'Saturday Night Live' Bringing Back John Mulaney And Daniel Craig As Hosts
This weekend brings RuPaul to host Saturday Night Live for the first time, hopefully giving us something better than last week's disappointing episode, where NFL player J.J. Watt made his hosting debut. But for the spring, SNL will bring back a couple previous hosts, one a seasoned SNL veteran, and the other with just one hosting stint under their belt.
John Mulaney will return to host the Leap Day episode of Saturday Night Live this month, marking his third time hosting in as many years. Plus, Daniel Craig will return to Studio 8H to host the first episode of March, his first time hosting since 2012.
Here's the announcement of the spring 2020 Saturday Night Live hosts that was made on Twitter:
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/eothxLryGW
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) February 6, 2020
John Mulaney last hosted Saturday Night Live in March of 2019. He's always a welcome face around Studio 8H since he worked as a writer on the show from 2008 through 2013, co-creating the character of Stefon with Bill Hader and making a few appearances as himself at the Weekend Update desk. He knows how SNL operates, and it's always great when a host can bring their own comedic tastes to the show.
It sounds like SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels really wanted to John Mulaney hosting SNL again too:
A letter from Lorne Michaels to the people of Toronto.
I am terribly sorry to move the show again.
It is now rescheduled for April 10. I will be there no matter what. I love you Toronto. Also I'm afraid of Lorne so I do what he says. pic.twitter.com/NIuZeWSmu6— John Mulaney (@mulaney) February 6, 2020
As you can see, SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels wrote a letter to the citizens of Toronto, Canada who were expecting to see John Mulaney at a stand-up show they bought tickets for on February 29. In fact, this is the third time the show has been delayed due to Mulaney's busy schedule. So Michaels must have been keen on getting Mulaney before he ends up unavailable again. Mulaney will be joined by musical guest David Byrne.
Speaking of busy, Daniel Craig will be making the publicity rounds all over the world this spring in support of the new James Bond movie No Time to Die. So SNL had to get him on the show a bit earlier to host on March 7.
The last time we saw Daniel Craig hosting Saturday Night Live, it was his debut on the sketch show stage. That was also one month before another James Bond movie, Skyfall, hit theaters in 2012. It also happened to be the 50th anniversary of James Bond, so we got the amusing bit you can see above. Since this is Craig's last stint as 007, maybe we'll get one more sketch featuring the secret agent.
But beyond mocking James Bond, Craig was really game for anything as host, and he really threw himself into the sketches. In fact, he was especially great in this sketch:
But this time, Craig will be dealing with a lot of new cast members who weren't around the last time he hosted. In fact, a lot of cast members who were on the show back in 2012 aren't around anymore. Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, Nasim Pedrad, Taran Killam, Tim Robinson, Vanessa Bayer, and Bobby Moynihan are all gone. Hopefully he still gets comfortable and has some fun with the new crew. He'll also be joined by musical guest The Weeknd.
We'll have complete reviews of each of these episodes, so stay tuned.