SNL
Zone: Swizz Beats Bigs Up VERZUZ, Says Platform “Bigger Than ‘SNL’”
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Paras Griffin / Getty Swizz Beats and Timbaland created one of the best performance platforms to ever emerge in years with their popular VERZUZ series. Now occupying a larger slice of the cultural connection, Swizz declared that VERZUZ is “bigger than SNL” in regards to viewership. In the Instagram Live breakdown of last Sunday’s VERZUZ between The Isley Brothers and Earth Wind & Fire, Swizz and Timbaland spoke candidly and earnestly about the battle DMX is undergoing for his life and how the event featured two of the famed rapper’s favorite acts. The pair then shifted into thanking fans and supporters for tuning in and also made mention of the Triller app in light of their still-new collaboration with the streaming service. However, what turned a num...
Daniel Kaluuya Shows Off Funny Bone In SNL Debut, Slams Racism During Epic Monologue
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: NBC / Getty Daniel Kaluuya is on one hell of a run. The Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe, and SAG Award-winning actor for his portrayal of Chairman Fred Hampton in Judas & The Black Messiah made his SNL debut, and he didn’t disappoint. Before we got to see him participate in comedic skits, Kaluuya kicked off his debut with an electric opening monologue that tackled racism across the pond, taking a shot at the Royal Family who has been embroiled in a racism scandal following an interview featuring Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle. “I know you’re hearing my accent and thinking, ‘Oh no, he’s not Black. He’s British.’ Let me reassure you that I am Black. I’m Black, and I’m British,” he opened up. “Basically, I’m what the royal family was worrie...
BTS’ Groundbreaking Saturday Night Live Performances Return to YouTube
ARMY, rejoice with us: after a long and painful absence, BTS’ 2019 performances on Saturday Night Live were rightfully restored earlier this week. Last June, after racking up a collective 39 million views, the performances of “Boy with Luv” and “Mic Drop” vanished from SNL’s YouTube account. This is, unfortunately, a pretty common occurrence, and often happens when labels run into copyright renewal with outlets like NBC. The resurfaced performances have arrived on the heels of similar copyright friction between Spotify and Kakao M, a South Korean music distributor, which resulted in hundreds of Korean artists and songs being removed from the platform earlier this week. In April of 2019, the world of Korean music in Western markets looked quite different. This was long before BTS had secure...
SNL Top Highlights: Dan Levy Charms In Hosting Debut
Since kicking off Season 46 last fall, Saturday Night Live has been running closer to business-as-usual than almost any other late-night show during the pandemic. Still, if you look closely, there are differences: Their audience size has been reduced, which has often made studio reactions more muted; the schedule has featured more episodes in a row and yet longer breaks in between; and the host bookings feel less tethered to the usual promotional cycles of big movies, TV show premieres, and awards season. Case in point: 10 months after Schitt’s Creek ended, four months after the show’s historic Emmys sweep, and two months after his co-starring role in Hulu’s Happiest Season, Dan Levy took a victory lap this week with his first Saturday Night Live hosting gig. In other words, he wasn’t real...
Kristen Wiig’s SNL Return Stresses an Uncertain Future for Character Actors
When Kristen Wiig hit the stage to deliver her monologue this past weekend on Saturday Night Live, she said it felt like coming home. She reiterated this point at the end of the show, during the goodnights. In between, she backed up her statements by comfortably re-settling into the rhythms of the show, and reviving two of her many recurring characters: Sue, the woman who can’t handle surprises; and Mindy Gracin, the addled stage star who appears on the game show Secret Word. Wiig still stands among the most beloved centerpiece stars of SNL this millennium, and this week’s episode underlined a major reason why, at least in terms of the popular consciousness: She originated a lot of recurring characters on the show. So many, in fact, that she can reprise two second-string ones like Mindy Gr...
SNL Still Isn’t Sure How to Satirize Wokeness
When Saturday Night Live has a genuine stand-up comedian as a host, it can shift the whole structure of the show, which is what happened last week, with Chris Rock, and this week, with less famous comedian Bill Burr. Combined with the season’s endless debate sketches, a longer stand-up-based monologue can reduce the amount of airtime available for actual sketches. Unlike Rock’s gig, the Burr-hosted episode seemed to take some of its cues from Burr’s stand-up material — and with so few sketches making it to air, it only takes a few with common ground to make an episode feel more thematically unified than usual. In his monologue, Burr poked fun at notions of wokeness and allyship, making his case that white women have hijacked national conversations about equality and that a longer, warmer g...
That Time Eddie Van Halen Became an ‘SNL’ Musical Guest Just Because He Was in the Building
Eddie Van Halen was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s because he just happened to be in the building that evening. The legendary rocker, who died Tuesday at the age of 65, was accompanying his then-wife Valerie Bertinelli to Studio 8H because she was hosting on Feb. 28, 1987. He had zero plans to appear on TV himself — but then house band guitarist G.E. Smith worked his magic. “He doesn’t want to follow his wife around like a puppy dog,” Smith remembered in an interview years ago. “So he finds out about the music office, and he comes in and hangs out — because you can do whatever you want in the music office. We’re in there drinking, smoking, whatever. He was comfortable there. It was his people, band guys. He got that. He could relax.” ...
SNL to Re-Air Chadwick Boseman-Hosted Episode This Evening
Saturday Night Live will celebrate Chadwick Boseman this evening by re-airing the lone episode he hosted. On the heels of Black Panther, Boseman hosted SNL in April 2018. The episode notably featured a Black Jeopardy sketch in which the Marvel actor portrays T’Challa and calls out Karen for putting raisins in her bland ass potato salad. The clip went viral in the wake of Boseman’s passing, amassing nearly 30 million views to date. The SNL episode will air this evening at 11:30 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Boseman was just 43 years old when he died last weekend following a secret battle with colon cancer that lasted four years. Countless tributes to the actor have since poured in, including personal notes from his Marvel co-stars, director Ryan Coogler, and Michael B. Jo...
SNL’s Michael Che To Star In A New Sketch-Comedy Show For HBO MAX
Source: photo: WENN Now that HBO MAX has brought back Sesame Street and announced the upcoming release of the long rumored Snyder Cut of the Justice League, they’re setting their eyes on some new material and Saturday Night Live‘s Michael Che is about to cash in on their growing library of original programming. Vulture is reporting that the Brooklyn comedian has just inked a deal with the new streaming service for a six-episode sketch-comedy series in which he will star and pen himself. Each of the six episodes will revolve around a theme such as police brutality, love and unemployment, while using the “sketches and vignettes to illustrate what it feels like to experience this from a black vantage point.” If you’re familiar with his work on SNL’s The Weekend Update or his own IG stories, y...
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Jimmy Fallon Apologizes After Old Blackface SNL Sketch Resurfaces [Updated]
In a week full of Big Yikes celebrity controversies, Jimmy Fallon has entered the fray. The current Tonight Show host is facing heaps of criticism on social media for a resurfaced clip of him performing in blackface on a 2000 episode of Saturday Night Live. In the 20-year-old sketch, Fallon impersonates comic Chris Rock — blackface, accent, and all — as his cast mate Darrell Hammond laughs and plays along. In the clip that began going viral early Tuesday, Fallon, who is white, riffs on the lack of black representation on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and jokes about Rick James smoking crack while recording “Super Freak”. Naturally, people are reacting angrily, and the hashtag #jimmyfallonisoverparty is currently trending on Twitter. Watch the clip below to see just how far Fallon too...
Saturday Night Live to Air New “At-Home” Episode for Season 45 Finale
Much like everything else, Saturday Night Live’s 45th season was thrown for a loop when COVID-19 effectively shut down the entire world. The cast and crew have twice filled the Saturday night airwaves normally reserved for SNL with “At-Home” episodes, and they’ll do so again this weekend in what marks the season’s finale episode. The two previous “At-Home” episodes have featured celebrity cameos from Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Paul Rudd, Adam Sandler, and Larry David, as well as musical performances from Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Miley Cyrus. You can probably anticipate a similarly celebrity-filled episode this weekend, but SNL is of course keeping things close to the vest for now. This weekend’s episode could also mark the final turn for several veteran cast members: in particular, Colin Jos...
