Who is Hosting Saturday Night Live Tonight: December 1, 2018

at
Share This Post

Tonight, the star of “First Man” becomes an SNL first-timer when Claire Foy hosts a brand new Saturday Night Live!

Each season, Lorne Michaels goes about 50/50 with hosts that are returning favorites and hosts that are newbies. This evening at 11:30pm on NBC, English born actor Claire Foy joins the latter. Claire has had a spectacular 2018 in her film career. She’s starred opposite Ryan Gosling in a film that the Oscar bees are buzzing about, “First Man.” The film is a biopic of sorts about Neil Armstrong, the first man to step foot on the moon as well as a historic look at the Apollo mission days of the United States space program. Claire Foy plays Janet Armstrong, the emotionally strong wife of the lunar pioneer who puts on the brave face of a dedicated spouse in public for the cameras while her husband’s quest to get to the moon’s surface is tearing up their relationship at home.

Claire also has a movie still out in theaters she’s promoting which may be the exact opposite of her role in “First Man.” She also stars in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.” It’s the sequel to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” based on the characters originally created by Stieg Larsson in his “Millennium” book series. In “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” Claire Foy takes over the role of Lisbeth Salander, (originally played by Rooney Mara in “Dragon Tattoo“,) an assault survivor, hacker, vigilante and operative who is known as “the girl who hurts men who hurt women,” by making abusive men pay for their sins. She’s part Wonder Woman, Dirty Harry and James Bond. Either of these movie roles have a good chance of being parodied on tonight’s all new Saturday Night Live. We could easily see the “the girl who hurts men who hurt women” taking on Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK or cast member Kenan Thompson’s Bill Cosby in an SNL sketch this evening.

When she takes the stage in the NBC Studios at Rockefeller Plaza tonight, Claire Foy will become the 4th first-time host during SNL – Season 44. She joins the very good company of Awkwafina, Seth Meyers and Liev Schreiber as first-timers this season. Being a first-timer who’s a serious actor and not a comedian, usually means to watch for the patented “SNL Cast Member Run-In” during the monologue. That’s where a cast member comes out on stage and interrupts the monologue to help the star through what’s usually their first time ever attempting any sort of stand up comedy. Our prediction would be Leslie Jones, who often jokes about her bad relationships with men, to “interrupt” Claire Foy to discuss her admiration for Foy’s character in “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” who violently attacks men who have wronged women.

Other things to watch for tonight on an all-new Saturday Night Live, is all the recent developments involving President Trump and the Mueller Investigation being turned into sketches and Weekend Update punchlines, including Trump’s proposed business dealings in Russia, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen admitting to lying about covering those dealings up for the future President and Trump adviser Roger Stone’s attempt to score a Wikileaks treasure trove of hacked Democratic emails from Julian Assange. With former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions being fired from the real life Trump administration, this might be the perfect time for cast member Kate McKinnon to move from playing Sessions to Roger Stone, the tiny political consultant with the even tinier round glasses in Saturday Night Live‘s ever-expanding World of Trump. Of course, it’s still anyone’s guess on if Alec Baldwin will be returning to SNL tonight as “Individual 1,” the name Donald Trump is now known as in the Mueller Probe.

Besides all things “Trump”, other news items to look for in sketch or SNL joke form include the ongoing battle between the left and the right most recently taking the shape of a feud between Joy Behar and Kid Rock, also Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s poor attempt to grow a beard over the long Thanksgiving weekend, the cold snap embracing the country, the Black Friday sales, the annual Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting ceremony which was hosted by SNL home-network NBC, and anything else Christmas-related as we move firmly into the holiday season.

We also expect a tribute tonight from Saturday Night Live over the loss of our country’s 41st Commander-in-Chief and its last war hero president, George H.W. Bush. The elder President Bush was famously played by Dana Carvey during the Bush years on SNL. Carvey’s impression of Bush 41 carried SNL through events like Hurricane Hugo, the Gulf War, also known by its official code names “Operation Desert Shield” and “Operation Desert Storm,” and through the 1988 and 1992 Presidential Elections. Dana Carvey marked his now famous impression with certain key phrases from the President’s vernacular, like “Thousand points of light” and “Not gonna do it.” The real President George H.W. Bush even appeared on SNL nearly two years after he left office on October 22, 1994 when Dana Carvey hosted the show and came out to do his monologue as his presidential alter-ego. The real 41 chastised Dana Carvey for his ridiculous impression while repeating some of the same verbal foibles that Carvey would do during his impersonation. Even though Bush criticized Dana Carvey’s impression on SNL, in real life, he loved it and invited Carvey to appear in the White House press room in December, 1992, a month after Bush had lost the Presidency to Bill Clinton. Dana Carvey said that was the start of a friendship with the late President that lasted 25 years. It really makes you miss the days when a President could not only take a joke, but embrace it as well.

The big SNL news from this past week is that Saturday Night Live has announced on Twitter, its final hosts for 2018. Following tonight’s episode hosted by Claire Foy, Saturday Night Live will have two more live shows before the mid-season break. Next week on Saturday, December 8th, SNL will be hosted by Jason Momoa who is hitting the big screen as “Aquaman” in theaters nationwide on Friday, December 21st. The King of Atlantis’ musical guests will be Mumford & Sons. Then, Matt Damon hosts the mid-season finale of Saturday Night Live on Saturday, December 15th with musical guests Mark Ronson & Miley Cyrus. Matt Damon received a social media standing ovation for his portrayal of Supreme Court Justice nominee / angry crybaby Brett Kavanaugh when he impersonated President Trump’s SCOTUS pick during the cold open back in September as part of the SNL – Season 44 premiere.

In the promos which you can watch below, for tonight’s new episode of Saturday Night Live, Claire Foy first takes to Twitter to let viewers know that she’s very excited about hosting SNL, although some nerves appear to be peeking through. In the next promo, host Claire Foy and cast member Pete Davidson are both pretty in pink while partaking in an SNL tradition to the disappointment of featured cast member Heidi Gardner. And in the final set, Claire is joined by cast member Cecily Strong and tonight’s musical guest Anderson .Paak to figure out exactly what type of accent the host is speaking in. Definitely Midwestern. “Da Queen!”

And in case you were wondering why musical guest Anderson .Paak spells his last name with a period in front of it, he told Bustle, “”The dot stands for “detail” — always be paying attention to detail. I feel that people take you as serious as you take yourself. I spent a lot of time working on my craft, developing my style, and after I came out of my little incubation I promised that I would pay attention to detail. And on top of that, I want to make sure that dot is always there to remind me and to remind others.” Here at the Interrobang, we’re always interested in punctuation. Or are we!?

Claire Foy hosts a brand new episode of Saturday Night Live tonight at 11:30pm on NBC with musical guest Anderson .Paak.

Next week, Jason “Aquaman” Momoa hosts an new episode of SNL and then Matt Damon returns to host the Saturday Night Live – Season 44 mid-season finale on Saturday, December 15th.

Read more comedy news.

Ernie Tripper
Ernie Tripper