly, not every host has been in every sketch, but it does seem to be a glaring oversight to not include O’Connor in one of the best of the night.

    The strongest outing of the night was, without a doubt, “Bachelorette Party Strippers,” with Ben Marshall and O’Connor as the “most sensitive strippers in all of the Catskills.” With A Little Life in tow, beanies hanging loosely on their perfectly rumpled heads and multiple layers of clothing, the sketch’s golden moments include a lo-fi version of Ginuwine’s “Pony” and line readings of “You are enough” and “You have to forgive yourself,” all of which gets Padilla’s bride-to-be more than hot and bothered — though the real steamy will-they-won’t-they is found in the undeclared romance between Marshall and O’Connor’s Augie and Remington.

    And while SNL opted for resurrections this episode, it did so with varying levels of success. Another run at Yang’s Dr. Please character, first originated triumphantly during Ryan Gosling’s hosting stint last year, fizzled out quickly: O’Connor portrays an intern with little to do, especially as Padilla’s repartee with the doctor upstages everything else (“Doctor, your car…” she begins, “Was towed?” Yang asks. “No, was left at the scene of a crime,” she answers. “Just like I left it,” he concludes.) There was also round two of Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell’s animated short, “Brad and His Dad,” first introduced during Nikki Glaser’s run earlier this season, the holiday-themed No. 2 installment of which felt like little more than filler tonight.

    As for Weekend Update, there were decent jabs at President Donald Trump (“In a new interview, President Trump said that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ‘days are numbered.’ As opposed to Trump, whose days are lettered,” co-anchor Colin Jost quipped, as the screen flashed with the image of a weekly pill organizer. “Trump also said that the proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery ‘could be a problem,’ adding ‘Bribe!’ In response, Netflix is offering Trump one night with the [KPop] Demon Hunters.”

    But perhaps the best aspect of Update was the return of Jane Wickline’s offbeat keyboard ditties. Addressing the “greatest threat to humanity right now” via song, Wickline’s ode initially presented as a foreboding warning against AI, before the track abruptly switched gears to discuss the child stars of Stranger Things. With lines like “They’re adults, we have to destroy them before they destroy everything / AI is just a distraction / The real threat here is Sadie Sink and her child co-stars on Stranger Things,” “Stranger Things is ending / They’ll have so much free time / What if they grow self aware / We need to keep them occupied / They’ll mobilize their followers, 60 million followers / We need to keep them occupied” and “Finn Wolfhard is the devil to me / The six of them are in a room right now preparing to seize the next election / And for these reasons, I stand with Vecna,” Wickline cautions the cast could go by way of Joe Rogan who “used to make people eat bugs [on Fear Factor], and now he’s President of the United States.”

    And, in what has become a bit of trend in recent years at SNL, especially this season, Lily Allen‘s second performance — the West End Girl single “Madeline” — featured a surprise appearance by Dakota Johnson, who was revealed to be the woman performing the spoken lines in the song, hidden behind a sheer curtain. The Materialists star made her grand entrance as Allen wrapped up the track, greeting the musician with a hug and kiss on the cheek.

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    Natalie Oganesyan

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  • 12 Leadership Lessons From Lorne Michaels 

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    As the producer of Saturday Night Live, Lorne Michaels brings serious leadership skills to a deeply unserious business. It’s how he’s kept SNL running for 50 years, through countless competitive threats, technological and cultural shifts, and bodily injuries.  

    As the CEO of a successful software development and consulting firm, I’ve spent my career building creative, high-performing teams, not unlike the ones Lorne assembles every season. His philosophies have helped shape how I lead at Sketch Development: balancing structure and spontaneity, nurturing talent, and finding the funny (or at least the human) in the chaos of business.

    Here are 12 Lorneisms you can take from him to help your business survive your greatest challenge, whether it’s AI, looming tariffs, or the next unknown concern. 

    1. “We don’t go on because it’s perfect. We go on because it’s 11:30.” 

    Over each season, SNL releases a brand-new hour of never-before-seen television every single week. You can achieve something similar at your business. We prefer two-week iterations. 

    Ship regularly, without waiting until it’s polished. Don’t build your processes around achieving perfection, or even around efficiency. Build workflows that prioritize regular checkpoints for value inspection. 

    2. “Organize loosely. You never know what will come up.” 

    Any time you document something so thoroughly that you create rigidity around it, you’re boxing yourself into a corner. Look at what’s protected in your organization, especially if it’s limiting you. Slaughter any sacred cows that are standing in the way of opportunity or productivity. 

    3. “Do it in sunshine.” 

    When Lorne catches a whiff of negativity or hatred in a writer’s sketch, he tells the writer to imagine they’re working in perfect sunshine. 

    The same goes for your team. Operating from a place of joy and enthusiasm will shine through in your service quality. Instead of assuming your users are idiots, assume the best of your customers, and choose to make things easier for them anyway. 

    4. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant.” 

    The second sunshine-related lesson from the Tao of Lorne is all about transparency. To solve a problem, expose it to the light of day and get a proper look at it. You won’t fix it in secret. 

    5. “The dress rehearsal has to be bad before the show can be good.” 

    As crazy as it sounds, give your people room not to shine. People need permission to be bad before they can become good. Having room to experience failure, to learn what it feels like and to learn from it, helps people understand what they need to change. 

    The same goes for your products. Launch fast, then iterate often. 

    6. Avoid “premise overload.” 

    The writers at SNL are talented, creative people. They have big ideas, but sometimes they try to disguise a saga as a comedy sketch. But you can’t cram 18 different things into a single sketch. 

    Learn to slice vertically, make small releases, and maximize the amount of work not done. Releasing 18 simple product enhancements is easier, faster, and better than trying to do them all at once. 

    7. “Listen for when the music changes.” 

    This is one of Lorne’s pet expressions. He’s constantly attuned to the voice of his customers and the cultural zeitgeist. In late night comedy, David Letterman’s Midwestern, “aw shucks” charm changed the music after the counterculture mentality that prevailed in the ‘70s. It changed again in the ‘00s with the proliferation of social networking platforms, and in the ‘10s and ‘20s as social justice movements took the spotlight. 

    If you’re guiding a product or a business, you have to keep your finger on the pulse, too. When the music changes, don’t keep pulling the same dance moves. For example, our music changed when AI started solving productivity problems and the Agile Manifesto fell out of vogue.  

    8. “If I have to read It, the answer Is no.” 

    One of Lorne’s colleagues asked him to read a script for a movie he was planning to direct. Lorne refused, repeatedly. If the writer couldn’t make his case without Lorne diving into the full script, the idea wasn’t ready for the big screen.  

    As a leader, don’t get mired in the details too early in the process. The case should be obvious when an idea is good. 

    9. “Producers should be invisible.” 

    As Harry S. Truman said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” 

    Lorne lives by this axiom. Tina Fey tells a story about Lorne pulling an Inception-level mind trick on her when she had the Weekend Update desk to herself after Jimmy Fallon left the show. Lorne didn’t mandate another co-anchor, he simply suggested that Amy Poehler would be an interesting choice, then reassured Fey that the decision was all hers. The rest is SNL history. 

    10. “You’re not given the job. You take the job.” 

    It’s not a leader’s place to lay everything out for their employees. The leader sets an intention or a desired outcome, but isn’t necessarily responsible for defining how to get there.  

    Get the right people involved, give them the support they need, and remove obstacles from their path. Then trust them to get the job done as they see fit, and don’t punish them for veering outside of their lanes along the way. 

    11. “Remember Podunk!” 

    Celebrities can become so deeply entrenched in the cultures of New York and Los Angeles that they forget their shows air in all 50 states. When they do, Lorne reminds them to remember Podunk. It’s a backhanded way to point out there’s a broad range of tastes – and audience needs – across the whole country. The same goes for your customer base. 

    This curse of knowledge can plague leaders and product managers in any industry. You might become so insulated in the community around you that you forget about the broader ecosystem. Don’t lose your connection to the diverse array of experiences and responsibilities for which you’re responsible. 

    12 – Overproduce to be ready.

    Come up with more ideas than you need. At SNL, this means pitching 100 fresh ideas every week, even though only 10 might make it to air. Ideas are tested, and more get weeded out at various stages throughout the week. 

    Overproduction and an experimental mindset will always yield better outcomes than assuming you know exactly which ideas are best. This means reframing how we think about waste. It’s not a bad thing to be avoided. It’s a byproduct you can mine for value. 

    Leading Like Lorne 

    Under Lorne’s guidance, SNL has survived cable, the internet, and streaming services, not to mention Mad TV, SCTV, and In Living Color. If you take a page from his book, your business can become just as nimble and resilient. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    John Krewson

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  • What Mikey Day Watches (and Reads) With His Son

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    Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images (Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan, Will Heath/NBC), Everett Collection (Geffen Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros.), Toei Animation, Supercell, Roblox, MrBeast via YouTube

    Ask a kid who Mikey Day is and they won’t rattle off his SNL bona fides or call out his recent guest spot on Abbott Elementary. They won’t cite his work as the Dollar Rental Car spokesperson or the fact that he penned 2021’s Home Sweet Home Alone alongside longtime writing partner Streeter Seidell. Instead, they’ll point to just one thing: his role as the host of Netflix’s hit baking series Is It Cake?

    “If I meet a kid and they’re between the ages of 4 and 9,” Day says, “I know they’ll have watched Is It Cake? A lot of SNL hosts with kids that age have even come to me and said, ‘I’ve got to get a picture with you at some point, because my kids love your show.’ It’s crazy.”

    And it’s because of kids, Day thinks, that Is It Cake? has been able to soldier on. “I think that after season one, adults would have been like, I get the concept, I’m ready to move on. But when kids like something, they’re all in, so that’s great,” he says. “That means we get to keep doing it.”

    With new holiday-themed Is It Cake? episodes hitting Netflix today — just in time for family movie nights and Thanksgiving baking marathons — we asked Day what he’s watching, playing, and reading with his 13-year-old son, Abbott.

    Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection

    Everything’s so different now with the internet and streaming. I don’t know if my son has ever watched a regular TV show like how I used to. His mother and I have made a point of showing him classic movies. We’ll announce them, though, like “It’s movie night on Sunday and we’re all going to sit down for two hours and watch something,” because kids are so used to the internet and YouTube that the idea of committing to something for two hours can seem astronomical to them.

    We’ve shown Back to the Future, Gremlins, The Princess Bride, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Back to the Future went over the best and we ended up showing him the entire trilogy. It’s my favorite movie so I think he was a little biased going into the first one, but he really liked it. Weirdly, though, he did say the third one was the best — I think because he liked the flying train.

    I’ve also shown him clips from movies like Spaceballs, just because I mentioned it, and then he wanted to watch that.

    Photo: Universal Pictures/Everett Collection

    My son is really into the Jurassic Park franchise now, too, mostly because he saw Rebirth after getting into the commercials this past summer. He wants to watch all of them, but I’m trying to show them to him in the order of how good I think they are, so we started with the original after we saw the most recent one, then we went over to Jurassic World. But slowly, I think we’re going to watch them all.

    Photo: Toei Animation

    My son really likes this anime called One Piece, which he found independent of me. I try to sit with him to watch stuff like that, but it’s intense. It’s just very loud. Like all the people he watches playing video games online, they just scream all the time.

    I kind of missed the whole anime thing as a kid. I’m sure if I’d done it, I’d be more into it now, but he loves it.

    He’s been One Piece characters for Halloween a few years in a row, too, which I love because that’s how I was with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I did try to show him the ’90s TMNT movie, which changed my life as a kid because I was so enraptured by it, but I think I tried to do it a little too young because he was pretty unimpressed. Maybe if we came back to it now he’d like it.

    Photo: MrBeast via YouTube

    My son is super into YouTube. So much so that he’ll ask, like, “When is Josh Plays Minecraft X1 or whatever going to host SNL?” One time, MrBeast was backstage at SNL and so I briefly introduced myself to him when I walked by. When I came home, I was like, “You know who I met? MrBeast.” On SNL you meet a lot of famous people, but for my son, when I said I met and talked to MrBeast for 30 seconds, that’s what he thought was super exciting.

    Photo: Supercell

    We play games together sometimes, but I play a lot of console games and he’s more into mobile games. I’ve played some Roblox with him and there are certain games that I like more on there than others, but I try. We used to play Lego Ninjago together, but now he plays mobile stuff like Brawl Stars, and I’m not as into that. I feel like I’m constantly like, “Want to play this game I found?” Like there’s this one called Split Fiction, and he’ll be nice about it, but he’s also like, “I’m good.” Like, “Yeah, maybe this weekend!” He just politely puts me off.

    I guess it’s understandable. He’s 13. I don’t know if I was watching a lot of stuff with my dad when I was in eighth grade.

    Photo: Golden Books

    There’s this Sesame Street book called There’s a Monster at the End of this Book that I loved as a kid that we’d read to my son all the time when he was little. I loved that.

    We also had a storybook version of Back to the Future that I read him long before he saw the movie.

    I tried to get him into Harry Potter, even though I never really read that as a kid, but I think we did it too early because it was just too dense. It was like “Dad, I’m 4. I’m checking out.” Maybe if we’d done it when he was a little older we might have captured his imagination, but we missed the sweet spot.

    He does love to read, though. He just finished all the Hunger Games books, so that’s cool.

    Photo: Paramount/Everett Collection

    I used to show my son clips from Airplane! all the time, so eventually I got to the point where it was like, “All right, I’ve got to just show him the whole movie,” which he loved. He thinks it’s so funny.

    There’s this other Albert Brooks movie, Defending Your Life, which I think is criminally underrated. We showed him that, which was fun, because he really liked it and it’s one of my favorite films of all time.

    I think when he gets old enough, I’ll show him the British Office, which is my favorite piece of media of all time, but I don’t want to hit it too early. Maybe when he’s in high school.

    Photo: Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images

    Because of where I work, he’s been exposed to some sketches from SNL, but he doesn’t actively seek it out. Sometimes he’ll sit down and watch stuff, but it’s not appointment viewing. I’ll make a point of showing him stuff sometimes, like years ago we did a Mario Kart sketch with Pedro Pascal that he thought was pretty funny, and during election years he’ll watch a little more because his mom gets really into it and talks about the election a lot so he’ll know all the players involved, but I think it just hits different for him.

    I used to tape Saturday Night Live off Comedy Central as a kid, when they’d show the episodes edited down to an hour and I’d be confused because at good nights people would be dressed as things that I hadn’t seen in the episodes. My son has been to the studio and everything, but I think for him, the show is just Dad’s job, and that’s fine with me.


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    Mikey Day,Marah Eakin

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  • Chevy Chase Addresses His SNL Exit 5 Decades Later

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    Nearly fifty years after his short time on Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase addresses his exit from the show in the upcoming CNN documentary, I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not. The trailer also hints at reflecting on the fame he gained from the success of his later work.

    Chevy Chase talks about leaving Saturday Night Live in new documentary

    Veteran actor Chevy Chase reflects on his decision to leave SNL in the new CNN documentary, I’m Chevy Chase And You’re Not. He said that it was a “mistake to leave SNL.”

    Not much else has been revealed in the trailer on the subject, aside from the fact that the documentary will air on New Year’s Day. It also features interviews from other celebrities like Martin Short, Lorne Michaels, Beverly D’Angelo, and more.

    Chase was one of the original cast members when Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975. At the time, the show was titled NBC’s Saturday Night. He starred alongside an ensemble cast that included Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, George Coe, and others.

    He quickly became the breakout star of the show thanks to his Weekend Update segment and went on to work as both a writer and a performer.

    In 1976, a year later, the Caddyshack star decided to leave SNL after his girlfriend, Jacqueline Carlin, expressed no desire to move to New York. He left the show and relocated to Los Angeles, where the two later married.

    Despite his short stint on the show, his work earned him two Primetime Emmy awards in 1976. During its 1976–1977 second season, SNL replaced him with Bill Murray. Nonetheless, Chase remained connected to the show as a recurring guest host until 1999. After departing from the series, the actor continued to garner massive stardom with movies like Caddyshack and National Lampoon’s Vacation.

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    Harsha Panduranga

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  • ‘Saturday Night Live’ Just Nailed the Problem With AI Products

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    The cast of “Saturday Night Live” is coming for the sometimes absurd world of AI-generated video.

    A skit from the show’s Nov. 15 episode poked fun at the technology’s penchant for some pretty strange glitches. It featured four grandchildren, played by cast members Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Marcello Hernández and Tommy Brennan, visiting grandmother Ashley Padilla in a nursing home on Thanksgiving. The children tell their grandmother that they uploaded some of her photos to an app that will bring them to life by turning them into short videos. (Apps like MyHeritage‘s Deep Nostalgia and AliveMoment already offer these types of capabilities. OpenAI’s Sora 2 on the other hand generates video from text prompts and allows users to insert their own likeness.)

    The AI animation begins innocently enough with Glen Powell, who is portraying the woman’s deceased father, smiling and waving—but things quickly escalate. In the next photo, Powell poses with Padilla’s mother next to a barbecue. She takes a drag off of her hotdog, while Powell throws the family dog, which has two tails and no head, on the grill.

    “There’s probably just too much going on in the picture and the AI got confused,” Sherman explains to the distraught grandmother.

    They move on to a photo with Powell and a family friend, played by Mikey Day, posing in a bowling alley. The bowling balls float out of frame, Powell whips out a wad of cash, and Day pulls down his pants to expose a “Ken doll crotch.” The episode culminates with the grandchildren saying they have one last “special” photograph that shows the grandmother’s parents grinning down at her, swaddled in a blanket.

    “Maybe we don’t bring this one to life. It’s just so nice the way it is,” Padilla implores. But Hernández insists, arguing it costs “10 credits just to upload it to the app.”

    The mother emerges from behind a bench as a disembodied torso, while Powell tears the swaddled infant in half and plays her like an accordion. A pantsless Day crashes in on the scene before a nuclear bomb goes off in the back. The cast bites back laughter as they promise they’ll return to visit their grandmother for Christmas.

    Although exaggerated, the skit is making fun of some very common problems with AI. With AI video generation in particular, the results can be dramatic or just plain weird. One big issue is hallucination, which refers to when AI models generate false information—this can include fabricated data from a chatbot or too many fingers on a hand in an AI video.

    But even in the short time that AI-powered video generation apps have been made available to the public, the quality has made some serious strides, which can lead to problems of its own. The issue is prompting concern from watchdogs. 

    Earlier this month, nonprofit nonprofit Public Citizen penned a letter to OpenAI demanding the withdrawal of its text to video app, Sora 2, arguing it does not contain enough safeguards and poses a “potential threat to democracy,” as well as to the privacy of individuals, The Los Angeles Times reported. Outlets like Futurism and 404 Media have also tracked a flood of hateful, misogynistic and violent content onto social media since AI video apps went mainstream.

    Give the video a watch, below:

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    Chloe Aiello

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  • Is Ashley Padilla Saturday Night Live’s New Breakout Star?

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    To see this in action, look no further than Padilla’s first big moment this season: when she anchored the “Parent Teacher Conference” sketch during the Bad Bunny–hosted premiere on October 4. Padilla milked major laughs as an awkward principal who was desperately attracted to Bad Bunny’s single father. She had a brief but memorable turn as Amy Klobuchar during the cold open of Amy Poehler’s episode on October 11, which earned a shout-out from the senator herself on X, and followed that up with a starring role as an office worker who accidentally let one rip in “Surprise,” from Sabrina Carpenter’s October 18 episode. Even when fumbling a line about laughing out of her butt, Padilla was funny enough that costars like Fineman and featured player Ben Marshall were visibly struggling not to break character.

    Clearly, the show’s writing staff feels similarly. After the first three episodes of season 51, SNL superfan and data analyst Mike Murray—who hosts the SNL by the Numbers podcast—ranked Padilla, based on her screen time and the number of sketches in which she appeared, as number three on his SNL power list, placing her just after Sherman and Weekend Update cohost Colin Jost. According to Murray, Padilla logged the most screen time of any cast member during Carpenter’s episode, with 13 minutes and 45 seconds on air—a single-episode total that Murray claims beats the career highs of Nwodim, Gardner, Fineman, and Melissa Villaseñor.

    Perhaps Padilla is rising so quickly due to a talent vacuum on the show. Before season 51, SNL lost two of its biggest female stars in Gardner and Nwodim; of its 17 current cast members, only two full repertory players are women—Sherman and Fineman. As it stands, women make up only 30% of SNL’s cast. And given the lack of female talent, all five of SNL’s women have been given more to do.

    Especially Padilla. On the November 1 episode, hosted by Miles Teller, Padilla once again popped up in multiple sketches and had a breakout moment with a Weekend Update bit, “Two People Who Just Hooked Up Discuss the Government Shutdown.” The extended riff cast Padilla and frequent scene partner Andrew Dismukes as newly besotted lovers, highlighting her brand of naturalistic, grounded comedy peppered with unexpectedly broad line readings.

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    Chris Murphy

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  • The Idea Developed While Stoned Is Paying Off

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    From whimsical thought to success, the idea developed while stoned is paying off with major sponsorship.

    Sometimes those “what if?” ideas starting mid-sesh actually turn into something brilliant. As an example, the idea developed while stoned is paying off for there buddies. Just ask Pete Davidson and Colin Jost. What began as a hazy, half-joking idea while consuming cannabis — to buy an old Staten Island Ferry — has now become one of the best “high-deas” to ever float into reality.

    Back in 2022, Davidson and his pal Colin Jost impulsively bought a decommissioned Staten Island ferry for $280,000. At the time, even their Saturday Night Live castmates weren’t sure if it was a punchline or a midlife crisis in motion. Davidson himself admitted it wasn’t exactly a sober moment of inspiration. “It was definitely one of those ideas that seemed genius at the time,” he joked later.

    RELATED: Immersive Events Redefine Millennial Nights

    But here’s the twist: the offbeat purchase just turned into a marketing goldmine. The ferry — once destined for scrap — is now being transformed into a floating entertainment venue. And in the latest proof this high-idea turned high-value, Nike just inked a deal to advertise on it. Yes, Nike. The global sports giant saw enough cool factor (and cultural relevance) in Davidson’s drifting dream to climb aboard.

    In fiscal year 2025 (ended May 31, 2025), Nike spent $4.689 billion on marketing, which they refer to as “demand creation expense”. In fiscal year 2024, the amount spent was $4.285 billion. 

    It’s a perfect example of how cannabis-fueled creativity can sometimes spark surprisingly good business instincts. The old ferry, now renamed the Titanic 2 (because of course it is), is set to host comedy shows, concerts, and exclusive events — think floating SNL energy with a downtown edge. Davidson and Jost’s offbeat vision could soon be New York’s most unlikely hotspot.

    RELATED: The Connection Between Country Music And Cannabis

    And while the move might have seemed reckless, it reflects something larger happening in pop culture: the normalization of cannabis and its creative influence. For decades, cannabis users were dismissed as lazy or unrealistic. Yet some of today’s best ideas — from tech startups to entertainment ventures — have emerged from relaxed, imaginative brainstorming sessions.

    Pete Davidson’s ferry adventure proves that not every “stoned idea” sinks. Some actually sail — and make money while doing it.

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    Anthony Washington

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  • Twin Miles Tellers Spoof ‘Property Brothers’ Tackling Trump’s White House East Wing Demolition & New Ballroom In Pre-Taped ‘SNL’ Sketch

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    Miles Teller pulled double-duty (in a way) by portraying twin brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott in a pre-taped Saturday Night Live sketch spoofing the Canadian reality TV series Property Brothers. This time, the two real estate property developers field their “biggest challenge yet” — the gargantuan task of having President Donald Trump (James Austin Johnson) as a client and being tasked with building the White House ballroom.

    But as the siblings attempt to navigate Trump’s increasingly difficult and outlandish requests, they must also deal with the simmering tension and resentment they feel toward each other.

    The two begin by touring the premises, noting ironically that Trump has a “strong eye for interior design,” which the GOP leader attributes to his affinity for gauche golden urns, which he puts “everywhere, like a hundred in every room.”

    While complimenting Melania Trump’s (Chloe Fineman) Halloween decorations of dead trees, skeletons and other spooky fixtures, the First Lady responds sardonically, “Those are for Christmas.”

    Other changes include Trump replacing a portrait of former POTUS FDR with a painting of himself as a soldier from Halo. Meanwhile, upcoming renovation requests include turning the Rose Garden grounds into what looks like “outdoor seating for an Olive Garden,” supplemented by a budget “between $350 million and infinity.”

    As the two brothers recall with an uneasy laugh, when asking Trump if he needs a permit, he apparently laughed and told them: “I could build this ballroom with the bones of my enemies, and no one could stop me.”

    For his inspiration, Trump points to a mood board that includes, among other images, photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Star Wars‘ powerful gangster Jabba the Hutt.

    Other reno plans include installing an MMA ring for “two mentally ill guys just wailing on each other … we love bum fights,” Trump says.

    After Trump responds to a text with a gif of the White House exploding, the brothers can commence with the East Wing demolition. However, due to the government shutdown, the duo had to “force Park Rangers and astronauts” to carry out the operation. After hitting a snag because all construction workers had been deported, Johnson’s Trump reflects, “I pulled up to the Home Depot parking lot and yelled, ‘Just give me the whites!’ I want the day laborers from Norway and Sweden, but, apparently, they don’t exist.”

    “We want this to be our forever home,” Melania says after Trump says he’s preparing for a third term. He then adds, “Yes, because we’re not leaving. We’re gonna be doing something called ‘coup!’”

    As the sketch concludes, the brothers ask for payment, at which point Trump responds with calling ICE on them, given that the sibling duo originates from Canada.

    Watch it above.

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    Natalie Oganesyan

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  • Legendary ‘SNL’ Writer Jim Downey Finally Steps Out of the Shadows

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    Perhaps the best example of over-explaining the thing that doesn’t need to be explained is “First Citywide Change Bank,” which you star in.

    Yeah. [Laughs.] It’s also not a service that needs a whole organizational arrangement. People can generally handle it by themselves.

    You and Norm MacDonald famously did Weekend Update together. What was your first impression of Norm?

    Adam Sandler knocks on my door and goes, “I want you to see this guy. He’s so funny, he scares the shit out of me. He’s, like, the funniest person I’ve seen in years.” I instantly agreed. At the time, he was writing for Roseanne. And I don’t think Roseanne [Barr] wanted to lose him. But when he said it was a chance for him to perform, she gave him her blessing.

    Within a month, he came on as a writer and featured player. He did a couple things that were on Update in the 1993-1994 season. He did an Andy Rooney piece that was one of the bravest pieces of comedy, where he’s going, “This is a letter that comes from Toledo, Ohio. This is a letter that comes from Denver, Colorado.” He didn’t care about the fact that half the audience was going to be completely bewildered.

    During this time, Don Ohlmeyer had joined the network and was very aggressive about giving notes. And one of his edicts was that Kevin Nealon had to go as Update anchor. Kevin was a great favorite of mine and all the writers, and we felt it was the writing of the segment that was the issue. It wasn’t Kevin’s fault. I went out to one of my first and only meetings where I had to listen to network notes, in ’94, and Ohlmeyer said, “Nealon’s gone. Who’s going to replace him?” So there was a discussion. I thought Norm would be the best to do it. I remember at the meeting a network executive went out of his way to talk about his objections to the show that year. He said, “I don’t know if any of you saw this guy Norm MacDonald doing Andy Rooney, and he’s just reading addresses off envelopes.“ It was like, “Please don’t tell me you’re bringing that guy back.” And I said, “Well, funnily enough, we were on the subject of who should do Update, and I think Norm MacDonald.” And the executive did a cartoon-like take, pretending that’s the strangest thing he ever heard.

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    Andrew Buss

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  • Sabrina Carpenter’s “SNL” Performance Has Been Called Out For Cultural Insensitivity By Rina Sawayama

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    Sabrina Carpenter On SNL Called Out By Rina Sawayama

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  • Domingo Channels His Inner Showgirl

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    The life of a Domingo girl consists of a lot of vacations and secret rendezvous. Kelsey (Chloe Fineman) must have a lot of miles saved up. For the cold open sketch on October 18, Saturday Night Live brought back Domingo (Marcello Hernandez) for a 30th birthday party celebrating Matthew (Andrew Dismukes), and as always, it ends in another hookup uncovered. Kelsey’s besties (Sabrina Carpenter, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, and Veronika Slowikowska) sing a revealing version of Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia” about their trip to Nashville to find a “really good gift for Matthew.” Which, in Kelsey’s world, means a “hoodie from Hudson News” and cheating.

    After a transition to Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra,” Domingo finally arrives — he lives close by after all. He’s here to give Matthew the perfect gift: lower self-esteem and a reminder that he is having sex with his wife. “Kelsey, we got a noise complaint. We shook the whole hotel, noise complaint,” Domingo and the gals sing to the tune of Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” which is the antithesis of this trio’s strange dynamic.

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    Alejandra Gularte

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  • Saturday Night Live Recap: Amy Poehler Is a Great Hang

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    The veteran cast member is the perfect host to get the season back on track with an episode full of throwback sketches and fun cameos.
    Photo: Will Heath/NBC

    After a rocky premiere, Saturday Night Live needed to give us some reassurance that season 51 (and the newest permutation of the cast) wouldn’t be all duds. Enter Amy Poehler, a reliable (but not overused) choice to anchor a confident episode. No disrespect to Bad Bunny, who has his charms in this format, but he isn’t a sketch performer like Poehler. It’s only fitting that she host the show on the 50th anniversary of its first-ever episode.

    Poehler isn’t here to promote a new movie or show. If anything, she’s here because of Good Hang with Amy Poehler, her podcast that took off earlier this year. “That’s right, I am a podcaster now, and if that’s not a recession indicator, I don’t know what is,” she joked self-deprecatingly during a short, pleasant monologue, reminiscing about her early days of watching SNL and picking a fight with AI “actress” Tilly Norwood. Poehler brought that warm energy to the whole episode, no matter the quality of the actual jokes.

    I very much approve of the choice to give Poehler new characters to play, rather than reviving old sketches for nostalgia. (We got enough of that last year.) These are basically all new roles or twists on old types, taking advantage of Poehler’s skill at embodying strong, often spunky personalities. The intentionally old-fashioned Rudemans sketch is nothing to write home about — the general premise has been done to death — but she and Sarah Sherman in particular stand out as Ashley Padilla’s passive-aggressive mother and grandmother. “I’ll get the landline we randomly still have?” she says while answering the phone.

    This was a fairly star-studded episode, starting with Tina Fey’s appearances in both the cold open and Weekend Update (joined by Seth Meyers). Poehler’s bratty Pam Bondi starts the episode off on a decent note, likening Amy Klobuchar’s name to a Pokémon during a Senate Judiciary Committee session, but it’s Fey’s impressively scary-looking Kristi Noem who draws the biggest laughs, mostly through references to killing her pet dog (“Dogs don’t just get shot. Heroes shoot them”). Low-hanging fruit? Probably. But it works.

    Then Aubrey Plaza reunited with her Parks & Recreation co-star for the Hunting Wives season two trailer, which amusingly plays on the show’s conservative lesbian contradictions. And Charli XCX showed up to silently dance around as the latest “Sally” in the first of Role Model’s summery, inoffensive performances. SNL can’t get by on cameos alone, but these enlivened a solid episode that bodes well for the show’s ability to turn out the same decent if unspectacular material this season.

    Here are the highlights:

    Sometimes realizing you’re in for a one-joke sketch actually makes it better, and that’s the case with this one. (It’s technically a parody of the medium Sylvia Browne, for those who remember — I stumbled upon a clip of hers on Instagram just the other day, and the similarities are striking.) Everything gets funnier when you realize Miss Lycus isn’t going to offer any deeper insight than “he’s dead” to her legions of desperate and grieving fans. But some of the twists are pretty funny, from the first “He drowned until he died” to “He drowned, but he’s still alive. What’s dead is your marriage.” Most of the audience doesn’t even seem to mind.

    Poehler’s girlboss corporate manager insists on closing a big deal for the firm while nine months pregnant, switching rapidly between business mode and childbirth mode when her water breaks. Fun to see Ben Marshall as her doula, even if I’m not completely out of the habit of scanning the background for the other Please Don’t Destroy guys.

    Colin Jost and Michael Che kept up their usual playfully antagonistic rapport this episode, with Che inserting Jost into the background of some famous Trump-Epstein footage using Sora. Sarah Sherman got some good material as concerned Long Island citizen Rhonda LaCenzo, worried about sharia law under likely incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani — or, rather, “shari-er lore,” in her accent — but the character is most amusing for her tics, like the bunched-up shoulders and constant offers for coffee. “Coffee, Che?”

    Of course, the most notable segment is the Weekend Update Joke Off, where former long-tenured anchors Poehler, Fey, and Meyers joined Jost and Che to riff about the 13-pound baby born in Tennessee. Not all of the jokes are laugh-worthy, but it’s just great to watch this group hang out, especially with the various improvised buzzer noises. I wouldn’t have minded them trading off for the whole Update.

    Possibly the best of the night? Poehler does typically good work as the mustachioed, hairy-armed attorney Lachlan Mulchburger, but the real beauty of this sketch is the steady escalation of the one-upmanship in the paid advertisement game, with different injury attorneys arguing they have the most combined experience. It really takes off with the clones reveal — five Billsons and five Liebermans — and reaches its apex at the conclusion with Yang’s appearance as Yggdrasil, the sacred tree, who had Zeus as a client.

    Poehler gets mileage out of another one-joke premise, dressed up like your archetypal emo teenager but whining about very adult concerns like raising kids, taking care of aging parents, and a forgotten Etsy password. The brief transition to professional and back for a phone call (she’s the superintendent) is a highlight.

    • “Two years ago, I was on the show, and you told me my brother was drowned but alive and thriving in Florida.”

    • Good spokesman work from Andrew Dismukes in the ad for non-alcoholic beer that morphs into an ad for 96% ABV non-non-alcoholic beer.

    • Jeremy Culhane also makes a good showing this week. I’m less convinced of Tommy Brennan so far.

    • Gotta love the review from A.I. Scott, “the robot now doing reviews for The New York Times.”

    • Apparently Jost’s family has been celebrating National German-American Day “ever since they hastily moved here in 1945.” The use of “hastily” singlehandedly made me laugh here.

    • Grant and Alyssa, aka the couple you can’t believe are together, appear on Update to talk about cuffing season and Halloween. “I’ll be going as Sylvia Plath, because it’s the one day of the year that you can dress like a slut” is in contention for line of the night.

    • YggDrasil: Injury Attorney, Time Is An Illusion, We Are Shadows.

    • There are some funny moments in the theme songs masterclass ending sketch, particularly the first Severance rap and the later reversal with a somber instrumental version of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. Bowen Yang’s corporal punishment-obsessed composer is more memorable than Poehler, and the sketch sputters to a close, but it gets the job done.

    • Nice to see the photo of Diane Keaton pop up before goodnights. If you weren’t already aware, Ashley Padilla used to be Keaton’s assistant, so it must’ve been a tough day for her — and she did great work in this episode! Hopefully the show will continue slotting her into the roles that would’ve gone to Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim. She’s still only a featured player, but it feels like she’s on a different tier from the others.

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    Ben Rosenstock

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  • Seth Meyers, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Crash Weekend Update on ‘SNL’ For ‘Joke Off’ About an Enormous Baby

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    “Saturday Night Live” Weekend update hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che saw their desk crashed by former anchors Seth Meyers, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler for a “Joke Off.”

    The trio stopped by to riff on a woman at a Tennessee hospital who broke a record by giving birth to a 13-pound baby. Some of the jokes included:

    *”The baby was so big he slapped the doctor on his ass.”

    *”Did she give birth or did the baby drive out?”

    *”She broke the hospital’s record and then she broke off her husband’s penis to make sure it never happens again.”

    Poehler was the episode’s host, and Fey also popped in during the night’s cold open playing Kristi Noem.

    The returning trio spent plenty of time hosting Weekend Update, as Fey was behind the desk with Jimmy Fallon from 2000–2004, with Fey and Poehler taking over from 2004–2006, and Poehler and Meyers helming the segment from 2006–2008. Meyers then hosted the segment solo from 2008–2013.

    Elsewhere in Update, Jost and Che took shots at Arby’s (“Arby’s announced that they’re adding a new item to their menu, Steak Nuggets. Although you can make your own Steak Nuggets by eating a bunch of Arby’s.”), Gen Z (“A growing number of Gen Z men are moving back in with their parents, taking over household chores and calling themselves ‘trad sons,’ replacing the old name, ‘failures.’”) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (“RFK said this week that men who were circumcised are more likely to be autistic, which isn’t surprising coming from a man who looks like he’s made out of foreskin.”)

    Watch the Joke Off below.

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    William Earl

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  • Bad Bunny Used His Saturday Night Live Gig to Roast MAGA

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    Like he did in 2023, Bad Bunny delivered the most impassioned part of his monologue in Spanish, promising his Latin base that the Super Bowl show would be as much their triumph as his. “It’s an achievement for all of us,” he said. “Demonstrating our footprint, our contribution. No one will ever be able to remove or erase it.” His trolls can stomp and fume and insist that “real” Americans should feel disrespected, not stupid but tricked and left out by a mainstream star daring not to always speak directly to them. Our evening’s host offered an elegant prescription for their conniption. “If you didn’t understand what I just said,” Bad Bunny purred of his Spanish riff, “you have four months to learn.”

    Before Bad Bunny, the cold open went straight into the CrossFit belly of Trump’s inner cabinet. Jost was a too-natural Hegseth, all puffed up chest and Crood arms, broviating at Quantico about how the military needed to stop being so gay and start clocking more kipping pull-ups. Johnson’s Trump put Jost in a frozen time-out as he strode into frame, warning that he had SNL in his cross hairs. “I know late night TV like the back of my hand,” he warned, revealing a crater of mold that no makeup could cover. He got in some barbs about the loss of so many cast members (Godspeed Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, and Michael Longfellow) and enlisted the crew to keep an eye on Marcello Hernandez for him. “Remember, Daddy’s watching,” Trump warned, as Mikey Day as Brendan Carr scuttled behind him.

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    Karen Valby

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  • ‘SNL’ Weekend Update: Dobby the House Elf ‘Defends’ J.K. Rowling’s Stance on Trans People, Colin Jost Jokes Tilly Norwood Met With ‘AI Harvey Weinstein’

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    The first Weekend Update of season 51 of “Saturday Night Live” pulled no punches, touching on several pop culture topics such as Diddy’s sentencing, J.K. Rowling‘s endless tweets against trans people and AI actress Tilly Norwood.

    “It was reported that major talent agencies in Hollywood are interested in signing a new AI generated actress named Tilly Norwood,” co-anchor Colin Jost said. “The AI generated actress got her start after she had a hotel meeting with AI Harvey Weinstein.”

    Later in the segment, “Harry Potter” character Dobby the House Elf (played by Bowen Yang in wild makeup and wearing a plunging sack) was brought on to speak about J.K. Rowling’s Twitter takedown of Emma Watson, as well as the former’s frequent social media posts against trans people.

    “Master Rowling has done so much for Dobby, and inclusion in general,” Yang as Dobby said. “Remember when Dumbledore was gay after the books came out? And when Hermione was Black only on Broadway? And when Cho Chang was…hmm, was Cho Chang Asian? Dobby can’t remember if the character named Cho Chang was Asian or not…”

    The Weekend Update duo also broke down Diddy’s sentencing this week, with co-anchor Michael Che saying, “Sean Combs was sentenced on Friday to four years in prison, and I’ll be honest, it’s hard for me to enjoy watching someone I love get punished. But that’s what Diddy would do!”

    “During Sean Combs’ sentencing, he pleaded for mercy, saying the things he did were disgusting, shameful and sick,” Che continued. “In fact, just thinking about it makes him harder than grandma’s candy!”

    Watch Weekend Update below.

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    William Earl

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