Who Is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: May 19, 2018

Tonight, it’s the Saturday Night Live season finale hosted by one of SNL’s most beloved cast members ever, Tina Fey!

Well, “most beloved” if you don’t count Sarah Palin.

Tina Fey is a 9-time Primetime Emmy Award winner for her work on Saturday Night Live and the hit NBC comedy she created, “30 Rock.” She also has 3 Golden Globes and multiple awards from the Screen Actors and Writers Guilds, plus she’s been awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. She certainly knows what she’s doing when it comes to comedy. SNL is such a huge part of her career, it’s no surprise she also has one of the most decorated resumes covering her time with Saturday Night Live including plenty of historic comedy firsts for women. To list all of Tina Fey’s SNL accomplishments, we really need to put everything in a “Tina Fey – Saturday Night Live Timeline.”

  • 1997 – Tina Fey leaves the world famous Second City group in Chicago for New York City to work for Lorne Michaels as a writer on SNL.
  • 1999 – Fey is promoted to Saturday Night Live head writer, the first female head writer in SNL history. It’s a position she holds until 2006.
  • 2000 – She goes from the writers’ room to in front of the camera as a featured cast member and starts co-anchoring Weekend Update with fellow cast member Jimmy Fallon.
  • 2001 – Tina goes from featured cast member to full repertory player.
  • 2004 – Amy Poehler joins Tina Fey at the news desk. It was the first time that two women have co-anchored Weekend Update.
  • 2006 – (May 20) Tina Fey’s last show as a Saturday Night Live cast member.
  • 2008 – Tina Fey returns as a guest with her most well-known work on Saturday Night Live, creating an iconic impersonation of Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
  • Since Leaving The SNL Cast – Tina Fey becomes the first female cast member to join the iconic Saturday Night Live Five-Timers Club.

Tina Fey has become one of the most popular hosts to take the stage in Studio 8-H. Tonight marks her sixth time hosting the show. Previously, she’s hosted the series in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2013, and 2015 when she co-hosted SNL with former cast member and comedy partner Amy Poehler. Saturday Night Live episodes hosted by Tina Fey have always been highlighted with celebrity cameos, much like how Tina Fey has been known to do her own drop-in appearances on other hosts’ shows. With tonight’s episode being the season finale and with a huge wrap party sure to follow, watch for plenty of cameos on tonight’s last new SNL show for Season 43. During Tina Fey’s previous SNL hosting gigs, guests including Amy Schumer, Paul McCartney, Maya Rudolph, former Governor Mike Huckabee, NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez, Darrell Hammond, Michael Bolton, Robin Wright, The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone & Akiva Schaffer, Aaron Paul, Gayle King and Steve Martin have stopped by. Actually, Steve Martin has done it on more than one of Tina Fey’s hosting nights. So, keep an eye out for Steve. It also wouldn’t be surprising if Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che hand the funny news over to former anchor Tina Fey this evening or to see one of her former co-anchors, either Amy Poehler or Tina’s comedy little brother Jimmy Fallon, join her at the desk. Tina has also played desk characters during Weekend Update. Tonight could be the night for Denise McDonough (Tina Fey) and Doreen Troilo (Jimmy Fallon), two characters from the Philly suburbs, to redeem themselves. The two characters had a disastrous appearance in October, 2016 on Weekend Update when Fallon couldn’t maintain his Philly accent throughout the bit. Jimmy is still haunted by criticism about that night.

Tonight, Tina Fey will be promoting her Broadway smash musical, “Mean Girls“, when she’s hosts SNL at 11:30pm on NBC. Be ready to adjust your DVRs, just in case, if you’re in the habit of recording Saturday Night Live. NHL hockey play-offs are on earlier in the night, this evening on NBC, and that always has a chance of pushing SNL back some if game coverage runs late. Tina Fey wrote the screenplay for the 2004 feature film comedy “Mean Girls” which starred Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lacey Chabert, Lizzy Caplan and Fey herself. This past Broadway season, Tina and her husband and former Second City musical director Jeff Richmond created “Mean Girls – The Musical“, which has been nominated for 12 Tony Awards (tied for the most this season with “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical“,) including a Best Book of a Musical nomination for Tina Fey. She’s certainly hoping to add some Tonys to all that award hardware we mentioned earlier. The 2018 Tony Awards airs June 10, 2018 and will be hosted by Broadway stars Josh Groban and Sara Bareilles.

With any end-of-the-season Saturday Night Live episode, the speculation will start immediately afterwards about which cast members will return and which will either graduate to future comedy careers or be shown the door and fired after tonight’s curtain call. Kenan Thompson has already put the kibosh on any thoughts that he might call it a day at Saturday Night Live after finishing his 16th season tonight. He already announced this week that he has no plans of leaving the show, ever. Colin Jost and Michael Che have just recently been promoted to head writer status, so it’s highly doubtful that the Weekend Update team is going anywhere after tonight. Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Aidy Bryant are now getting great co-starring roles in comedy movies, but it’s hard to tell if any of them are feeling like it’s time to move on to film full time. Alex Moffat and Mikey Day should be ready to move up from featured cast members to full repertory players. Chris Redd, Melissa Villaseñor and Heidi Gardner are featured players who are gaining momentum and getting plenty of screen time, so it’s hard to imagine them leaving just as they’re getting warmed up either by choice or by Lorne Michaels’ hand. Featured player Luke Null seems to be getting cut for time on a weekly basis and Pete Davidson likes to include his frustration with his sketches not making it on the show into his recurring Weekend Update gimmick. As they say, there’s always a little bit of a shoot in every work. So, who knows? Oh yeah. Lorne Michaels. He’s the one who knows and we’ll all hear soon enough who is coming back for Season 44.

Today’s Royal Wedding is sure to dominate the news headlines all weekend, so it’s seems like a sure bet that it will make its way from the front pages to a Saturday Night Live sketch and Weekend Update jokes. Especially with the etiquette debacle that royal bride Meghan Markle’s father has become leading up to today’s wedding day. A Prince Harry bachelor party sketch wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility either. As always, there’s plenty of Trump news for SNL to play with this week, including North Korean leader Kim Jong Un playing mind games with President Trump by possibly deciding to back out of the previously planned June summit. Other news items that may become SNL fodder include the Hawaiian volcano erupting, this week’s political primaries featuring West Virginia’s ex-convict coal boss and Republican Senate candidate Don Blankenship who claimed to be “more Trump than Trump” losing his bid, plus there’s the NBA and NHL play-offs and of course, another school shooting for Jost and Che to mention.

In the promos for tonight’s Saturday Night Live season finale, first, Tina Fey narrates an animated biography of her career, then in the next video which you can watch below, it’s the SNL Studio Tour with Tina Fey where this week’s host gives a 6:30 minute tour of Studio 8-H, the home of Saturday Night Live. Be sure to watch for Tina to introduce everyone to one of the nicest guys at SNL and one our favorites, Wally the Cue Card Guy. And in the final set, Tina is joined by tonight’s musical guest Nicki Minaj where they work on the next big Hollywood idea.

It’s the last live SNL of the season, when Tina Fey hosts the Saturday Night Live – Season 43 Finale with musical guest Nicki Minaj tonight at 11:30pm and live across all American time zones on NBC.

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