Who’s Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: January 13, 2018

Saturday Night Live is back live tonight with Sam Rockwell hosting the mid-season premiere!

It’s that sign that the holidays are officially over and the new year is underway. The return of live episodes of Saturday Night Live in January. It happens tonight with first-time host Sam Rockwell at roughly about 11:30pm on NBC. Rockwell is making his SNL hosting debut to promote his film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” which is already doing quite well during awards season. Sam Rockwell is bringing some trophy hardware to Saturday Night Live tonight including a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in “Three Billboards” as well as a Critics Choice Award which he just won this past Thursday.

Over the past few years, Saturday Night Live has become an important stop along the way to winning an Academy Award and Sam Rockwell seems like a lock for an Oscar nod when the nominations are announced on Tuesday, January 23rd. The Oscars handicapping site, GoldDerby.com has pointed out that a growing list of performers hosted Saturday Night Live on their way to winning an Academy Award that year, including Anne Hathaway (“Les Miserables” [2012]), Jennifer Lawrence (“Silver Linings Playbook” [2012]), Christoph Waltz (“Django Unchained” [2012]), J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash” [2014]), Emma Stone (“La La Land” [2016]) and Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea” [2016]). That’s just the people who won an Oscar. The list of people who hosted during their Academy Award runs, and made it as far as a nomination includes Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg and Jonah Hill who by the way, brought his “Wolf of Wall Street” co-star and fellow nominee Leonardo DiCaprio out during his SNL monologue. So tonight’s show should be considered a good luck charm for Sam Rockwell.

As mentioned earlier, Sam Rockwell is a first-time host for Saturday Night Live tonight. He’ll be the sixth person making their hosting debut during SNL‘s Season 43. He’s also the first host of 2018 with new shows coming through the rest of January with hosts Jessica Chastain and Saturday Night Live alumni Will Ferrell finishing out the month.

With the list of future Oscar winners to host SNL growing longer, we can expect that to come up during Sam Rockwell’s monologue tonight. Hopefully, he doesn’t jinx it. Also, watch for Alec Baldwin to be back in a cold open as Donald Trump, who has once again stuck his Presidential foot in his mouth by referring to Haiti and some African nations as “shithole countries”. The fun part will be to see how far Saturday Night Live can go in regards to saying the word “shithole” either in a sketch or on Weekend Update. Some news networks have said the full word under the umbrella of reporting the news, while others have said “S-hole” or spelled it out saying, “S-H-I-T-hole” and some opting not to say it all, but writing it out in their screen captions while simply calling it “an obscenity” on the air. Other news items that may make it into an SNL sketch tonight could be David Letterman’s first Netflix interview for his show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction“, now streaming featuring former President Barack Obama and also Oprah’s highly talked-about speech at the Golden Globe awards which fueled rampant rumors about her running for President.

In the promos for tonight’s brand new SNL, Sam Rockwell prepares himself to take the stage in Studio 8-H with the help of cast member Aidy Bryant which leads to some “Golden Globe level-prep”and a pre-show injury. In the second set of promos, Rockwell appears with Cecily Strong and his musical guest for the night, Halsey and only of them gets congratulated on his Golden Globe win while the another tries to ruin the promos.

Also here’s a reminder that Saturday Night Live may be running a little late tonight. NBC has an NFL Divisional Playoff Game today between the Atlanta Falcons and the Philadelphia Eagles and that could throw the whole schedule off a bit and Saturday Night Live may start later than usual tonight on NBC as mentioned in the promos below. Set your DVRs accordingly. Saturday Night Live is back live tonight with host Sam Rockwell and musical guest Halsey on NBC.

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