Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: August 15, 2020

Tonight, Saturday Night Live goes in one funny direction with an SNL repeat starring host and musical guest Harry Styles!

Here’s some stats about tonight’s repeat episode of Saturday Night Live with Harry Styles as your host. This was the former boy-band boy’s first time hosting SNL, which made Harry one of 5 first-time hosts last season during SNL‘s 45th year. Harry Styles had previously been a musical guest 4 times on SNL, as both a solo artist and as part of his group One Direction. The singer – actor got to do sketch work in those past appearances which was a great warm-up for his hosting debut where he was promoting his brand new album “Fine Line.”

In this evening’s encore, Harry Styles is both host and musical guest. He’s the 33rd entertainer to achieve that distinction in Saturday Night Live history. And he was the second one to do it this past season alone. Chance the Rapper was both SNL host and musical guest last October. Harry Styles joined the ranks of performers like Paul Simon, Deborah Harry, Olivia Newton-John, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Sting, Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga to name a few who have pulled the coveted SNL double-duty.

The original air-date of tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat hosted by Harry Styles was November 16, 2019 and it was one nutty episode. A lot of the sketches you’ll see tonight defy description, although, we’ll do our best. There’s one sketch in particular that is the highlight of this SNL repeat. It’s one that was penned by the brilliant Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres, whose sketches are always so amazingly hilarious and unique, that they could only come from the man known as the Space Prince. That “Julio Torres” originality is on full display in tonight’s sketch called “Sara Lee” which Julio co-wrote with new SNL featured player Bowen Yang.

In the “Sara Lee” sketch, Harry Styles’ character “Dillon” has been put in charge of the Sara Lee food corporation’s Instagram account. He’s been called in to meet with his supervisors because he has mistakenly confused the Sara Lee corporate IG with his personal account. This led to Dillon posting about his intense gay sex life under the Sara Lee banner on the company’s social media page.

Our advice; Record SNL tonight, so you can watch it back to get a crash course on the gay “Daddy” sex scene. You’re going to hear phrases for the first time ever in an SNL sketch like “wreck me daddy”, “destroy me king” and “why do guys freak out when I ask them to spit in my mouth?”. The delivery between Dillon (Harry Styles) and his supervisors (cast members Cecily Strong & Bowen Yang) is spot-on. Plus, keep an eye out for Julio Torres himself to show up in the “Sara Lee” sketch. He appears as the “fashion twink.”

Other sketches tonight aren’t any less bizarre than the “Sara Lee” one. Host Harry Styles and cast member Heidi Gardner play an expecting Icelandic couple who are enjoying a child-birthing class more than they should. He’s also part of a vaudeville trio of backup singers for an aging former child star named “Baby Faye” (Cecily Strong) trying to hold on to fame. Plus, Harry plays a British intern who on his very first day working at an NYC firm, is willing to cut in line at Popeye’s to buy up all the new chicken sandwiches for the staff lunch. Much to the horror of the black employees at the company.

Also, Harry and cast member Mikey Day play a couple of airline pilots who have the passengers freaked out with their unconventional in-flight announcements. Then Harry and cast member Chris Redd close the night as a pair of funeral DJ’s who get an elderly woman’s funeral jumping much to the dismay of her loved ones. Harry Styles fans will love this sketch appropriately titled “Funeral DJs” especially when the pants come off. It’s the sort of thing that happens when Lorne Michaels has a twink hosting the show.

There are two SNL Shorts in tonight’s encore episode which are no less eccentric in their humor. Cast member Aidy Bryant plays a woman named Joan singing about her new boyfriend in a music video. Sounds normal enough, but her boyfriend is her new chihuahua puppy. During the short called “Joan Song“, Aidy sings “my dog is my boyfriend” and the puppy turns into a human. A human that looks like Harry Styles.

The other SNL Short on this evening’s show is called “That’s the Game.” Chris Redd plays a gangster who’s decided to take over illegal operations from the boss played by cast member Kenan Thompson. However it turns out that Chris Redd and his crew (Harry Styles & Mikey Day) quickly realize they need the boss more than they knew.

Harry Styles’ monologue was funny, but not nearly as original as the rest of the show. For his opening remarks on his Saturday Night Live hosting debut, Harry Styles sits down behind the piano and gives the audience a few random thoughts while he plays. If this reminds you of when Zach Galifianakis hosted SNL or when Zach did the same thing in his comedy special, “Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion” recorded in San Francisco, then yes, you’d be absolutely correct.

The gimmick may feel like Zach Galifianakis’ bit, but the jokes are all written for Harry. As Harry Styles pretends to play the piano, he talks about growing up since his days in a boy band. He also teases a One Direction reunion just enough to make you wonder if Louis, Niall, Liam and what’s his name are waiting backstage. There were already hard feelings between Zayn Malik and his band-mates when he left 1-D and Harry does take a major shot at his former band-mate in tonight’s monologue.

Donald J. Trump’s impeachment hearings were the top story on the day and the hit of political television’s new fall season last year when this SNL episode first aired. So, that’s how this episode of Saturday Night Live opened the show.

The SNL Cold Open on this evening’s repeat played off the fact that the impeachment hearings weren’t making for the most exciting TV. So Saturday Night Live shook up the hearings and gave them the soap opera treatment with an opening sketch called “Days of Our Impeachment.” The opener is full of soap opera music with dramatic stings and stabs along with plenty of over-acting and SNL political impressions.

Saturday Night Live’‘s cast gave us their standard Washington DC impersonations in this evening’s cold open. Kate McKinnon is back as Rudy Giuliani. Beck Bennett is the jowly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Mikey Day screams his way through an impression of Republican Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio. Alex Moffat plays the never-blinking Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff and Melissa Villaseñor does her pitch perfect impression of Rep. Alexandria “A.O.C.” Ocasio-Cortez. And it’s cast member Heidi Gardner who steals the opening scene tonight as “woman who faints.”

We get some new impersonations in the cold opener with Kyle Mooney appearing as Ambassador Gordon Sondland who in real life was told “You’re fired!” by Donald Trump. Same as former Ambassador to the Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (played by Cecily Strong) who was labeled as “Bad News” by the wackadoodle in the White House. Plus, Kenan Thompson shows up as Cleveland Browns player Myles Garrett who at that point in time was in the center of a recent brawl controversy between the Browns and the Pittsburgh Steelers for swinging his helmet like a weapon. Garrett was only included in the SNL Cold Open to make it more topical.

The big surprise tonight is the cameo by SNL favorite guest Jon Hamm who’s in the opening sketch as “Career Diplomat Bill Taylor.” Hamm shows up to huge applause this evening, which will just be a sad reminder of what these shows used to be like when they had studio audiences.

With the impeachment hearings at the forefront of what the country was dealing with when this Saturday Night Live episode aired, it was naturally the top story on Weekend Update. The first few moments of this evening’s repeat edition of Weekend Update are dominated by Trump news delivered by Colin Jost and Michael Che.

The anchormen talk about impeachment hearings and President Trump’s attacks on former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch which came in the form of hit-tweets. They also discussed Rep. Jim Jordan’s conspiracy theory that the impeachment investigation was just a front to try to get nude photos of the President. Yep. That’s a real thing.

Weekend Update also touches on Rudy Giuliani’s new podcast, Trump trying to keep his taxes a secret, Roger Stone’s conviction, Sean Spicer being voted off “Dancing with the Stars“, White House advisor Stephen Miller promoting white supremacy, Colin Kaepernick having public NFL workouts, schools in Italy teaching climate change, the world’s largest Starbucks, and the 50th anniversary of “Sesame Street.”

There’s two guest characters on tonight’s repeat Weekend Update. The first is one you know. It’s Kate McKinnon as former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Part racist, part opossum, this impression of Jeff Sessions is hilarious. Sessions is on Update to talk about running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama again and he’s willing to kiss a lot of Trump ass to get back to DC.

Also appearing on Weekend Update is a new character portrayed by Kyle Mooney. He’s playing Scooter Rineholdt, the fictitious President of Milk Distribution for Dairy Farmers. Scooter’s in a blind panic because “milk consumption” is on the decline and the milk business may be going bankrupt. He doesn’t want anyone drinking any of these milk substitutes that are available. As Scooter Rineholdt says, “I’d rather drink my own piss!”.

If you want a taste of Harry Styles on SNL, we have the promos for tonight’s rerun below. In promo #1, it’s a Harry Styles Greatest Hits package from his previous Saturday Night Live gigs as musical guest as both a solo act and with his One Direction brothers. Harry didn’t get to do a whole lot of sketch work as an SNL musical guest, so in this first promo, that’s the reason why we get so much of his Mick Jagger impression from a “Celebrity Family Feud” sketch.

In the next promo, host Harry Styles joins Kenan Thompson for some “classic fall fun” and “sweater weather hijinks”. After all, in this rerun, it is late November. The guys enjoy a romp in some pretend autumn leaves, but then, like the saying says, it’s all fun and games until someone threatens to call NBC security.

Tonight, singer, actor, pop idol, Harry “Sweet Creature” Styles hosts a repeat episode of Saturday Night Live! He’s also the musical guest! It all starts at 11:30pm et on NBC!

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