Scarlett Johansson is right at home at ‘Saturday Night Live’

Saturday Night Live
Scarlett Johansson & Bad Bunny
May 17, 2025

By closing out the 50th season of Saturday Night Live, Scarlett Johansson made SNL history, becoming the most recurring female host with 7 episodes, narrowly beating out Tina Fey and Drew Barrymore. (Alec Baldwin holds the record with 17 episodes.)

As I’m sure you know, Johansson is married to SNL cast member and “Weekend Update” anchor, Colin Jost, and there have been a lot of rumors that this would be his and fellow “Weekend Update” anchor, Michael Che’s final episode. So, was Johansson there to be with her husband on his last appearance on the show? If she was, it wasn’t confirmed during the episode, not even in the “good nights” which I understand were cut off in the broadcast airings.

Instead, all in all, the episode felt like a regular SNL episode: a few good bits intermixed with mediocre ones, and absolutely zero formal goodbyes from any of the cast members, like Kate McKinnon’s “Final Encounter” sketch, or being danced off the stage during the goodnights, like Kristen Wiig. If it was Colin Jost’s (and Michael Che’s and Mikey Day’s and Heidi Gardner’s) final episode, no one was letting on.

That said — Bowen Yang and Sarah Sherman seemed to share a sad moment during the good nights. I don’t have either of them on my Bingo card for leaving next season, but Bowen has made a name for himself in Hollywood already, so it wouldn’t be a HUGE surprise if he were to leave.

But he better not.

As for Scarlett Johansson, she’s an excellent — and obviously experienced — host who helmed a solid finale. She’s a natural fit with the cast, and despite her movie star credentials, she’s unafraid to look silly or be ridiculous. Also, she can rap? Even if it was Jost’s last episode, I fully expect Johansson to return in the future: she’s family now.

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Welcome to the scariest Halloween of our lifetimes!

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The VMAs were fire, literally. (The kids are still staying that, right?)

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Bad Bunny hosts el primer bilingual ‘Saturday Night Live’

Saturday Night Live
Bad Bunny
October 21, 2023

Puerto Rican rapper and singer, Bad Bunny (also known as Benito Ocasio), presented the writers of Saturday Night Live an unusual test last night: English is not the host and musical guest’s first language, and, based on last night’s performance, he’s not particularly a strong English-speaker. Lest you think I’m being insulting to Mr. Bunny, let me say right now that I have consistently pointed out that hosting a live comedy show as a non-comedian would be terrifying for anyone. So I have nothing but respect for this Spanish-speaking singer as he chose to go out on the Studio 8H stage and host in another language.

But as I started to say: the language thing was a challenge. The writers needed to come up with ways to write Bad Bunny into sketches that would not embarrass him or be too dialogue-heavy that he wouldn’t be able to relax and have fun with it. And for the most part, they came up with some very clever workarounds: one sketch is entirely in Spanish — and it works; they set another sketch entirely in the world of telenovelas; and they brought out Pedro Pascal a couple of times to assist.

Not all of the bits worked: the more Bad Bunny was required to speak in English, the more uncomfortable he appeared and the more it went off the rails. That said, ultimately it was a more successful episode than last week’s premiere, in large part because the writers were facing a unique challenge, one that forced them to not be lazy lest they make the host look bad.

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Roy Wood Jr. and ‘The Drew Barrymore Show’ writers know their worth

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Not even The Grammys can slow ‘The Last of Us’ down

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Regé-Jean Page heats up ‘Saturday Night Live’

Saturday Night Live
Regé-Jean Page & Bad Bunny
February 20, 2021

Though he had been in the cast of the Shonda Rhimes series For the People and the remake of Roots, not many people had taken notice of our host Regé-Jean Page until he starred in the Shondaland series Bridgerton on Netflix which only debuted in December. So it’s a little strange that someone whose name I had to look up when he was announced (and I say that as someone who writes about television every day and who binged Bridgerton), would be hosting Saturday Night Live already: Regé-Jean Page’s hardly a household name.

But it turns out Page is not only good at playing smoldering 19th-century counts in Regency-era London, he’s also a charming comedic actor who seemed to genuinely be enjoying himself on the live stage last night. Last night, Page demonstrated that he is a versatile actor, with great range and a bright future ahead of him. He will be a household name soon enough, I predict.

As for the episode itself, it was fine. There weren’t any sketches that really stood out — for good or bad. It just felt like the writers were coasting on some B-level material. But you know what? Sometimes that’s as much as any of us can give. After the week I’ve had, I’m inclined to cut people a break: so what if they didn’t knock it out of the park? They tried and they didn’t cut anyone’s power or water off in the process and they didn’t just say “fuck it” and got to the Cancun Ritz Carlton, and so I’m proud of everyone involved. Good job, kids.

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President-elect continues to ignore President Toddlerpants, appoints actually qualified people to his administration

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‘Saturday Night Live’: Still not live, still from home

Saturday Night Live
At-Home, Part 2
April 25, 2020

Those wacky kids over at SNL, they did it again. Using Zoom, phones, plenty of wigs and green screens, and a lot of creativity, the cast and writers of SNL managed to put on yet another 90-minute episode satirizing this insane situation we all find ourselves in. They also seemed to have worked out some of the bugs that didn’t work so well for them the last time they tried this (thank you, “Weekend Update,” for losing the laughter — that crutch was there for you guys, not the audience) and have embraced the adage, “brevity is the soul of wit.” Even when a sketch didn’t work — and not all of them did — they never lasted more than about 3 minutes, and your suffering would soon be over. And keeping that in mind, I will get on with it already:

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