Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: August 3, 2019

at
Share This Post

Tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat is hosted by People Magazine’s current Sexiest Man Alive, Idris Elba!

Of course, Idris Elba is known for a lot more than just the highest title that can be bestowed by People Magazine. He played Stringer Bell on the first 3 seasons of “The Wire“, which is the series that first put him on the celebrity map. There’s the title role he played in the limited BBC series “Luther” which brought him critical acclaim and a Golden Globe award. Then of course, there’s his film work in the Marvel comic book movies as Thor’s best friend on all of Asgard, Heimdall, which brought Idris Elba some nice fat paychecks. Tonight, he’s center-stage as a first-time host on Saturday Night Live at 11:30pm et on NBC as he hosts this evening’s installment in SNL‘s summer of reruns

When Idris Elba hosted tonight’s SNL repeat, which originally aired on March 9, 2019, he was promoting his first comedy role in the new Netflix series, “Turn Up Charlie” where he plays a one hit wonder deejay forced to go to work as nanny to his best friend’s annoying, but lovable daughter. “Turn Up Charlie” is Idris Elba’s first “on-screen” comedy role, but as he explains in his SNL monologue, it wasn’t his first gig in comedy. When he first came to America from his native London, England, one of Idris Elba’s first jobs was as a bouncer at the world famous NYC comedy club, Caroline’s on Broadway, just over 20 years ago.

As you’ll see in tonight’s rerun, the SNL first-timer takes the stage looking amazing in a green suit and matching tie, showing all the reasons why People Magazine selected Idris Elba the sexiest among the living. The rest of his monologue is basically a walk through his Wikipedia page as reminisces about his days as a working deejay and a struggling actor.

But before you get to tonight’s monologue, there’s the SNL Cold Open which in a rare change-up, has nothing to do with the American political scene. The opening sketch was pulled right from the entertainment headlines of earlier this year and from singer / songwriter R. Kelly’s legal problems. The cold open is the SNL version of the now infamous sit-down CBS News interview between “CBS This Morning” anchor Gayle King and the legally challenged, self-proclaimed “King of Pop-Soul” R. Kelly. In the actual interview back in March of this year, Kelly lost his cool and stood up during the interview and stomped around the room while Gayle King tried to get him to regain his composure by looking him in the eye and calling him by his actual name, “Robert.”

In the SNL opener, cast member Leslie Jones appears as CBS’ own Gayle King with veteran cast member Kenan Thompson doing a pitch perfect impression of R. Kelly who was facing 10 counts of sexual abuse along with being jailed for not paying thousands in child support. The sketch goes in and out between R. Kelly’s interview and some impromptu song performances from Kenan Thompson as Kelly, and it captures all the confusion, insanity and off-the-wall R. Kelly responses of the actual CBS News interview and then amplifies it. The sketch has some new vitality tonight with the accused superstar pedophile being back in the news this week while being transferred from Chicago to Brooklyn to face charges in New York.

The sketches in tonight’s repeat episode of SNL start off with a game show sketch called “Can I Play That?” It’s the game show for actors where the host (Kenan Thompson, as usual, the MVP of this episode) describes a movie role and the three contestants (host Idris Elba with cast members Cecily Strong & Beck Bennett) who are working actors, have to guess if they’re capable of playing that part according to the angry, ignorant opinions that can be constantly found on Twitter. “Twitter. One mistake will kill you.” The roles they have to decide on include “a blind person”, “Caitlyn Jenner” and a “Half-Asian person” among others.

The next sketch, “PowerPoint“, puts the host in the background as cast members Aidy Bryant and Kate McKinnon get to shine playing two middle-aged receptionists at Microsoft’s corporate offices who are unaware of how to use computers, but find themselves forced into a world they don’t understand when they’re assigned to do a PowerPoint presentation at a workshop. Hopefully their characters, Henriette and Nan, become recurring ones and are back in future sketches on Saturday Night Live because we definitely need more middle-aged female SNL characters screaming “I’m a total simple turd!”

“The Real Housewives” get the parody sketch treatment on SNL tonight in a sketch called “The GoldDiggers of the WNBA” featuring host Idris Elba, and cast members Kenan Thompson and Chris Redd as guys searching to find a wealthy WNBA player to play the role of Sugar Momma in their lives. Watch for how extra tall the SNL crew is able to make Leslie Jones in this sketch.

Other sketches include a soccer sketch featuring Idris Elba as an injured player known as “The Bruiser” trying some commentary for the first time while being a man of few words and those few words being on the offensive side. There’s also a physical comedy sketch with Elba as a magician breaking in a new assistant played by Leslie Jones who’s a much larger sized woman than his regular female assistant. And that’s putting it as politely as possible in this new respectful era we live in. And the show wraps with a bar sketch with a table of young actors trying to make it in Hollywood including cast member Beck Bennett’s character who has trouble hiding his jealously when Idris Elba’s character books a new “CSI” series.

There’s a couple of SNL – Digital Shorts in tonight’s Saturday Night Live repeat to enjoy for the second time. The first SNL short we get on tonight’s repeat is a parody spot for a fictitious fast-food chicken restaurant called “Bok Bok” which is doing a disclaimer about their corporate mascot also called “Bok Bok”. The restaurant chain is desperately trying to dispute the comparisons being made between its chicken lady mascot and “Momo” the demonic, half-human, half-chicken urban legend who tempts children into a suicide challenge. Momo was very big on the internet when this short aired originally back in March, 2019.

The next short, “The Impossible Hulk” is a comic book story come to life featuring Idris Elba as a man who, due to a radiation accident, brutally transforms into an emboldened white woman who is ready to call 9-1-1 whenever feeling that his rights are being trampled on. It’s essentially “BBQ Becky” or “Permit Patty” made into a super hero saga.

The top story for Weekend Update anchors Colin Jost & Michael Che on tonight’s SNL rerun is the sentencing of former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to four years in federal prison on eight counts of filing false tax returns, bank fraud, and failure to report foreign assets. Speaking about the seemingly light sentence, Michael Che comments, “As a black guy, it feels very unfair. But as a rich, black guy, it’s a little encouraging.”

Other topics you’ll see covered tonight on Weekend Update include President Trump’s connection to the owner of the South Florida day spa where New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft got busted for soliciting a prostitute, Trump autographing Bibles for tornado victims, Hillary Clinton announcing she won’t run for President in 2020, Ash Wednesday, Virgin Atlantic Airlines’ new employee dress code, Queen Elizabeth’s new Instagram account, the “Best City to Live In” in America, a huge opioid bust, a new nude roller coaster record, Batman’s anniversary, the image of Jesus being seen in the clouds, swamp monsters, and the HBO Michael Jackson doc “Leaving Neverland” where Michael Che has a joke that finds the audience turning on him.

Visiting the Weekend Update desk for tonight’s encore showing is the return of Heidi Gardner’s character, Goop staffer and Gwyneth Paltrow employee Baskin Johns. The new-agey Baskin, who is clueless when it comes to Goop’s products, once again struggles to explain what ingredients are in Gwyneth’s bath and body products. Baskin Johns is joined by her supervisor, Piper James who tries to bail her out and who is a must-see again tonight! She’s definitely “Number One.”

Also on Weekend Update tonight, Pete Davidson is back. Yes, he was on Weekend Update last week too, but Saturday Night Live is not airing their repeats in chronological order this summer. Pete is commenting on both the R. Kelly and Michael Jackson documentaries. Pete compares R. Kelly fans to loyal members of the Catholic Church, much to the shudders of the audience. Pete giggles at himself throughout his commentary on how all geniuses and really talented people end up being sick with serious moral flaws.

And as a highly unusual third guest on Weekend Update on tonight’s rerun, Leslie Jones, who you’ll notice gets a vastly enlarged amount of air time in this episode, talks about funeral planning. And it’s her own funeral she’s planning. She wants to an open casket service where she’s nude and she wants to keep the service moving and brief. And of course, Stifler from “American Pie” will be giving the eulogy.

Idris Elba hosts an encore presentation of Saturday Night Live from March 9th with musical guest Khalid tonight at 11:30pm on NBC.

Also, August is here and that means that the annual Saturday Night Live ticket lottery is now open! If you’re an SNL fan and have always dreamed of seeing the show live while in New York, now is your chance to apply. SNL is accepting emails through the month of August, on why you want to be part of the studio audience when the show returns live in September, 2019 for SNL – Season 45. Go to NBC.com for all the details or check out the link in the tweet below. It beats camping out on the streets of New York City hoping for stand-by tickets!

[sw_read_more comedy news]

Ernie Tripper
Ernie Tripper