Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: January 30, 2021

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SNL returns live tonight with a star who’s cashing in a hosting raincheck from last season, John Krasinski!

Picture it. New York City in springtime. The date is March 28, 2020. A young sitcom star-turned-action-hero is excited about hosting Saturday Night Live for his very first time. Then, a horrific global pandemic begins. Movie and television productions shut down across the world. And that moment of triumph is taken away from you because SNL had to lockdown Studio 8-H at 30 Rock. And when the show does come back in April, 2020, SNL can’t use you. The cast is doing homemade production pieces from their own apartments. What should have been one of the greatest nights in a performer’s life is now gone. That is, until tonight.

That’s exactly what happened to this evening’s SNL host John Krasinski. He was scheduled to host the show when the cast and crew returned from their 2020 spring break last March, but they never did. The rest of SNL – Season 45 ended up being remotely produced. Tonight, John Krasinski gets to make up for lost time. Only 309 days late. He’s finally getting to host Saturday Night Live for his very first time.

Back in March of 2020, John Krasinski was hosting SNL to promote the sequel to his mega-hit horror movie, “A Quiet Place.” Well, if there’s a bright side to a pandemic, here’s one. Krasinski’s sequel, “A Quiet Place Part II – Even More Goddamn Quiet” (just kidding), is still waiting to premiere. The Coronavirus shut that down too. So, John Krasinski, you lucky dog, you still get to plug your new movie, which you also wrote, directed, and executive produced because “A Quiet Place Part II” will now be released on Friday, September 17th, 2021.

For those of you who don’t know John Krasinski from his silent, but thrilling “A Quiet Place” movie, which by the way, has to be easy as hell to write since there’s no dialogue, you probably know him from the American version of “The Office.” It ran for 9 seasons on NBC from 2005 to 2013. And it now airs for all eternity in syndication. He played the mild-mannered, but mischievous Jim Halpert who dreamed of a better job than working at the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, PA and who kept his love for receptionist Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer) to himself for the early part of the series.

Krasinski, or “Kras” as I like to call him because “Krasinski” is too hard to spell correctly, also became a buffed-up TV action hero and stars in the Amazon Prime adventure series, “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” based on Clancy’s very popular books. If Kras went to all trouble of working out and getting some nice abs, it’s at least worth checking out. Two seasons of “Jack Ryan” are available on Amazon Prime now. And a third season has gotten the go-ahead and started filming last October in Italy.

Your SNL host for this evening is also a television producer. John Krasinski and Stephen Merchant who is known for the original British version of “The Office” created by Ricky Gervais, are the brains, creators and executive producers behind “Lip Sync Battle.” It was first developed for Jimmy Fallon to play with celebrity guests on the Tonight Show before it finally spun off into its own TV series on the Paramount Network.

Since then, “Lip Sync Battle” has garnered 3 Primetime Emmy Award nominations for John Krasinski for Outstanding Structured Reality Program. “The Kras” earned another Emmy nod for his work on “The Office” for a total of 4 nominations altogether. Any one of John Krasinski’s projects lends itself to get the parody treatment tonight on Saturday Night Live.

SNL may decide to parody “A Quiet Place” and give a cast member a noisy bag of chips. The siege on the Capitol could be the setting for a parody of “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” where host John Krasinski as Jack Ryan has to rescue SNL cast member Beck Bennett while he’s doing his Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell impersonation. “The Office” could be an office setting in any outrageous location, even the new Biden White House.

If you check the calendar, you’ll see tonight is the first new episode of Saturday Night Live since Joe Biden took the oath of office and was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. That could most definitely be part of this evening’s SNL Cold Open. Another big story that the SNL writers must be scrambling to turn into comedy is from the financial world. Small investors, with the help of Reddit getting out the word, sent the price of shares of the electronics retail chain, GameStop, sky-high after learning that hedge fund operators were bragging about being able to tank it.

Now that SNL is back with live shows, it will be interesting to see who they’ll use to play President Joe Biden since Jim Carrey’s agreement to play the former VP / future President was only for the first 6 shows of this season. Also, Trump is still in the news. So does that mean Alec Baldwin will still be playing the disgraced one-termer on Saturday Night Live!? The variety series most likely still needs a Trump, after all there’s a real-life impeachment trial happening with Donald Trump becoming the only president in history to be impeached twice. Baldwin’s Trump will probably be bragging that he leads the league in impeachments over all other U.S. Presidents.

Other news stories involving former President Trump that SNL may want to make jokes about include former Veep Mike “Fly-Head” Pence now being homeless since he’s out of office, White House Covid19 expert Dr. Fauci enjoying his freedom from Trump, the Kellyanne Conway insane family drama, the “Tiger King” not getting his Presidential pardon, and former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders running for Governor in her home state.

Since one of our SNL favorites, cast member Aidy Bryant is returning after wrapping up filming on the final season of her Hulu comedy series “Shrill“, she may want to pick up where she left off. Aidy could once again play the former Press Secretary like she’s done in the past, but this time with Sarah Huckabee Sanders making a run for the Governor’s Mansion where her father, Mike Huckabee, once ruled over all of Arkansas with a deep-fried fist.

There’s also plenty of stories in the news just waiting to be transformed into jokes at someone else’s expense on Weekend Update tonight including Jane Krakowski rumored to have dated the My Pillow Guy, airlines banning emotional support animals, no new players being elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year, and Super Bowl history being made with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers being the first team to ever play the “Big Game” in their own home stadium when the Bucs face the defending champs, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Plus, there’s the staggering amount of legends passing away including Larry King, Home-Run King Hank Aaron, renown record producer and murderer Phil Spector, Emmy, Golden Globe and Oscar winner Cloris Leachman and Emmy winner and Academy Award nominee Cicely Tyson. Out of all of these icons, only Cicely Tyson ever hosted Saturday Night Live during her career. She was the host back in 1979 during SNL – Season 4 with musical guest Talking Heads.

However, Larry King held a special place at Saturday Night Live. He was impersonated (by our count) 19 times on SNL over the years. Cast members Kevin Nealon, Will Ferrell, Norm Macdonald, Jimmy Fallon, and Fred Armisen all brought their impressions of the radio and television host to Saturday Night Live throughout the seasons. It would be a nice gesture if the SNL wardrobe department retired the Larry King suspenders.

After all this time, John Krasinski is finally in Studio 8-H. It’s 10 months overdue, but it happens tonight when he makes his SNL hosting debut! The musical guest this evening is Machine Gun Kelly. BTW, back in 2018 when cast member Pete Davidson posted a disturbing message on social media that made everyone in the country think he was suicidal, it was Machine Gun Kelly who immediately flew to NYC to check on Pete. Fortunately, Pete wasn’t really planning on doing anything drastic.

The two hung out and became even closer friends during the SNL winter break that year. Machine Gun Kelly has also appeared in two of Pete Davidson’s movies. He was in both “Big Time Adolescence” and “The King of Staten Island.” We can expect to see these two sharing some screen time on tonight’s brand new SNL. MGK will most likely be in an SNL Short this evening if they plan on doing a music video where Pete Davidson is rapping as usual. There’s something new. We can expect Kelly to make it into a sketch or two as well or sit in with Pete on a Weekend Update segment if they go in that direction.

If you scroll a little bit further, you’ll find the promos for tonight’s all-new Saturday Night Live. Host John Krasinski is joined by musical guest Machine Gun Kelly and SNL cast member Heidi Gardner. Before you watch them, just know that the pressure is really on because this is a big show. It’s the Saturday Night Live Mid-Season Premiere! Also, If you ever wondered how tonight’s musical guest got his name, you will wonder no more.

Saturday Night Live is back and ready to kick off the second half of the season with John Krasinski hosting an all-new SNL with musical guest Machine Gun Kelly. It starts tonight at 11:30pm et and it’s live across all American time zones, coast-to-coast on NBC!

SNL is live next weekend as well on Saturday, February 6th with your host, “Schitt’s Creek” star and creator Dan Levy!

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Ernie Tripper

Ernie Tripper